Layoffs spell opportunity for some fintech startups • TechCrunch

welcome to interchangeIf you get this in your inbox thank you for signing up and trusting and voting. If you read this as a post on our site please sign up here You can receive it directly in the future. Each week we take a look at the hottest fintech news from the previous week. This includes everything from funding rounds to trends to analysis of specific spaces to hot takes on specific companies and phenomena. That’s my job. That way you can get the latest information. Mary Ann

Hiring

Hey Hey! I’m feeling good this week as I finally kicked off something I’ve been working on for a while: tracking the hiring of fintech companies. Covering layoffs is no fun. Unfortunately, too many layoffs. So I think our coverage will be a bit more balanced by also spotlighting fintech companies that are hiring instead of firing, laying off workers (and in general I thought I could provide people with a way to see what positions are available.

After the article published on February 16th, I found some more Employers communicate news of open positions at their company.

• Kikoff is hiring for 10 roles (a mix of hybrid and remote), including Senior Product Manager, Associate Product Manager, Senior Product Designer, Engineer, and Growth Marketing Manager. The consumer fintech company focuses on helping people build credit, and in June 2021 he raised $30 million.
• Addepar, which makes software to track investment performance, is also hiring aggressively, with about 50 open positions in the US, UK and India (and many with remote work options). I have). In June 2021, the company raised $150 million at a valuation of $2.17 billion. The company currently has about 850 clients on its platform and over $4 trillion in client assets.
  
• Nium is hiring and has many open positions. The B2B payments company has raised his $200 million in 2021 at Unicorn valuation.
• Human Interest, a 401(k) provider, recently increased its total funding to $500 million, including an investment from BlackRock, and has 23 open roles, including engineering, product, and revenue.
• Spend optimization company Emburse, with offices in six countries, just appointed a new CEO, Johann Wrede, and is hiring for nine roles, including sales, engineering, and customer success.
• Collective, an all-in-one back-office finance platform for the self-employed, has raised over $28 million in funding and is hiring across five roles: engineering, marketing, and member services (tax, accounting). The Collective has raised its latest round, its Series A, in May 2021.

I’m sure there will be more information in The Interchange next week. Feel free to share with anyone looking for new opportunities.

weekly news

TechCrunch’s Tage Kene-Okafor did a great job reporting this story. “Prince Boakye Boampong, Founder and CEO of dashIt offers an alternative payment network with a connected wallet that allows interaction between African mobile money and bank accounts, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation.

rear Affirm’s It’s been a tough week, so I’m going to dig a little deeper into this area and find out that while consumer-centric BNPL (buy now, pay later) companies are struggling, many B2B-centric companies continue to raise money. I discovered that BNPL is a tech giant apple According to Bloomberg, it seems to be moving forward with plans to offer a unique “buy now, pay later” service, and that it “has rules on how to approve transactions.”

In this TechCrunch+ article, Amsterdam-based Grant Easterbrook, a fintech consultant and co-founder of Dream Forward, said, “We got some hype and momentum at first, but we ended up delivering on our promises. The focus is on fintech ideas that never existed. He notes ideas that “fail to go mainstream and transform financial services in the way their founders originally intended.” super interesting read.

February 15th, Lightspeed Venture Partners Ansaf Kareem has published a very detailed blog post titled “The Alchemy of Fintech Valuations”. In it, he summarizes the fintech sector, the closest public comp, key metrics to pay attention to, and where the multiples are currently. He wrote that he hopes it will “provide a better benchmark that entrepreneurs can take advantage of as they scale their businesses.” Check here.

February 7th, focused on Austin-based SMBs sana benefits The company announced that it will cut about 19% of its workforce. It’s unclear how many people were affected, but Austin Inno said the startup had about 170 employees when he raised $60 million in Series B last summer. TechCrunch has raised $20.8 million in Series A in 2020. In a blog post/letter to employees, CEO and co-founder Will Young said the company’s “accelerated growth and focus on product development will come at the expense of higher risk tolerance and higher risk tolerance.” It was done. More expenses.” As part of a retirement package, the company has kindly given its employees laptops, stating that “having a laptop is important for job hunting.” I admit that

It’s great to see more women taking leadership roles in the fintech community. Here are two examples:

Former NEA General Partner Liza Landsman Joins Fintech Startup Stash, as the new CEO, has called himself an “anti-Robinhood”. Her appointment she took effect on February 6th. Landsman said she has been an independent director of Stash since mid-2022, and previously she held operational and leadership roles at Jet.com, Citigroup, BlackRock and E-Trade. At NEA, where AUM is her more than $25 billion venture, he focused on fintech and consumer products. The company also formed a new B2B business led by former CEO and now Head of Business Development Brandon Krieg. A good friend of mine and a very talented journalist, Suman Bhattacharyya, covered the move here. Last October, TechCrunch covered the company’s milestone of surpassing his $125 million in annual revenue and adding a cryptocurrency offering.

