Budapest Letters #36
👋 Hi All! Great to have you back. This is Budapest Letters, my newsletter covering startup and small business stories from the CEE region, or interesting developments that might have something to do with this part of Europe. Hope you will enjoy it!
Before we jump into edition #36, big shout out to our new subscribers, good to have you here. And one more thing before we roll, if you like what you read, subscribe + share 🙏
Cheers, Aron
📢 TL;DR
Top stories this week: ✍️ Russia attacked Ukraine without a reason, causing political and economic turmoil in Europe ✍️ Omnipack, Daytrip and uPacjenta raised 💵 ✍️ Czechia’s NFTScoring aims to make NFT investments more transparent and secure for enthusiasts ✍️ SalesForce published its annual Small & Medium Business trends report that surveyed more than 2k business owners
🔥 Story of the Week
No further comment needed…
Apart from the obvious: if you can, support 🇺🇦 and its citizens in a way that is possible for you per your respective countries. For Hungarians, check here.
Show Me Da 💶
👏 Omnipack, a logistics startup from 🇵🇱, raised €7.5M, led by various business angels and VC funds, including SMOK (🇵🇱) and Flashpoint (🇭🇺/🇬🇧). The startup, that provides an E2E ops platform for e-commerce businesses (i.e. taking care of fullfilments, capacity planning, etc.), will use the fresh funding to fuel its growth.
👏 Daytrip, a travel startup from 🇨🇿, bagged €6.1M, led by Euroventures (🇭🇺), with participation from J&T Ventures, Nation 1 and Pale Fire Capital, all local and existing investors. The company, that connects English-speaking private car drivers with tourists within countries, will use the money for intl. expansion.
👏 uPacjenta, a healthteach startup from 🇵🇱, snatched ca. €4.6M, led by Inovo (🇵🇱) and YZR (🇩🇪). The startup, that operates a digital platform that connects patients with relevant medical specialists (i.e. telehealth model), will use the funding to fine-tune its technology and to start dynamic expansion across Europe.
👏 Additional investment news that you should know about:
NFTscoring (🇨🇿) bagged €1.5M from 🇨🇿 and 🇺🇸 investors - more
Catalyst (🇷🇴), a VC fund, will invest €50M in SEE startups - more
Congrats to all!
🚨 Startup Alert
This week’s alert is on NFTScoring, an NFT market analyses startup from 🇨🇿, that not only just raised €1.5M from various VCs, like local biggie Credo Ventures, but also made it into Y Combinator, the famed 🇺🇸 startup accelerator; fun fact: NFTScoring is the 3rd startup from Czechia which managed to make it to YC.
What the startup offers its users is straightforward: fact-driven, deep, 24/7 analysis of the international NFT market, thus helping investors locate gems in a sea of horse poo. Not sure how many of you went down the NFT rabbit hole, but man, it is crazy out there. Pixel bears, monkeys dressed up as humans, portraits drawn in Microsoft Paint-style by 5 year olds, zombies, you name it, it is there.
So a solution that helps enthusiasts navigate in this parallel universe is gold. I sincerelly believe that if David Mokoš and Adam Zvada, the two young gun founders of the company, keeps their razor focus, they might make it big.
🥂 Here’s to the their success!
🧠 Food
Salesforce, the global CRM giant from 🇺🇸, published its annual SMB (Small and Medium Business) trends report that rests on the feedback of ca. 2,3k business owners from North & South America, Europe and the Asia Pacific region.
Two takeaways that I found - especially - interesting:
Nearly one in five SMBs furloughed employees during the pandemic, but nearly 49 per cent of them have rehired those they furloughed.
63 per cent of SMBs have e-commerce now, out of which 31 per cent added it within the past 12 months. On top of this, 14 per cent of surveyed SMBs acknowledged their plans to add e-com function within the next 1 year.
Still, for most SMBs, keeping up with increasing customer expectations (i.e. digitalization) and making sure to have a solid cashflow, remains a challenge.