Although he’s coming from a numbers-driven background, growth expert Julian Shapiro focuses on the emotional power of storytelling these days.

“I like to think of successful brand-building as creating a company that customers would be upset to separate from their identity,” he says in an interview below. “For example, they’d cease to be the man with Slack stickers all over his laptop. Or the woman who no longer wears Nike shoes every day. And that bugs them.”

A prolific Twitter user, writer and now podcaster, he advises startups to “just blow your own mind” to best explain the value of what you are offering. Don’t overthink it. Your own excitement will take your audience on a journey with you in ways that paid acquisition can’t.

He’s informed by years working with hundreds of startups as the co-founder of Demand Curve (growth training courses) and Bell Curve (a growth agency), but also as a repeat startup founder, angel investor and open-source web developer (Velocity.js).

In the discussion below, he tells us more about the path he’s taken through the startup world, how companies are changing their public communication and what he’s most excited about.

What has led you from web development and startups to growth marketing in recent years, and most recently to your own personal writing for the public on Twitter, etc.? Many people in your position would be more comfortable just founding new tech companies, or investing in crypto or what have you.

I try to avoid being contained by momentum. If something’s going well in one field (engineering) but I’ve found something more fulfilling (like growth strategy), then I’ll switch. I don’t switch for the sake of switching, but I will keep switching until I find something I love. That eventually brought me to writing, which I will never stop doing.

Trying a little bit of a lot of things gives you exposure to learn what else you could (and should) be doing. To break out of a local maximum, you need to always remain curious: What else don’t I know about?

What I ultimately stick with is whatever process I enjoy (not just enjoy the outcome). This usually means the process is fun, educational, adventurous and helps me meet like-minded people. Writing is a Bat-Signal for like-minded people.

You’re focused on the art of storytelling right now — what are the key things that the startups you work with continue to get wrong here?

The story of a startup is essentially their (1) investor pitch and (2) customer-facing brand.

I like to think of successful brand-building as creating a company that customers would be upset to separate from their identity. For example, they’d cease to be the man with Slack stickers all over his laptop. Or the woman who no longer wears Nike shoes every day. And that bugs them.

To get to that point, you need a mix of goodwill, what-we-stand-for ideology, social prestige and customer delight—among other affinity-building ingredients.

How do you see companies changing the way they talk about themselves to the public in the future, given larger societal trends? Fewer press releases full of canned legalese, more public engagement on social media from the CEO?

Employees with audiences who broadcast corporate messages on a human-to-human level. Plus company social media accounts gaining personality and acting more like their employees.

It’s really hard to grab attention otherwise, especially with the explosion of content creators who are very good at hogging attention and optimizing content for the platforms. Corporate blogs haven’t been competing with them. I’m not sure they could. So much of this is personality-driven, to my point in the previous paragraph.

I’m also hoping, but not expecting, companies to dial back frequency of content production and increase quality of content production. Signal is more important than frequency in an era where we’re overloaded with content.

Given how many startups you work with across YC, etc., and since you are also an angel investor, what are key industry trends that have you most excited?

I’m interested in businesses with product-led growth, brand affinity moats and who get harder to compete with the larger they get. In other words, customers do the selling, customers fall in love and defensibility is in their design.

This is in part a reaction to not wanting startups to be so reliant on paid acquisition. And it’s also a reflection of how I want startups to be thinking more about not just providing transactional value to customers but also making customers truly delighted.

Just months after raising $28 million, Jerry announced today that it has raised $75 million in a Series C round that values the company at $450 million.

Existing backer Goodwater Capital doubled down on its investment in Jerry, leading the “oversubscribed” round. Bow Capital, Kamerra, Highland Capital Partners and Park West Asset Management also participated in the financing, which brings Jerry’s total raised to $132 million since its 2017 inception. Goodwater Capital also led the startup’s Series B earlier this year. Jerry’s new valuation is about “4x” that of the company at its Series B round, according to co-founder and CEO Art Agrawal. 

