Hamburg-based MobilityFund, an investor that focuses on the emerging mobility sector, announced its expansion into the global market with the opening of its new office in California.

With this new office in Southern California, MobilityFund now has over 20 partners in its leadership team spread across different countries like Germany, Hong Kong, Portugal, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and Chile.

The company has onboarded several industry experts to its expanded team, including Horace Dediu, known for coining the term “micromobility”; Tatiana Quiros, co-founder of Toyota Kinto in Costa Rica and a transport expert with the World Bank; Mark Joseph, former CEO of Transdev; and Gabriel Scheer, a founding member of Lime and now director of innovation at Elemental Accelerator.

This expanded team is focused on guiding investments from MobilityFund’s latest fund, which has already invested in six startups, including Colonia and Flowfox. 

 MobilityFund is now also offering advisory services, which have already benefited various clients, such as major original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), top-tier suppliers, dealership groups, energy companies, and financial organisations interested in future mobility trends.

MobilityFund’s efforts involve securing advanced technologies, assisting with market strategies and making strategic investments. Notable collaborators include energy and transportation giants like Kaufmann, Peter Vardy, Purdy Group, Galp, Holman, and Massy.

“Our global team and expanded coverage in mobility has made us an attractive partner for global businesses with a stake in the future of mobility and energy,” says Sam Baker, managing partner of MobilityFund.

MobilityFund’s strategic investments in the mobility landscape

MobilityFund is a key player in driving innovation in the mobility industry. By investing in future-focused ventures and collaborating with renowned brands, MobilityFund guides acquisitions and launching startup accelerators.

In July, the venture capital firm invested in Hamburg-based startup Flowfox as part of a 7-figure Pre-A funding round. Flowfox’s mission to streamline the global container release process aligns with MobilityFund’s commitment to seamless mobility through technology.

MobilityFund sees an opportunity in the ocean carrier industry where digitalisation and communication are lacking and still relying on manual processes. MobilityFund is addressing this gap by investing in Flowfox’s automation to make operations smoother, reduce mistakes, and offer real-time data.

In addition, MobilityFund also invested in a digital sharing platform Colonia during the startup’s €6M seed round in June. 

Colonia’s ambition is to become the ‘Airbnb of the truck market’ by separating vehicle use from ownership. This allows unused vehicles to be rented out temporarily, turning expenses into earnings.

Colonia employs a business-to-business (B2B) sharing approach to put this into action. This approach empowers logistics firms to cooperate within a secure marketplace, supported by easy-to-use fleet management software, leading to improved operational efficiency.

Utrecht-based Sensorfact, a climate-tech IoT scale-up that specialises in smart monitoring solutions for industry, announced on Wednesday that it has raised €25M in funding. 

The round was led by European growth investor Blume Equity with participation from existing investors FORWARD.one, Korys, and SET Ventures. 

The Dutch company says it will use the capital to accelerate expansion into new markets and optimise its current product suite. The investment will also help Sensorfact expand the range of resource categories measured and serve industrial businesses globally.

The announcement comes over a year after raising €13M in funding from FORWARD.one, Korys, and SET Ventures in January 2022.

Pieter Broekema, CEO of Sensorfact, says, “We deeply appreciate the trust of our investors and dedicated employees. With Blume Equity on board, we are confident that we will continue to drive innovation towards a greener and more sustainable industry even faster.”

“We have already achieved remarkable energy savings for European industrial plants, underscoring our significant impact towards a net-zero future,” he adds. 

Sensorfact: Improving resource efficiency of industrial SMEs

Founded in 2016, Sensorfact is on a mission to offer manufacturers an integrated, user-friendly, and budget-friendly solution. 

The all-in-one, self-install system allows manufacturers to improve resource efficiency and maximise machine uptime by smartly monitoring electricity, gas, water, and compressed air usage. 

Furthermore, it can accurately predict maintenance requirements, ensuring smooth operations for manufacturers.

The core USP is in the smart algorithms and productivity enablement tools the company uses to translate the data into actionable insights, with Sensorfact also providing the IoT hardware needed for the measurements.

Currently, it has over 150 employees across offices in Utrecht, Amsterdam, Berlin, and Barcelona, and serves over 1,300 clients in 40+ countries.

The lead investor

Blume Equity is a European climate-tech growth investor dedicated to delivering profit with purpose by supporting fast-growth European businesses addressing the climate crisis to scale. 

Blume works in close partnership with management teams on the growth journey, drawing upon long scale-up and sustainability experience. 

The company has hubs in Amsterdam and London, and operating partners across other key European geographies.

Eleanor Blagbrough, co-founding Partner of Blume Equity, says, “Sensorfact is a fantastic company, epitomising the kind of inherently impactful business we seek to back: Europe’s industrial SMEs need to improve their resource efficiency and this presents both a compelling impact and business opportunity.” 

European Investment Bank (EIB) Group (European Investment Bank and European Investment Fund) announced on Monday, February 13, that it has signed the European Tech Champions Initiative (ETCI) mandate with Spain, Germany, France, Italy, and Belgium.

ETCI is a fund of funds that will back high-tech companies in their late-stage growth phase. 

“This initiative is a striking example of what we can achieve collectively to strengthen the EU’s economic and industrial sovereignty,” says Bruno Le Maire, French Minister of the Economy, Finance, and Industrial and Digital Sovereignty. 

Managed by the European Investment Fund, ETCI has secured commitments from Spain (€1B), Germany (€1B), France (€1B), Italy (€150M), and Belgium (€100M) during the initial subscription period. 

“This initiative will provide the most innovative startups with the capital they need to scale and lead the global entrepreneurial ecosystem,” says Nadia Calviño, Vice President of the Government of Spain and Minister for the Economy and Digital Transformation. 

The EIB Group has deployed an additional €500M, bringing the total to €3.75B. However, the size of the fund is expected to grow further with future commitments, says EIB. 

“Offering support to Europe’s innovative firms in their late-stage development, when they want to scale up their business, is essential for safeguarding the EU’s strategic autonomy,” says EIB Group President Werner Hoyer. 

