As we head into the second half of 2022, we wanted to take a moment to highlight some of the great achievements across our portfolio over the past few months. It’s been quite a year so far, and we continue to be impressed with the hard work of our portfolio teams as they find ways to adapt and execute their visions during these extraordinary times. 

Three years ago, we launched our €80m third fund to continue backing the best early-stage enterprise tech founders in Europe, and we’ve now invested in 14 exceptional teams solving complex problems for the modern enterprise. 

The Adara team is also growing, and we’ve welcomed new team members, including Nacho Sánchez and Alessandro Gambarotta as Associates, María Alonso as Financial Controller, and María Pérez-Hernández, and Juan Orbea as Investment Analysts.

Our portfolio companies also marked many significant milestones over the past few months, including some of the largest acquisitions & exits for European deep tech startups to date. Here’s a recap:

🚀 Three acquisitions & welcoming AVIII investment #14
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🤝 Global direct-to-consumer (DTC) eCommerce company ESW agreed to acquire  Adara portfolio company and leading end-to-end eCommerce solution provider, Scalefast. We first partnered with Scalefast in 2018 and invested in their Series A & B rounds. Scalefast quickly grew into a team of over 350 employees across Madrid, Los Angeles, and Paris, and will join ESW to continue transforming online shopping experiences for top brands in over 200 markets. Learn more. 

🤝 The largest monitoring and security platform for cloud applications, Datadog, Inc., announced a definitive agreement to acquire Hdiv Security, an Adara portfolio company and fast-growing security-testing software provider. We backed Hdiv Security in 2018, leading their Seed raise. In just four years, Hdiv became a top solution for DevSecOps teams globally. The acquisition will help Datadog create a more comprehensive approach to its Cloud Security Platform. Learn more.

🤝 Adara portfolio company and competitive intelligence automation platform Kompyte was also acquired by Semrush, a major player in marketing and search automation. We met the Kompyte team in 2017, and invested in their Seed round as part of our AVII fund. Kompyte’s technology will be used to expand Semrush’s existing competitive intelligence feature. Learn more.

💰 We announced our latest AVIII investment in Komon, a platform that permits digital content creators and artists to launch NFT-powered communities. Adara participated in the $2 million pre-seed round alongside Samaipata, Inveready, Shilling, and several business angels. Learn more. 
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🎉 More growth stories we celebrated
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🔹 Freeverse closed their €10m Series A funding round, less than one year after their €1m Seed raise, to fuel development of their ‘Living Asset’ (NFT 2.0) technology and go-to-market push.

🔹 QualityClouds raised a £5.5m round of investment to continue scaling their application development governance platform.

🔹 Seedtag continued their explosive growth, reporting 80%+ Y-O-Y organic growth in 2021. In the first half of 2022, they acquired French company KMTX, announced their first offices in the Middle East, and established their official US headquarters in NYC. At the end of July, Seedtag also announced the big news that they raised over €250M in funding from Advent International.

🔹 Caravelo has experienced a breakthrough year and is on track to grow 4x in 2022. Alaska Airlines is one of the latest airlines to adopt Caravelo’s flight subscription software. The company also received a €3m capital injection from Sabadell Venture Capital & Inveready to fuel their growth.

🔹 42Crunch announced that they now have over 450,000 developers using their API Security tools.

🔹 Beonprice continued expanding across Europe and Latin America, and was selected as one of this year's 50 Fastest Growing Companies in EMEA by the Founder Institute. The company also appointed a new CMO, Alex Barros, to support their global expansion efforts.

🔹 IOMED entered the Portuguese market, and announced an agreement with the Cantabrian Health Service in Spain to implement their artificial intelligence (AI) tool for structuring clinical records in all three of the region’s hospitals and all of its primary care centers.

🔹 Apres was selected as a finalist and pitched at this year’s South Summit Startup Competition.

🔹 Quibim continued strengthening their position in the European medical imaging industry, receiving a Best New Radiology Software award for their QP-Prostate AI application. 
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📚 Content we loved
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🔸 Our Managing Partner Alberto Gómez shared a deep dive into Adara’s perspective on cybersecurity, one of the key pillars of our investment thesis.

🔸 Hiring tech talent remains one of the greatest challenges for startups. Top technical leaders across the Adara portfolio shared what changes they are seeing in hiring for technical positions and their advice for scaling recruitment efforts. 

🔸 BBC Click interviewed XYZ Reality’s David Mitchell and tested out The Atom, an augmented reality (AR) headset device designed to help with inspections at construction sites.

🔸 Constella Intelligence released its 5th annual Identity Breach Report, detailing how shifting global dynamics and geopolitical conflicts present opportunities for threat actors to strike.

🔸 El Referente launched its first report on the role of women investors in Spain, highlighting 100 of the most active women investors in the Spanish startup ecosystem and recognizing our Partner Rocío Pillado.
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✨ Thank you

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We want to say thank you to our community of founders, co-investors, and partners for a truly remarkable year so far. As we look back on the past few months, we can’t help but be excited about what's to come, including new investment announcements and some big news related to our family of funds. 🚀

If you are reflecting on your year and looking to join a high-growth company, many of our portfolio startups are actively hiring. Check out the 150+ open roles and join our Talent Pool here. And as always, if you’re an early-stage founder who is building something extraordinary, we’d love to hear from you. 

📫 Subscribe to our monthly Caminos newsletter here to stay up-to-date, and don’t forget to follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter for even more news. 

- The Adara team

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