“What factored into the current valuation is our annual recurring revenue, growing customer base and total addressable market,” he told TechCrunch, declining to be more specific about ARR other than to say it is growing “at a very fast rate.” He also said the company “continues to meet and exceed growth and revenue targets” with its first product, a service for comparing and buying car insurance. At the time of the company’s last raise, Agrawal said Jerry saw its revenue surge by “10x” in 2020 compared to 2019.

Jerry, which says it has evolved its model to a mobile-first car ownership “super app,” aims to save its customers time and money on car expenses. The Palo Alto-based startup launched its car insurance comparison service using artificial intelligence and machine learning in January 2019. It has quietly since amassed nearly 1 million customers across the United States as a licensed insurance broker.

“Today as a consumer, you have to go to multiple different places to deal with different things,” Agrawal said at the time of the company’s last raise. “Jerry is out to change that.”

The new funding round fuels the launch of the company’s “compare-and-buy” marketplaces in new verticals, including financing, repair, warranties, parking, maintenance and “additional money-saving services.” Although Jerry also offers a similar product for home insurance, its focus is on car ownership.

“Access to reliable and affordable transportation is critical to economic empowerment,” said Rafi Syed, Jerry board member and general partner at Bow Capital, which also doubled down on its investment in the company. “Jerry is helping car owners make the most of every dollar they earn. While we see Jerry as an excellent technology investment showcasing the power of data in financial services, it’s also a high-performing investment in terms of the financial inclusion it supports.” 

Goodwater Capital Partner Chi-Hua Chien said the firm’s recurring revenue model makes it stand out from lead generation-based car insurance comparison sites.

CEO Agrawal agrees, noting that Jerry’s high-performing annual recurring revenue model has made the company “attractive to investors” in addition to the fact that the startup “straddles” the auto, e-commerce, fintech and insurtech industries.

“We recognized those investment opportunities could drive our business faster and led to raising the round earlier than expected,” he told TechCrunch. “We’re eager to launch new categories to save customers time and money on auto expenses and the new investment shortens our time to market.”

Agrawal also believes Jerry is different from other auto-related marketplaces out there in that it aims to help consumers with various aspects of car ownership (from repair to maintenance to insurance to warranties), rather than just one. The company also believes it is set apart from competitors in that it doesn’t refer a consumer to an insurance carrier’s site so that they still have to do the work of signing up with them separately, for example. Rather, Jerry uses automation to give consumers customized quotes from more than 45 insurance carriers “in 45 seconds.” The consumers can then sign on to the new carrier via Jerry, which can then cancel former policies on their behalf.

Jerry makes recurring revenue from earning a percentage of the premium when a consumer purchases a policy on its site from carriers such as Progressive.

U.S. consumer investing and trading service Robinhood announced this morning that it will acquire Say Technologies in a $140 million cash deal.

Say Technologies is a venture-backed startup, having raised $8 million in 2018, per Crunchbase data. PitchBook data indicates that the company was worth $28 million on a post-money basis following the investment, implying that the company’s backers managed a roughly 5x return on their investment.

Say was backed by Point72 Ventures, among other investors.

The deal is notable because it is Robinhood’s first major purchase since going public in late July, and because it illustrates where Robinhood may look to invest some of its newly liquid equity wealth; when a company goes public, it can more easily purchase other companies thanks to recharged cash balances and a floating stock.

In a blog post, Robinhood wrote that “Say was built on the belief that everyone should have the same access to the financial markets as Wall Street insiders.” What does that mean? In practice, Say has built a communications platform that allows even smaller shareholders to pose questions to the companies in which they invest. Sure, some companies are including retail questions in their earnings calls, but what Say has in mind is broader.

You can see how Say and Robinhood might fit together. Robinhood has a huge user pool of retail investors who like to trade and invest. Say has the technology to connect retail investors to the companies that they own. With Robinhood’s database of which retail investor owns what, and Say’s communications tech, the trading platform may be able to offer a better shareholder experience than what rival platforms can offer.