ETCI: Plug financing gaps 

With this fund, ETCI aims to deepen Europe’s scale-up VC market by bridging gaps in financing availability, especially for companies seeking to raise over €50M. 

ETCI was unveiled in February 2022 in Paris during a summit organised under the French Presidency of the Council of the EU.

“Innovative businesses need to be able to find the equity capital they need right here in Europe,” says Marjut Falkstedt, Chief Executive of the EIF. “As manager of the ETCI, we will be using our scale and expertise to nurture a sustainable late-stage growth ecosystem capable of supporting homegrown innovation.”

ETCI will pool public resources from participating Member States and the EIB Group to make significant investments into large-scale Venture Capital funds, providing growth financing to European tech champions.

“Europe is already home to world-class companies and industries with access to solid technical and financial infrastructures. To enable future European tech champions to play an equally significant international role and to boost Europe’s global competitiveness, we need to go one step further,” says Christian Lindner, Germany’s Federal Minister of Finance. 

He adds, “With the European Tech Champions Initiative, we are now filling a gap in the financing landscape and strengthening Europe’s strategic autonomy.”

“We share this initiative in which Europe works in synergy to mobilise public and private capital to support the growth of future champions of digital innovation,” said Giancarlo Giorgetti, Minister of Economy and Finance of the Italian Republic. 

“We hope that Italy, which has always been one of EIF’s main partners, will be able to draw from this project the right impulse for the development of this business sector,” he adds.

“Belgium welcomes the pan-European investment strategy implemented by the European Investment Fund and is delighted to be able to contribute to new developments in the technology scene,” says Belgium’s Finance Minister Vincent Van Peteghem.

The Quarterly Startup Report for Q3 2022 is out! And this quarter, Dutch climate startups rake in the maximum investment.

The report was published in collaboration with Dealroom.co, Golden Egg Check, KPMG, the Regional Development Companies (ROMs), Dutch Association of Private Equity Companies (NVP), Dutch Startup Association (dSa), and Techleap.nl. 

Raised €480M in VC

According to the report, Dutch startups and scale-ups raised €480M in venture capital in Q3 2022, compared to €1.5B in Q3 2021.

However, the report reveals the number of deals is slightly higher at 99 this year versus the same quarter last year. But the number of deals larger than 100M, which made last year a record year, is now significantly lower, which explains the big difference, adds the report. 

The number of deals closed this quarter is slightly higher than last year’s, with 99 deals closed this year as opposed to the previous year. 

However, the number of deals worth more than 100M is significantly lower this year, which the report attributes to the large difference in totals between this year and last.

The report also indicates that investors invested more in the early phase (< €10M) and less above that.  

“It is particularly striking that the last category of larger investments almost all ended up in climate startups,” says the report. 

Climate investment dominates

A large majority of investment rounds with an amount greater than €10M were for climate startups or ClimateTech. Some of the investment rounds include:

• Lightyear (solar car) – €81M 
• Greener Power Solutions (mobile batteries) – €45M
• Elestor (batteries) – €30M 
• Sympower (software for electricity network) – €22M  
• LEAP24 (fast charging network) – €15M 
• Thorizon (nuclear) – €12.5M 
• Chaincraft (circular chemical production) – €11M
• Gradyent (software for efficient district heating) – €10M  
• Strohm (hydrogen pipeline) – €10M 

Dutch health tech company Xeltis was the only company in a sector other than Climate Tech to receive an investment of more than €10M.

Rise of early-stage deals

According to the quarterly startup report, 107 deals worth less than €1M were made in the first three quarters of 2022, an increase of 40 deals compared to all of 2021.

In 2021, 53 deals were made in the €10-50M category. However, this number has decreased to 29 in 2022. 

In the €100M+ category, the difference is especially significant; for the entirety of 2021, there were ten compared to just three investment rounds in 2022 by Backbase, Leyden Labs, and Pyramid Analytics through the third quarter. 

“The turnaround in early-stage investments is a good development for the rapidly growing number of startups. In addition, it is very encouraging that it is a climate where startups are collecting large investments. It again underlines that the necessary innovation for the current crises and challenges we face will come from these companies,” says Lucien Burm of the Dutch Startup Association. 

Venture capital

The report indicates that a considerable amount of capital is still available in the market. Moreover, in recent months, many venture capital firms have established new funds to invest in over the next few years.

Recently added new Dutch funds include:

• Endeit Capital – €303M 
• SHIFT Invest – €110M 
• Shamrock Ventures – €10M 

New funds were also launched in the past quarter, one example being Newion, which recently announced its fourth fund of €130M.

“Investing in tech is investing in the future of the Netherlands. These companies have developed new solutions for the major social transitions in the climate, healthcare, and circular economy. They are indispensable for the earning capacity of our country, and their social importance will only increase in the coming years. It is encouraging that investors are moving along and now seem to be focusing mainly on these sustainable companies,” says Maurice van Tilburg, Managing Director of Techleap.nl.

EIT Digital, a pan-European organisation that promotes innovation, education, and entrepreneurship in digital technology, has announced this year’s 20 finalists across Europe for its EIT Digital Challenge. 

The finalists will pitch in front of a jury of experts and investors, and participate in a matchmaking session with invited corporates and investors. The winners will be announced at an event on October 27. 

The winners will receive a waived entry into the 12-month EIT Digital Accelerator programme worth €50,000. In addition, they will get dedicated services in international access to finance and business development from the EIT Digital Accelerator team.

The EIT Digital Accelerator provides tailor-made growth support by helping participants raise capital, find customers, and scale up internationally. This is done through a distributed team of business developers and fundraising experts from 10 European countries.

Since 2012, the EIT Digital Accelerator has supported startups and scaleups from 18 countries. Together, these startups have raised over €1B in investment. The Accelerator has also been recognised as the world’s top public Business Accelerator by UBI Global, and as one of the top three accelerator brands in Europe by Startup Heatmap Europe.

Here are the 20 selected finalists for the EIT Digital Challenge 2022.

