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Hi Sifted Reader,

So, you've closed a healthy funding round and have some knowledgeable, trustworthy investors joining your board. All seems gravy.

Until you realise you also need to source a chairperson and non-executive director. Where should you go to find them? And what should you look for?

We've got you covered in our second "Dear Sifted" agony aunt instalment this week. Plus ... 

• Innocent Drinks founders’ VC JamJar raises £100m fund
• Sweep raises $73m as interest in carbon accounting surges
• All you need to know about German tech's first quarter

— Amy, fintech reporter & Amy, editor

Back in 2013, the trio behind Innocent smoothies founded VC firm JamJar just two days after selling their company to Coca-Cola for more than $700m.

Fast forward to 2022, and the consumer-focused firm has just raised its second fund. It's a healthy £100m in size and has a chunky cornerstone investment from the British Business Bank.

But how is JamJar different from any other early-stage VC?

Katja Staple finds out. 

Grow by SAP is offering access to an exclusive programme for hypergrowth companies that includes a ready to use SaaS package and other big perks.

Learn more here.

After the highs of 2021, Germany has had a slow start to the year in terms of funding. 

There have been none of the megarounds we’ve seen in other geographies — in fact, no deals above $250m.

But despite this slight slowdown, there's still a wealth of interesting startups coming out of the country. 

Miriam Partington has more on the ones that caught our eye. 

Last summer international investors, traders and business leaders began flocking to Portugal en masse. 

Why? They'd heard about the country's particularly crypto-friendly laws. 

Turns out that Portugal is a great place to base yourself as a crypto investor, as any capital gains made from selling cryptocurrencies is tax free. As a result, so-called "crypto families" are popping up everywhere. 

Pedro C Garcia finds out more about this growing breed. 

This week we have the second piece in a new Sifted series, where we ask you, our readers, to send us your startup problems, before rounding up some top-notch advice from industry experts.

Christopher El Badaoui, cofounder and CEO at LGBTQ sexual health app Lvndr, doesn't know where to start when it comes to choosing an NED for his startup's board. 

So Sifted asked another founder, a VC and a director to share some valuable insights to help El Badaoui with this tricky decision. 

Agony Aunt Kai Nicol-Schwarz pulls their advice together. 

Do you also need some (startup) advice? Let us know about your startup problems — anonymously if you like — and we’ll ask a bunch of experts in the tech community what you should do. Simply fill in this form or email kai@sifted.eu.

Our upcoming report explores the secrets behind startup success — and we want to hear from you. Tell us your survival story, your tortoise and hare moment… we’re all ears.

Take our survey.

🚑 Avi Medical raises €50m to bring back the family doctor experience — with tech. The Munich-based startup is banking on a hybrid model of slick online care and brick-and-mortar clinics — and it plans to open 100 of these in the next three years. It's a proposition that Balderton, UiPath founder Daniel Dines, Berlin's Heal Capital and Paris-based Eurazeo couldn't refuse at its Series B, just closed. 

🌴 Carbon accounting is hotting up. At least it seems that way, as French carbon management platform Sweep has picked up a $73m Series B round — making it Europe’s best-funded carbon accounting platform. Sweep helps large-scale, high-emissions businesses measure their carbon output, set targets and model emission reduction strategies. Freya Pratty has the details.

👾 Forget the metaverse, what about the 'eduverse'? The what, you ask? Well it will help to read up on Labster, which has just raised $47m to build on its  educational “eduverse” — where students can wander around a science campus to do virtual experiments or take VR-based medical training courses. As always, Maija Palmer is here to decode what all that actually looks like. 

👀 Carbon capture goes mainstream. That's what we're all thinking after Climeworks, a Swiss carbon dioxide removal startup, raised a $650m round — the largest investment ever into a carbon capture startup. Climeworks is based in Switzerland but its direct air capture and storage plant, known as Orca, is in Iceland — and it's the biggest in the world. Freya Pratty explains why it matters. 

🌌 Bridging different metaverses will be key — here’s how. As consumers want to wear, drive and play with their digital stuff across metaverses, big IP owners and virtual goods producers are about to enter a golden age. At least that's according to Adam Chrigström, the cofounder of the streaming aggregator Playpilot. He believes the virtual goods market is about to grow by orders of magnitude as big brands virtualise their assets and offer them up to a consumer base eager to buy (and own!) them. Read more here. 

Amy Lewin
Editor 

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

Amy O'Brien

Reporter

Get in touch with her at amyobrien@sifted.eu 
Or @Amy_EOBrien

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