Elon Musk buying Twitter, XAnge launches climate fellowship, Neat's fundraise, and more...
What's Up Tech? #110
Welcome to our 110th newsletter. It was written with 💛 by Quentin Renaud, Saish Rane, Medina Sinani and Angèle Sahraoui
Fundraisings from last week with Neat, Retraced & Bearer
News from last week with Elon Musk buying Twitter & XAnge
Our content of the week with Packy McCormick
A list of some cool events taking place in November
Internship & Job offers of the week
Wishing you a pleasant read 💛
⭐️ Neat raised 10M€ from Octopus Ventures, NewAlpha Asset Management, Mundi Ventures and Founders Future (🇫🇷)
Founded in May 2022 by former Barclay’s exec Fabien Cazes and longtime insurance industry professional Maximilien Dauzet, Neat is a Paris-based B2B2C insurance solution integrated into the shopping experience to help retailers increase customer satisfaction and revenue. Its affinity insurance products are offered as a white label to retailers who wish to offer their customers coverage for theft, loss, breakage and breakdown. 🤝
Neat focuses on customers in five markets: high-tech, travel, mobility, health and household appliances. Casino Group and BNP’s online bank Floa have already trusted Neat for a lifetime warranty offer for electronic and multimedia devices. 📱
The 10M€ will not only help Neat strengthening its technological tool to move towards an "automation of claims settlement" but will also help the team expanding operations in Europe and hire +40 individuals within the next 10 months. 📈
A word from Nick Sando, partner at Octopus Ventures: “Individuals and businesses will spend over $80 trillion on insurance over the next decade yet the gap between the level of coverage that people have versus needs is increasingly widening. Neat recognised this gap in the market and the team has seized the opportunity to offer a solution that actually meets the customer's need.” 😁
Neither shaken nor stirred, €10 million pours into insurtech Neat
📑 Retraced raised 6.5M€ with Alstin Capital (🇩🇪)
Retraced, a German-based startup has received 6.5M€ in funding from Alstin Capital. The startup offers a B2B platform for sustainable supply chain management that connects textile manufacturers and suppliers, and enables the exchange and optimization of compliance data along the supply chain. 🔁
The blockchain-based platform helps fashion brands collect information regarding sustainability, suppliers, working conditions, materials and certifications. In addition, Retraced’ customers can integrate the entire supply chain of individual products into their online store and share it transparently with consumers. 👩🏻💻
Today, Retraced is active in America, Asia and Europe and already works with fashion groups such as Marc O'Polo, Joop and Galeria. 🛍
🌐 Bearer raised $4M in a second seed round, with Alven, Point Nine, Partech and Kima Ventures (🇺🇸)
Bearer is an SF-based startup that was founded by two French former software engineers, Cédric Fabianski and Guillaume Montard. Driven by one vision, improving the developer's experience, Cédric and Guillaume decided to tackle the data security market, a market approximately worth $17B. 🚀
Bearer automates data security and privacy protection for developers. In other words, Bearer pioneered a solution for developers to automatically detect sensitive data flow and data security risks while coding. 🧘♂️
The capital raised will be used to develop the product which is for now only available to a small community of early adopters. If you think you may need this product or want to know more, do not hesitate to join Bearer’s community. 😎
🐦 Elon Musk completes $44B acquisition of Twitter
After months of contentious exchanges, Elon Musk has finally completed the acquisition of Twitter and in doing so, his first actions as “Chief Twit” were to part ways with CEO Parag Agrawal & Lead Counsel Vijaya Gadde — who famously took the decision to permanently remove Donald Trump from the social networking platform. 🙃
Elon has also taken swift steps to propose new product changes such as revamping the verification marks criteria and bringing in a team of friends/advisors including Sriram Krishnan, Partner at Sequoia & Jason Calacanis, angel investor among others. If these last few days were any sign of what’s coming, we’re in for a rollercoaster ride! 🎢
🌎 XAnge launches a new Climate Fellowship with Techstars & Energy Impact Partners
XAnge has launched a new Climate Fellowship Program that will fund entrepreneurs willing to work in the Climate Tech space with a €100k SAFE in exchange for 7% of equity. This fellowship aims to support founders at an even earlier stage and make fellows ready to launch a climate venture and raise a seed round within 12 months. 🚀
Interested participants can apply till December 16th and the first cohort starts in January 2023. 📆
💸 Capital & Taste
Quick question: Would you think that your bank has taste?
Banks have so much capital with them but can’t seemingly have an inkling of style. Well, not to pick on them but they are being attacked on all fronts with neobanks increasingly covering many bricks of what a bank used to have monopoly over. 😅
As this easy access & features get commoditised, there is still one, elusive ingredient that is missing and yet to be conquered — taste. It’s such a difficult beast to handle let alone sufficiently predict & get accurate. For example - if you heard that some company was to do a merch drop, would you be the first one to sign up or gag at the sight of it?
By this metric alone, there is a startup that blows it out of the water. If you’ve been on tech twitter for any period of time this past year, you must have come across Party Round, now known as Capital. 👀
Capital has a unique, reverse-mullet strategy with a founder-centric media arm that was initially Party Round to get the maximum amount of eyeballs and brand awareness, and a business end that uses financial services to monetise. This started through a market insight on reducing CAC as a fintech if you were a media arm.
In order to know more on why Packy McCormick is so bullish on this startup, read his essay:
🖥 (IRL, Lisbon) Web Summit, 1-4/11
The Web Summit is one of the largest tech events in the world (+70,000 people expected), taking place annually in the city of Lisbon. Info here!
👩💻 (IRL, Barcelona) Devops.barcelona, 3-4/11
Devops.barcelona is for every “SysAdmin, Ops, DevOps, Developer, Manager or Techie who wants to level up.” Info here!
🤝 (IRL, Paris) Open Source Experience, 8-9/11
The Open Source Experience is the meeting place for the entire open source software industry, bringing together more than 4,500 professionals over two days. Info here!
🇫🇮 (IRL, Helsinki) Slush, 17-18/11
Slush is a technology conference for startups and tech talent to meet with top-tier international investors, executives and media. The 2022 edition will bring together 4,600 startup founders and operators, accompanied by 2,600 investors. Info here!
💾 (IRL, Prague) European Big Data Value Forum, 21-23/11
The European Big Data Value Forum (EBDVF) brings together industry professionals, business developers, researchers and policy-makers from all over Europe and other regions of the world to advance policy actions, and industrial and research activities in the areas of Data and AI. Info here!
⛓ (IRL, Berlin) Next Block Expo, 23-24/11
Next Block Expo (NBX) — one of the biggest blockchain industry events in Europe - is bringing founders, investors and blockchain experts together to redefine & discover the future of web3. Info here!
Internships
VC Analyst - Seed4Soft (Paris)
Africa Euroquity Analyst - Bpifrance (Paris)
👉 And if you’d like to discover more offers… you can check our job board just here!
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 💛