Anisoprint

HQ: Luxembourg

Anisoprint is a hardware startup producing carbon fibre 3D printers. The printers can manufacture carbon-reinforced plastic parts that can substitute metal parts in aerospace and engineering areas, cutting costs and increasing productivity. The company works with various clients in sports, robots, quadcopters, medical prostheses and orthoses, and sports goods.

Build38

HQ: Munich, Germany

Build38 provides mobile application protection solutions and services – including artificial intelligence and robust app shielding technology. The company claims that its solutions are easy to integrate and can be done in minutes. 

The company protects applications across various industries, including automotive, banking, insurance, public transportation, and healthcare. 

Based out of Munich, the company has offices in Barcelona and Singapore.

Covision Quality

HQ: Bressanone, Italy

Covision Quality is a spinoff of Covision Lab and works with its research and institutional partners. The company has developed software for automating and scaling visual inspection and defect detection on metals and plastics through computer vision and machine learning.

Covision claims that its customers can increase “time to inline deployment” by 20x and reduce pseudo scrap rates by up to 90%.

Daye

HQ: London, UK

Daye is a femcare startup offering healthcare products designed with women in mind. The company’s new product is a tampon using CBD to handle period cramps, aka dysmenorrhea. CBD is an extract from the flower of the industrial hemp plant and is a legal marijuana relative.

Elemendar

HQ: London, UK

Elemendar has developed an Artificial Intelligence capability READ application that reads human-authored cyber threat intelligence and translates it into machine-readable industry-standard structured information (STIX & MITRE ATT&CK). The company’s solution enables clients to understand and defend against new threats faster.

Faradai

HQ: London, UK

Faradai Energy Intelligence Platform is an AI and cloud-based PaaS data analytics solution for commercial buildings, industrial facilities, and renewable energy plants. Through machine learning algorithms and big data analytics, Faradai provides energy saving, operational efficiency, energy procurement optimisation, predictive maintenance, solar energy, and sustainability management for its customers.

Greenhabit

HQ: Eindhoven, the Netherlands

Founded by Mark Linders and Chantal Linders, Dutch company Greenhabit was launched within the EIT Digital Innovation Factory to help people with diabetes and cardiac conditions stick to their rehabilitation programmes. 

The company employs a scientific approach to behavioural change. By providing daily activities and rewarding progress, the app employs gamification to keep users interested. In addition, Greenhabit can pinpoint patient requirements using AI to address the root cause of bad behaviour.

JENTIS

HQ: Vienna, Austria

Based out of Vienna, JENTIS is a server-side tracking tool that helps businesses extract complete, accurate, and consistent raw data to accelerate their growth. The Austrian company developed the SaaS solution to reduce errors and deviations in web analytics tools and to streamline operations.

Loupedeck

HQ: Helsinki, Finland

Loupedeck manufactures customisable consoles designed to optimise productivity and maximise creativity through interactions with creative software. 

The company’s product line-up includes Loupedeck+, Loupedeck Live, and Loupedeck CT. 

Each console is custom-designed to support various workflows, including photo and video editing, audio composition, graphic design, content creation, and live streaming. 

Meep

HQ: Madrid, Spain

Based out of Madrid, Meep has developed MaaS solutions in the form of mobile applications in which all modes of transport available in a city, public and private, are integrated. 

The company aims to combine traditional public transport services with new micro-mobility to put the citizen in the centre of public transport, radically improving their digital experience. 

Through the app, the Spanish company provides digital solutions for Transit Authorities, Transit Operators, and Mobility Service Providers to create an interconnected mobility ecosystem. 

Medicalib

HQ: Paris, France

Medicalib is an online portal that helps find health professionals, nurses, physiotherapists, and midwives in less than an hour. 

MiiCare

HQ: London, UK

MiiCare is a social enterprise company that has developed a digital health coach, Monica, to support older adults (physically and emotionally) to live a healthier, safer, and happier life, and ease the pressure on their families and caregivers.

Multiverse Computing

HQ: San Sebastián, Spain

Multiverse Computing provides software for companies from the financial industry to help them gain an edge with quantum computing. It combines quantum and quantum-inspired solutions to address complex open problems in finance by demonstrating industry use cases to bring value to financial institutions.

The company’s flagship product, Singularity, enables financial professionals to run efficient quantum algorithms on any quantum computer from a simple spreadsheet to address highly complex problems – such as portfolio optimisation and fraud detection – without requiring any knowledge of quantum computers.

Outvise

HQ: Barcelona, Spain

Outvise is an online talent marketplace for Business Tech freelance experts. 

The platform connects companies with highly skilled freelance experts and management consultants to address their talent gaps across all functional areas, from strategy, marketing, and sales to operations, technology, and IT, in a fast and cost-effective way.

Parloa

HQ: Berlin, Germany

Parloa is a Conversational AI platform for automating omni-channel customer services like phonebot and chatbots. The company’s solution allows customer concerns, primarily on the phone, to be identified within seconds and repetitive tasks to be automated. Through this solution, Parloa aims to help every company worldwide to have better customer conversations. 

Sellforte

HQ: Espoo, Finland

Sellforte is a marketing mix modelling platform serving companies to measure marketing ROI and plan scenarios for future media investments. 

Snafu

HQ: Stockholm, Sweden

Based out of Stockholm, Snafu is a full-service record label built on AI music discovery. To discover talent, the platform’s proprietary algorithms analyse open platforms, including Spotify, SoundCloud, Youtube, and TikTok. 

Then, as per the company’s claims, the solution predicts which artists are likely to be popular, depending on sentiment analysis, song structure, decision trees, and neural networks.

Vottun

HQ: Barcelona, Spain

Vottun focuses on helping companies adopt blockchain technology to improve their current business processes and create new business models. 

The company has developed a platform that provides different blockchain ‘ready-to-use’ solutions and APIs to create value. Currently, in the public blockchain, the company supports Ethereum, Stellar, Algorand, Ethereum Classic, Bitcoin, and Inmutable X (only for NFTs).

