INTELLI Weekly Insights
Tuesday September 27, 2022 | Volume 1 Series 8
Good morning - we hope you’ve got your first (or second? third?) coffee already, and are ready to dive into this week’s INTELLI Insight review. A quick few reminders:
The details for our September 30 virtual panel event can be found here
PreIPO has shares of MindMaze and Epic Games available. Grab a time slot from our calendar to chat with us regarding the allocation.
PreIPO is raising another $10M in a bridge-to-Series A. Book a time to learn more.
Tech IPOs from 2019 are up 38%, while those that occurred in 2020 and later are down by about as much. The differing performances show the impact of rising market valuations between 2020 and 2021.
After the carnage in stock markets these past few months, can you really pin blame on tech executives for rethinking the value of going public? Because at the end of the day, you have to look at the cold hard stats, one being that the median tech initial public offering since the start of 2020 has dropped 39% from the offering price.
But another statistic may be more surprising. The median tech IPO from 2019 is up roughly 38%, even after big sell-offs in the past 12 months, according to our analysis of data provided by Dealogic based on Friday’s closing prices. That demonstrates just how much lower valuations were in 2019, before the pandemic sent the market soaring to stratospheric levels.
Your Venture Financing Signals
Opto, a private market access solution for investment advisors, raised a $145 million Series A.
AccessFintech, a platform for over 100 banks and exchanges to access and exchange trading data, raised a $60 million Series C.
Sardine, a fraud prevention provider for cryptocurrency startups, raised a $51.5 million Series B.
PreIPO, a distributed platform for Private Market securities, raised $2.5M in a bridge-to-series-A round.
Yellow Card, a pan-African crypto exchange, raised a $40 million Series B.
Monese, a mobile banking app for immigrants in the UK and Estonia, raised $35 million.
Scratch Financial, a patient financing platform for healthcare payments, raised a $35 million Series C.
Ledgy, a cap table and equity management solution for Europe, raised a $22 million Series B.
Sequence, a UK-based business payments provider, raised a $19 million seed round at a $75 million post-money valuation.
Noble, an embedded no-code builder of credit cards and buy-now-pay-later tools for businesses, raised a $15 million Series A.
Inclined, a startup that lends against whole life insurance policies, raised a $15 million Series A.
Higlobe, an international payment transfer solution, raised $14 million.
StashAway, a Singaporean digital wealth manager, raised a $12.67 million Series D extension.
Loctax, a tax management platform for multinationals, raised a $12 million Series A.
Carats & Cake, a financial services OS for events, raised a $10.6 million Series A.
Fondue CashBack, a Shopify app that allows merchants to offer cashback, raised $10 million in seed funding.
Jacobi, a multi-asset portfolio investment technology, raised a $10 million Series A.
Integral, a real-time finance provider for web3, raised $8.5 million.
Cheq, a mobile payments platform for restaurants and hospitality, raised an $8 million seed fund.
Tres, a financial data lake for web3 companies, raised a $7.6 million seed round.
Nibiru, a crypto derivatives protocol, raised a $7.5 million seed at a $100 million valuation.
CNote, a tool for investing in fixed-income and time deposit products, raised a $7.25 million Series A.
Heru, an automated tax filing provider for Mexico, raised a $6 million seed round.
Sparrow, a financial search engine for student loans, raised a $5.83 million seed round.
Nilos, a crypto treasury platform for businesses, raised $5.2 million.
Habito, a UK digital mortgage broker, raised £5 million in funding.
DolarApp, a crypto-enabled dollar banking app for Mexico, raised $5 million.
Headquarters, a financial operations and reporting software for web3 companies, raised a $5 million pre-seed.
Bitgreen, a blockchain layer-1 network for sustainable and green payments, raised $5 million.
Julaya, an Ivory Coast-based B2B payments provider for Francophone Africa, raised a $5 million Series A.
Brightflow AI, a small business financial forecasting and cash flow management app, raised a $4 million seed round.
Binocs, an India-based crypto tax reporting app, raised $4 million.
Lynk, a closed-loop payments platform to give merchants an alternative to cards, raised a $3 million seed round.
Portabl, an app for consumers to securely store their financial data, raised a $2.5 million seed round.
Neem, a Pakistani embedded finance platform for underserved communities, raised a $2.5 million seed.
Erad, a non-dilutive debt financing platform for businesses in the Middle East, raised a $2.4 million pre-seed.
Ply, a payment tool for HVAC businesses, raised $1.7 million.
Finnovate, a wealthtech provider, raised a $1 million pre-Series A.
FTX, the crypto giant buying other crypto giants, is in talks to raise another $1 billion at its $32 billion valuation.
Bonus: Fintech platform POWER raises $316MM - Read more here.
New York-based fintech infrastructure firm Power is out of stealth with $16M in seed funding and a $300M credit facility. Power provides a full-stack credit card issuance platform designed for companies, brands, and banks, with embedded fintech experiences including custom credit card programs, personalized rewards, and targeted promotions.