and

Focus on Fintech QED investor recently announced the hiring of Melissa Ho as a Principal focused on multi-stage fintech investments in Southeast Asia, with a focus on early-stage companies. Ho is her first QED employee in Singapore. She previously led the investment team at Wavemaker Partners, her seed VC fund in Southeast Asia that invests in Enterprise, Deep Her Tech and Sustainability companies. There she was responsible for key areas of SaaS, B2B markets, proptech, edtech, commerce, and consumer internet, in addition to the Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and Bangladesh markets. Last August, the company made its first investment in Africa. We are also very bullish on Fintech in Latin America.

ICYMI: From Natascha Mascarenhas: “pipeAn alternative financial platform last privately valued at $2 billion by investors has announced a new CEO. Joined Pipe after working as General Manager of Banking. He was also CEO and President of QuickBooks Capital. Boyle’s role begins on February 20. ” Click here for details.

At the forefront of real estate open the door and Jiro has partnered to give Atlanta and Raleigh homeowners a new way to explore multiple home sales options when visiting Zillow. Customers who “start their selling journey” with Zillow can now simultaneously request both a cash offer from Opendoor and a quote for the sale price of their home on the market with her local Zillow Premier Agent her partner. rice field. Sellers who decide to accept Opendoor’s offer can use the Opendoor platform to sell their homes on their own timeline. Any seller who chooses to sell their home on the market will be paired with her Zillow Premier Agent partner locally.

Fintech forever

I recently caught up with Adam Nash, who has several positions under his belt. He has also held executive and technical positions at Dropbox, LinkedIn, eBay, and Apple. On the fintech front, he is the former CEO and most recently co-founder of his Wealthfront. DaffyTC’s Connie Loizos wrote last year: charitable donation. With DAF, you donate some money (or stocks, or cryptocurrencies) with tax breaks when you donate, and that donation moves into a managed investment account, which is expected to grow over time. . At a later date, the donor directs the funds to a charity of their choice. “

He told me that since its inception in 2020 and launch in late 2021, the nonprofit has amassed nearly 10,000 members and raised nearly $30 million for charity. Account sizes range from $10 to over $2 million.

Mr Nash added: Other his Daffy members donate tens of thousands and even millions of dollars when they have financial windfalls, such as bonuses, company exits, and stock windfalls. By charging a percentage of the assets. So they don’t really want a small account. They want someone who can set aside hundreds of thousands of dollars for charity, but he’s not the 1% thing. It’s like 0.1% capacity. That’s why we’re so excited for Daffy. ”

Daffy is free for members just starting with an account balance of less than $100.Despite recession and rising inflation, Nash says Duffy saw record high Donations in Q4 2022 — 3X more than in Q4 2021. Members donate in a variety of ways: 20% cash (ACH, debit/credit cards), 20% stocks/ETFs, 20% crypto 40% DAF (Donor Advised Fund) transfers. Despite all the crypto and stock market conversions in 2022, Nash said there will be a 100% increase in the number of crypto donations in the fourth quarter of 2022 compared to the fourth quarter of 2021. said Duffy saw ETF donations increase by more than 128%.

Financing and M&A

Saw it on TechCrunch

Puzzle builds a modern accounting package for today’s API-enabled startups

Tiger Global and Ribbit invest another $100 million in PhonePe

Ledge aims to build automation tools for finance teams

IFC leads $17 million investment in South African insurtech Naked

Kenyan fintech power scales after $3M seed round

Singapore-Based Neobank Aspire Raises $100M from Lightspeed and Sequoia SEA

Andreessen Horowitz backs ModernFi’s bank deposit market

Neobank Vexi raises millions to offer low-interest credit cards to youth in Mexico

a16z, GV help Thatch in efforts to simplify health benefits for startups and their employees

How a Brazilian startup’s pivot to corporate cards paid off

and elsewhere

Insurance ‘super app’ Goose completes $4M Series A funding round

Vaas launches with $5 million investment in debt management platform

First Latino Neobank Comun Raises $4.5 Million in Seed Funding

Hala Acquires UAE-Based Startup Paymennt.com to Expand Business in SME Sector

Fintech AdalFi Raises Fund That Shows Life In Pakistan’s VC Market

That’s all. For those of you in the US, enjoy your long weekend. Happy President’s Day. I wish you all a wonderful weekend and a wonderful week ahead. Thank you again for your support. If you want to hear something fun, check out the Equity podcast featuring me, Natascha Mascarenhas, and Rebecca Skutak!