By offering to its user base a service like what Say has built, Robinhood can offer a unique twist on retail investing. This feels somewhat analogous to Spotify spending heavily to procure exclusive rights to certain podcasts; such efforts differentiate Spotify from rivals despite having a commoditized core offering. Trading is now free in many places, so Robinhood layering specialized services on top of its investing service makes good sense, perhaps helping drive user loyalty and net new-user adds.

Shares of Robinhood are off around 1.2% today, despite generally higher markets. We might say that investors were selling lightly in wake of the news, but that would be a somewhat bold read of the day’s trading.

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Just two months after its last funding announcement, Indonesian crypto assets platform Pintu has closed a $35 million Series A+. The new round was led by Lightspeed Ventures, with participation from returning investors like Alameda Ventures, Blockchain.com Ventures, Castle Island Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Intudo Ventures and Pantera Capital.

Pintu’s previous funding, a $6 million Series A led by Pantera, Intudo and Coinbase Ventures, was announced in late May. Pintu is the latest investment app in Southeast Asia to quickly raise a much larger follow-on round as interest in retail investing grows. Other examples include Bibit, Ajaib and Syfe.

Andrew Adjiputro, Pintu’s chief operating officer, told TechCrunch that Pintu raised a Series A+, instead of a Series A extension or Series B, because its focus on product development and execution is still the same. “With the Coinbase IPO and a lot of new users onboarding, we think it’s the right time for us to raise a larger round to finance faster growth,” he said. “It’s good momentum for us to launch new products and grab the market.”

Pintu plans to use its Series A+ on “aggressive” hiring for all its teams and rolling out new features and products. During the first half of 2021, Pintu says app downloads grew by 3.5x through organic growth, while active traders on the platform increased by 4x.

The platform currently offers trades on 16 cryptocurrencies, with plans to add more coins, including NFT tokens.

Adjiputro said Coinbase’s successful initial public offering in April helped fuel interest in crypto trading, especially among first-time investors.

“They became curious and the bread and butter of our business is essentially education,” said Adjiputro. “We have a lot of education on our platform and it attracts this new breed of investors who want to learn more.”

While the rate of retail investment in Indonesia is still low, its growing quickly because of a confluence of factors, including people’s desire to diversify and increase their assets during the pandemic.

For many of Pintu’s users, the app was their first introduction to investing instead of stocks, Adjiputro said. The company recently surveyed current users, asking about the top five asset classes they are invested in. Crypto came in third after mutual funds and digital gold, and before stocks at number four.

The preference for crypto over stocks is echoed in figures released by the Indonesian Ministry of Trade, which showed that as of June 2021, there were over 6.6 million crypto investors in Indonesia, or about triple the 2.2 million public equity investors in the country.

Pintu is a licensed crypto broker under the Indonesian Commodity Futures Trading Regulatory Agency (BAPPEBTI). It has a low minimum investment rate of 11,000 IDR, or about 75 cents USD, making more attractive to new investors.

Timothius Martin, the company’s chief marketing officer, was a first-time investor when he started using Pintu. He told TechCrunch that the number one draw was accessibility. “It’s easy to start investing and also withdraw assets. In Indonesia, we are now at a stage where people have heard about crypto, about Bitcoin, are very interested and may already want to invest, but there are not many options that are easy enough for them to understand.”

Instead of encouraging users to make an investment when the open the app for the first time, Pintu presents them with educational materials. For example, one of its features is Pintu Academy, a collection of articles and videos. While Pintu’s target demographic is millennials, it’s also attracting older demographics, including people who have traded other assets, like stocks, but want to learn more about the fundamentals of crypto trading.

Adjiputro said Pintu’s focus on education is what differentiates from other Indonesian crypto platforms like Indodax and Tokocrypto.

The company is getting ready to launch new features, like Pintu Earn, a crypto asset account that lets users earn interest on a variety of crypto assets, and e-wallet integration for easier deposits and withdrawals.

It’s also deciding what coins to add next. “We’re very selective in terms of the coins we introduce, because this is a platform for first-time investors and beginners, so we want to protect them, not only in terms of our UI, but also the selection of coins we have,” Martin said.

