Budapest Letters #41
👋 Hi All! Great to have you back after a long Easter break. But I do hope that after reading today’s content you will feel that it was worth the wait. 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.
Before we jump into edition #41, 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: ✍️ SEON, a fraud prevention startup from 🇭🇺, raised ca. €87M, positioning it to become a future leader in the digital anti-fraud space ✍️ Rimac, Enso, Bunnyshell and Rush also managed to bag serious 💶 ✍️ Estonia’s Swapin aims to bridge the gap between crypto and traditional finance ✍️ Startup Hungary’s annual report on the state of the Hungarian tech scene was published
🔥 Story of the Week
SEON, a fraud prevention startup that was founded in 2017 by Tamás Kádár (CEO) and Bence Jendruszák (COO), schoolmates at Corvinus University of Budapest, raised roughly €87M, led by IVP (🇺🇸), with particpation from well regarded business angels and existing investors, Creandum (🇸🇪) and PortfoLion (🇭🇺). While the company’s success very much rests on its strong team and great product, the COVID pandemic, despite having gazillion horrible consequences, also had a positive impact on its growth trajectory (i.e. skyrocketing e-commerce activity).
The fresh money, that comes barely a year after its last €10M Series A round, will be used - mostly - for international expansion (🇺🇸, LATAM, APAC). Go SEON!
Show Me Da 💶
👏 Rimac Automobili, an electric sportscar startup from 🇭🇷, received a whopping €120M from Investindustrial, an investor in Morgan, another carmaker. The company, which in the past received funding from the likes of Porsche, Hyundia and KIA, is considered to be one of the most innovative players in the field after Tesla. The new funding, as all parties hope, will help Rimac to finally start mass production of its sportcars after years of assembling them in low quantities.
👏 Enso, a data analyis startup from 🇵🇱, snatched ca. €15.3M from a sleuth of, as far as I undestand, 🇺🇸 investors, including Khosla Ventures, SignalFire and Y Combinator. The startup, that offers an advanced data analytics platform with visualization capabilities, will use the fresh money to expand its offering.
👏 Bunnyshell, a cloud infrastructure startup from 🇷🇴, bagged €3.5M from Early Game Ventures and RocaX Ventures, two local VC firms. The company, founded by Roxana Ciobanu and Alin Dobra, provides a cutting-edge DevOps automation platform for businesses. The fresh funding will - chiefly - go for US expansion.
👏 Rush, a digital logistics startup from 🇧🇬, raised €2.5M from Eleven Ventures and LauncHUB Ventures, two local VC firms, and several business angels, like Yair Miron (founder of Raise.ai). The company, that offers innovative shipment tracking for e-commerce businesses, will use the money for international expansion.
👏 Additional investment news that you should know about:
Swapin, a crypto payment provider from 🇪🇪, raised €1.7M: more here
Sell.xyz, a product fulfillment platform from 🇱🇻, bagged €1.5: more here
Up Catalyst, a nanomaterial producer from 🇪🇪, snatched €500k: more here
Congrats to all!
🚨 Startup Alert
This week’s alert is on Swapin, a crypto payment provider from 🇪🇪, that - as noted above, just raised a €1.7M seed round from various business angels. The startup, has currently two core products. CoinCollector, which lets businesses accept payments in cryptocurrency without dealing with crypto-related burdens (e.g. compliance), and E-com, a widget merchants can integrate with any website to accept crypto that is instantly converted into fiat currency. Pretty sweet.
Besides its business offering, Swapin also provides solutions for private individuals, like paying any kind of fiat owed bills with crypto currency.
🧠 Food
Startup Hungary, the most prominent non-profit organisation representing the 🇭🇺 startup community, published its annual report on the state of the local scene.
While I will not dive into all the bits and pieces of this great analysis, you should all download it and read it, one fact stands out: Hungarian startups, as per raised VC money and number of unicorns, are lagging behind regional counterparts. The data speaks for itself. In the past decade CEE went from having 5 🦄’s to ca. 40 with 🇭🇺 producing zero / nil / none. Also, when it comes to internationalization (e.g. sales growth), Hungarians are “Slowcaining“ instead of “Hurrycaining“.
Here, this is what I am talking about…
But, on the positive side, because thankfully there is many things to celebrate, it is visible that local founders do not lack ambition (e.g. 41% think that they will reach unicorn status and 84% think they will be a key global player on their respective market); always a good base for success. And that the number of so-called “Champion” startups (i.e. have at least €80k monthly recurring revenue and growe 5% per month or have an internationally recognized investor) increased vs last year. Big news, that mean that the stories of Bitrise, SEON, Craft or Shapr3D will be followed by others. So long story short, good developments happening in Hungary but with several crucial areas to still work on to really 🚀 🚀 🚀