In 2019 we’ll focus on extending our business in Germany and the first commercial activities in the Nordic region. 2018 was about becoming a recognized infrastructure player in Berlin and consolidating our position in the Netherlands with a consistent flow of deals.

Lean Startup Summit is a full-day event that brings big ideas from Eric Ries’s books off the page to show how organizations are making them real around the world. For a 10% discount, use the LEAPFUNDER10 code.

Check out the promising startups currently raising funding: Civocracy, obob, Soulskill, PleanSat & RefundMe. Stay tuned for our coming soon rounds: Leapfunder & Hug A Pet.

Happy investing,

Tienko, Rutger, Myrthe, Andrea, Nika & Mark

• Wednesday, January 30: Leapfunder Investor Readiness Session, Berlin
• Thursday, January 31: Leapfunder Investor Readiness Session, Amsterdam
• Friday, February 1: Round Table Session, Amsterdam
• Wednesday, February 6: Leapfunder Investor Readiness Session, Berlin
• Friday, February 8: Round Table Session, Berlin
• Monday-Tuesday, February 11-12: Lean Startup Summit Berlin
• Wednesday, February 13: Investor Readiness Session Berlin
• Friday, February 15: Round Table Session Delft
• Wednesday, February 20: Investor Readiness Session Berlin

RefundMe is a platform that digitizes the VAT refund process for Non-EU tourists using IoT. Last week, we won both the Holland FinTech Jan 2019 Pitch and the Amsterdam Pitch Battle hosted by The Next Web. We also acquired our first retailer in the form of Ace Jewelers (the 3rd largest chain in the NL) and have ongoing talks with Schaap en Citroen and Bataviastad. We also had a successful initial demo with Booking.com and we’re organizing a private product keynote for select stakeholders on February 15th. Visit our round here.

Civocracy, one of Europe’s Digital Champions according to the Financial Times, raised €72K, exceeding their €60K minimum within days of launching the round. They have an additional €20K hard committed, and a further €25K conditionally committed on the round reaching €125K. A number of investors have invested in the company multiple times. Civocracy is looking for more investors wanting to invest a five-figure ticket. Visit our round here.

obob is an easy to use and powerful photo tool for professionals working in teams, on the field and in the office. We got plenty of leads from the Munich “Bau”, the most important German construction tradeshow. We just developed our own obob stat tool, which we immediately put into action to track the 50 new users from December. We are ironing out a few bugs for our new release and most importantly we started developing the obob report tool needed for the Vinci Facilities project in Stuttgart. We will demonstrate the obob pilot at the Vinci Facilities convention this March to more than 300 Vinci executives. Visit our round here.

Soulskill is a talent relationship manager for small and mid-sized teams to maintain and grow their freelance workforce. We have begun billing for our paid mandate with the leading Video on Demand app (OTT) app in India (Hotstar) and are expecting MRR from this account to hit ~ €8K within this quarter. We also recently launched our podcast series called “The Future of Content”. We have raised €105K as part of our seed round (including €20K on Leapfunder), and are now looking to close an additional €50K before March 31st. Visit our round here.

PlenSat has initiated limited human feasibility clinical studies at the University of Maastricht. We have successfully introduced a single pill to four of the initial six patients in our investigational Phase 1 study. Based on the successful completion of the Phase 1 study we will apply for approval from the Medical Ethical Committee to start the second phase of the clinical feasibility trials. Phase 2 will involve multiple balloons in the patient’s stomach. This is planned to start in Q1. The €150K loan we got from RaboBank will cover the expenses for the next 6-9 months. Visit our round here.

Leapfunder was co-founded by > 80 active Angel investors. They are called the Founders Club. This offer of investment is for the current Founders Club, as well as for potential new members. Learn more.

Hug A Pet offers digital veterinary services to customers with a mission to make pet healthcare convenient and stress-free. They want to become the European market leader of the veterinary industry. Learn more.

• Civocracy’s co-founder Chloe is listed as one of the top 10 people improving society.
• Plot Projects & Mixpanel partner to help supercharge user insights with context.
• Undagrid partners with Vodafone to implement IoT services on a global scale.
• Etergo reflects on the 2018 milestones that launched them into a new year.
• PickThisUp is one of the 8 Dutch startups that are making logistics and transport industry smarter.