- Ireland (4!), Romania and Cyprus represent but no presence from Sweden and Norway
- two grocery startups with an edge
- all 3 Spanish startups funded pre-YC
- most funded raised $5M, oldest is from 2015.

This is customized intel for Nordic 9 customers. Become one now!

 

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End of August means that the summer batch of startups incubated by Y Combinator will pitch investors at the Demo Day.

The following presents what we have found interesting as we reviewed all the 54 European startups part of the program. You can find the complete list with their profiles and their investors here.

 

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Country breakdown

The country breakdown is as follows (vs the winter numbers):

- UK - 16 startups (15)
- France - 9 startups (4)
- Germany - 5 startups (3)
- Ireland - 4 startups (0)
- Denmark (3) Netherlands (0), Spain (3), Switzerland (0) - 3 each
- Cyprus (0), Estonia (0), Finland (0), Poland (2), Romania (0), Russia (0) - 1 each

• UK, France, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands and Switzerland are the net startup contributors in this season, with more participating startups than in the winter. Ireland was not represented in the winter, and now has 4 startups, really cool.

• The Nordics has the same number of startups as six months ago - 6 - but remarkably Sweden (the largest dealflow generator in the area) and Norway (the more interesting one) had zero startups incubated at YC this summer.

• Other notable absent countries - the Central Eastern European bunch: Austria, Croatia, Slovenia, Ukraine - all represented in the winter, are now compensated by a Romanian presence, a Polish one and a startup from Russia.

• Cyprus has also interestingly appeared on the map with a mobile security startup founded by three ladies - more on that below.

 

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Industry breakdown

- software services, SAAS - 37
- data-driven services - 14
- ecommerce and retail - 10
- manufacturing - 7
- marketplace 6
- energy, health services - 5
- food, financial services - 4
- other verticals - hardware (3), real estate (3), education (2), biotech (2), recruiting, pharma, video, audio

• Software is eating the world, you know it, it's been a recurring mantra in the investment world for the past 10-15 years. Also, it is no secret that YC likes startups using software in order to attack large markets - this summer's batch is no different.

• There's also a significant number of data-driven startups attacking all sorts of verticals.

• Also, interestingly, verticals which were very long tail during the winter are now well represented - i.e. ecommerce, manufacturing, marketplaces.

• More consumer-focused businesses as well compared to last winter.

• Here's the breakdown from last winter, for comparison:

- 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)

 

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Investors

• All 3 Spanish startups part of the program (Arengu, Payflow and SolarMente) were pre-funded, as well as both Eastern European ones - Archbee and Inspector Cloud.

• Payflow from Spain is the most funded one from the entire European batch, with $5.5 million raised from a group of German investors.

• Artillery from Ireland raised $2 million during the program, according to an SEC file.

• Kitchenful from Germany, Female Invest from Denmark, Enso from Poland and Archbee from Romania all raised at least $1 million.

• Enso from Poland is the oldest startup from the group, founded in 2015.

Here's the list of the startups and their funding history:

- Iona Mind - $400k from high profile investors
- Inflow - $700k from Rhytm VC, angel investors
- Café - $1 million from Kima Ventures and angels
- Kitchenful - $1 million from angel investors
- QOA - undisclosed from Nucleus Capital
- Artillery - $2 million from undisclosed investors
- Female Invest - $1.7 million from Danish investors
- Lightly - $1.1 million from First Momentum Ventures
- Arengu - €500,000 from K Fund, Lana Partners and angel investors
- Payflow -  $5.5M from Flash Ventures, Rocket Internet and angel investors.
- SolarMente - undisclosed amount from GFC, Atomico angels, Liquid2 
- Enso - $1.6 million from Kima Ventures, Passion Capital
- Archbee - $1 million from Inovo Partners
- Inspector Cloud - $750k from Moscow Seed Fund, OKS Group

 

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Interesting startups

14 companies from the 54 from this batch caught our attention this year. Here's why and a short profile for all of them, listed alphabetically:

 

Female Invest

verticals: Education, Financial Services
model: B2C, subscription
HQ: Copenhagen
founded: 2019
raised: $1.7 million from Danish investors

Female Invest found a niche at the intersection of investing, education and women, selling content and investment ops against a subscription. And it's working out so far, 17k subscribers and about 100k MRR is not too bad after about a year.