Pintu’s criteria for new coins include ones that have a high market cap, meaning adoption is already relatively mainstream. It also looks at how long a coin has been around and its liquidity.

Pintu plans to focus on expanding in Indonesia before entering other Southeast Asian markets.

In a statement, Lightspeed partner Hemant Mohapatra said, “Lightspeed has invested in over 17 crypto and blockchain companies globally including FTX, Blockchain.com, Offchain Labs and more. We believe crypto is at an inflection point to become an important asset class globally, and will give rise to massive companies that will become regional leaders. Pintu has created the strongest market brand, best user experience and hands down one of the strongest teams we’ve ever come across in this market.”

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U.K.-based open banking bulk payment startup Comma has raised £4.34 million ($6 million) in a seed round of funding led by Octopus Ventures and Connect Ventures. They were joined by investors Village Global, and the founders of Wagestream, Peter Briffett and Portman Wills.

The company says it enables small and micro businesses to bulk-pay bills, salaries and taxes using existing high street small business bank accounts, saving them a lot of time and money in administration. This is because BACS is difficult to obtain and costly, and virtual accounts require KYC to set up and add complexity to bookkeeping.

Comma says that during the pandemic there was a large increase in outsourced financial operations. The availability of open banking bulk payment APIs from several of the high street banks made the product possible, which led to the startup picking up a great deal more business.

The Comma app connects to accounting systems (Xero, QuickBooks, Sage) and allows a business or their accountant to enter and manage supplier bank details without needing bank access. They can pay between 15-50 payees at once and the system posts payments against bills back to the accounting system to mark what has been paid.

Founder Tom Beckenham said: “I worked as COO of a business that was billing across continents and paying hundreds of staff. It was a very manual process. It occurred to me that larger businesses had corporate banking and systems that managed payments. Small businesses did not and were largely ignored. I noticed that traditional methods of solving the problem for small businesses had high setup costs — eliminating most of the market.”

He said he saw an opportunity to use new open banking technology to get to this long tail of businesses and solve payments holistically: “We have just got past the £1,000,000 in payments so far. We will get to £1 million per week by the end of the quarter.”

In the U.K. the startup competes to some extent with Credec, Telleroo and BACS bureaus such as ADP. Internationally, Melio in the U.S. is the closest comparison. Libeo in France is also offering something similar.

This past decade, Nigeria has seen several companies cater to the development and growth of software engineers and tech talent in general. It’s a space many in the Nigerian ecosystem like to think is budding yet overcrowded.

So when Chika Nwobi started Decagon in 2018, the perception was generally “here comes another tech talent accelerator.” Two years on, the entrepreneur who is a household name has significantly scaled the company to new heights.

Today, Decagon is announcing its $1.5 million seed round and a student loan financing facility of $25 million from Nigerian financial institution Sterling Bank.

As a serial founder, Nwobi ran a couple of tech businesses, most notably mobile internet company MTech in the early 2000s. With Decagon, Nwobi is charting new territory in the fast-paced startup world after years of investing via his seed-stage firm called L5Lab.

Nwobi says Decagon aims to address the underrepresentation of black people in tech globally, starting with Nigeria. The West African country is the most populous on the continent and the most populous black nation globally.

The dire need for tech talent in Nigeria has become more evident these days, where startups are raising venture capital at a ridiculous pace. Youth unemployment in the country is at a staggering 50%, and while tech has presented an avenue to create jobs, supply isn’t catching up with demand. And more worrisome is the fact that the country’s best talents are leaving in droves to foreign companies in the U.S, Canada, the U.K., and Germany.

So the issue really is supply. If supply is fixed, everyone is happy. That’s what Decagon hopes for by training and connecting engineers to work remotely with both local and international companies. “Microsoft, Facebook and Google have all invested in building engineering offices in Nigeria, but most other companies can’t afford to do that, so we help them access top talent to work as remote engineers,” Nwobi said.

