Q2 Update — News from SquareOne
Hi! 🙌
You know, Berliners like to escape from their city. It’s either too hot or too cold, too loud or too silent. You can already feel the streets are empty, the curtains drawn, and the stores closed. Sunday Scaries in the middle of the week.
So, right before the inevitable urban summer escape fully unfolds, we wanted to send this update about the second quarter of 2023.
Wishing you all a great summer season.
Cheers,
Team SquareOne
Square Summit Recap
The highlight of this past quarter was undoubtedly the resounding success of Square Summit. We welcomed over 300 guests from the SquareOne ecosystem in Berlin, enjoying insightful panels and a great networking experience. To our surprise, nothing went completely wrong — so we might do it again!
What investment trends do we expect in 2024? And what are the challenges of building successful companies in Europe? A very insightful episode of Startup Insider with Christian and Jan Thomas live from Square Summit.
🎧 Listen in (GER only)
Portfolio News
- Last week, Anytype officially launched its public beta — and the team smashed it: #1 Product of the Day and #1 Product of the Week on Product Hunt. Congratulations! Anytype is a private hub for all your data, built on a new architecture that protects your privacy and data sovereignty, even when working across devices.
- Flinn receives a €2 Million grant from the FFG (Austrian Research Promotion Agency) just half a year after successfully closing its pre-seed round and founding the company. The substantial grant is a testament to the exceptional potential of Flinn’s mission in the industry. The funding will be used to expand their AI capabilities with a particular focus on Natural Language Processing. ➡️ Check out the news on Brutkasten (GER only) or go to the press release (EN)
- Chip supply chains are highly vulnerable, but Europe is racing to catch up in chip production. With Codasip, it’s possible to develop your own chip within a small team (using RISC-V), making Europe more independent in semiconductor development. 🗞️ Read the article on Handelsblatt (GER only).
- Congrats, Vue Storefront, on closing the SPAR Austria Group. Vue’s frontend technology allows eCommerce businesses to connect with any backend service — whether content management system, payment system, search provider, or other third-party service — and swap them when needed. 💪 Learn more
- Edgeless Systems’ OC3 is the premier event for security architects, cloud-native software engineers, IT security experts, CISOs, CTOs, security researchers, and developers who want to learn about confidential computing. Submit your talk to present in front of the world’s confidential computing community on March 13, 2024. 💡 More info
- Stripe is strengthening partnerships with the German SME sector: SMEs lack access to technologies, while startups strive to reduce their sales cycles. At SquareOne, we are dedicated to building a platform that brings together both worlds, SMEs and startups. Contact us to learn more about the approach and how you could benefit from partnering with us. ➡️ Watch the video on Linkedin
- Wandelbots ranks #2 in Sifted’s 2023 “Rising 100” report. With the report, Sifted Intelligence recognizes the most promising privately held companies in Europe and Israel building businesses out of software who are just a few steps away from someday joining the ranks of the $1bn-plus unicorns.
Squad Stories
- How can portfolio companies best support each other, and what role can we play in bringing them together? “Connect your portfolio, but don’t steal their time,” says Pablo, who, together with Ruhi Dang, Product Lead Europe at Stripe, initiated a Product Leaders Workshop for our portfolio companies at our Berlin office. 🌐 Read the recap on Medium
- Goodbye, Felix! After four years with SquareOne, Felix is off to new adventures. We are grateful for all of Felix’s contributions since he joined us in early 2019, whether leading new investments, supporting the portfolio companies, or working passionately on our branding and events. We’re glad Felix will stay close to our fund and continue working with his portfolio companies. Upcoming Events
- Together with our friends from crowd.dev, we’re co-hosting the next edition of Berlin Open-Source Drinks on August 17! Interesting fact: The last meetup in Berlin was even larger than the ones hosted in London and New York. Don’t miss out on this opportunity and connect with the growing open-source community in Berlin (and of course, you’ll meet our partner and open-source expert Federico!) ➡️ RSVP here (If you’re interested in open source, we recommend reading Federico’s Medium article on why “Open-source is the new normal”.)
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