The Netherlands has become one of Europe’s most dynamic and attractive destinations for startups.
With a strong entrepreneurial culture and a supportive ecosystem, Dutch startups are developing at an astonishing pace across sectors.
The Quarterly Startup Report, published in collaboration with Dealroom.co, Golden Egg Check, KPMG, the Regional Development Companies (ROMs), Dutch Association of Participation Companies (NVP), Dutch Startup Association (dSa), and Techleap.nl, provides insights into the state of Dutch startups this quarter.
€420M in Q1, 2023
The report reveals that Dutch startups raised more than €420M in venture capital in Q1 2023, and a total of 107 deals were closed.
Although there is a decrease compared to the last quarter of 2022, in which investments amounted to almost €600M, we see that the trend of the past year continues: there is more investment in the early phase.
27% in climate tech and sustainability
27 per cent of the capital invested (€115M) in the past quarter ended up in climate tech and sustainability industries, adds the report.
The total investments in the first quarter of 2023 were just over half of the €811M in the same quarter of 2022 while the number of deals has increased again.
Increased deals
For the first time since the first quarter of 2022, the total number of deals has increased again – 107 deals in Q1 versus 88 in Q4 2022. This is mainly due to the number of early-stage investments. It is still less than in the same period last year, in which 123 deals were closed.
The distribution in the number of deals versus deal size in the first quarter of this year is very similar to that of 2022, with slightly more deals between €1M and 4M and fewer deals above €15M.
“International and macroeconomic conditions, such as high-interest rates and uncertainty in the financial sector, are making VCs (and their investors) more cautious and hesitant and are still not fully up to speed with their initial investment pace,” says Maurice van Tilburg, Managing Director. Director of Techleap.nl
“At the same time, there are many opportunities for investors due to the greater choice and lower valuations. This year will be a crucial year; we expect startups that raised capital earlier, in 2021 or 2022, to enter the market for another round later this year as they are not yet profitable. The question is whether investors will go along with this or not,” adds Tilburg.
We have compiled a list of Amsterdam-based startups that garnered significant attention in Q1, 2023.
Creative Fabrica bags €56.8M
Amsterdam-based Creative Fabrica, a marketplace for fonts, graphics, crafts designs, and premium content for crafters, has raised $61M (approximately €56.85M) in a fresh round of funding.
The investment was led by Alven and was joined by LionTree and TriplePoint, with continued participation from Peak, Felix Capital, and FJ Labs.
Founded by Anca Stefan and Roemie Hillenaar in 2016, Creative Fabrica offers a library of
premium content and graphic assets available via membership. Beyond premium content, the company also curates and customises its offerings with design tools, seminars, and inspirational content to the demands of its audience.
Finst launches crypto platform with low fees
Amsterdam’s Finst, a cryptocurrency investment platform, launched its services to retail investors after obtaining its registration as a Crypto Service Provider from De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) earlier this year.
Finst says that retail investors can now open their account in less than five minutes and benefit from 82 per cent lower fees than the average fees of eight other major platforms.
The startup will charge 0.15 per cent per transaction without minimum amount, volume commitment, or added spread.
Founded by the ex-core team of DEGIRO, an online stockbroker in Europe, Finst enables investors to diversify their wealth across 30 popular digital assets, trade 24/7 in EUR (€), and monitor the market with real-time news.
Gelectric secures funding
Gelectric, a startup specialised in electrical retrofit solutions for old vessels, secured an undisclosed investment from a Dutch angel investor.
Founded in 2022 by Efil Bengisu Saygı and Rıza Özdülger, Amsterdam’s Gelectric helps identify opportunities to improve the energy efficiency of the ships, in addition to bringing other benefits, including reducing operating costs, improving the fleet’s environmental performance, and enhancing the company’s reputation.
Mithra-Ai gets €300K loan
Mithra-Ai is a SaaS B2B software company in the field of Cognitive Spend Intelligence. In January, the company received a €300K convertible loan from Innovatiefonds Noord-Holland.
Innovation Fund Noord-Holland was launched by the Dutch province of Noord-Holland, University van Amsterdam, Vrije Universiteit, Hogeschool van Amsterdam, Amsterdam UMC, and Sanquin, with support from the EU through the European Regional Development Fund.
Founded in 2021 by Arash Saberi, Christophe Frère, Rasa Raoufi, and Dennis van den Brand, Amsterdam-based firm Mithra.ai aims to make procurement teams stand out by taking on time-consuming, laborious (low value, high volume) tasks so that they can concentrate on making important decisions and realising value for their business.
not8 bags funding from Antler
Amsterdam’s not8, a B2B startup that aims to standardise the product development review process, raised an undisclosed investment from Antler.