Decagon runs a six-month software engineering program and selects its candidates based on merit. It’s a paid program, and the software engineers are expected to pay about N2 million (~$4,000) tuition to get in. Then, the company employs an income-sharing model when the engineers find work and start earning upon graduation.

But what if the trainees can not afford the program in the first place? The student loan financing takes care of that, and students who take that option are expected to repay N3 million (~$6,000) in the space of three years.

The company claims to be the first to create such merit-based loan financing for students in Nigeria. The financing is in partnership with the financier Sterling Bank and Nigeria’s apex bank, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). It allows Decagon to offer a Pay-After-Learning plan that provides the trainees with laptops, accommodation, internet, meal allowance and a stipend. No upfront payment is expected, says the company.

Decagon says while more than 80,000 people have applied to partake in its program, it has accepted only 440 candidates. That’s a 0.55% acceptance rate. However, Nwobi discloses three figures to show the company is on the right track: the company has recorded a 100% placement rate for its trainees, a 100% loan repayment rate, and a 410% salary increment made by its software engineers after getting placement.

Global tech talent company Andela employed this model before pivoting, and while it didn’t work for them, it seems to be working for Decagon. The reason is likely because Andela used equity financing to carry out these operations, whereas Decagon uses debt. 

Obinna Ukachukwu, the divisional head of Sterling Bank, commenting on the student loan financing, said, “We got involved to support alternative education by providing loans for Nigerian students complemented with financial literacy training. Based on the excellent performance of the current portfolio, it made sense to scale our support to Decagon.”

For its equity financing, Decagon raised money from Kepple Africa and Timon Capital. Some angel investors like Paul Kokoricha, managing partner of the private equity business of ACA, and Tokyo-based UNITED Inc., also took part.

Nwobi says Decagon operates at the intersection of edtech, fintech and the future of work, and the funds will be used to scale its efforts on the three fronts. The company will also be looking to deepen gender inclusion by increasing female participation in its cohorts from 25% (its current stats) to 50% in the next three years.

The CEO adds that the company which he refers to as a “tech talent catalyst” is profitable and growing at 500% per annum. “We see this capital as fuel to accelerate our mission to transform exceptional people, often from under-represented backgrounds, into world-class engineers by connecting them with financing, in-demand skills and their dream jobs.”

“We’re thrilled to work with Decagon to build up the top 0.5% of vetted engineering talent in Africa and help connect them to global tech opportunities. The frequency of engineering leaders from US and European companies in our network ask about sourcing African and Nigerian technical talent has increased at a rapid clip, and we’re excited to lean into that and help Decagon on their mission,” partner at Timon Capital, Chris Muscarella, said in a statement.

Decagon’s raise comes when there is general skepticism about the viability of tech talent accelerators on the continent despite their apparent need.

Before Andela changed its model, it was a clear market leader with over $180 million in its arsenal. Since it’s pivot, funding has relatively stalled for most of these companies. Maybe Decagon’s student loan financing method will be the new trendsetter in a space that desperately needs investment to solve Africa’s talent problem.

More than 40 African startups from a handful of countries have gone through YC over the past decade. Zambia joins that list today, and its entrant, Union54, is a worthy first entry.

Union54 (54 is a nod to the number of African countries) is a fintech company founded by Perseus Mlambo and Alessandra Martini. The startup claims to be Africa’s first card-issuing API and only just launched this year. But to paint the picture, Union54 didn’t come out of thin air; it is a project from the couple’s earlier startup Zazu.

Zazu was launched in 2015 as a challenger bank in Zambia. As with any fintech on the continent, Zazu had to create its own debit cards that users could connect to a wallet. Most times, Zazu would have to wait months for partner banks in the country to issue these cards. Mlambo tells me that at one point they had to wait for 18 months.

All this while the founders began to work with banks around the region to start issuing cards themselves. But the banks were lethargic in their approaches. “We just realized that either the processor or the bank was not necessarily well equipped to be able to answer our questions or to be able to give us the product that we’re looking for,” Mlambo said to TechCrunch in an interview.

