Image credit: Trengo
The Netherlands is known for its open culture, ease of doing business coupled with a largely English-speaking population, and focus on innovation and entrepreneurship. The Dutch government is invested in helping create a better startup scene. More government and EU initiatives are coming up to support bringing innovations to the market.
As a result, the startup ecosystem is witnessing a huge boost to the number of opportunities and funding deals.
Get to know the amazing finalists here
According to a report from Dealroom, Dutch startups have raised massive amounts of funding this year. In the first six months of 2021, Dutch startups witnessed a whopping €3B in funding. A year ago, they managed to raise €500M in the same period while the entire year of 2020 ended up with €1.7B in funding.
Thomas Mensink, a Startup & Investment Analyst at Golden Egg Check told Silicon Canals, “I don’t think we’ll break this record again in the next half-year. Some really big funding rounds just happened to come together in a short period. However, we’ve seen for a while now that Dutch startups close ever-larger funding rounds. There are more and bigger late-stage rounds. It means there are companies that are not only able to raise those amounts, but which are also able to handle it and who are entrusted with such an investment.”
We have compiled a list of eight Netherlands-based startups that have raised funding in the month of August 2021 and are hiring fresh talents right now. If you’re in the Netherlands and looking for a job, check out this list and spread the word.
Some details about these startups such as founders’ names, founded year, and the total funding amount raised have been sourced from Dealroom.
Trengo
Founder(s): Patrick Meutzner, Marcel van de Weerd, Igo Trampe
Founded in: 2017
Funding: €34.5M
Trengo claims to build an omnichannel communications platform to simplify communication for teams globally. It helps companies improve communications with customers and teams, leading to increased productivity, sales, and customer satisfaction.
Trengo brings together all the popular platforms like WhatsApp Business, Instagram Direct Message, and Google Business Messages. The platform claims to merge CRM, social channels, and communication tools, to provide an easy, efficient, and consistent way to improve customer satisfaction and productivity.
The company announced that it has raised $36M (approx €30.49M) in its Series A round of funding to accelerate its international expansion, further boost the development of its platform, and hire more talents.
VanMoof
Founder(s): Taco Carlier, Ties Carlier
Founded in: 2009
Funding: €179M
Two Dutch brothers founded VanMoof with a vision of creating a perfect city bike. VanMoof is known for its sleek, high-tech, and feature-rich e-bikes that help modern city-dwellers get from one place to another faster. The bikes come with a slew of integrated digital devices like anti-theft systems, intelligent motor, and automatic electronic gear shifting.
VanMoof Brand Stores are now available in Amsterdam, Berlin, London, New York, Paris, San Francisco, Seattle, and Tokyo. The company plans to expand its store to at least 50 cities worldwide through dedicated Service Hubs by the end of 2021.
Recently, the company raised $128M (approx €108M) in its Series C round to enhance its production capabilities, continue developing new technologies, improve bike specs and reliability, and hire new talents.
EclecticIQ
Founder(s): Joep Gommers, Raymon van der Velde
Founded in: 2014
Funding: €43.5M
EclecticIQ’s founders claim to have first hand experience of running threat intelligence teams in the industry, and of the importance of analysts, tools, and data in the cybersecurity battle. With EclecticIQ, they are now set out to build analyst-centric products and services which improve cybersecurity defenses.
EclecticIQ helps governments, large enterprises, and service providers manage threat intelligence, create situational awareness, and adopt an intelligence-led cybersecurity approach. The company operates worldwide from offices and teams in Europe, the UK, North America, and India, and through value-added partners.
Recently, the cybersecurity scale-up received €15M in EU financing as well as €3M from Dutch Security TechFund, part of TIIN Capital. The funds will help the company to further develop its cybersecurity platform through investments in R&D. It will also use the proceeds to expand to new countries and sectors by investing in sales and marketing and hiring new talents. You can apply here.
Orbisk
Founder(s): Bart van Arnhem, Olaf van der Veen, Richard Beks
Founded in: 2019
Funding: €1.1M
Orbisk is a startup on a mission to make the world food system more sustainable through computer vision and AI technology. The company helps hospitality organisations with a complete insight into their food waste which helps them cut their food waste in half.
