Here’s the recap of another week filled with Dutch startup news. And: the Monday reads are back!

News & Updates

The Delft Hyperloop team won the prestigious SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition, in which Elon Musk challenges teams to build the best pod. Last year, the team got the second place in the design phase. Now it was first in best overall design and performance. A team from Munich was a bit faster.

Sendcloud, the startup that helps webshops with their shipping, is expanding to France. According to Emerce the Eindhoven-based company is opening an office there this spring. The startup also has an office in Munich.

A new social network for your neighbourhood Wazzurb launched last week. The startup from Arnhem will compete with Nextdoor, the US company that launched in The Netherlands last year.

Funding

Land Life Company, the startup that aims to turn degraded soils into beautiful greenery again, got a 2.4 million euro series A investment from the Postcode Lottery Green Challenge Fund, SystemiQ and Vectr Ventures. The founders also injected money in this round.

Monday reads

The end of an era: the guys behind Founded in Holland, a kind of grassroots version of StartupDelta before StartupDelta, decided to pull the plug. Read all about their journey. (Medium)

It’s estimated that at least half of the Silicon Valley elite has some sort of retreat. If that means they all are prepping for Doomsday, remains the question. But the super rich are certainly thinking about it (New Yorker – longread).

It’s often said having a startup is all about growth. But that can’t happen if your product just sucks. So… focus on product first! (Medium)

Increasing profits? Yes. Maximizing profits? Nope. (Signal v. Noise)

Image: Delft Hyperloop on Twitter