• calendar management tools
• productivity and collaboration software solutions
• tools solving for issues up and down the tech stack

Going over my trackers this weekend, I got curious about the up and coming SAAS startups from Europe and which raised MVP/early traction venture money - less than 5 million in total that is. Here’s some quick finds:

• There’s a group of 3 startups doing a calendar management tool, each decently funded for their very early stage: 

  • Hera (France) - YC startup backed by Notion Cap and angels, raised 2.3M

  • Katch (UK) - founded by Paul Murphy of Lighspeed, raised 4M from LocalGlobe, Speedinvest and some 50 angels

  • Rise (NL) - founded by a couple of Dutch who previously worked for Blendle, raised 3M exclusively from angels.

• Add to those the French Café, which is more focused on overall productivity but also with a calendar management feature. 

• Notably, Kima Ventures is an investor in 3 out of the 4.

• Multiple startups developing collaboration tools in all sorts and shapes - notable ones, besides the above-mentioned Café:

  • Superthread, Brits doing “the fastest” team collaboration tools, backed by Connect Ventures and angels.

  • Tana, Norwegians that raised a hefty pre-seed from the likes of Lightspeed, Northzone and many others, and which is still in invite-only beta.

  • Giskard, French helping developers evaluate the quality of AI models, also very early and which just raised $1.6 million from Bessemer, Elaia and angels.

  • Clearword, Irish doing an automated tool for creating meeting summaries in a searchable video library, backed by Connect Ventures and angels. 

• There’s a good range of startups doing tools solving for issues up and down the tech development chain:

  • Budibase, Brits from Belfast doing an open-source web app builder transforming data into apps and automated processes, and which just closed a $7M Seed II led by SignalFire alongside Angular Ventures and Techstart 

  • Kubeark, Romanians from Bucharest doing an enterprise grade container and app management​ solution, pre-seeded by Launchhub in the fall.

  • encore.dev, the Swedes who did a tool removing the need to manually configure, connect and set up cloud components - raised a $3 million seed round led by Crane Ventures last spring.

  • two Germans that I liked: Anytype, building an operating system for the new Internet and Codesphere, doing a zero-configuration cloud environment where apps can be produced and run from a browser.

• A couple of tools built on top of other platforms that look interesting, both from France: 

  • June, which does an analytics product based on Segment, went to YC in 2021 and raised seed from angel investors led by Point Nine Capital. 

  • Once App, developer of mobile optimized storefronts for Spotify shops, accelerated at YC in 2020.

  • Kima is also a shareholder in both of them. :D 

• Other productivity tools, this time in spreadsheets:

  • Sheetgo from Spain, doing a plugin connecting and synching different spreadsheets - raised $3.5 million locally.

  • LiveFlow, Brits doing a nextgen spreadsheet connecting real-time data from Google Sheets, bank accounts, accounting and revenue platforms.

• Other names on my bingo card: Noodl (Sweden), Cerbos (UK), Rayon (France).

• I put all of them, about 50 or so, in a cheat sheet which I will update on constant basis.

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