Startup & Scale-up Funding Analysis 2019: What’s Hot in the Netherlands?

Last week, we wrote that Dutch tech startups and scale-ups raised over €1.4 billion in 2019 in part 1 of our funding analysis.

In this second part, we’ll look at what’s hot in the Netherlands; what are the popular cities and themes?

This blogpost includes:

Amsterdam is (again) the capital of venture capital

More than one third (37%) of all investments were in Amsterdam companies. Together they raised close to €700 million in growth capital. This is the same amount as all other cities combined. Amsterdam-based scale-ups also accounted for the largest chunk of Series B — and later — rounds.

Popular topics: same old and new trends

Some topics, like Online Platforms, Software/ SaaS, E-Commerce Fintech and Biotechnology were hot in 2019, but are in fact hot always. Themes that were specifically popular in the past years that we think give an interesting peak in the future are:

Sustainability & Impact — e.g. meat substitutes (Meatable, Protifarm and Boon) and circular economy
Electric Vehicles & (Urban) Mobility — e.g. Hardt Hyperloop, Scoozy, dott, Etergo, Snappcar
Sophisticated Software (Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Blockchain etc.) — e.g. Finturi, Dutch Analytics, PTTRNS.ai
Robotics — e.g. Smart Robotics, Accerion, SenseGlove