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Updated on Oct 27, 2023
1. Piper, AI to power sales teams, raises €3M with top investors nivel👩🏼💼💼.
Piper offers Artificial Intelligence in one of the key areas of any company: sales 🏷️. The promise is to help sales teams automate repetitive tasks and get the most out of every customer touchpoint potencial🤝🏼.
Founded by three ex-managers of companies such as Google, Twitter or Jobandtalent, the young company, born in 2023, has convinced investors with reasons to inject 3 million to consolidate technology 📲 and sign talent 👨🏻💻 to make way.
Why it has potential: they themselves explain it on their website; in addition to integrating with other platforms, Piper offers generative AI in the three commercial phases: Pre-Meeting📝, Meeting 📅 and Post-Meeting 💬.
The funds and investors that enter are also a qualitative support (founders of Colvin💐, JobandTalent🧑🏻🔧 or Doctoralia👩🏼⚕️) for the future of this company that manages to land AI in a specific product and with a direct return 🫰🏼para the business user.
If you are interested, for the moment the only possible action is to join the waiting list 🪑🫷🏼.
👉🏻 Read the news about the €3M round here 💸.
👉🏻 Meet Piper here and see how they can help you refresh information before a sales meeting, remind you of key benefits the customer values or write follow-up emails🤖📩.
2. Apple starts funding payments made with ApplePay and bypasses competitors 💵🛍️.
ApplePay is great when you carry it on your phone and pay with it at a data phone. But it's even better when used as a payment method for online purchases. It's fast and with two 📱 clicks 📱 on the side button, voilà 🫲🏻, that thing you didn't need is yours and you didn't even know it. If there was a moment of regret 😰 while you were looking for the card or logging in ☝🏼 on Paypal, ApplePay cancels those seconds of restraint ⚡️.
It can also happen that, having made the decision to buy, there is no money 👛 in the account, or the money you have is not enough to eat macaroni 🍝 for 10 days. Here comes this new service 🍎 Designed by Apple in California 🏄🏼♂️.
PayLater is Apple's way for users to finance any purchase between $75 and $1,000 without fees or costs and pay back within 6 weeks 📆.
Available only in the USA 🇺🇸, Apple continues to consolidate its entry into financial services, after the arrival of the Apple Account launched in the spring with Goldman Sachs and offering the best remuneration on the market, launching a challenge 🥊 to traditional banking 🏦.
Apple's dominant position is perfect to take this step and position ApplePay as the payment method of reference, the most immediate and direct 🏎️; this gap has increased after the implementation of in-app payment verification by banks, which slows down the payment process and reduces conversions 🐢.
Meanwhile, the most direct competitor, Klarna, the buy-now-pay-later online finance giant (you see it on H&M's website 👗 or Wish 🔫, among many others), closed August with a 14% increase but is now facing a strike of its employees 🐢.
👉🏻 Here to read the news about PayLater integrated into Apple Wallet 💳.
👉🏻 Here to learn about Klarna, the dominant player in online deferred shopping ⏰.
👉🏻 Here to find out how we did it at Jekyll creating Wealty, the Fintech app that gives you cashback for every purchase you make, fully automated 💥.
3. What used to work in Startups no longer does: 3 keys to understanding an ecosystem that has (finally!) matured🥭.
There is a lot of talk that 2022 was a complex year for startups; that if the investor winter 🥶, that if there is no money, that if they ask for more offering less... Nothing from eso🙅🏻♀️.
At the end I leave you with an apparently simple article on why it would not make sense to found Glovo today, but which contains some critical truths, key to founding a startup or an online business today.
1. Unprofitable business models 🥲: they talk about Glovo as an example, but it can be extrapolated to many others. There are many companies that are founded without having a monetisation model claro🤷🏻♂️, either in the short or long term, and this no longer makes sense for investors😕. A company cannot be loss-making forever. This truism has not always been the case and the ability to generate profits🧾.
2. Obsession with money 🤩: no more going from round to round, from accelerator to accelerator. Founders who contribute their own equity, who are able to grow on their own 🌬️ and who live the company in a serious and disciplined way 🤩 and not as a free money party 🥳 are increasingly valued.
3. Training 📚: entrepreneurs who are too young 🧒🏻, recent graduates or, worse, encouraged to abandon their studies to start up 👋🏼. Training, studying in companies before owning one's own and the technological and financial level 🏦 are very favourable points for any investor.
In short, there is money. In fact, quite a few investors are still looking for 👀 investment opportunities but guided by much more rational criteria 🧠 and making risky investment an increasingly predictable science🔮.
👉🏻 Here is the article on why founding Glovo doesn't make sense today and what investors value now 🧑🏻🏫. 👉🏻 If you are thinking of starting a startup, we can help you with the optimal business model 👌🏼 and develop a monetisation plan 💶 that will put any investor at ease. Make an appointment with us 📅 and one of our experts 📲 will call you to discuss your project.
4. Crisalion, electric planes for urban mobility, gets €15M in Series A 🚁👩🏻✈️.
Crisalion defines itself as a company dedicated to advanced mobility🚄. They want, in fact they are doing it, to revolutionise the way we move ourselves and move things🚂.
Located in Madrid🚰, Crisalion has different areas of technology and development of mobility solutions:
By land 🛣️: teleoperated vehicles, they move on the road and are remotely controlled 🕹️ by a person but move without a driver inside.
By air 🛫: this is the line where they are focusing on eVTOLs (Electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing). In other words, aircraft with vertical take-off and landing ⬆ that allow the movement of people 👩👧 and/or goods 📦 in urban and interurban environments.
With a veteran and experienced aviation team coupled with the patented FlyFree propulsion, which offers maximum safety and stability thanks to the ability to manoeuvre in any direction, Crisalion's future promises😎.
👉🏻 Here is the news of the €15M Series A round 💰.
👉🏻 Here is the Crisalion website and its technology 🪽.
5. IrisBond raises €2M public-private to bring its eye-tracking technology to USA 🇺🇸👁️.
The birth of IrisBond was in 2013 and its focus has been, among others, on the development of eye-tracking technology 👀. This is integrated software that allows a person to interact with a device through eye movement 📲**.** With different technologies and adaptations available, they have been working for more than 10 years on making life easier for people with reduced mobility 👩🏻🦼 thanks to these integrations ⚙️.
Compatible with operating systems such as Windows or iPadOS, it has brought a profound improvement in the quality of life and accessibility to technology for children and adults affected by ALS.
Now, IrisBond gets an injection of €2M to bring this technology to the USA and expand its use to the healthcare field to improve communication with patients who have cognitive or physical difficulties, to avoid patient-doctor intermediaries 🗣️👨🏻⚕️ .
👉🏻 Read here the news about the mixed round for IrisBond.
👉🏻 Here you can get to know them and watch a video about how it works 🥹.
