This Week in London Startups - Issue #31 (and #1 on LinkedIn)

What's up, London Startup Clubbers! ??

Happy New Year from the LSC team here - we've enjoyed a bit of an extended winter's break ?? but we're so excited for 2022 and giving you more visibility into the London startup scene than ever before!

We'll continue to round up the tops news, funding rounds, events and the hot roles at startups in London. However this year we will also be bringing more exclusive insight from leading startups, interviews with members of London Startup Club community, highlighting hot early stage startups PLUS shining the spotlight on Founders looking at raising seed & pre-seed rounds. ??

As a community we want to help support the next generation of founders in a bid to be London's next unicorn ??

We looking for sharing this journey with you.

Aydan Al-Saad, Founder of London Startup Club

Founder Spotlight - Currently Raising

This weeks Founder Spotlight is Ryan Lawrence - Founder of Betmate

Here is a note from Ryan about Betmate and the his current fundraising plans and how you can get involved.

"Hi London Startup Club Members!

Great to (virtually) meet you all.

At Betmate, we’re on a mission to change an industry begging out for disruption - the gambling industry.

We have the vision of making it more responsible and based on social engagement, rather than the products you see today, where the house always wins.

On Betmate, you bet against other people, rather than against us, so we never profit based on people losing money. The game we offer and future games we hope to offer are genuinely fun to play and we launched Betmate with our Fantasy Football game (developed in-house) in September.

Since then, we have spent minimal money marketing to focus on product development. In this time, we are revenue-generating and have had over ￡22,500 staked on the app.

To learn more about Betmate, our future plans and what we are fundraising for, please see our pitch deck here and deal terms here.

If you have any questions or would like to jump on a call, please reach out either via email ([email protected]) or via LinkedIn.

Thanks for taking the time to read!

Ryan"

Want to learn more about investing in Betmate? Sign up here to get the newsletter and links to the deck and deal terms.

Top News

Four-day work week pilot launched in the UK - link here

Google buys London HQ in $1bn vote of confidence for the office - link here

Trends to watch in femtech in 2022 and beyond?- link here

UK Founding Rounds

UK-based jobs platform Otta.com raises $20m Series A - link here

London-based Mention Me eyes US expansion after $25m funding boost - link here

Checkout.com raises $1B round at $40B valuation – TechCrunch - link here

B2B lead generation firm Cognism raises $87.5m to expand in Europe, US - link here

Legal tech startup Juro raises $23m for US and European expansion - link here

International Highlights

Lattice, a startup making software to help employers fight the 'big quit,' triples its valuation to $3 billion in 10 months - link here

An early bet on Solana and others has led to a new, $500M fund for Foundation Capital - link here

Paris-founded Wandercraft secures €40 million to accelerate delivery of its personal self-balanced exoskeleton?- link here

Lyra Health scores $235M and a new acquisition—but it’s not the only one after a spot in employers’ mental health benefits - link here

Microsoft to buy Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion - link here

Berlin-based Lendis bags €80 million to scale up its operating system for hybrid work - link here

Editors Choice

Lessons from Hopin: How to run an effective leadership team meeting - link here

Events

How are startup brands keeping up with consumers??- Sifted/Talks, Jan 26 - link here

Could the metaverse perfect our imperfect world? - The Garden, Jan 27 - link here

TechCrunch Live with Index Ventures and DeepScribe - Feb 23 - link here

Hot Roles

Head of Sales @ SaaStock - link here

Product Manager, Global (Europe) @ Cash App link here

Enterprise SDR, UK&I @ Deel - link here

Thank you all for taking the time to view this newsletter. As always we appreciate everyone's feedback - if you can take 30 seconds (I promise it's super fast).

We would love to gather some quick feedback via a TypeForm here.