The coronavirus pandemic impacted various aspects of the economy, and as a result, some sectors observed increased demands while others were negatively impacted. Multiple businesses faced losses, while the startups were afraid of fundings drying up. However, with lockdown relaxing in Amsterdam and most parts of the Netherlands, the country’s startup and scaleup scene seems to have gotten better.
According to a recent Dealroom/StartupAmsterdam report, the combined value of Amsterdam’s tech ecosystem has expanded to €73B, compared to €10B in 2015. This makes Amsterdam the third-ranked tech ecosystem in Europe, by the total value of tech companies founded since 2000. Another report ranks Amsterdam as the third best startup ecosystem in Europe, after London and Stockholm. Globally, the city stands in the 12th position.
The good news is, the stakeholders of the ecosystem are constantly striving to strengthen it and drive inclusiveness and collaboration. “We are always looking for companies that offer painkillers, not vitamins. Startups that offer a solution for a problem and solve people’s pain. Those companies are less affected than the nice-to-haves,” says Johan van Mil, partner at Amsterdam-based VC Peak Capital.
The city’s thriving startup ecosystem is a living, breathing entity that’s growing and maturing rapidly. It’s buzzing with an entrepreneurial spirit, innovative drive, and ambition of its stakeholders – the ecosystem’s lifeforce. The true entrepreneurial spirit that even a pandemic could not extinguish.
Below mentioned are some of the Amsterdam-based startups that hit the headlines in 2020
From bootstrapped to unicorn: MessageBird raises €169.8M at €2.5B valuation
The cloud communication platform MessageBird offers a suite of options that helps businesses stay on top of customer service. The company raised €169.8M and valued at €2.5B. The latest Series C funding round for the company happened remotely due to the effects of the pandemic.
The round was led by Silicon Valley’s Spark Capital, with participation from Bonnier, Glynn Capital, LGT Lightstone, Longbow, Mousse Partners and New View Capital. Existing investors Accel, Atomico, and Y-Combinator also participated in this round.
Founded in 2011, MessageBird offers what it calls an ‘Omnichannel’ solution that is said to unify and track interactions across ‘every’ messaging channel. Instead of keeping tabs on different channels such as SMS, email, voice, messaging apps and more, an enterprise can simply use MessageBird’s service for consolidated information at one place.
Recently, Messagebird has acquired Pusher, a London-based software firm, in a deal worth $35M (approx €29M). It marks the next milestone for the Dutch unicorn, on its path to an IPO.
Digital gaming and adtech company Azerion raises €12.5M; announces IPO plans
Azerion, a digital gaming and adtech company, based out of Schiphol-Rijk, the Netherlands, raised €12.5M to accelerate the growth of its digital platform with a wider variety of quality games, entertainment, and monetisation features, both organically and through acquisitions.
Azerion says the acquisitions are initially focused on quality casual games and digital entertainment concepts, as well as digital advertising solutions.
Founded in 2014 by two Dutch entrepreneurs – Umut Akpinar and Atilla Aytekin – Azerion claims to have built an ecosystem that combines content, technology, and data for publishers, advertisers, and consumers.
Payaut raises €2.65M in seed funding
Fintech startup Payaut raised over $3M (€2.65M) in its seed round of funding. The round was led by its earlier lead investor UK-based LocalGlobe, and previous investor Finch Capital also participated again.
Founded in 2019 by Ernst van Niekerk and Gillis Haasnoot, Payaut offers an automated payment solution for online marketplaces. It ensures that money flowing through these marketplaces ends up with the right sellers or companies with SplitPayments. The company claims to offer an all-in-one payment solution for online marketplaces that takes care of everything regarding payments towards the platform and the vendors it hosts.
Catawiki scoops up €150M
Catawiki, an online auction platform for buying and selling special items and collectables, raised €150M in a fresh round of funding led by Permira through its Growth Opportunities Fund. Existing investor Accel also participated in this round. The current round of funding will help Catawiki to grow its user base by investing in technology, marketing, and hiring more experts across Europe.
Catawiki was founded by Rene Schoenmakers (a Dutch comic collector), and Marco Jansen (a Dutch developer). It went online on 10th September 2008 as a wiki-based compendium of collector’s catalogues. The company claims to be the most-visited curated marketplace in Europe in categories such as collectables, art, design, jewellery, watches, classic cars, among others.
Cybersecurity scaleup EclecticIQ raised €20M
EclecticIQ raised €20M in its Series C round of funding led by Ace Management, a cyber growth investor. The round also saw participation from Capricorn Digital Growth Fund and Quest for Growth, Invest-NL, Arches Capital. Besides, existing investors, including INKEF Capital, KEEN Venture Partners, and KPN Ventures, also participated in the round.
