What happens in the startup scene in The Netherlands right now? Find out in another Dutch startup news update!
News & Updates
Dutch bank app Tikkie has 1 million unique users
For once an app developed by a corporate bank seems to be working. The payment app Tikkie that enables users to send each other payment request or make payments to companies like airline Transavia has reached 1 million unique visitors. ABN Amro claims that 150.000 transactions are being completed every week on the platform. Tikkie was launched last year.
Customer analytics startup Usabilla opens shop in Berlin, London and Sydney
Amsterdam-based Usabilla is on an international expanding spree (in Dutch). Last month the company opened an office in Berlin, last week in London and Sydney will follow next month. From Sydney the companies wants to service customers in South East Asia and Oceania.
Funding
B. Ventures backed HR startup Healthy Workers raises €500K
Healthy Workers, a HR startup founded by Boy Lokhoff has raised 500.000 euros in a seed round led by Cairn Real Estate. The startup helps large companies to gain insights into the well-being of the their employee base and the health conditions in their offices and offers them recommendations on the application of measures concerning the working environment environment, stress management and sports.
Biotech startup Hercules Pharmaceuticals raises €300K from UNIIQ
Leiden-based and Boston University spin-off Hercules Pharmaceuticals has raised 300.000 euros for the further development of a new drug to improve the immuun system of cancer patients. The capital raised will be used to validate the effectiveness and safety of the medicine through further pre-clinical research and tests of the drug as a ramp up to a Series A round. Animal tests have an increase of life expectancy of 90 %.
Fintech startup Bittiq raises seed round from newly launched Holland Startup Capital
Utrecht based startup Bittiq has raised an undisclosed seed round from the newly launched angel fund Holland Startup Capital I. Bittiq will use the capital raised to develop its mobile app and is set to launch the platform by the end of the year. Bittiq founder Federico Spiezia: “We want to innovate finance because we believe that good financial advice should be accessible to everyone. We make it free, personalised and automatic.”
Monday Morning Read
Scaling: imperfect is perfect
Over the last years I have met, spoken and mentored dozens of startups. Most startup founders and corporate innovation project managers follow partially valid advise to think big. But though well-intentioned, exactly because of this advise, they fall into the trap of premature optimisation wasting resources on feature creep, PR, conference visits and hours and hours of needless talks with investors and corporate development reps at the wrong time. Especially in the early stage it’s critical to do things that don’t scale that lead you to product market fit. Or in other words, think big, start small, move fast, release often, break things. I know you have heard this many times. But time and again people start to build their Facebook in all its glory of today right of the batt and get disappointed if they don’t succeed in one or two years.
Reid Hoffman and Mark Zuckerberg, founders of the biggest social and business networks started small. List to both Hoffman and Zuckerberg in this podcast on the story behind the story of the origins of Facebook. ‘I didn’t know it would be us. I was just messing around in my computer science classes’, says Zuckerberg.
The new CEO of Uber: Dara Khosrowshahi
And there you have it. The new CEO of the $70 billion transportation company Uber is Iranian immigrant Dara Khosrowshahi. Khosrowshahi has led since 2005 the largest online travel companies in the world, the travel-booking site Expedia. Here is good background post if you want to know more about the man who is going to help the troubled company to get back on track.
Photo by Vincentiu Solomon on Unsplash