The startup decided to go for the bullseye and meet with Mastercard. I mean, why wait for banks when you can bag those who issue these cards in the first place, right? Ultimately, the company got a Mastercard Principle membership, the first fintech from Africa, it claims.

As a principal member, Zazu became authorized to act as an “issuing bank.” In other words, they can provide debit cards and as “acquirers,” which means they can provide transaction processing services.

Along the way, the founders realized that to really advance African fintech, it was imperative to make it easier for any African country’s fintech to issue virtual or physical debit cards. So the team spun out Union54 from Zazu. The platform now has several APIs that make it simple for any fintech to issue programmable debit cards.

“We’ve now used our membership to be able to help other companies, any African fintech who wants to issue their own cards. They can just come to us, plug into our APIs, and move quickly, without needing to spend a long time negotiating,” Mlambo said about providing the service for other African fintechs.

The CEO adds that the company targets fintechs that don’t want to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in setup fees to get virtual or physical cards. Union54 claims to issue cards in weeks via an API that does BIN sponsorship, program management and settlement, among other features.

Being able to do this gives Union54 bragging rights as Africa’s first card-issuing API. Fintechs have rarely looked at this opportunity; most are focused on other segments from payment gateways to wallets. It’s an interesting point to note because somehow, all the big players in these segments end up trying to create virtual and physical cards for their customers and face complications doing so. That’s the void Union54 wants to fill, and although it’s currently in beta, the company boasts of an impressive unnamed clientele signed up on its wait list and currently using the platform.

“The fascinating thing about these companies is that they are not B or C players. They are in the top 5% of African fintech. And for me, I always tell people, we’re now in the golden generation of African fintech. So it’s really the perfect time for a card-issuing product to be able to work with all of these guys considered leaders in their space. It means we really do have something that people want to use every day,” the CEO added.

On the company’s site, there are eight use cases for its API: ledger-based, acquirers/gateways, buy now, pay later, credit union, delivery companies, digital banking, credit card management and corporate cards.

Fintechs using Union54 are also allowed to design the cards and set the currency in which they want the cards to be charged, and set an extensive catalog of who will use them, what they will be used for, when they will be used and how they will be used.

Union54 charges fintechs on a pay-as-you-go basis for every API call. If a fintech company wants to create a physical card, they are charged a flat fee between $7-9 and an undisclosed flat fee when a transaction is made.

Mlambo says getting into the summer batch of YC 2021 has allowed the company to sign up its first set of customers, as most of them have come from YC’s network. He calls YC a program that has been “worth it from day one.”

“I am really excited and proud that Union54 has become the first Zambian fintech to get accepted into Y Combinator. And the second in Southern Africa. As you will know, when global investors look at Africa, they often do so from a West African perspective and our getting into Y Combinator validates a small part of our broader hypothesis: it is possible to service Africa from friendly jurisdictions such as Zambia.”

Micromobility startup Voi has raised $45 million, funds it says will be used to research and develop technology that will improve safety, keep users from riding on sidewalks and ensure scooters are properly parked.

The funding comes a month after Voi launched a pilot in Northhampton, U.K. with Irish startup Luna to test how computer vision technology might be used to solve parking and sidewalk riding issues. The R&D spending will include “pioneering the use of computer vision software to prevent pavement riding,” according to a statement released by the company.

“We are leading the way in that technology — we want to embrace that technology, like Luna, to make available next year on our fleet for the masses,” a spokesperson for Voi told TechCrunch, who also noted the company is open to outfitting its e-bikes with computer vision technology.

The Voi spokesperson told TechCrunch the company is happy with the progress it has made to date and is exploring its own proprietary technology, which could include acquiring Luna. No decisions or acquisitions have been made so far, but Voi is also investing in its next-generation scooter. It’s possible that the next vehicle comes with computer vision built in, rather than retrofitted to the stem.

Voi, which already has scooters in 70 cities across the U.K. and Europe, is aiming to expand. And technology that solves parking, safety and sidewalk clutter is viewed by Voi as key to winning city partnerships and maintaining the ones it already has.

