Hello,

This week’s main headlines:

• New €40M BCN fund for early-stage climate techs 🌱

• Barcelona wants more climate tech events 🌍

• BCN’s business schools on top again 🏆

Good news: Barcelona’s startup ecosystem cares about climate tech, a lot!

Last week’s Barcinno poll gauged the community’s interest in industry-specific tech events in our city.

And a clear winner emerged: 🌍 Climate tech/sustainability.

Coming out with a 21.7% share of the votes, the people have spoken loud and clear. There is a huge interest in solutions that can help save our planet. Even better, Catalan-based entrepreneurs are already well into building wonderful solutions that work.

📊 Our Q1 BCN funding report revealed cleantech (4 rounds, €15.5M raised) as the top industry by number of rounds raised. And it swiped the top spot in our recent future fundraising poll last month, with almost half of you predicting sustainability-focused startups to raise the most investment in 2023 in Barcelona. Oh and btw, a €40M fund investing in early-stage climate tech firms has just landed in our city (more on that in this newsletter’s VC section).

All of this shows one thing: There is a huge opportunity for somebody in Barcelona to take the lead on a climate tech-focused event or event series. Just saying ☺️

And since climate tech perfectly matches Barcinno’s values, we’ll gladly help you. So if you’re interested in kicking something off in this field, reply to this newsletter or contact our team member Natasha. We’ll be happy to support match-making, share advice on event management, and help promote such an event via our platform 💪

Coming back to the BCN event poll, 💰 fintech and 🤖 AI jointly ranked with 13% of the votes. Seems people can’t get enough of BCN FinTech events or AI talk.

Conversely, blockchain/web3/crypto received one the smallest share of votes –that’s not from a lack of interest, though, but rather due to an already wide spectrum of events that are being offered in this space (personal favorite: EBC). Somewhat disappointing to see food tech rank as joint-last, but to be honest, the food in our city is already world-class 😂

The Happiness ROI Programme
^{Week 7: Boundaries}

_{Powered by The -C- Coach, in collaboration with Barcinno and OneCoWork.}

This week, we're exploring the fourth pillar of wellbeing in the Happiness ROI Programme: setting boundaries. Looking at the results of the boundaries survey, it's evident our community is struggling with setting and honouring our needs and limits.

Only 21.05% of us are able to honour our boundaries, which means 4 out of 5 of us are struggling to activate our sense of agency and autonomy. Another 42.11% are finding it hard to say no - which means we're saying yes to things we don’t want to. The key is to feel uncomfortable within the unfamiliarity of implementing boundaries until consistency creates familiarity and norm.

Nearly 70% of us are feeling the pressure to say yes. I understand the overwhelming desire to do what feels easy, but every time we say yes, we're not promoting healthy and sustainable relationships in our lives. By saying no, we're promoting empathy, compassion, and mutual respect.

38.89% of us struggle to communicate with people and set boundaries in an area I refer to as our personal brands - our beliefs, opinions, and needs. Doing so impacts our self-worth, leading to learned helplessness, needing external validation, and building fear of rejection. Another 30.56% of us can’t set boundaries with those closest to us. Most likely we are incorrectly assuming that they should understand us, our needs, and our desires.

I've developed a free toolkit with audios, videos, resources, and exercises to help you to identify and practice setting healthy boundaries in your daily life.

Next week I’ll be featuring another one of the stories you submitted and providing guidance on how to incorporate positive changes in your life. Share your story too, or feel free to contact me any time if you need further support or guidance on the Happiness ROI Programme.

With heart and integrity,
Mehibe, The -C- Coach.

Have a great week & do good!

Startup & Investment News

Barcelona investment news

• Sportstech CeleBreak raises €1.1M

• Blockchain startup Vottun gets €200K

• Skull Barber Shop closes €200K first round from various known ecosystem members

• App marketing solution BCNMonetize acquired by US firm Entravision

Barcelona startup news

• Typeform announces Formless, a new form builder powered by AI & GPT4

• Mundimoto launches Motocomponentes, the first 2nd-hand spare parts marketplace in Spain; Q&A with CEO Josep Talavera here

• TravelPerk opens new London office & wins Travel Tech Titan award

• Sateliot’s nanosatellites being used to control bee population & ensure agricultural pollination

• Brickken joins Chainlink BUILD program to drive adoption of tokenization solutions

• ABLE Human Motion receives Círculo Ecuestre Joven Relevante award

Spanish investment news

• Cloud solution Jotelulu gets €4.1M

• Video PaaS Yuvod closes €4M

• Ebike startup Velca gets €1.2M

• Foodtech Rice in Action raises €870K

• Seville-based Liceo de Farmacia closes €500K

• Edtech IsEazy acquired by VC & PE firm ProA Capital

• Structuralia acquired by Aurica Capital-owned Educa Edtech

VC, investment & crowdfunding news

• Inclimo Climate Tech Fund I lands in Barcelona to invest €40M in 25 early-stage startups

Open calls, accelerator news & incubator stories

• Telefónica & Wayra launch first edition of their Startup Cloud Competition; until May 31

Barcelona startup & entrepreneur profiles & interviews

• Marc Camarasa, COO of Silence: “Barcelona is definitely the place to develop an electric mobility project”

• Roka Furadada: The sun protection revolution, from Catalonia to the world

• Félix Loureiro, Sede Blockchain: "We do not give value to our data, companies do"

• How PayRetailers is leading the online payments revolution

Tech News

Tech news in Barcelona

• New FT ranking places Barcelona’s business schools as first & third best in the world

• Barcelona ranks as the world's 1st city for conference attendees

• This is how Port Vell will be transformed for the Copa América

• Norrsken opens new social club in BCN to bring together the expertise, access & capital of experienced tech leaders

Tech & big company news in Spain

• Danish fintech unicorn Pleo arrives in Spain

• Indra appoints new CEO, José Vicente de los Mozos

Politics, legal & economics

• Leaked government document shows Spain wants to ban end-to-end encryption

• Countdown to the CJEU’s 1-to-30 VTC-to-taxi ratio ruling

• European AI startups have a new lobbying group in Brussels

Good Reads

• The 15 European AI startups making waves in 2023

• Is it goodbye to rental scooters?

• Catalonia has almost 100 tech hubs: how many jobs does it generate?

Good Videos & Podcasts

• The story of YADO: From idea to sale to Hotdesk (Life on Mars, ES)

• Cooltra’s marketing strategy: How to launch a motosharing brand (ES)

Great Events

This week:

• Mon, 29 May @18:30: CodeWomen: Open Coding Night by Factorial HR

• Wed, 31 May @18:30: Fuckup Nights Barcelona Vol. XLI

• Wed, 31 May @18:30: Startup Masterclass: Essential Skills for Building and Scaling a Business

• Thu, 1 Jun @09:00: TB Breakfast with Carlos Pierre, Badi

• Thu, 1 Jun @11:30: Next steps in Fintech: A vision of the present and future

Upcoming:

• Wed, 7 Jun: The Marketing Meetup with Olga Andrienko, VP of Brand Marketing @Semrush

• Thu, 15 Jun @15:00: Innovating Together: Spain & Lithuania’s FinTech Frontier 2023

• Thu, 15 Jun @09:00: Hired!Bcn: Talent acquisition conference

See the full event calendar here & add your event here.

Startup Jobs:

• FI Group is looking for a Startup Consultant Innovation

• Happy Scribe is hiring a Workplace & Culture Manager

• GUZZU is looking for a Tech Lead

• Scalapay is recruiting a Head Of Sales - Spain

• European Blockchain Convention is hiring a Web3 Community Builder

• Strands is hiring a Content Strategist