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Weekly startup news update: Peerby, Blendle, fund for social enterprises

It sure has been a busy week for the Dutch startup scene. You might want to sit down for this week’s news update!

Funding

We saw a lot of funding activity in the second week of September.

Biotech startup Audion Therapeutics from Amsterdam raised a whopping 8.3 million euro from Inkef Capital and the European Union to combat hearing loss.

American VC Cottonwood is really active in the Twente region, this time with a 1 million euro investment in nanotech startup Eurekite.

Instant Magazine, the Alkmaar startup for creating digital magazines, raised 500.000 euro from Newion to expand internationally.

Monyq, a new user-interface for your money, wants to bypass banks. The startup received a 300.000 euro seed investment from Keadyn.

Legal tech startup Legalmatters.com got a 600.000 euro investment from newly founded venture builder Venture Fathers.

Launches & Updates

Good news for the investment climate in The Netherlands: last week another two funds became available.
HenQ launched it third fund (value: 50 million euro) and Social Impact Ventures launched to invest in social enterprises.

Sharing economy darling Peerby finally found a business model. Peerby Go lets people pay a little money to rent stuff from their neighbours, on which Peerby collects a little fee.

The ‘iTunes for journalism’ Blendle last week launched in Germany, putting that money from Axel Springer and NYT to work.

Dutch co-founders based in the US Bert Belder and Ben Noordhuis sold their Node.js startup Strongloop to tech giant IBM.

The Postcode Lottery Green Challenge for sustainable startups got a Dutch winner this year. Land Life Company gets 500.000 euro to develop its business.

Also, the Cambridge Innovation Center comes to Holland. Today their Beta Space will be opened in Rotterdam.

Events

The video platform for entrepreneurs Handson.tv is having a European pitch competition for startups. September 24 the tour is coming to Amsterdam. The two best pitches will be invited for the final in Paris, where you can win a week of inspiration in Silicon Valley.

What can startups learn from photonics chip technology? Find out at the Photonics Business Technology Conference in Eindhoven, September 23.

Monday morning read

Thinking about starting your own company? Read these 22 books first. (Medium)

We love Medium, but posts on Medium are sometimes, well… kinda lacking on real insights. Here’s A Cynic’s Guide to Writing the Perfect Medium Post.

Here’s what happens when a founder spent 5 days on Necker Island with Richard Branson, Seth Godin and Tim Ferriss. (Inc.com)

 
Photo provided by Peerby

Lorenz van Gool
Lorenz is co-editor-in-chief of StartupJuncture. As a freelance editor and journalist, he writes about startups, innovation and (e)-business. Loves to report from conferences. Really likes cleantech and journalism startups. You can ask him anything about dinosaurs. Twitter: @lorenzroman

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