Voi is also using the funds to work on the sidewalk parking problem by adding physical parking racks. On Wednesday, Voi installed 100 parking racks in Stockholm in agreement with the city. Voi already has over 300 physical parking racks in the U.K.

Voi uses a swappable battery system that’s popular with other operators like Lime and Spin, which means the racks are just there for keeping scooters out of the public right of way. Voi says having physical racks will help “create a sustainable service for cities and the people living in them.”

This latest round brings Voi’s total funding to $205 million. The round was led by The Raine Group, and existing investors like VNV Global participated alongside new investors. The company did not specify who those new investors are.

While Amsterdam garners the lion’s share of attention in the Netherlands tech ecosystem, the not-so-far-away region around Utrecht has its fair share of tech startups and investors, as is evidenced by our latest survey of locals, below.

Area ecosystem wranglers such as StartupUtrecht, UtrechtInc, Holland Startup, Utrecht Community and others bring startups, scaleups, corporates, angels, VCs, local government, banks and universities together to build the local startup ecosystem. They also benefit from the formidable Netherlands tech advocate initiative StartupDelta and The Netherlands Enterprise Agency, which promote the Netherlands more widely.

Utrecht is the fourth-largest city in the Netherlands, with 350,000 inhabitants. Its offices and co-working spaces include Dotslash Utrecht, De Stadstuin, MindSpace and Tribes; as well as accelerator programs like Startupbootcamp and Techleap.

Notable startups from the region include Distimo (acquired by AppAnnie), unicorn GitLab, MoneyMonk and StuComm. Plus there are newer ones such as SnappCar, Blendle, Merus, Nibblr, United Wardrobe, Näpp, Lalaland, 2DAYSMOOD and Remind2Change.

Our survey respondents think the ecosystem is strong in sustainable energy, medtech, food tech, life sciences, marketplaces, deep tech, gaming and media. However, they seem to think it’s weaker in design, hardware, fintech, robotics and agritech.

Notable startups named by our respondents include Channable, Pepscope, Goin’ Connect, Fundsup, Tover, Faqta, Sensorfact, SODAQ, Picnic, Neurolytics, De Clique, Solease, BikeFlip, Packaly, DiManEx, Trunkrs, DialogueTrainer, EatMyRide, CART-Tech, Prolira, among many, many others. It just goes to show the region has a strong and growing ecosystem.

The investment scene is described variously as focusing on software, clean tech, life sciences, biotech, organoids, 3D bioprinting, AI and VR/AR. One says: “In Amsterdam it’s ok. Utrecht is a bit lagging.” Another said, “The investor scene focuses on early-stage, scalable tech in healthcare, sustainability and education. [There are] many local informal investors and nationally operating VCs.”

With the shift to remote working, many respondents think people will “preferably move out of the city center toward the villages nearby” as there is “a lot of nature/space around.” That said, Utrecht is “a growing hub” and many will “stay in the city. But fewer people will move in, and remote working is there to stay.” It’s also easy to work remotely in the Netherlands given its proximity to other big European cities, so it may attract new digital nomads, “thanks to the central position of Utrecht in the middle of the country and the attractiveness of the ecosystem.”

We surveyed:

Jorg Kop, investment manager, ROM Utrecht Region

What industry sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What is it weak in?
Digital, gaming, e-health, edtech, sustainability.

Which are the most interesting startups in your city?
Channable, Pandora Intelligence, Sensorfact, SnappCar, Faqta, StuComm, DiManEx, Prolira, CART-Tech.

What are the tech investors like? What is the investment scene like in your city? What’s their focus?
Many local informal investors and national operating VCs.

With the shift to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, will people stay in your city, move out, or will others move in?
Others will be moving in, thanks to the central position of Utrecht in the middle of the country and the attractiveness of the ecosystem.

Who are the key startup people in your city (e.g., investors, founders, lawyers, designers, etc.)? 
Sjoerd Mol (Benvalor), Erik Stam (Utrecht University), Robbert-Jan Hanse (Holland Startup), Heerd Jan Hoogeveen (Startup Utrecht), Jorg Kop (UtrechtInc and ROM), Edgard Creemers (ROM).