Founded in 2014 by Joep Gommers and Raymon van der Velde, EclecticIQ is a global threat intelligence, hunting, and response technology provider. Its clients are some of the most targeted organisations, globally, claims the company.
Fast-charging startup Fastned raises €17M
With a goal to open 1000 fast-charging stations for electric vehicles to charge with renewable energy from the sun and wind, fast-charging network for electric vehicles company, Fastned, has raised €17M in a fresh round of funding with the issue of bonds.
Founded in 2012 by Michiel Langezaal and Bart Lubbers, Fastned is a Dutch company with an aim to accelerate the transition to electric mobility by giving freedom to electric drivers.
Investor henQ opens new fund: €100M
Venture capital fund HENQ from Amsterdam received €100M to invest in business software companies in the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe. 80% of the money went to SaaS companies while the 20% was already invested in companies including Zivver, Order Champ, Cloud and Townsend Mews.
Prior to that, henQ hit a new milestone with its fourth fund, henQ 4, with the first close of €70M. henQ takes pride in being a fully remote VC. There are no offices and the team works from different locations and it is also closing deals remotely.
Ever since starting their first fund in 2005, henQ has been focused on investing from pre-seed up to Series A in B2B software companies. One of the first investments the company made with its first fund was in Mendix, which was eventually acquired by Lightspeed for over $700M (approx €573M).
In henQ 2, they invested in SEOshop and saw early success as it was acquired by Lightspeed. Fast forward to henQ 3, the firm invested in 19 companies that showcased a 70% graduation rate, which means they raised a follow-on round with external investors after a seed round from henQ. Some of the notable companies from henQ 3 include ZIVVER, SendCloud, Mews Systems, Impraise, Aidence, among others.
CodeSandbox to make coding more collaborative & less complex; raises €10.83M
The Amsterdam-based company raised $12.7M (nearly €10.83M) in its Series A round of funding led by EQT Ventures. The round saw participation from existing investors including Kleiner Perkins, Arches Capital, and Vercel founder Guillermo Rauch accompanied by new angels Andreas Blixt and Daniel Gebler.
CodeSandbox is an online code editor that allows users to create a new web application in a single click. The platform handles the setting up of the development environment, the tooling, and the provisioning for the users. This way, they can focus on creating the application instead of all the tooling.
Zivver raised €14.4M
Zivver, a platform that offers solutions to securely exchange email, chat, or transfer files to prevent data leaks of sensitive information, raised $17M (approx €14.4M) in a fresh round of funding led by international tech investor DN Capital, with participation from new investor SmartFin.
Founded in 2015 by Rick Goud, Zivver provides a secure document sharing and email communication solution for enterprises. It offers a secure mobile communication platform for encrypted emails and sharing large documents. The company uses two-factor authentication (2FA) so that only the recipient can open the message.
The raised capital was used to accelerate Zivver’s international expansion into the UK and other markets. In addition, it also helped in the expansion of Zivver’s platform from email data protection and secure file transfer to adjacent use cases like digital signatures, secure forms, and secure video.
Adyen alumni raise €2.6M funding for Silverflow, a cloud-native card payments platform
Silverflow raised a seed fund of €2.6M to roll out its first cloud-native card payments platform. In an exclusive conversation with SC, Silverflow’s co-founders, Anne Willem de Vries and Robert Kraal shared more about the company, the initial challenges it faced and more.
The Silverflow platform has been in development for about two years now, and is slated to launch in early 2021. The platform is said to be the first cloud-native card payments platform that directly connects with card networks.
This accelerator is all set to boost energy startups in Europe with a new €21M fund
To help startups dealing with energy production, accelerator – Rockstart, raised €21M in fresh funding. Rockstart is using the funds to create an Energy Fund to be utilised investing in energy startups based out of the Netherlands and Europe. This new fund will be used to help early-stage startups until they scale-up.
The new Energy Fund launched with the Dutch pension fund ABP, and family office De Hoge Dennen Capital as cornerstone investors, along with some prominent private-wealth and industry investors. It is also supported by the seed capital scheme from the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO).
Previously, Rockstart’s first AgriFood Demo Day, which was hosted in Copenhagen on the 30th January 2020, the company had closed an investment in their AgriFood fund taking the total capital under management to over €18M.
E-bike firm VanMoof raised funds as its sales accelerate
VanMoof secured €33.7M in Series B funding from Norwest Venture Partners, Felix Capital and Balderton Capital. The company said it will utilise the funds to fuel further global expansion and bolster its manufacturing process.
The raised capital was to help VanMoof to meet the increased demand for its e-bikes and shortening delivery time. The company will drive its expansion plans further into key growth markets such as the US and Germany, where new brand stores and pop-up shops will be opened.