WorkTrips.com

HQ: Warsaw, Poland

WorkTrips.com (previously Hotailors) is a next-gen AI-powered travel platform. The platform organises business travels that grant access to real-time offers from 2,000,000+ hotels and 700+ airlines worldwide. The company says that with its platform, businesses can easily control their travel policy, reduce spending and increase the efficiency of their company. 

W.Sense

HQ: Rome, Italy

W.SENSE is a deep-tech telecommunication company, born as a spinoff of Sapienza University in Rome. It specialises in underwater monitoring and communication systems based on IoUT solutions.

Every entrepreneur’s journey is riddled with challenges. Be it formulating the market fit idea, finding the right method of financing, or building the best team, but one challenge that could reign supreme is finding the right support.

Over the years, we have seen entrepreneurs and business leaders turn to other experts in their field to seek guidance. Mark Zuckerberg famously turned to Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Paul Graham of The Washington Post for advice. When Satya Nadella was chosen as only the third CEO of Microsoft, he shadowed Netflix chief Reed Hastings to learn the art of management.

While big corporations and billionaire startup founders might have it easy to find support, it is not always easy for many startups and scaleups. If you are a scaleup in the Netherlands then your best option is Techleap.nl‘s Rise programme.

Techleap.nl Rise Programme: what you need to know?

Formerly called StartupDelta, Techleap.nl is a publicly funded non-profit organisation that aims to accelerate the startup ecosystem in the Netherlands. Each year, the organisation selects some of the fast growing Dutch startups for its Rise programme, which acts as a vehicle to build connection and access mentorship.

The claim to fame here is that Techleap.nl gives the selected startups and scaleups the “best” learning and network infrastructure. The scaleups joining the Rise programme get access to leading experts, networks, and resources to learn from the best Dutch entrepreneurs.

Whether a scaleup is trying to go for a funding round or struggling with leadership, the Rise programme aims to be a one stop solution to all the challenges. More than anything, the Rise programme literally puts these selected scaleups in the radar of global investors and brings attention they wouldn’t have otherwise.

In August, Techleap.nl announced the names of nine scaleups that are joining the batch #8 of its Rise programme. Over the next two months, Silicon Canals will bring exclusive interviews with these nine scaleups looking at their journey, their learnings from being part of Rise programme, and their stated goal to disrupt the business they are operating in.

These scaleups are being dubbed as disruptors by Techleap.nl and it is visible from the work that they are doing in their respective fields. From child care and sleep improvement to AI-driven farming and sustainable delivery services, the batch #8 of the Rise programme stands out in every possible way.

Tjarda Voorneman, Lead, Techleap.nl Rise Programme, says, “We are very happy to welcome 9 very ambitious companies to batch #8 of the Rise programme. An exclusive scaling programme that will facilitate them to share insights and learn from other leading Dutch entrepreneurs. This way, we ensure that their process of scaling is accelerated and their network is expanded.”

Sustainability on my mind

The Dutch startup ecosystem is one of the most impactful in the world. In the past few years, we have seen a number of Dutch entrepreneurs build truly impactful startups. The batch #8 of Techleap.nl’s Rise programme highlights these impact startups/scaleups that are also disruptors in their own way.

The first such scaleup is Trunkrs, which aims to turn same day and next day delivery services into a planet friendly solution. In our quest to get online orders on the same day or next day, we often fail to notice the immediate impact on our planet. Trunkrs wants to change that by combining cutting-edge IT solutions with existing resources.

Like startups that have been part of Rise programme before, Trunkrs is also obsessed with delivering a premium customer experience but does so without any compromise on its commitment to sustainability. It plans to have a fully electrified delivery network by the end of 2022 and its ability to optimise the last mile will do good to protect people and the planet.

Like Trunkrs, Connecterra is also on a mission to use technology to enable sustainable farming. Dedicated to empower farmers, the scaleup is using technology to help farmers streamline their operations and thus reducing the industry’s impact on the planet.

At the heart of Connecterra’s tech stack is artificial intelligence software called ida, which is being used in 18 countries across the globe. Being used by some of the world’s leading dairy brands, ida helps “users identify key issues, recommends data-driven solutions, and supports a transition to more sustainable farming.

Care takes centre stage

Another salient theme with Techleap.nl batch #8 of Rise programme is the focus on scaleups on care. Care is a broad term that can apply to a lot of things but we don’t necessarily talk about disruption in the child care space. Sitly wants to change that by revolutionising the way people approach childcare.

The scaleup has built a marketplace that connects families, nannies, and babysitters in 14 countries across the globe. Sitly’s mission comes from a deep understanding of the child care needs of parents around the world. Designed by parents for parents, Sitly has now become one of the world’s largest child care databases and has more than 7 million registered users.

One of the areas that people have started caring deeply about recently is their sleep. Somnox, a Dutch scaleup, wants to help 100 million people around the world achieve better sleep by 2030. The scaleup has built a huggable device that relies on patented technology leveraging biofeedback and breathwork to offer better sleep.

As a sleep companion, Somnox helps people get better night’s sleep by using controlled breathing to reduce stress, lower heart rate, and calm the body and mind. At a time when tech giants like Apple are focusing on sleep as a major health metric, Somnox could be onto delivering a really impactful service to humans.

Champions of Smart Functions

We all live in this hyper-connected world where everything around us is smart including humans. With our homes and all the appliances becoming smart, people are finding it difficult to control and connect with them.

Homey aims to solve that with its technology capable of controlling, automating, and monitoring all household wireless and smart devices. Athom, the mastermind behind Homey, has built the technology to work with smart devices regardless of brand using a single, easy-to-use hub. The smart functionality also extends to the free app, which allows users to connect anything from doorbells and lights to locks and thermostats.

Can you bring smart functionality to the supply chain industry? RTI Blockchain will not only nod to yes but is also demonstrating how it is possible. The scaleup has built an online infrastructure that connects all the partners in the supply chain of load carrier registration across the globe.

The infrastructure includes everyone from suppliers and poolers to shippers, receivers, and other relevant parties. The cleverness of RTI Blockchain’s infrastructure comes alive via a simple automated dashboard where the registration of load carrier transactions becomes as seamless as managing online banking.