 

GamerPay

verticals: Ecommerce, Gaming Industry, Marketplace
model: B2C
HQ: Copenhagen
founded: 2020

GamerPay operates a marketplace allowing gamers to buy, sell and own in-game skins & assets.

GamerPay's team is solid - they previously built and operated another ecommerce marketplace, w/ 1 million users selling second hand high end clothes. Secondly, what they do is in a very hot market at the moment, combining themes such as gaming, NFTs and blockachin. Not least - in 3 months of operations they already have great market validation as they transacted $245k, w/ a $7 cut, in a market of 215 million trades annually in games they support.

 

Heimdal

verticals: Energy, Manufacturing
model: B2B
HQ: Oxford
founded: 2020

Heimdal found a different methodology to remove atmospheric carbon dioxide and trap it in materials that are used to make cement. They produce synthetic limestones, which are raw materials for producing cement - concrete is responsible for 8% of global CO2 emissions and is the standard in the construction industry. 

Cement is usually made from mined limestone, which is one of the largest natural stores of carbon dioxide. Using that to make cement is a bit like burning oil - Heimdal makes synthetic limestone (such as that used to make cement) using atmospheric CO2 and creating a carbon neutral environment. They specifically built machines that extract limestone from the ocean to make carbon negative glass and concrete. 

Sounds complicated but it's really not. :-) Those guys' challenge requires them to sell synthetic limestone to cement producers and eventually commercialise parallel byproducts. Arguably a more difficult problem to solve for two freshly Oxford engineering graduates with not so much business experience - they say they do have though multiple LOIs signed with producers across Europe. The product they make is super interesting in a market producing 2 billion tonnes of limestone per year.

 

HeyCharge

verticals: Energy, Hardware, Manufacturing, Real Estate
model: B2B
HQ: Munich
founded: 2020

HeyCharge develops an ultra-low-cost, plug-and-play EV charger that doesn't require internet connections and integrate with third-party products via SDK and APIs. Their setup doesn’t require anything else other than an electrician to wire power while the charger and the app work together in a very clever way by using tokens exchange, even when underground and outside of mobile network coverage. 

Installing EV chargers is an expensive pain in the ass especially because they need internet connections and cloud-based backends. The EV charging market is strongly tied to the worldwinde macro trend of switching from diesel to electric + their solution works in challenging environments like underground parking in apartment buildings and offices. Poor network coverage leads to an awful user experience, drives installation complexity and maintenance costs - they built a painkiller for it.

 

Iona Mind

verticals: Health services, Mobile, Software Services
model: B2B
HQ: London
founded: 2019
raised: $420k from angel investors

Iona Mind is using CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) for providing a digital treatment for anxiety and depression delivered via a mobile-based chatbot app. Apart from a solid product combining tech in a smart way and science, mental wellbeing is probably one of the most important 21st century problems to tackle. Iona sells the app as an employee wellness benefit to organisations, which it makes a lot of sense even though the B2B GTM market is not trivial in the big picture.

Iona also has some investor validation as it notably raised a small pre-seed round while part of YC from high profiles angels such as Chris Adelsbach or Matt Robinson.

 

Kapacity.io

verticals: Competitive Intelligence, Energy, Real Estate, Software Services
model: B2B, SAAS
HQ: Helsinki
founded: 2020

Another interesting energy startup - Kapacity.io is a SAAS for real estate operators used to reduce heating and cooling energy costs and emissions in buildings, as it adjusts HVAC & heat pump electricity consumption based on renewable energy availability, grid congestion and electricity prices. The model is also interesting as it incentivizes the other side of the table since participants in the service receive compensation, which means they are actually getting paid to reduce emissions.

 

Kitchenful

verticals: Ecommerce, Food Industry, Marketplace
model: B2B, B2C
HQ: Berlin
founded: 2020
raised: $1 million from angel investors

There's two grocery ecommerce operators part of YC, both with smart market approach which ultimately should give them a consumer edge when competing with the standard players from the market.