Where do you see your city’s tech scene in five years’ time?
Part of the greater Amsterdam region from an international brand perspective, closely working together with all other key startup regions in NL.

Stefan Braam, incubation lead, UtrechtInc

What industry sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What is it weak in?
Strong: AI, health, sustainability and learning. Weak: robotics, engineering, ag.

Which are the most interesting startups in your city?
Solease, SnappCar, BikeFlip, Packaly, Sensorfact, DiManEx, Näpp, Trunkrs, StuComm, Faqta, DialogueTrainer, EatMyRide, CART-Tech, Prolira, MRIguidance, Redgrasp, SyncVR, DigiDok, Learned.io, 2DAYSMOOD, Hooray and Goin’ Connect, Fundsup.

What are the tech investors like? What is the investment scene like in your city? What’s their focus?
Focus on health tech.

With the shift to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, will people stay in your city, move out, or will others move in?
Stay: a lot of nature/space around.

Who are the key startup people in your city (e.g., investors, founders, lawyers, designers, etc.)? 
Jorg Kop, Stefan Braam

Where do you see your city’s tech scene in five years’ time?
Utrecht, as the Dutch vibrant hub for early-stage, highly scalable tech startups.

Menno Vergeer, co-founder and CEO, Redgrasp

What industry sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What is it weak in?
Strong in life sciences.

Which are the most interesting startups in your city?
Channable, Redgrasp, Trunkrs.

With the shift to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, will people stay in your city, move out, or will others move in?
People will preferably move out of the city center toward the villages nearby (all within a range of 10-20 km).

Where do you see your city’s tech scene in five years’ time?
It will grow at a rate similar to the global tech scene.

Roelof Reineman, entrepreneur

What industry sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What is it weak in?
Strong: IT, digital, sustainable energy, medical, food. Weaker: design, hardware, fintech.

Which are the most interesting startups in your city?
KokeRoo.

What are the tech investors like? What is the investment scene like in your city? What’s their focus?
A focus on building a better world and a profit, not just the profit.

With the shift to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, will people stay in your city, move out, or will others move in?
Stay. Tt is a lush, green city with plenty of room to live and breathe.

Who are the key startup people in your city (e.g., investors, founders, lawyers, designers, etc.)? 
Utrecht Inc (Jasper Voorendonk). Dotslash (Jelle Drijver). StartupUtrecht (Heerd Jan Hoogeveen).

Where do you see your city’s tech scene in five years’ time?
Thriving and still growing.

Luuk Post, partner, De Contentkalender

What industry sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What is it weak in?

We’re strong in public affairs. We’re weak in the for-profit sector.

Which are the most interesting startups in your city?
Moveshelf.

With the shift to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, will people stay in your city, move out, or will others move in?
The city of Utrecht is ever-expanding; people will always move in.

Leon Brunenberg, managing partner, Arches Capital

What industry sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What is it weak in?
SAAS, software, B2B.

What are the tech investors like? What is the investment scene like in your city? What’s their focus?
In Amsterdam it’s ok. Utrecht is a bit lagging.

With the shift to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, will people stay in your city, move out, or will others move in?
Stay.

Where do you see your city’s tech scene in five years’ time?
In Holland, second after Amsterdam.

Erik Stam, co-founder, Stichting Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Observatory

What industry sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What is it weak in?
Strong: health, edtech, IT.

Which are the most interesting startups in your city?
Channable, Tover, De Clique, Bittiq, Neurolytics.

What are the tech investors like? What is the investment scene like in your city? What’s their focus?
IT, health, edtech, travel.

With the shift to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, will people stay in your city, move out, or will others move in?
Stay.

Who are the key startup people in your city (e.g., investors, founders, lawyers, designers, etc.)? 
Jorg Kop, Heerd Jan Hoogeveen, Robbert Jan Hanse.

Where do you see your city’s tech scene in five years’ time?
Expanding.