Commitment to the future

Samotics, Delmic, and Winc Academy are impact startups doing valuable work for the future. Samotics is fighting energy waste and unplanned downtime of global industrial companies using an AI-driven platform. The platform enables real-time monitoring of energy consumption and equipment to deliver actionable advice.

It also offers a health monitoring system that can prevent equipment failure months in advance. Delmic, on the other hand, is making microscopy solutions accessible across life science, geology, materials science, and nanophotonics. The technology is designed to be greener and user-friendly for light and electron microscopy.

All of this culminates at the need for tech education to scale the technology available to us and build newer technology. Winc Academy wants to solve one of the challenges in this space by offering a flexible approach to tech education.

Through courses that can be completed on a remote basis and at the pace suiting each individual, Winc Academy helps anyone build a career in the tech industry. With its courses built around the latest practical skills that tech employers are looking for when hiring, Winc Academy is definitely looking to change the course of online tech education

Over the last few years, Amsterdam’s scaleup ecosystem has thrived, thanks to solid digital infrastructure, entrepreneurial ecosystems, and increased access to capital. Dutch scaleups have created 35,000 more jobs in the last three years, doubling their growth rate of the three years prior, according to Dealroom. 

The combined value of Amsterdam’s scaleup ecosystem has grown from €10B in 2015 to €100B in 2020, driven by leaders like Adyen and TakeAway. Over the last couple of years, Amsterdam has consistently ranked as one of the top 3 tech hubs in continental Europe, competing with Berlin, Paris, and London. 

In 2022, Amsterdam was listed as Europe’s 2nd most valuable tech hub (after London) by enterprise value, valued at €227B (including Adyen and TakeAway). 

RocketX, an Amsterdam-based accelerator that incubates, builds, develops, and invests in technology & scale-ups, announced on Tuesday, September 20, that it has published its ‘Amsterdam Scaleup Salary Benchmark Report 2022.’

The report provides insight into salary developments in scaleups in Amsterdam and its surrounding areas. 

Methodology

The report was compiled from data provided by Dutch scaleups in the greater Amsterdam Region, commonly known as ‘de Randstad.’ This region consists of Amsterdam, Utrecht, The Hague, and Rotterdam. 

The compilation is based on inputs from 62 high-growth companies with 20-150 employees, a turnover of €1M, and a survey among 2,416 talents at scaleups.

Short overview

The report shows between 2021 and 2022, the average salary across all job categories, and nearly all seniority levels, increased by an average of 4.6 per cent. The report also reveals that:

• Revenue positions have increased by 5.4 per cent  
• Technology and product roles have increased by 3.3 per cent 
• HR and Talent Acquisition by 7 per cent 

RocketX also researched trends in bonuses, employee options, work environment, diversity, and international employees. The report reveals, among other things, that 56.7 per cent of scale-ups grant all employees stock options as part of their compensation to compete with large tech companies in the labour market.

Beer Zandt, Co-founder, and Head of Partnerships at RocketX, says: “In our partnership with scale-ups and talent in Europe, we are regularly asked whether we can benchmark salaries to understand the right rewards for positions. We believe in the power of transparency for both employers and employees. Especially In the current turbulent labour market, it is important to keep abreast of the impact of market conditions on salaries.”

“In 2021, we launched the first edition of the Amsterdam Scaleup Benchmark Report that was well received by both scale-ups and talent”, continues Beer Zandt. “We also have reports launched for Berlin and Munich. In addition, the now published second Dutch edition offers the possibility to compare the salary development in the Amsterdam region with that in 2021 and other major European tech hubs.”

Here’s a glimpse at the report across domains and contains the definitions of roles and change in salaries.

Revenue 

According to RocketX’s definition, “The Revenue domain is a cluster of functions that predominantly contributes to revenue generation within scale-ups.”

Marketing 

The marketing department aims to position and promote the brand to prospective customers to drive demand and generate leads. Further, the marketing department is divided into: 

Growth Marketer: A Growth Marketer is responsible for finding and managing the right channels to reach customers and continuously optimise traffic, engagement, and conversion.

Content Marketer: A Content Marketer is responsible for developing the content strategy based on the defined ideal customer profile and target persona within the decision-making unit. 

Product Marketer: The Product Marketer is responsible for developing effective marketing strategies to promote products and their features to an organisation’s target audience.

Note: Since Product Marketer roles were not yet included in the 2021 version, a comparison is not applicable between 2021 and 2022.

Visual Design: A Visual Designer is responsible for bringing a brand’s vision to life.

Sales & Business Development

The sales department is dedicated to selling a business’s product or service to customers.

Sales Development Rep: Depending on the business and distribution model, SDRs are responsible for following up on marketing qualified leads and performing outbound sales prospecting. 

Account executive: The Account Executive is responsible for the mid-to-bottom-of-funnel sales process, meaning they should have a discovery call, give the prospect a product demo, deliver the proposal, negotiate, and eventually close the deal.

Customer Success: The customer success team ensures that customers achieve success by using the product or service to increase retention and identify up-and-cross-sell opportunities. 

Revenue Operations (RevOps): RevOps is a B2B function that focuses on the Revenue domain to help teams make decisions that grow the business.

Product & Technology

According to RocketX’s definition, “The Product & Technology domain is a cluster of functions that focuses on the development of a company’s product and/or technological offering.”

Product

The product arm of a business is responsible for product planning and execution throughout the product life cycle. The product category is divided into:

Product Manager: The Product Manager is responsible for the product development cycle. 

UI/UX designer: The UI/UX designer’s job is to create user-friendly interfaces that enable customers to navigate a business’ digital products and understand how to use them. 

Solutions Engineer: A Solution Engineer’s job is to bridge the commercial aspect and technical requirements of a client or prospect. 

Note: Since Solution Engineer roles were not yet included, a comparison is not applicable.

Technology

The technology or engineering department builds and maintains the software and technical infrastructure and takes care of the technical systems overall.

Front-End developer: A Front-End Developer ensures that visitors to a company’s website have a pleasant experience and can easily interact with the product. 

Back-End Developer: Back-End Developers build and maintain the technology that powers the application’s back-end or infrastructure. 