Founded by Yaroslav Medvedev (ex-McKinsey) and Vladislav Dekhanov (ex-Yandex) in 2022, not8 is on a mission to change how product review is done.
not8’s feedback tool enables the product team to comment on any web-based product, streamlining the development process.
The tool also helps the product team to keep all the necessary information in one place, reduces the risk of information loss, and minimises the number of review cycles required.
Innovation Fund Noord-Holland launches new €10M fund
Innovation Fund Noord-Holland (INH), an initiative that provides loans to ‘innovative’ startups and SMEs in the Noord-Holland region, launched a new €10M fund available for startups.
The new fund offers convertible loans ranging from €50,000 to €350K to SMEs that have a registered office in North Holland.
The resources are only meant for business owners who are neither academic freshmen nor employees of one of INH’s shareholder knowledge institutions (UvA, HvA, AUMC, VU, and Sanquin).
The Proof-of-Concept fund at INH is available to these new academics. Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 3 to 5 must be met by the project.
Mollie appoints new CEO
Mollie, an Amsterdam-based fintech company, appointed Koen Köppen as its new CEO, replacing Shane Happach in January this year.
Köppen, previously the CTO of Klarna for five years, joined Mollie as CTO in May to support its expansion.
The new CEO will drive Mollie’s mission to simplify complex financial services and level the playing field for small- and medium-sized e-commerce companies taking on larger competitors.
Stippl, a travel planner platform packs €400K
Stippl, an Amsterdam-based all-in-one travel platform, secured €400K to accelerate global expansion.
The platform offers travellers a platform via a website, and as an app for iOS and Android, to easily create, organise, and change travel itineraries.
Besides travel planning, Stippl can be used to find activities, hotspots, and hospitality venues like restaurants at the chosen destinations.
StartGreen Capital announces the sixth fund
StartGreen Capital, an impact investment firm, launched its sixth fund – the StartGreen Transition Fund (SGTF).
The fund aims to hit the €200M mark and is now open to investors.
With the new SFTG fund, StartGreen Capital intends to focus on accelerating the Dutch energy transition by financing regional energy projects.
Startupbootcamp unveils 10 new startups
Startupbootcamp, a startup accelerator that provides investment and mentorship services, unveiled 10 startups that will participate in the first cycle of its Renewable Energy & Net-Zero Programme, a part of the Bold Action initiative.
The accelerator programme offers extensive support in establishing a thriving business, from developing a product to securing funding.
You can check out the startup list here.
People for People brings in €450K to support refugees
People for People, an aid organisation that works for refugees in Dutch reception centres, have received €450K to improve living conditions for families and children.
The donation came from Dutch entrepreneurs John Caspers (co-founder of Adyen), Robert Vis (founder of MessageBird), and Ali Niknam (founder of bunq). Caspers is now also a co-partner of the organisation together with Vis and Niknam.
The foundation works to assist people of all nationalities who seek safety and refuge in the Netherlands by taking action to meet their basic needs and offer them respectable and decent living conditions, such as places to sleep, food, transport, free bank accounts, and SIM cards.
Fairphone (b)rings in €20M from Invest-NL
Amsterdam-based Fairphone, a company that claims to make the world’s first fairly designed and produced smartphone, raised €20M in funding from Invest-NL.
Founded in 2013 by Bas van Abel and currently led by CEO Eva Gouwens, Fairphone aims to inspire the entire electronics industry to act more responsibly.
According to the Amsterdam company, every phone sold by Fairphone demonstrates the demand for ethical electronics combined with a profitable business strategy.
Solarix bags €900K from ROM InWest
Solarix, an Amsterdam startup that designs and supplies innovative coloured solar panels for facades, secured €900K investment from ROM InWest, the regional development agency in North Holland, The Netherlands.
Founded in 2018 by Marloes van Heteren and Reinier Bosch, Solarix designs and manufactures aesthetic-coloured solar panels for facades.
With its unique colour technology, design collections, and associated mounting system, Solarix says its solar panels can be fully integrated into sustainable and aesthetic facade solutions.
Amberscript acquires two competitors
Amberscript, a startup specialising in AI-enabled speech-to-text engines, acquired two of its competitors – abtipper.de and uitgetypt.nl.
With these acquisitions, the Amsterdam company aims to cement its position as the market leader in the Netherlands and Germany.
Founded in 2017 by Peter-Paul de Leeuw, Thomas Dieste, and Timo Behrens, Amberscript has created a specialised AI-enabled speech-to-text engine to ease manual transcription efforts.
Its SaaS software enables users to automatically transcribe audio and video into text using speech recognition.
bunq reports quarterly profits
In February, challenger bank Bunq announced that it had reached a pre-tax profit of €2.3M in the last quarter of 2022.