The company has recently raised €12.5M from one of Europe’s leading venture capital firms Balderton Capital and assembly partner SINBON Electronics. These funds will support the company’s international expansion plans as it aims to scale up for keeping up with the increased e-bike demands.
CB Insights acquires Dutch blockchain intelligence startup Blockdata
Software company Blockdata that deals with blockchain-centric market intelligence has been acquired by CB Insights.
With social distancing and working from home being the new normal, this acquisition happened virtually. CB Insights notes that pulling off the deal completely online wasn’t too difficult as they managed to do so in less than three months. As per the company, the deal moved quickly since blockchain tech has become popular with CB Insights’ customers.
Factris helps SMEs with invoice financing; secures €50M
Fintech startup Factris, that provides an online invoice factoring platform for European SMEs, raised €50M. The round for Factris was based upon a secured financing agreement with asset manager NN Investment Partners (NN IP). The company used the funds to provide easier financing to European SMEs. It did it by purchasing their trade-related invoices, which enables SMEs to better manage their liquidity position.
Founded in 2017 by Brice Laurent and Marcel Meijer, Factris specialises in the fields of SME financing, factoring, debt management, debtor insurance, and invoice finance. The company also specialises in working capital to businesses by buying their unpaid invoices.
The startup had earlier raised €5M in funding from AB ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of the Arab Bank. Existing investors including Speedinvest, Optima Investments, and other high net worth investors also participated in the Series-A equity funding round.
Prior to that, Factris received €1.4M in funding from the EU for the development of an automated risk-management system. Notably, this risk-management system will use Artificial Intelligence and will be aimed at solving a major problem affecting small businesses across Europe.
Mollie raises €90M in TCV-led funding
Payment services provider Mollie became the newest member of the fintech unicorn club, raised €90M in its series B funding round. The company raised a total of €115M, to date. Mollie will utilise these funds for accelerating its international expansion plans.
Founded in 2004 by Adriaan Mol, Mollie is a payments platform that offers an easy-to-implement process for integrating payments into a site or app. It is a technology-based company processing payments for more than 50,000 clients with local payment methods such as Mastercard, VISA, Amex, PayPal, iDEAL, Bancontact, Bitcoin, SEPA Direct Debit, Cartes Bancaires, ESP, Giropay, SOFORT Banking, and more.
Mollie aims to make online payment simple for merchants by taking away the complexity from payment methods and offering a simple, but powerful API.
AI-startup raises €10.13M to support COVID-19 research
Castor, that’s using AI to offer a cloud-based clinical data platform that simplifies the clinical trial process, raised €10.13M in its Series A round of funding. The round was led by Two Sigma Ventures while Hambrecht Ducera Growth Ventures and existing investor INKEF Capital participated as well.
The new funding will help the startup to strengthen its support for patient-centric, remote trials. It will also enable the company’s customers to maximise value from existing and newly generated data throughout the clinical trial process.
Founded back in 2012 by Derk Arts, Castor offers an Electronic Data Capture (EDC) system for medical researchers to help them easily capture and integrate high-quality data from any source on one compliant platform. It helps set up data capture forms, collaborate with colleagues, invite patients through questionnaires, import, export and analyse their data in a secure, compliant cloud environment, all without elaborate training or technical skills.
Kinder raised €500K amid pandemic, looking to raise €3M
Amsterdam-based Kinder is a tech-for-good startup that thoroughly vets the performance of charitable organisations and allows donors to act instantly when confronted with the world’s problems. In this case, ‘vet’ means examining or checking. In other words, gathering information on an organisation to determine its soundness.
In August, this year, we reported that Kinder raised almost €500K in funding. The very next month, the startup raised an additional €525K in a funding round led by a group of angel investors. In fact, Mathys van Abbe, founder of Kinder, also joined the round. With this funding, Kinder has, so far, raised €2.1M to date
The company intended to use the funding to expand its global network as well as accelerate product development for innovative fundraising features including Kinder Appeals and Kinder Fundraiser platforms. These platforms would allow users to donate towards effectively solving society’s most urgent problems and organise fundraisers to maximise their support.
WordProof wins €1M in a competition by European Commission
WordProof finished first in the ‘Blockchains for social good’ competition hosted by the European Commission. As a result, the company won €1M. With this contest, Europe aims to stimulate the use of blockchain technology to solve social problems.
Founded in 2019 by Sebastiaan van der Lans and Frank van Dalen as an angel investor and partner, the Dutch startup is on a mission to restore trust in the internet. According to the Global CIGI-Ipsos research, the confidence on the Internet is declining due to fraud, fake news, and privacy issues, among other things.
Recently, the company raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Yoast – a leading SEO plugin for WordPress.
Fastned is solving Europe’s EV charging problems, scores €13M
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Meet the 11 social innovators pitching at DNNL X Social Enterprise NL Launchpad Demo Day 2024