Full-Stack Developer: They manage the back-end and front-end development of the software or (web) application.

DevOps: DevOps looks to speed up and automate aspects of a business’ processes regarding developing, testing, and releasing software and constant updates. 

Data Scientist: A Data Scientist extracts, analyses, and interprets masses of data from various sources. 

Data Engineer: Data Engineers are responsible for finding trends in data sets and developing algorithms to help make sure that raw data is more beneficial to a business.

Operations

According to RockstartX’s definition, “The Operations department is a cluster of functions that makes sure the business is running smoothly and includes HR, Finance, Legal & Business Operations.”

HR Manager: The Human Resources (HR) department manages the employee lifecycle, from recruitment to retirement. 

Talent Business Partner (TBP): TBPs or Recruiters are responsible for sourcing and screening relevant candidates while managing the candidate interview experience.

Legal Counsel: Legal Counsel is responsible for managing legal risks and challenges, drafting and reviewing contracts, templates, and frameworks, advising management on strategic questions from a legal point of view, and assisting the founders during investment rounds.

Finance: The finance department oversees all accounting, bookkeeping, and financial affairs.

Business Operations: Business Operations Managers work cross-departmentally in organisations to streamline and organise processes. 

Department Heads Domain 

Besides individual contributor roles, RocketX also benchmarked the salaries for the heads of the departments, including the following roles:

Head of Marketing 

Head of Sales 

Head of Product & Technology 

Head of HR 

Head of Finance 

While different challenges come with being an entrepreneur, the threat of uncertainty seems to be the one that gets them nervous the most. From startups to the tech industry, there is one question on every entrepreneur’s mind: what does the future hold? 

Well, if you belong to a deeptech scaleup ecosystem in Europe and are trying to figure out how to continue your growth and progress, this article might be what you need to read today!

EIT Digital, a pan-European organisation aimed at promoting innovation, education, and entrepreneurship in digital technology, is all set for the 9th edition of its flagship competition – EIT Digital Challenge 2022.

The EIT Digital Challenge aims to identify the best European deep tech entrepreneurs and help them scale up internationally, supporting the European deep tech ecosystem. 

Since its launch in 2014, the competition has attracted thousands of applications from more than 33 European countries. Many of the winning scaleups have moved on to become internationally successful companies.

The competition focuses on ‘deep-tech’ scaleups, broadly defined as technology companies with a differentiating product offering built around unique scientific or technological advances which are often protected or hard to reproduce.

“The EIT Digital Challenge aims to identify the best European deep tech entrepreneurs and help them scale up their businesses internationally, supporting the European deep tech ecosystem. We will select the top 20 companies and invite them to an exclusive closed-door event at the end of October where they will have the opportunity to pitch to a jury of high-profile corporates and investors,” says Diva Tommei, Head of the EIT Digital Accelerator.

Criteria

EIT Digital Challenge is open for applicants based in EU27 and Horizon Europe-associated countries, with a minimum annual revenue of €300,000 or €2M in equity investments, and that are a maximum of ten years old.

The applying company’s solution must be applicable to one of five thematic areas: Digital Industry, Digital Finance, Digital Cities, Digital Wellbeing, and Digital Tech.

The EIT Digital Challenge’s team will examine the market and internationalisation potential of the applicant’s products or services as well as the quality of their core team. 

The team will also consider the fit of the product or service to the organisation’s thematic areas and the impact EIT Digital’s support could have on the company’s business. 

What to expect?

In the end, the best five companies will receive a full year of tailored support from the EIT Digital Accelerator team, worth €50,000, which includes access to finance and business development support, as well as international visibility. 

They also get access to a 350+ members strong ecosystem of EIT Digital partners across Europe consisting of corporations, SMEs, startups, universities, and research institutes.

Here’s why you should apply

After winning the challenge in 2019, Sidekick Health, a digital therapeutics scaleup, was actively supported by EIT Digital’s fundraising experts. As a result, the company closed a $20M oversubscribed Series A financing round in 2020. 

“The EIT Digital Accelerator team delivered critical support during this process and was key in the successful closing of our fundraising: in addition to providing invaluable feedback and advice, their systematic management of the process and coordinated efforts allowed us to meet with all the right investors from across Europe in a very short time,” says Sidekick’s CEO and co-founder, Tryggvi Thorgeirsson.

Another Challenge winner, Medicus.ai, was vocal about the benefits received from the Acceleration programme. 

“We met investors we couldn’t have reached on our own, and this has contributed positively to us closing our round of 5 million Euros in mid-2019,” says the company’s CEO, Baher Al-Hakim.

For 2021 winner Connecting Food, the award helped bring the company to the next level.

“When we took part in the Challenge, we were impressed by the companies that we saw pitching. That made us even prouder of being selected as winners. Afterwards, the support of the EIT Digital Accelerator helped us promote and scaleup our technology at the international level, introducing us to other top European players,” says Maxine Roper, CEO of 2021 winner Connecting Food.

Where to apply?

Apply to the 9th edition of the EIT Digital Challenge here. The deadline for the application is September 19, 2022. The finals will take place in October.

Closure, a Rotterdam-based contract cancellation service, announced on Tuesday that it has raised €1.5M in funding from Borski Fund and Rabobank. Early investors, including Kees Jan Rietveld, Lex Geerdes, and Wiegertje Groenveld also participated in the round.

The Dutch scaleup says it will use the funds to support the team’s expansion and roll out to other European countries.

The announcement comes four years after the company raised €300K in a Seed round of funding in November 2018. 

Closure: What you need to know

Founded by Chantal van der Velde and Graciëlla van Hamersveld, Closure offers users a digital platform that allows heirs to cancel all their subscriptions, from telephone to social media accounts, in one place. The platform also allows users to transfer them to a different user.

Closure co-founder and CEO Graciëlla van Vliet says, “Our goal is to support heirs by handling the digital legacy of a loved one. This way, families can focus on what is most important at this moment in life: mourning.”

The company says that a deceased person typically has more than 30 accounts, subscriptions, and contracts, varying from bank accounts and insurances to charity donations and social media accounts. 

