European startups at Y Combinator in winter 2021

Reports Startups 24 March 2021

As the Demo Day of the winter's batch of Y Combinator' startups has come to an end, we reviewed all the 41 participants from European countries that were selected.

The country breakdown is as follows:

the UK - 15 startups
France - 4
Denmark, Germany, Spain - 3 each
Austria, Norway, Poland - 2 each
Belgium, Croatia, Lithuania, Italy, Slovenia, Sweden and Ukraine - 1 each.

The industry breakdown is as follows:

software, SAAS - 29
biotech - 6
financial services - 6
marketplace - 3
consumers focused- 2
other verticals: construction (2), sports (2), education, energy, food, hardware, health, HR, logistics, telecom, satellite (space)

Interestingly, some of the participants were already funded before joining YC. Investors include Seedcamp, Episode 1, SAP.io (from UK), 42CAP or Aglae Ventures (from France) or StartupLab Founders (from Norway).

Also notable, two of the startups raied while being part of the program - one raised $5 million, another raised $1.6 million.

The following presents a profile for each of the 39 startups from Europe that presented at the Demo Day at YC in the winter 2021. The startup profiles are structured by country - for your convenience, at the end of the report you will find a country distribution as well.

United Kingdom (15)

The UK had 15 startups being selected into YC's 2021 winter program. Here's what they do:

One satellite manufacturer, already working with ESA and SpaceX for sending the machines into space
A neobank (payment service operator) focused on Brazilian Brazilians and Latin Americans
a few SAAS verticaly-oriented on health, financial services (2), a fitness API aggregator
5 SAAS developers of plain vanilla software tools
2 marketplaces - one for consumers (video classifieds) and one for funding property rennovations
one biotech company.

One of the companies which does SAAS for HR actually raised $5 million while being enrolled.

5 out of 15 were already funded prior to joing YC by investors including Seedcamp, Episode 1, SAP.io or Worth Capital.

Alba Orbital

verticals: manufacturing, transportation
HQ: London
founded: 2012
investors: N/A

Alba Orbital is the developer and manufacturer of the Unicorn-1 and Unicorn-2 satellite platforms, the world's smallest commercial satellite platforms being PocketQube format.

Anima

verticals: software, health industry, SAAS
HQ: London
founded: 2020

Anima developed software for healthcare providers, which speeds up the clinical workflow 10x through automated total triage, and allows providers to deliver the right care for patients within 24 hours.

Axiom.ai

verticals: software, SAAS
HQ: London
founded: 2019
total raised: N/A
investors: SAP.io, Techstars

Axiom.ai developed automated bots that can scrap any type of webpage or information from the web.

Broad

verticals: financial services
HQ: London
founded: 2020

Broad was founded in 2019 with the mission of providing Brazilians and Latin Americans access to the international financial market in a simple, practical and accessible way.

Camelan

verticals: consumers, marketplace
HQ: London
founded: 2020

Camelan developed a video classifieds platform, a mobile marketplace that lets you buy and sell anything using short videos.

Cord

verticals: software, SAAS
HQ: London
founded: 2020

Cord is building software that allows data scientists and researchers to algorithmically solve the problem of creating and managing training data for machine learning applications, starting with computer vision, replacing thousands of hours of manual labelling.

Humaans

verticals: HR, SAAS
HQ: London
founded: 2019
total raised: $5M
investors: Moonfire, angel investors

Humaans, founded by Giovanni Luperti and Karolis Narkevicius, develops HR software, a SAAS that aims to become a central hub for employee on-boarding and management. The tool is already in the market, and in use by customers including Pleo, ChartMogul, Bombinate, HeySummit and Pento

Infracost

verticals: software, SAAS
HQ: Edinburgh
founded: 2020

Infracost developed a software tool that shows enterprise engineering teams how their code changes will affect their cloud costs.

Kanda

verticals: construction industry, financial services, marketplace
HQ: Warwick
founded: 2018
total raised: N/A
investors: Worth Capital

Kanda provides financing products for general contractors via a marketplace that allows them to offer financing to homeowners who want to remodel but can’t pay the full price upfront.

LiliumX

verticals: software services, biotech, SAAS
HQ: London
founded: 2020

LiliumX developed a process for discovering new biospecific antibodies against cancer by using a modular protein platform, rapidly generating and testing thousands of candidate bispecifics using robotic screening and big data analysis to discover bispecific lead assets with entirely new modes of action.