BNBP: Klarna to make second round of job cuts
BANKING: Finastra and Visa introduce global BaaS offering integrating Visa Direct
BANKING: For Brazilian shareholders, Nubank’s IPO has a bitter aftertaste
BANKING: Revolut adds Brazil and Mexico to global expansion
WEALTHTECH: Wealth-tech platform Centricity raises $4 million in pre-seed round
INSURANCE: AIG’s Corebridge raises $1.68 billion in IPO
INSURTECH: Bamboo completes $16 million raise
INSURTECH: Acrisure acquires B2Z Insurance
INSURTECH: SMB-focused Pie Insurance raises $315M Series D
AI: Brightflow AI aims to spotlight small business cash flow
The Largest Fintech Raises / Rounds of 2022
Data provided via Finextra
The financial sector has experienced an immense turnaround in terms of funding rounds in 2022 compared to last year. Fintech startups have recorded more than 130 funding rounds in January alone and the upcoming months were even more prolific for several companies. According to GlobalData, some startups were more visible to investors simply because of their size, thus in this article, we are going to cover some of the biggest fintech funding rounds of 2022. It is a well-known fact that private investors are fond of the fintech sector, so it should come as no surprise that the leading spots were taken by fintech companies.
Acorns
Acorns is an American financial technology and financial services company established in 2012. It has managed to raise more than $300M in March 2022 which speaks volumes about the overall condition of the market. However, experts were hoping that Acorns would generate even higher numbers since it announced a SPAC deal last year. According to this deal, Acorns would receive nearly $450M and the total value of the company would become $2.2B as a result. Despite high expectations, the SPAC merger was called off a couple of months ago as the timing was not right, so Acorns only got $300M in the end. This fact clearly indicates that the market is under serious pressure at the moment and several companies refrain from going public due to this exact reason.
Stax
Stax is also an American fintech organization operating in several segments including software/technology, business services, healthcare, industrial, education, and so on. It was established in 2014 by siblings - Suneera Madhani (CEO) and Sal Rehmetullah (president). This company has managed to revolutionize the way payments are processed nowadays and created a secure environment for businesses and platforms to execute transactions. The 2022 year was quite productive for Stax since it received $245 million in investments from companies like HarbourVest Partners, Greater Sum Ventures, and Blue Star Innovation Partners. Experts are stating that the upcoming months will be even more prolific for this company since it has managed to retain high customer engagement so far.
Marlette Holdings
Marlette Holdings might be an unknown name for the majority of readers, but you have certainly heard of its online credit and financial wellness platform called Best Egg. This is a Delaware-based fintech company that has managed to gain $225 million from the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan. As a result, Best Egg accumulated a total of 300 million dollars in revenue in 2022, making it the third-largest fintech funding round this year. According to Crunchbase, Best Egg was established in 2013, and it has raised more than 2 billion dollars ever since.
Edly
Edly is a New York-based company founded only 3 years ago, but it has managed to help out a lot of students by providing alternative resources for traditional private loans. As a result, students have the opportunity to take advantage of more affordable and accessible loans, and so far, Edly has more than 4,000 customers. In 2022, Edly announced a $175 million investment from funds. Also, co-investment vehicles were provided by companies such as Windmuehle Funds and Medalist Partners. This has significantly helped Edly to develop tuition funding which includes income-based repayment loans. This tuition takes into account the starting salary of students and helps them to carry out affordable loans.
SonarSource
SonarSource is a Swiss company established back in 2008 that develops open-source software for continuous code quality. This means that the developers have a chance to write clean codes and revise existing ones organically in order to get the desired results. This year has been tremendous for SonarSource as it received a total of 412 million dollars from a funding round led by General Catalyst and Advert International. What’s more, an existing investor called Inside Venture Partners also took part in this movement, and as a result, SonarSource accumulated up to $4.7bn in valuation. As officials have stated, the company has huge goals to grow its go-to-market team globally and gain more than 1 billion dollars in revenue, so they will orient funds toward this direction.
Veza
Veza is a data security platform that claims to be established on the power of authorization. It provides a wide range of services to security entities and helps them to better comprehend the complex nature of data. Also, you will learn how to manage human identities and different accounts across disparate systems. Most importantly, the company supports both cloud and on-premise systems, so you will understand how to operate on both of them. Veza has gained a total of $110 million funding round in 2022 from companies like Bain Capital, GV, Accel, True Ventures, Ballistic Ventures, and Norwest Venture Partners.
A Must-Read
Fintech engineering manager Francisco Javier Arceo, currently at Affirm and formerly at Fast and Goldman Sachs, wrote up his Lessons from Fast’s Implosion. The story of Fast, the one click checkout company which folded at the beginning of the year, should be a cautionary one for high-growth fintech startups: raising too much, over-hiring, lacking focus, high churn, and a confusing product can all be signs of trouble ahead.
Pitchbook released a report on US venture capital investments in the second quarter and the first half of 2021. Indicators for late-stage startups are record-breaking.
77% YoY is the median growth in the estimated valuation of a late-stage startup between funding rounds.
70% is the median growth in the valuation of a late-stage startup between the last round of funding and the IPO.
120% is the median growth in the valuation of a late-stage startup between the last round of funding and acquisition.
$882.4 million is the average, $160 million is the median valuation of a late-stage startup in the next round of funding.
$2.9 billion is the average, $699.8 million is the median valuation of a late-stage startup when it goes public.
7 late-stage startups in the first half of this year went to IPO with a valuation of more than $40 billion. For the whole of 2020, there were 5 such startups, for the whole of 2019–3.
* All valuations are pre-money, excluding funds raised.
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