The Dutch platform unburdens the heirs of the deceased by acting as a single point of contact between them and the organisations. Heirs indicate the companies with which subscriptions should be terminated or taken over, and Closure carries out these requests.

The heir can access the progress through a weekly update and a personal dashboard. 

Closure CTO Bart Verhaegh says, “By applying numerous machine learning technologies, a single employee can now handle hundreds of requests a day. We not only unburden heirs but also help organisations process a death notification in a care-free and less laborious manner, as typically customer service desks do not grow proportional to the company’s customer base.”

The Rotterdam company collaborates with more than 200 funeral homes and numerous service organisations such as T-Mobile, Unicef, Interpolis, OV-Chipkaart, and Knab. 

Closure is licensed by the Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM) to terminate or transfer contracts of financial institutions.

‘We commit ourselves to innovations that stimulate people’s financial well-being. Due to the innovative strength and mission-driven approach of the team, we now also support the next growth steps. We see opportunities for Closure to increase their impact in both the Netherlands and abroad,” says Thijs Reiling, investment banker, startups and scaleups at Rabobank.

“Behind the Closure software is a revolutionary innovation that could also be applicable outside the death process. At Borski Fund, we invest in AI solutions because they offer enormous opportunities to efficiently solve quantitatively large social problems. Closure is the fifth AI company to add to our portfolio.” said Bertrand van Leersum, Investment Director at Borski Fund.

When you look up in the sky, you will see stars at night and probably a few aeroplanes or helicopters flying at a fixed height. This limited use of airspace has been a quest for big tech giants and billionaires to conquer. From the likes of Google and Amazon to Uber, every company wants to own a space in the air and some want to do that through drones.

Amazon wants to use airspace to deliver products faster, Google wants to do the same for local shops, while Uber wants to use the air to propel people from point A to point B. However, there are also startups and companies that want to use drones and the airspace for critical use cases like disaster management or urgent delivery of life-saving medical products.

One such startup is Amsterdam-based Avy, which is reimagining the use of drone service for emergency services. “I have always been very fascinated about everything that flies,” says Patrique Pi Zaman, Founder and CEO of Avy.

Aviation needs to be innovative and not conservative

For Patrique Pi Zaman, the idea of starting a drone service company stems from a childhood fascination for anything and everything that flies. He narrates his childhood story where he used to look up to the sky and see not only aeroplanes flying but also the potential. That passion for aviation was never lost on him but with the passage of time, Zaman further understood the intricacies associated with the aviation industry.

In its current form, he says, the aviation industry is “quite conservative” when it should actually be innovative. This desire to turn an old school industry into a bedrock of innovation is essentially the motivation that drove Patrique to start Avy.

The backstory behind the decision to start Avy is as fascinating as his childhood story of looking up at the sky. Patrique says he was once going through an old magazine at his parents’ house that he used to read as a little kid. In a section dedicated to future technologies, Patrique says the magazine — published in 2020 — predicted what 2020 would look like and when asked how many of those predictions came true, he smiles and says, “most of their predictions came out well in one way or the other.”

However, the magazine did not really succeed in getting everything correct in its technology of the future issue. A page dedicated to flying cars becoming a reality in 2020 did not materialise despite flying cars being a thing in science fiction movies and that flying DeLorean from the Back to the Future franchise remains iconic to this day.

This page about flying cars in an old magazine piqued the interest of Patrique, who immediately set out to investigate the technology. He says the findings led him to this conclusion that “there is little innovation happening in aviation, where at the same time, there is a huge need to innovate because everyone knows that flying is far from sustainable.”

Making aviation sustainable is a challenge

The amount of research that Patrique has done about the aviation industry and its inability to become innovative or sustainable shows every time when he speaks about the industry. A lot of the time he follows his statements with definitive numbers, proving how invested he is in the space and that alone could be the factor for his success and that of Avy.

He says it costs 12 per cent of emissions in mobility by just flying and it is such an unsustainable mode of transport that even just showering for just 20 seconds a day, never eating meat again or cycling to work won’t undo that action. When asked what could be done to make the aviation industry more sustainable, Patrique answers as if he was anticipating that question.

He says, for the aviation industry to become sustainable, it also needs to become autonomous. With all the information at his disposal, Patrique set on this mission to imagine what aviation would look like if it was sustainable and autonomous. He also began imagining a new sky world with a friend and an aviation student. Their brainstorming focused on changing the three fundamental pillars of the aviation industry.

He says the first of those pillars is the vehicle. With drones, helicopters, and aeroplanes, Patrique says there should just be one form of flying vehicle to reach full sustainability. This could lead to the possibility of zero-emission flights, whether fully electric or hydrogen, but also help with the second pillar, sustainable production. The third is fully autonomous aviation, including options like different flight altitudes.

Breaking the entry barrier

Just a week before our chat with Patrique, the Hague-based Ampyx Power filed for bankruptcy after failing to find an investor. Ampyx Power aimed to generate wind energy using an airborne vehicle and feed the energy directly to the grid. The ambitious project failed after the company failed to find adequate funding to support its research and production.

Patrique also talks about the cost associated with building a startup in the aviation field. In order to conduct feasibility research on their idea, Patrique says they applied for a competition, where they won and got a little bit of money. However, to build his grand vision for a completely different aviation industry, Avy would have needed not only hundreds of millions of euros but also thousands of people. Even if that vision succeeds, it would have taken at least 20 years for that vision to get the necessary certifications.

Patrique Pi Zaman, who studied nature sciences and innovation management at Utrecht University, describes himself as impatient by nature. The lack of money and resources didn’t stop him either. He tells the story of an immigrant from Syria in Amsterdam who told him about his long journey from the war-torn country to the safety of the Dutch capital.

During the journey from the Mediterranean Sea to mainland Europe, the person told Patrique that their boat sank and he was one of only three survivors out of more than 40 people who sought refuge. This interaction, Patrique explains, made him rethink his idea for a future of aviation. He tailored his grand vision to build an aircraft that could fly to a disaster zone that most drones could not or where helicopters are not easily available.