LiveFlow

verticals: software, financial services, SAAS
HQ: London
founded: 2020
total raised: $450k
investors: Seedcamp

LiveFlow developed a fully automated, NextGen Spreadsheet, that lets you connect real-time data from your Google Sheets, banks, accounting and revenue platforms in a matter of minutes.

Neuro

verticals: software, SAAS
HQ: Bath
founded: 2019
total raised: $650k
investors: Rockmount Seed

Neuro developed a serverless compute engine for machine learning.

Nuntius Therapeutics

verticals: biotech
HQ: London
founded: 2021

Nuntius Therapeutics is a biotech company working for producing therapies for currently incurable rare diseases.

Terra

verticals: sports industry, software services, SAAS
HQ: London
founded: 2020

Terra is a software company that developed an API that makes it easy for developers to access fitness and health data from wearables and sensors.

Webiny

verticals: software services, SAAS
HQ: London
founded: 2018
total raised: $350k
investors: Episode 1

Webiny is a developer-friendly serverless CMS powered by Node, React and a GraphQL API.

France (4)

Four startups, all from Paris, all software developers:

one mobile app that can take photos and works as a Photoshop plugin, used for fashion industry;
another developing a software tool for wealth managers;
a startup developing a CMS for building websites
one team building a productivty software solution.

2 of the 4 were founded in 2020, one in 2018 which already raised $1.8 million from 42CAP and Aglae, and one in 2019, funded with half a million prior to YC

ClipDrop

verticals: software, fashion, SAAS
HQ: Paris
founded: 2020

ClipDrop developed a mobile app that turns regular mobile photos into professional product visuals.

Finary

verticals: software, financial services, SAAS
HQ: Paris
founded: 2020

Finary developed a software tool allowing wealth managers to track their investments portfolio.

Routine

verticals: software, SAAS
HQ: Paris
founded: 2020
total raised: $500k
investors: N/A

Routine, founded by Julien Quintard and Quentin Hocquet, is a personal productivity desktop/mobile app that is always at the user's fingertips through a single keyboard shortcut. It allows busy people to quickly capture thoughts, secure time in their calendar to work on important tasks, schedule meetings, take notes but also quickly glance at their calendar to know when is their next meeting.

WeWeb

verticals: software, SAAS
HQ: Paris
founded: 2018
total raised: $1.2M
investors: 42CAP, Aglae Ventures

WeWeb is a next-generation website builder that helps you create sites faster.

Denmark (3)

3 startups from Denmark shortlisted this winter - one sports fantasy mobile app built by a guy running an angel fund and two biotech teams, one developing a SAAS for antobody drug devel and the other building lab robots for microbiologists

Pipe|bio

verticals: biotech, software services
HQ: Aarhus
founded: 2018

PipeBio is a SaaS bioinformatics platform to develop antibody drugs as it enables scientists to analyze and manage massive amounts of DNA sequencing data themselves without the need for bioinformaticians or programmers.

Playmaker

verticals: sports industry, social network
HQ: Copenhagen
founded: 2019
investors: The Nordic Web Ventures
total raised: N/A

Playmaker is a mobile social network dedicated as a discussion platform that allows you to own your identity and grow your following as a Fantasy Manager.

Reshape Biotech

verticals: biotech, robotics
HQ: Copenhagen
founded: 2018

Reshape Biotech builds lab robots that automate the everyday tasks of microbiologists, from filling plates to analyzing images.

Germany (3)

2 startups from Berlin and one from Stuttgart, 2 founded in 2019 and one in 2020. None of them with with public funding announcement before joining YC.

All three are software developers in vertical spaces:

one in telecom selling sim cards,
one SAAS developer for events
one marketplace for construction machines.

Gigs

verticals: software services, telecom
HQ: Berlin
founded: 2020

Gigs sells what they call telecom-as-a-service -providing phone & data plans to an API globally and enabling platforms in the IoT, HR, Travel & eCommerce space to sell connectivity to their customers.

MeetAnyway

verticals: software services, SAAS
HQ: Stuttgart
founded: 2019

MeetAnyway developed software for event organizers.

Machine26

verticals: construction industry, marketplace
HQ: Berlin
founded: 2019

Machine26 built a marketplace for construction machines, as it helps construction machine owners to sell their machines without any effort.