Orbisk provides plug-and-play installation of the food waste monitors in the kitchen. The monitor is ready for immediate use from day one, and will register all of the food waste in the kitchen automatically. The food waste monitor has a camera with AI technology that automatically recognises which products are being thrown away.
An online report gives an insight into food waste – per week, day, or ingredient – including how much is being out, and how it can be prevented. The data shows excatly when the waste occurs, and why. This way, the hospitality sector can optimise supply, the purchasing process, or the menu, based on data. This not only saves money but also prevents a lot of unnecessary food waste.
Last month, Orbisk raised approx €1.05M in Seed round and plans to continue developing its product, expand its establishments, and scale internationally. The company is also currently hiring, you can apply here.
Foleon
Founder(s): Daan Reijnders, Joost Galama
Founded in: 2013
Funding: €13.6M
Foleon (previously Instant Magazine) is a content creation platform that makes creating interactive content easy. The company’s mission is to empower everyone to create the content their audience craves. The Dutch platform provides B2B companies with an intuitive drag & drop editor and interactive Foleon Doc format, enabling them to create bespoke digital content experiences.
Recently, Foleon raised $10M (approx €8.5M) in Series C round of funding from existing investors Connected Capital and Newion, supported by debt from ABN AMRO. The raised capital will help the company to double its team growth and product development to extend its leadership in the digital content creation space. You can apply here.
Betty Blocks
Founder(s): Chris Obdam, Tim Obdam
Founded in: 2010
Funding: €33M
Betty Blocks enables people from the business-side and IT to build software together in order to speed up innovation and improve time-to-market. The company says it is built for enterprises that want to allow more people to join the software development process, all in an IT-approved and governed way.
The platform looks to empower a new breed of developers. These business developers (or citizen developers) are employees that do not need to have programming knowledge but understand processes and data. The developers use templates and no-code building blocks to build apps without coding, connect apps to the existing enterprise application landscape, and provide the IT department with more control over shadow-IT.
Recently, the company raised $33M (approx €27.97M) in a fresh round of funding to expand its operations and further develop the platform. Betty Blocks is also looking to expand its team and is currently hiring talents. You can apply here.
Shypple
Founder(s): Jarell Habets
Founded in: 2016
Funding: €27.2M
Shypple aims to make global trade virtually frictionless and therefore easier and cheaper to conduct. The company’s digital freight forwarding service offers 24/7 real-time insights on status and location for all product orders and shipments. It offers businesses insights that are configurable per stakeholder and party. All data is instantly available with standard reports on lead times, forwarder performance, and costs.
The company connects over 3,000 businesses to manage, improve as well as provide end-to-end transparency and complete control over their supply chain. This creates value through increased efficiency, direct transport cost savings, minimising errors, performance improvements of suppliers and forwarders, and better consolidations, optimising global trade.
Shypple claims that its technology also helps companies to increase their operational FTE efficiency by 30 per cent. The company has recently raised funding to accelerate its growth and innovation in the freight forwarding industry and is currently looking to increase its workforce. Checkout their open positions here.
IMSystems
Founder(s): Jack Schorsch, Matthew Corvers, Thibaud Verschoor, Rory Deen
Founded in: 2016
Funding: €3.9M
IMSystems aims to revolutionise what is achievable with drive technology, improving current systems, and opening new possibilities. The company has introduced high-performance gearbox technology: the Archimedes Drive.
“We have finally been able to get rid of the gear teeth and beat the traction drive paradox. This enables us to deliver precisely the right force at precisely the right place using our patented Flexroller technology.”
The Archimedes Drive is available in ratios up to 10,000:1 – almost 100 times it’s nearest competition. “We can deliver high torque in a fraction of the volume of other speed reducer technologies, and do it with precision approaching 1 arc-second.”
The company claims its drive technology is lighter, stronger, more efficient, more scalable, and lower cost than any competing drive technology. Its goal is to revolutinise the robotics industry.
IMSystems has recently raised $3.5M in its Series A round of funding and is looking to further grow its team. The company is accepting any open applications at the moment, you can apply here.
Oh, and while we have you, be sure to keep an eye on SiliconCanalsJobs for even more exciting startup opportunities!
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