In Q4 2022, bunq’s net fee income grew by 37 per cent compared to Q4 2021, and user deposits grew by 64 per cent compared to €1.8B at the end of 2022.
The Amsterdam headquartered neobank says its first quarterly profit will fuel the fintech’s further growth and expansion.
Agtech startup Source.ag reaps €21.6M
Source.ag, an Amsterdam-based agtech startup that assists greenhouse farmers with AI, raised $23M (approximately €21.6M) in a Series A round of funding led by Astanor Ventures.
Acre Ventures Partners and several leading greenhouse operators in the Netherlands also participated in the round.
Rien Kamman and Ernst van Bruggen founded Sources.ag in 2020 to democratise access to sufficient fruit and vegetables through AI-powered greenhouses.
The company’s proprietary algorithms simulate plant behaviour to define and execute optimal cultivation strategies, taking into account millions of data points on climate, biology, and resources.
Source.ag claims that it produces up to 15 times higher yields and uses up to 20 times less water while reducing pollution and use of land.
Bundleboon goes bankrupt
Amsterdam’s Bundleboon, an online curated shopping service that specialises in kidswear, went bankrupt last month.
Founded by Monique Janke and Nelli Jeloudar in 2018, Bundleboon offered parents a collection of exclusive brands and personalised outfits uniquely styled for their children.
Smartlockr bags funds from Round2 Capital, others
Smartlockr, a data security company, raised an undisclosed funding amount from Round2 Capital, NextGen Ventures 2, and the Security of Things Fund.
Founded by Hans de Graaf and Roham Rahimi, Smartlockr specialises in data and email security and aims to address the challenge of human error in communication.
The Amsterdam company provides an easy-to-use platform for organisations to prevent data leaks of sensitive information.
Chargetrip supercharged with €10M Series A funding
Chargetrip raised €10M in Series A funding to further scale its range prediction and EV routing technology to North America and support fleet operators.
Chargetrip’s routing engine takes into account over fifteen different variables, including temperature, weather, charge speed, elevation, rolling resistance, real-time vehicle data, and availability of charge stations, to calculate the real-time range of any electric vehicle.
The Amsterdam platform also enables EV owners to find the best route to their destination with access to optimal charge stations in between.
Factris reaches €1B financing milestone
Factris, a fintech company that provides quick, low-cost working capital to European SMEs reached the €1B mark in financing in Q1 of 2023.
The Amsterdam fintech company says it ended 2022 with double-digit growth in average portfolio size, client count, and financing activity, exceeding forecasts.
Founded in 2017 by Brice Laurent and Marcel Meijer, Factris’ goal is to use financial technology and provide individualised advice to quickly and affordably fund SMEs all over Europe.
Factoring, which is Factris’ primary form of financing, helps customers by providing working capital using their unpaid invoices.
3D-scanning firm Th3rd acquired by Snap
Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, acquired Amsterdam-based Th3rd, a 3D scanning firm, for an undisclosed amount last month.
Founded in 2014 by Rudo Bisschop, Esther Bisschop, and Tristan Bethe, Th3rd specialises in creating high-quality 3D digital twins of people and products through its enterprise solution 3DSaaS.
The digital 3D models can be used for (digital) marketing, virtual reality, augmented reality, as holograms, and as a Master file in asset collection to build advertising campaigns.
Amsterdam’s Th3rd claims it can digitise up to 50,000 items per year per scan solution and on a location of choice. The brand only spends a set amount for each digital twin (3D model), and they can select the output format and grade level.
Techleap.nl launches new initiative
Techleap.nl, a non-profit publicly funded organisation aimed at boosting the tech ecosystem in the Netherlands, launched the Diverse Leaders in Tech (DLiT) community.
DLiT is an initiative that focuses on an inclusive and diverse tech sector by 2030.
Just Eat Takeaway.com deregisters from SEC in the US
Just Eat Takeaway.com, a global online food delivery marketplace, announced that it will file for deregistration of its securities from the Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States of America under the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934.
Through deregistration, the company intends to reduce reporting costs and complexity.
The Amsterdam company’s primary reasons for deregistration include the inadequate trading volumes of its securities in the US along with the considerable expenses associated with staying registered under the Exchange Act.
Anywyse creates a podcast with AI
Anywyse, an Amsterdam-based audio learning platform, released a podcast created by using Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology on International Women’s Day.
Based on the idea of Lisa Jukema, co-founder and COO of Anywyse, the 15-minute podcast aims to educate and inform listeners about the significance of International Women’s Day and why it is essential to provide support and empowerment to women in all spheres of life.
It also features stories from women who have made significant contributions to their respective fields and provides resources for listeners who want to get involved in supporting women’s rights.
01
Empowering Ukrainian Startups: Highlights from the PowerUp Ukraine 2024 Conference