Spain (3)

Spain is represented by three Barcelona startups, two focused on financial services and one developer of a general notificantions aggregator. All of them focused this year, the two fintechs, interestingly, already aith 20+ people teams, even though they're not funded!

Abacum

verticals: software, financial services, SAAS
HQ: Barcelona
founded: 2020

Abacum is a SaaS platform which makes is it easy for finance teams to use real-time data, generate reports and collaborate.

Hubuc

verticals: software, financial services, SAAS
HQ: Barcelona
founded: 2020

Hubuc develops a Banking-as-a-service platform as it aims to enable any business to be able to embed financial services in its products with a single API.

MagicBell

verticals: software, SAAS
HQ: Barcelona
founded: 2020

MagicBell developed an aggregate notification system that aims to improve your customers' workflow with our in-app notification inbox, where all your product notifications live. Fully customizable to match your product's UI and ready to be deployed within the hour.

Austria (2)

Austria is represented by two companies in YC - one team building a smart DNA printer and which had been incubated at SOSV since launch in 2014, and a software startup developing low latency, robust and distributed networking applications.

Kilobaser

verticals: biotech, hardware
HQ: Graz
founded: 2014
total raised: N/A
invstors: SOSV

Kilobaser, developed by Briefcase Biotec, a device that is capable to print DNA oligos as it automatically synthesizes ready-to-use DNA oligos in less than 2 hours.

Lunatic

verticals: software services, SAAS
HQ: Vienna
founded: 2020

Lunatic developed a runtime software tool for developing low latency, robust and distributed networking applications. It can be used for web applications, game servers, video and voice chat, or other apps requiring low latency runtimes.

Norway (2)

Norway has two software startups this year in YC - one developing an API connecting EV, solar producers etc to an energy grid provider and a developer of a SAAS productivity platform.

Enode

verticals: energy, software services
HQ: Oslo
founded: 2020

Enode, led by Henrik Langeland, is building a software tool powered by APIs that connect EVs, solar, batteries and heating to energy providers.

Kitemaker

verticals: software services, SAAS
HQ: Oslo
founded: 2019
total raised: $180k
investors: StartupLab Founders

Kitemaker developed a SaaS platform to enable software teams to build products better.

Poland

Poland is the only country in the list with one VC backing two startups that were part of YC w21. Both startups are SAAS developers, one a headless tool for e-commerce companies and the other a solution used for identity verification.

Authologic

verticals: software, SAAS, e-commerce
HQ: Warsawa
founded: 2017
total raised: $1.6M
investors: SMOK Capital, Movens VC

Authologic is a system that allows businesses to check the identity of their clients online using video, banking data, and digital IDs. Their API allows a flexible definition of verification scenarios based on the risk profile of the client or risk involved in the given process.

Vue Storefront

verticals: software, SAAS, financial services
HQ: Warsawa
founded: 2020
total raised: $1.6M
investors: SMOK Capital

Belgium

Segments ai

verticals: software, SAAS
HQ: Bruxelles
founded: 2020
total raised: N/A
investors: Jonathan Cornelissen

Segments developed a platform for computer vision experts to iterate more quickly between data labeling, model training and failure case discovery.

Croatia

Wasp

verticals: software services, SAAS
HQ: Zagreb
founded: 2020

Wasp developed a programming language for developing full-stack web apps with less code.

Lithuania

Turing College

verticals: education, consumer
HQ: Vilnius
founded: 2020
total raised: $180k
investors: StartupWise Guys

Turing College is an online school for data science in Europe.

Italy

Blink

verticals: logistics, e--commerce
HQ: Milan
founded: 2020

Blink provides same-day delivery to e-commerce companies, helping them acquiring and retaining more customers thanks to a great delivery experience.

Slovenia

Juicy Marbles

verticals: food ndustry, manufacturing
HQ: Ljubljana
founded: 2019

Juicy Marbles is a food-tech company that developed proprietary protein texturing technology used to produce plant-based whole cuts..

Sweden

Sturdy

verticals: software industry, SAAS
HQ: Lund
founded: 2020

Sturdy is an online first code platform used to automate the majority of the work code management developers do - sharing, reviewing and shipping changes.

Ukraine

Datrics

verticals: software, SAAS
HQ: Kiev
founded: 2020
total raised: N/A
investors: Illia Polosukhin, QPDigital, StartupYard

Datrics helps FinTech companies build and deploy machine learning models without writing code.