Good morning! Sit down for another news update. Here’s what you need to know about the Dutch startup ecosystem.
News & updates
WeTransfer last week has made its first acquisition by taking over digital design agency Present Plus. The company worked on many design project for WeTransfer before. Interesting fact: Present Plus was co-founded by WeTransfer co-founder Nalden.
The network of quickchargers for EV’s Fastned published their 2015 year figures (pdf). The startup had a operating loss of nearly 4 million euro (before taxes), due to investments made to work: last year was mainly used to build new charging stations. Revenue rose to 75K euro. Of course, no surprise here. But it’s good to see a company being so transparant in such an early state.
To further grow Fastned is raising money by giving out share certificates soon.
Amsterdam and Paris are ‘exchanging’ startups (link’s in Dutch). StartupAmsterdam and Paris&Co will take in and help startups broaden their European network this way. Amsterdam already has a same agreement with New York.
E-commerce startup Saleduck has set shore in Asia with an office in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur. After expanding to eight European countries last year, and being active in Malaysia and Singapore already, the startup hopes to do business in five more countries in South East Asia this year.
Funding
VC firm InvestInFuture and regional development organisation InnovationQuarter invested in software company RISKID.
Utrecht-based RV sharing platform Goboony raised a 350.000 euro seed round.
Amsterdam-based WePrevent secured an undisclosed investment from VOC Capital Partners.
Monday morning read
Subscription startups are hot, especially the ones where they deliver stuff in a box. Prospurly made thousands of dollars in just months. (Subscription School)
Being, the app that lets you watch Instagram feeds from another user’s perspective, shook up the tech world in just a week. Then it got banned by Instagram. Here’s what happened. (Medium)
Another human bites the dust: although professional Go player Lee Sedol won one match against his AI opponent AlphaGo, he lost in the long run. And that’s reason for some concern (The Next Web).