52 things Sifted learnt in 2020

Merry Christmas all! This year in Europe we got €37.3bn worth of VC funding for startups, 21 IPOs, 15 new startup unicorns, 1,933 seed rounds and 181 VC funds raised.

 
But these are just numbers. What did we really learn this year?

Here are some of the top facts that Sifted found out in 2020, from the fun to the serious.

  1. European startups can go from launch to being worth $2.1bn in just 8 months. Yes, that is now officially possible after London-based online events platform Hopin became one of Europe’s most valuable startupsthis year after its $125m Series B in November.
  2. VCs are apparently not just guessingwhen they come up with valuations like this $2.1bn Hopin one (although there is a bit of that as well).
  3. Despite the pandemic, CEOs have been taking their employees onpsychedelic Ayahuasca retreatsas a team bonding exercise (and HR is not so sure it’s a good idea).
  4. The European Union has started investing directly into startups through the “unicorn factory” EIC fund. It also made its first investment into “new space” as well.
  5. Along with edtech, telemedicine, and food delivery, dating apps usage went through the roofduring the early Covid spike. Swedish dating app Relate saw its active users increase 40% during lockdown, and two people in Paris held up a virtual date for a whopping 11 hours and forty minutes on Swiss dating app Once. Has dating changed forever?
  6. Delivering one dose of a coronavirus vaccine to 7.8bn people worldwide wouldfill 8,000 Boeing 747 aircraft, according to Cargo.one, the Berlin-based digital booking platform for air cargo. In other virus news, it was Germany’s BioNtech, a classic European startup success story, which helped create the first vaccine.
  7. Away from coronavirus, Sifed discovered that glow worms may be the next big thing in street lighting. French startup Glowee makes use of bioluminescence — a light-emitting property found in glow worms and fireflies — to produce sustainable lighting.
  8. Bananas have their own version of Covid-19. It’s called TR4, also known as Panama disease which causes banana plants to wilt and die. Tropic Biosciences, a UK-based biotech company, is using gene editing to develop a banana that can beat the disease.
  9. Buy-now-pay-later startup Klarna is being sued by a company founded by Pablo Escobar’s brother, which claims that the startup owed his company Escobar Inc €400,000.
  10. Vibrators are being used to help spinal injury patients regain sexual sensation in the latest iteration of the sextech craze in Europe. The hypothesis is under investigation by MysteryVibe, a London-based startup creating sexual health products.
  11. Food can be made from more or less thin air. This is thanks to Finnish startup Solar Foods which is making a food called solein — which tastes a bit like egg and when baked into bread it has a hint of carrot — in a unique chemical process.
  12. Four out of five dog ownersin the US market will treat their furry friends a birthday gift according to David Prien, founder of Stockholm-based digital veterinary clinic FirstVet. That’s a big market for European pet tech companies.
  13. A tote bag needs to be used 167 timesuntil it’s actually more useful to the planet than a paper bag, according to Plan.AEarth cofounder Lubomila Jordanova in a Sifted Talks on accelerating tech for good in November.

This is just a selection of the 52 things that Sifted has learnt this year. Read the full list here!

 
Plus

We did a lot of stories we were proud of this year. But these are the ones, dear readers, that you read and shared the most voraciously. They are pretty awesome: check them out.

  1. Europe is making faster cars and better batteries than Tesla
  2. Pablo Escobar’s brother is suing Klarna for millions
  3. Good vibrations — men’s sexual wellness gets the tech treatment
  4. Enter the era of the digital nomad
  5. The “Fin-influencer” boom: Why Instagram and TikTok are the new battlegrounds for digital banks
  6. Inside Monzo 2.0: Who’s running the show now?
  7. Brunch with Sifted: psychedelic investor Christian Angermayer
  8. Europe now has 60 startup unicorns
  9. The power of community: how Gymshark is killing it in the gym
  10. A robot wrote these startups pitches. Would you invest in them?
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