the rumours are true... I've been promoted to head of content at the FT's @Siftedeu✨ very excited to continue reporting on tech and startups in Europe, with such lovely people

News I never wanted to be sharing 💔 Legendary tech journalist Steve O'Hear has died. Steve was a friend and mentor to many of us at Sifted, and we'll dearly miss him. https://t.co/ln4vJvwU7X

Really pleased to say that I've been selected as one of @PPA_Live 's Next Gen winners for 2024 — a 30 under 30 of rising stars in UK publishing and specialist media ⭐ https://t.co/ogaKI4A5W7

🌱Vertical farming company Infarm declared bankruptcy at the end of last year. Now it's back, focused on growing kosher salad leaves in Canada... though past lives continue to haunt it, with a recent court case naming the old entity. w/ @mparts_ https://t.co/8aFBdP4Vwy

NEW: Post-quantum cryptography startup PQShield has raised a $37m Series B to protect tech against the threat of a fully fledged quantum computer https://t.co/QRIY1Wzq1Q

🔍Next Tuesday, I'm running a financial investigations workshop in conjunction with @journoresources We'll look at: finding and using company records, navigating the confidentiality of documents, cultivating sources at companies + more Tickets here 👇 https://t.co/UzYmBzMtZJ

I've been travelling around the UAE meeting the European climate techs heading to the country. Can the region's rush to adopt environment hacking tech at scale make a difference, as it continues to pump out large amounts of oil and gas? 👇 https://t.co/n5K1RuRW2N

Thanks @steph_hbailey @Siftedeu - many more founders need to be aware of this: 'Last summer, Cindy Gallop flew to Amsterdam to meet an investment manager who had offered her £10m in equity financing to help her grow @makelovenotporn' https://t.co/SZ3EnnHRRg

If a similar scam has targeted you, and you want to reach out, please do so. https://t.co/JQzygqQD6y

“This destroys people’s trust,” said Gallop, in our interview. “These guys can continue this scam, as long as founders are too embarrassed to speak up.”

They all took place between 2021 and the end of 2023 - and follow the same pattern. It’s likely that there are many more victims out there, too embarrassed to speak out, worried it may hurt their future fundraising.

“The scam itself is a sickening ordeal to go through,” one founder, who chose to remain anonymous, told me. “Looking back, we were just naive to it all, a bit blinded by the opportunity really.”

I set out to find some of them and ended up speaking to another six victims in the months that followed - two of whom had lost money. The more people I spoke to, the more people with almost identical tales they connected me with.

The story starts seven months ago, at Sifted Summit, where larger-than-life sextech founder @cindygallop mentioned onstage she had almost lost $500k in a rogue crypto scam that had lured her to Amsterdam and Barcelona. She was lucky but said others hadn't been.

NEW: The crypto con scamming founders out of hundreds and thousands of dollars. I've been investigating the scam targeting startups across Barcelona and Milan. I spoke to seven victims - two lost over $200k. https://t.co/JQzygqQD6y

Robert Falck, founder of Sweden's Einride, tells @FPratty that the Gulf has a sense of ambition Europe lacks "I love the ambition here, they understand that the future needs ambition. The economies of scale will be happening here first.” @Siftedeu https://t.co/Um8nNtoYGR

Interview with Frenchman Vincent Farret d'Astiès — a man designing a balloon as tall as Notre Dame and dreaming of a once-in-a-lifetime dining trip to the edges of space. https://t.co/yk0vACasRB

You can download it here: https://t.co/vWz3AhNqTT

B2B unicorn creation outpaced the B2C segment for the first time in 2021, and has maintained its lead ever since. But in a time of economic uncertainty, will this last? Great to launch our new report with @awscloud last week at the AWS Summit.

Swedish financiers Harald Mix and Carl-Erik Lagercrantz are behind two of Europe's biggest climate tech companies: Northvolt and H2 Green Steel. I sat down with them to find out the secret sauce 👇 https://t.co/CGraOOELox

And if you aren't signed up to the climate tech newsletter (authored by the amazing @FPratty) you should be. https://t.co/yzkNDdMPs1