Carbon removal, empowering sales reps with AI, a new fund for Central European startups, and many more...
What's Up Tech? #140
Welcome to our 140th newsletter. 🖤
In 2023, baby vc is proudly sponsored by OneRagtime which will fund enrolment fees for the 2023 VC bootcamps participants, to promote diversity and inclusivity in the VC ecosystem — giving everyone the opportunity to succeed, regardless of their background.
OneRagtime is a European Seed & Series A venture capital fund with 40+ portfolio companies like Jellysmack, Homa Games and Zenly.
Follow OneRagtime on LinkedIn and check their website!
Fundraisings from last week with CUR8 and Zeliq
News from last week with Vinted and ffVC
Internship & Job offers of the week
Wishing you a pleasant read 🖤
♻️ CUR8 raised $6.5M to scale carbon removal projects (🇬🇧)
The carbon removal industry is a nascent one, with several different categories including Direct Air Capture (DAC), afforestation (e.g. plating more trees to capture CO2), and enhanced weathering (spreading CO2-absorbing rock on croplands). ♻️
Yet, the fact it is only nascent means there is also room for scams and carbon offsets that are in reality worthless, thus deterring companies from engaging and investing in voluntary carbon markets. 😕
But that’s where CUR8 comes in! CUR8 is a UK-based company that is building a market-making platform for carbon removal projects which enables companies to build a wide portfolio of carbon removal projects. The good news being that the team just raised $6.5M in pre-seed funding led by Google Ventures. 💵
Climate startup CUR8 raises $6.5M from GV for its market-making platform for carbon removals
👨💻 Zeliq raised €5M for its AI-powered sales tools (🇫🇷)
French-based startup Zeliq just raised a €5M pre-seed round led by Resonance. The company aims at empowering sales teams by leveraging AI, and envisions to release its solution in Q3 of 2023. 📆
Concretely, the team wants to make sure sales reps have access to accurate prospect data - while traditional sales tools are often limited to inaccurate and outdated data. An autopilot tool will also be available so that sales reps can focus on what they do best: locking in valuable clients. 🗝
That said, it is clear that many automated sales solutions already exist, but these do not offer the all-in-one solution Zeliq delivers as it is able to encompass the sales process from start to finish - thereby preventing sales reps from constantly switching tools. 👀
“By incorporating AI technology, we want to make the sales process as friendly as possible – starting from finding the right list of prospects, getting the correct contact details, and all the way to conducting outreach.” – Dorian Ciavarella, Founder and CEO of Zeliq. 🤝
ZELIQ Raises €5 Million in Pre-seed Funds to Develop AI-Powered Sales Solution
👕 Vinted is “technically” ready for its IPO… but prefers to focus on sustainable growth 👀
During an interview with Sifted (link below!), Vinted CEO Thomas Platangua admitted that Vinted was “technically” ready to IPO — although the company has no plan to do so for now, and despite many considering an IPO as the natural next step for the company. 🔍
“When you're at this stage, it's something that you're constantly looking at… We’re building this company in a way that it's technically IPO-ready at this point in time. And we'll just pick the moment that's good for the company.”, said CEO Thomas Plantenga to Sifted.
As a refresher, Vinted is a 15 years old secondhand fashion marketplace that became Lithuania’s first unicorn in 2019. The company now employs more than 1,500 employees and has also secured its presence in more than 19 markets. 🌍
Worth stressing, Vinted currently has 150 jobs opening despite the overall grimness in the tech ecosystem. CEO Thomas Plantenga explains this through the team’s focus on sustainable growth and its willingness to build a multi-decade business rather than maximizing short-term profits that would put the company in the best position for a successful IPO.
💵 ffVC announces a new €60M fund targetting Central European startups
Warsaw and New York-based ff Venture Capital just announced it had reached a first close at €32M on an expected €60M new fund called ff Red & White that will be dedicated to Central European startups. 🇪🇺
In particular, this new fund will focus on startups from 7 countries: Germany, Austria, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Romania, and Hungary, and support startups working in the digital transformation, resource optimisation, and sustainable transformation sectors, with expected participation in late seed to Series A rounds. 👀
Another key objective behind this new fund is the willingness to bridge Central European startups with the US and Japanese markets, which is also why this new fund is a joint venture with Japanese investment advisory firm JBIC IG Partners. “We believe there is a unique opportunity for startups aggressively tackling pressing challenges in both regions – aging populations, changes in global trade and its impact on manufacturing economies, as well as energy dependence,” commented ffVC Partner Maciej Skarul to Tech.eu
Internships
VC Analyst - ISAI (Paris)
VC Analyst - Crédit Mutuel Innovation (Paris)
VC Analyst - Cherry Ventures (London)
Jobs
Senior Associate - Breega (London)
👉 If you’d like to discover more offers… you can check our job board just here. And if you want to submit a new job offer, you can fill in this form (or share it)!
Also, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at joinbabyvc@gmail.com. We’d be super happy to have you sharing job/internship offers, events or feedback with us! 🤝
You can also read about us on our website and follow what we do on LinkedIn.
Take care, and see you next week,
The whole baby vc crew 🖤