Kitchenful is one of them - a grocery provider connecting local supermarkets with food needs provided via customers meal plans. Sure, they're not the only ones doing this (i.e. Jow) but consumer personalization is a competitive advantage that it's better to build explicitly upfront rather than tracking sales history. A bunch of German angels seem to agree as they backed the company prior to YC w/ $1M.

 

Membo

verticals: Ecommerce, Food Industry, Marketplace
model: B2C
HQ: Talinn
founded: 2020
raised: undisclosed amount from angel investors

Membo is the other one - their thing is building a marketplace for local food producers enabling them to sell directly to consumers on a next-day basis.

Membo's solution is more difficult to implement, particularly on an European scale due to huge cultural differences from country to country. They have a proof of point in Estonia, where they have delivered over 4000 orders in the past 8 months.

 

Lago

verticals: Online marketing, Software Services, Competitive Intelligence
model: B2B, SAAS
HQ: Paris
founded: 2021

Lago is a software startup developing a no-code tool helping growth teams segment and sync their customer data. Their tool is a one-minute fix thing that helps growth people do their job, without relying on the devel, which can take days to implements and just as much to make small iterations - a huge pain point, if you're familiar with how marketers operate.

 

Malloc

verticals: Mobile, Security, Software Services
model: B2C, SAAS
HQ: Nicosia
founded: 2020
raised: $120k from undisclosed investors

Malloc, founded by three ladies based in Cyprus, developed a mobile app that monitors and prevents any app from recording you or transmitting your data without you knowing. Important not only for privacy reasons but also for the battery preservation. An interesting problem with not an easy GTM though and a decision to be made between the consumer and the B2B market.

 

QOA

verticals: Food Industry, Manufacturing
model: B2C
HQ: Munich
founded: 2021
raised: undisclosed from Nucleus Capital

QOA is the only alternative food producer in this YC batch, and they do alternative chocolate products by using precision fermentation. Love their tagline too - 'We do for chocolate what Oatly did for milk'

 

SigmaOS

verticals: Software Services
model: SAAS
HQ: London
founded: 2021

SigmaOS develops a new web-based browser - I'm always rooting for startups disrupting the FAANGA establishments acting as internet gateways. Interestingly enough, their GTM involves asking for money upfront as it is a paid product, which should reflect on the market adoption numbers.

 

SolarMente

verticals: Energy, Manufacturing
model: B2B, B2C
HQ: Barcelona
founded: 2021
raised: undisclosed amount from GFC, Atomico angels, Liquid2 

SolarMente caught my eyes as it is founded by the son of Wiebe Draijer, the CEO at Rabobank in Netherlands. They're a manufacturer of solar rooftops, which sells and finances homeowners while helping them produce, store and distribute their clean energy. Already raised funding from GFC, Liquid2 and Atomico via its angel program.

 

StudyStream

verticals: Education, Social Network, Video
model: B2C, SAAS
HQ: London
founded: 2020

StudyStream is really cool - they built and operate a video platform & online community that allows students to study with others from around the world 24/7 and in real time. Remote p2p - this is the new normal when it comes to education.

 

All the startups and their profiles are available here.

 

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Country index

 

UK

• Abatable
• Appollo
• bloop
• Coinrule
• Digistain
• DiveHealth
• Heimdal
• Iona Mind
• Inflow
• Onfolk
• SigmaOS
• Sitenna
• Shopscribe
• StudyStream
• Teamspace
• Tenyks
• Tuli Health
• Genei

 

France

• Beau
• Café
• Carbonfact
• Crew
• Hera
• Lago
• Numary
• PaletteHQ
• Whaly

 

Germany

• HeyCharge
• Kitchenful
• Moving Parts
• QOA
• Snowboard Software    

 

Ireland

• Artillery
• Luminate Medical
• Noloco
• Protex AI

 

Denmark

• GamerPay
• Female Invest
• Zoios

Netherlands

• Echoes HQ
• Orderli
• Quest

 

Spain

• Arengu
• Payflow
• SolarMente

 

Switzerland

• Adaptyv Biosystems
• Lightly
• Pabio

 

Cyprus

• Malloc

 
Estonia

• Membo 

 

Finland

• Kapacity.io

 

Poland

• Enso

 

Romania

• Archbee

Russia

• Inspector Cloud

 

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