INTELLI Insights - Weekend Round Up

Sunday September 25, 2022 | Volume 1 Series 7 | FinTech Panel event, Instacart cuts staff, IPO and M&A news, and a deep dive on Securitize & Spice VC.

As we barrel into the end of Q3 and the start of Q4 (where did the year go?), both private and public companies are tightening up ship as they plan budget increases/decreases for the Fiscal Year 2023.

To kick off the INTELLI Insights Weekend round-up, we want to highlight deals that are soon going to be visible in your PreIPO accounts: MindMaze and Epic Games, as well as invite you to our virtual event this coming Friday - view event details and RSVP here.

View event details and RSVP here.

Here’s a quick overview video on MindMaze:

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INTELLI brings you some new news out of the unicorn Instacart, reported by The Information; the company is cutting staff and curbing hiring in their run-up to their IPO.

Erin Woo reported that “Instacart has been letting go of staff, slowing hiring and curbing other expenses as it heads toward a public listing, when the grocery-delivery company will try to convince public investors that it can maintain its growth—and make a profit—as the economy slows.”

The San Francisco startup over the last two months has fired some of its more than 3,000 workers after holding midyear performance reviews where managers were instructed to provide feedback on employees’ shortcomings, according to two people with direct knowledge of the situation.

Instacart joins other tech companies, including Meta Platforms, that are trimming staff by taking a harder look at employee performance or leaving open positions unfilled while avoiding highly publicized layoffs. The moves address high labor costs, which ballooned at tech companies during the boom of recent years and now look unsustainable as the economy decelerates.

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Some weekend insights on IPOs and SPACs from the past week:

IPOs & SPACs

• Spin-off strategy: Japanese digital commerce co Rakuten plans to spin off its banking unit into a public company, valued between $2.1 and $2.8 billion, picking Goldman to handle the process. Read more here.

• Beneficent Co., a liquidity provider to alternative asset investors, is set to go public through a combination with the Avalon Acquisition SPAC at an implied $3.5 billion valuation, sources say. Read more here.

• Global Star Acquisition, a SPAC pursuing a fintech acquisition, has priced an $80 million IPO. Read more here.

M&A - Fintech

• Finish mobile payments app Pivo was removed from a planned three-way merger with MobilePay and Vipps due to European Commission competition concerns. Read more here.

• Swiss crypto-focused private equity firm Web3 Investco AG announced that it will acquire 100% of Luxembourg’s Blocktrade SA. Read more here.

• Governance, risk and compliance advisor ACA Group acquired Ethos ESG. Read more here.

• Jupiter Fund Management is selling a 7% stake in neobank Starling Bank at a significant discount - for £100 million instead of £175 million. Read more here.

• Healthcare payments provider Zelis acquired medical reimbursement firm Payer Compass. Read more here.

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INTELLI Weekend Spotlight: Securitize

In a podcast done with FinTech Blueprint, Carlos Domingo (the Co-Founder and CEO of Securitize) shares insights about the formation and journey of Securitize and the project of tokenizing Spice VC.

Quick background on Carlos Domingo: Before becoming the CEO of Securitize, Carlos co-founded and launched SPiCE VC, a fully tokenized VC fund. In order to ensure global compliance for SPiCE VC, Carlos and his team created the security token issuance and lifecycle management platform that would later become Securitize, Inc.

Additionally, Carlos was CEO of Research & Development for Telefonica (one of the largest telecom companies in the world), as well as CEO of New Business and Innovation for Telefonica Digital.