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Hi Sifted Reader,

It's that time of the week again. Tear open the curtains, turn up the volume on your bluetooth speaker and start your Friday right — with the soothing sounds of The Sifted Podcast.

This week Amy and Eleanor chat about that whopping $11.8bn(!) Getir valuation, the Finnish startup turning shopping into a game and our latest coverage of the war in Ukraine. Listen to it on Apple or Spotify, plus...

• European fintech rankings 2022
• More on that Getir valuation
• Matching Ukrainians with tech jobs
• A wild startup court case

— Kai, reporter & Amy, editor

Fintech is the poster child of European tech. The sector boasts 35% of the region's unicorns and its three most highly valued startups — Klarna, Checkout.com and Revolut — are, you guessed it, all fintechs. 

But which startups are on the path to fintech stardom? We've created a list of the most promising fintechs in Europe in 2022. 

We bet there are a few you haven't heard of.

In the last two years, Activate has helped over 60 startups get investor ready. Over 40% of the founders who took the Activate acceleration programme successfully raised funds, totalling £11m. Will you be next?

See the success stories here.

Last week was a big one for Turkish speedy grocery startup Getir, as it raised a monster $768m Series E and launched itself into the exclusive club of European decacorns.

But given the sluggish stock market and some poor performances by its competitors (just take a look at Deliveroo's share price), it's easy to wonder how Getir managed to bag that cash haul. Are its numbers just that good — or are its investors already in too deep?

Katja Staple investigates.

Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, a number of platforms have sprung up to help people find tech jobs in Europe. But getting Ukraine's tech talent into work hasn't been an easy task, and regulatory barriers are proving difficult to navigate.

Miriam Partington and Steph Bailey caught up with some of the founders of these job platforms — and Ukrainians who've found work through them — to find out how they're tackling the hurdles.

Here's what they said.

Sometimes things get a little nasty in startup land. One of Europe's leading Amazon aggregators, Heroes, has just settled a lawsuit with VC Solid Capital, after alleging the firm faked documents claiming it had invested in the startup's seed round.

Here's how the dispute unfolded, according to court files.

Freya Pratty has the story. 

Fintech 2021: fruitful exits aplenty, chummy regulators and new digital tools for consumers and businesses springing up all over the shop. There must be something in the water.

But what's coming up in 2022? Federico Scolari turns to the data to find out which subsectors are getting investors all hot and bothered and whether the megarounds are set to continue.

Here's the state of fintech.

The spending power of Gen Z is huge. It currently sits at $140bn, according to some reports, and will only head in one direction as more Gen Zers enter the workforce.

So with all this money lining their pockets, what are they looking for in bank? We dug into the data, and spoke to experts and Gen Zers themselves to find out.

Here's what we discovered.

📱Apple's got competition in Europe. Buzzy consumer hardware startup Nothing has announced it'll release its first smartphone this summer — and its legions of fans have gone wild. The news follows the startup's $70m Series B earlier this month. Could it usurp the iPhone?

🎓 UK spinouts get record investment. Startups launched on the back of university research in the UK bagged £2.5bn in funding last year — growing 69% on the previous year. It comes as a number of spinouts begin to hit scale and foreign investors jump into the market, but a report warns that UK spinouts remain "hugely underfunded".

This isn't the only newsletter Sifted publishes. We also have weekly newsletters focused on sustainability, fintech, corporate innovation and startup life. Sign up to them here — and check out some of the articles we've shared in them recently below:

👎 Europe's plastic problem. The region's churning out twice as much of the stuff as it was two decades ago, contributing to 3.4% of global emissions, and just 14% of it is recycled. Check out this week's chart of the week from our sustainability-focused newsletter, Sustain, for more.

👍 And here are the startups looking to solve the issue. We spoke to investors from VC firms Balderton, Norrsken, Planet A and Speedinvest to find out which sustainable packaging startups they've got their eye on. Another one from our Sustain newsletter.

📣 How to give (brilliant) feedback. Some top notch advice from Santa Rožkalna, chief people officer at Latvian unicorn Printful, about how to avoid the shit sandwich when giving feedback. One from the Startup Life newsletter archives.

Amy Lewin
Editor 

Get in touch with her at amy@sifted.eu
Or tweeting at @amyrlewin

Kai Nicol-Schwarz 

Reporter

Get in touch with him at kai@sifted.eu 
Or @NicolSchwarzK

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