The story of Patrique and Avy is one of the grand visions that took its roots when he was a child and looked up to the sky. However, it materialised when he heard this story of a disaster that could have been averted with proper access to disaster relief. Thus, Avy was born with the idea of an aerial vehicle to aid in emergency response.

Drones for good

The tagline of Avy is “drones for good” and it has built a drone that Patrique describes as “a wing-shaped aircraft ready to save lives.”

He says that Aera 3, the new generation aircraft designed by Avy is able to take off vertically, which eliminates the need for a runway or any other infrastructure. After the aircraft takes off vertically and reaches a certain altitude, it is able to transition to a horizontal flight and it flies by generating lift from its wings.

Patrique says Aera 3 is 10 times faster, can fly 10 times further and is 10 times more efficient than a regular drone. It is also fully autonomous, which removes the need for a pilot. The onboard electronics designed in-house by Avy are able to control the aircraft, manoeuvre, navigate and avoid collision with other airborne vehicles.

While the fully autonomous design might make some people worry, Patrique says it is the only logical way to deploy its technology faster and get to a disaster zone faster. Avy does not want to be in the business of only selling drones and is instead looking at building an entire ecosystem that the company likes to call “drone response network.”

The idea is to have multiple drones docked at various stations and the drones being intelligent enough to map their path and reach a disaster zone faster than existing technology. Another reason for its full autonomy is that manual labour adds to the cost. The third reason, Patrique says, is safety. He says 87 per cent of failures are human-induced and he feels a fully autonomous vehicle can reduce failure, and achieve its peak efficiency.

One of the unique aspects of Avy is that it designs, assembles and produces all its aircraft in-house. This allows, Patrique says, Avy to integrate the hardware and software better than most other drone companies.

Challenge of building everything from scratch

For its disaster management and emergency delivery drone network, Patrique estimates Avy will need to have anywhere between 50 and 75 drones in the Netherlands. He reiterates the need for the company to place these systems depending on “time that you require to get to an incident and the backup that you need.”

He also reveals that Avy has around three of its Aera 3 drones flying in the Netherlands. This being the starting phase, the startup is preparing itself for its biggest challenge yet. It is one thing to get a minimum viable product or study feasibility but it is another thing to get that product off the shelves. Patrique, who has dreamed of this since childhood, is cognizant of the challenge.

Patrique says the team at Avy is “putting a lot of effort to scale” production. It is looking to speed its European rollout not only in the Netherlands, but also in Scandinavia, the UK, Belgium, and France. He says that designing everything by itself has been the biggest challenge in this journey so far.

“Motors, autopilot controllers back then were more hobby material than for industry use.. There was no regulation in place. We couldn’t get people that were experienced since the ecosystem was new. So we had to do a lot of things, we had to discover a lot of new things,” he elaborates on the challenge.

It is very rare to see challenges become strategy and Avy has made it a mission to hire inexperienced people who have “an extreme form of self-learning and are able to understand complex things faster.” In fact, Patrique says that finding market fit should be on top of the agenda of every entrepreneur.

Raising Series A funding plan

We have seen hardware startups fail without adequate funding and Patrique agrees with that notion. He says a hardware startup can bootstrap only to a certain point. With the feasibility study done and its drones already being deployed in the Netherlands, Avy is looking to raise funding in the form of a Series A round.

The new funding will help Avy reach its goal of scaling production to one aircraft per day. The Series A funding will essentially support its investment in building a production line. “I would say there are one or two tickets open in Series A and we hope to close it soon,” Patrique says.

Techleap.nl Rise offers inspiration and motivation

Patrique says he decided to join Techleap.nl’s Rise programme because of the opportunity to connect with other founders, tech leaders, and pioneers in the industry. He says the role of an entrepreneur can at times be so closed that you are focussing only on your company and thus disconnected from the outside world.

By joining the Rise programme, Patrique says that he once again got the opportunity to find inspiration and motivation from other founders. He also adds that the programme helped him learn “how to grow from 50 to 100 to 150 people.”

Avy is at this juncture where it could see hypergrowth in terms of headcount and milestones achieved. However, with that hypergrowth, there will be a need to change as an organisation and Patrique believes he learnt through batch 7 of the Rise programme.

“You need to be really careful in your culture, you need to change your organisational design, you need to change your leadership team, you need to change a lot of things,” he says. “As we are all inexperienced with that part, it was great to get a lot of ideas.”

Another thing, Patrique says, the Rise programme helped him see is blind spots. He says the team at Avy is familiar with the things it does right but Rise helped him see things they are not doing right. This is key for a startup to keep doing what it does right and fix the blind spots that could unlock value within the organisation.

Patrique summarises his whole experience with Rise as an opportunity to reflect on the hardship of finding great talent. He says that Avy has an interesting culture and offers extreme freedom to those working at the organisation. “People can decide their own days of work, their own hours, we offer infinite holidays, we have a bar and a sauna, rooftop terraces, a lot of secondary things that we never promote because that’s just what we do,” he says.

He further adds that Rise helped him learn about employer branding, a manifesto detailing why Avy wants people to work for it and also help people understand its organisational framework. Patrique says Avy wants to be that company which is able to communicate its objectives clearly. He concludes by saying that the Rise programme helped him understand the right balance in communicating the objectives.

Big vision and bigger mission

Patrique Pi Zaman says the first goal of Avy is to build a global response network that allows every country to deploy aircraft within minutes to support people with lifesaving needs. The second goal is to become so experienced with sustainable, zero-emission and autonomous aviation, that they can build larger aircraft.

If Avy succeeds in this mission then it will have an outsized influence on the larger aviation industry forcing others to change and become sustainable in the process. He says all of this will become possible only if “Avy becomes a workplace that everyone is super proud to work for” and “everyone feels happy and healthy.”

“If we succeed in these three things, then I’m happy,” Patrique quips with a big smile.

As we conclude, Patrique shares important advice for every entrepreneur out there. He says “entrepreneurship is like evolution, as entrepreneurs, we need to be very aware of what’s happening and make sure that we act on it to see whether the idea fits or not.”