Barcelona Weekly Tech & Startup News – January 23, 2017 – Barcinno

Good morning! We hope you had a relaxing, rainy weekend in Barcelona. It turns out we may have a real-life unicorn in our midst: LetGo raised an eye-popping amount of money last week and will now challenge the Klingons for interstellar domination.

Don’t miss IESE’s 2nd annual Women in Leadership Conference this Wednesday (25th), featuring speakers from Microsoft, Adidas, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Facebook, Sonar Music Festival, Avios, Pfizer, KING and more!

Also, DatabeersBCN is revving back up for the new year. Their 12th event will be Pecha Kucha-style on Monday, January 30th at Fábrica Estrella Damm.

Finally, the early bird tickets for the 4th edition of 4 Years From Now are already on sale. Get an even BIGGER discount using the code Barcinno20. But hurry, prices increase on February 1st.

Ok, let’s see what’s new in Barcelona’s startup scene this week:

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THIS WEEK’S HIGHLIGHTS:

Startup & Investment News

• Barcelona tech startup Broomx shares their learnigs from CES 2017 in Las Vegas with us
• WATCH OUT! Barcelona-based Letgo has raised $175 million, valuation of nearly $1 billion
• Mobile World Capital Barcelona launched d·LAB, a new digital transformation programme that aims to solve social issues using mobile and digital technology
• Barcelona’s hotel intelligence tool ReviewPro was acquired by Chinese firm Shiji for $28M
• Schibsted Spain acquired the digital real estate portal Habitaclia for an undisclosed figure
• Barcelona’s Mom2Mom, a digital babysitting service platform, secured €536k funding
• Barkibu, an online platform for finding veterinarians, closed a €500k investment round
• Barcelona-based Celicity raised €275k to help people with celiac disease stay gluten-free
• Catalan Renewable Energy startup Smalle Technologies secured €240k investment through Crowdcube
• The startup that helps you save more energy, Kwiil, has received a €150k funding
• Barcelona startups raised €282M in 2016, which makes up more than 50% of Spain’s total startup funding in that year
• Spanish startup mouse4all developed a mouse to help disabled people use smartphones
• Jonndo, a shoe firm led by two Spaniards in their 20s, aims to take on New York
• German Big Data startup zeotap raises €12M to enter Spanish market

Tech News

• Spain is the European leader of the “sharing economy”, according to report
• Barcelona has been ranked in the top 20 cities worldwide in latest “Global Talent Competitiveness Index”
• Alibaba announced that it plans to open first office in Spain in February this year
• After one year, Uber re-launches it’s food delivery service in Spain, this time in Madrid
• Google is set to bring “smart homes” to Spain with roll-out of its Nest product line
• Huawei beats Samsung to become market leader in Spain, Apple’s market share on high
• Catalan supermarket chain BonÁrea joins fight for online sales by opening €2M automatized order picking center and launching a new App
• Mango plans for internet sales to account 20% of its total revenue by 2020
• Barcelona students beat over 100 teams from 6 countries to win the mobile gaming competition imaginChallenge
• Being invisible just became a little bit more possible thanks to Spanish scientiests
• After a 38% rise in passenger figures, Barcelona El-Prat aims to become international hub
• Catalan government pledges €1,4M to audivisual sector to build Barcelona Cinema brand
• 13 world-leading companies (no Spanish ones) vowed invest €1,4B into hydrogen energy
• 5 technologies to reduce your electricity bill at home amongst energy price raise in Spain

Good Reads

• GOOD WATCH: Radinn launched the best ever call for applications to their startup
• GOOD READ #1: “How can startups & corporates partner for success?” -Startupbootcamp
• GOOD READ #2: 7 Spanish success stories in Forbes 30 under 30 list

GREAT EVENTS THIS WEEK

• Tue, 24 Jan @ 18:30: Demo Youngfish: Intro to Prototype Thinking – By YoungFish
• Tue, 24 Jan @ 19:00: La comunicación – la punta del iceberg
• Wed, 25 Jan @ 09:00: Second Annual IESE Women in Leadership Conference
• Wed, 25 Jan @ 16:00: Augmented Reality trends for 2017
• Wed, 25 Jan @ 19:00: Code In The Dark – BCN edition
• Wed, 25 Jan @ 19:00: MOB/Talks Deconstruyendo la Exponencialidad
• Thu, 26 Jan @ 17:30: MOB/Workshop: Introduccion al Design Thinking + prototyping
• Thu, 26 Jan @ 19:00: ‘What makes users love your product?’ by Itamar Gilad, PM Google
• Thu, 26 Jan @ 19:00: DrinkEntrepreneurs #18 – January
• Thu, 26 Jan @ 19:00: ¡Afterwork con cervezas gratis!
• Fri-Sun, 27-29 Jan: Mobile Weekend

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