INTELLI Weekly Insights
Thursday September 29, 2022 | Volume 1 Series 10 | Funding signals & News
🌅 Good afternoon (& evening to some!) - we hope you’ve got your second (or third? fourth?) coffee already, and are ready to dive into this week’s INTELLI Insights mid-week review. A few quick housekeeping items:
The recap of our September 30 virtual panel event is posted on our website here. Details for our next event will be included in the Weekend Roundup.
PreIPO has shares of MindMaze and Epic Games available first to INTELLI subscribers. Grab a time slot from our calendar to chat with us regarding the allocations.
PreIPO is raising another $10M in a bridge-to-Series A. Book a time with our management team to learn more.
🔎 INTELLI Spotlight Article
2023 Banking and Capital Markets Outlook by Deloitte (Report PDF)
A new global economic order seems imminent. Banks globally can chart a path through the current fog of uncertainty to reposition for a brighter future. Access the report here.
💸 A huge number of ‘zombie’ companies are drowning in debt. Amongst them, Affirm - added to this ‘zombie’ stocks list by equity research firm New Constructs.
According to the latest note from the research firm New Constructs, some of the nation’s largest companies purposely understated their earnings in the first half of 2022. New Constructs CEO David Trainer argues that many companies may have done so to avoid reporting significant losses in the second half of the year, where fears of a recession are mounting due to deteriorating economic conditions.
💵 INTELLI Funding Spotlight:
Humaans - HRIS for Growing Startups
The team at INTELLI received an update from Giovanni Luperti about his company Humaans.io
The email stated that the team at Humaans was “excited to share the announcement of our $15 million Series A funding round. The round was led by Lachy Groom with participation from Exor; Exponent Founders Capital; Shopify founder Tobias Lütke; Slack founder Stewart Butterfield; Niantic COO Megan Quinn; Asana CRO Oliver Jay; Peakon founder Phil Chambers; BOND General Partner Jay Simons; former Slack CPO April Underwood, ASDF Ventures; Pleo Senior People Leader Jessie Danyi; Fidel API CEO Dev Subrata; Intercom co-founder Des Traynor. Previous investors including Moonfire, Frontline Ventures, and Next Play Ventures also participated in the round.”
The update described how the Humaans team navigated through the recent market dynamics. Here’s another excerpt from the email:
“Macro and our approach
Despite the recent market dynamics, we hit important milestones and experienced meaningful growth in the past 12 months.
This funding round will help us consolidate our UK presence and accelerate Humaans’ expansion into the European market, enable us to further invest into the product and in hiring world class talent, as well as strengthen the position of the business.
During the 2021 euphoria, we opted for a contrarian approach in building Humaans. From day one we were deliberate about staying lean, focusing on execution excellence, and hiring slowly to prioritise high caliber talent as well as relentlessly learn from customers’ needs. Our approach enabled us to move quickly on both the product development and on the Go-to-Market side, increasing our efficiency. This enabled us to be in a position where today we don’t need to scale back our ambition and can benefit from the current market dynamics to accelerate further.”
If you haven’t heard about the company already, keep an eye on them. At Humaans, Giovanni and the team aim to build a resilient business that can scale, supporting customers and their employees for the long term.
🌎 INTELLI International Outlook
In 2021, there was doubt on whether Brazil could be in for an IPO bonanza. But…it hasn’t happened: Not only is Latin America’s largest economy going through the same IPO drought as the rest of the world, but also one of its highest-profile public listings, Nubank, is coming to a sudden end. Read more here.
Related Articles
Nubank logs more than 1.8 million crypto users in Brazil
👨🏼💻 INTELLI RSS Quick-Reads:
Inclined Technologies has closed a $15 million Series A funding round led by HSCM Ventures , with participation from Anthemis Group. Its first product is the Inclined Line Of Credit (iLOC) – a way to access whole life cash value.
Avanta Ventures announced a $225 million early-stage Fund II, bringing its assets under management to over $300 million.
French startup Regate has raised a $20 million Series A funding round (€20 million) led by Valar Ventures.
HelloSafe has raised $4.2 million in seed funding led by OneRagtime and Kima Ventures.
Paym, the mobile payment service launched by fifteen of the UK's biggest banks and building societies, is shutting down after an eight year battle to keep abreast of changing consumer trends and technology.
Tech giant Samsung has teamed up with Axis Bank to launch a co-branded Visa credit card in India.
💰 M&A Weekly:
Here are some of the latest transactions that you might have missed out on:
Molina to buy AgeWell’s long-term care business in New York for $110M (Link to article)
Washington-based Pacific Woodtech (PWT) has closed on the sale of LP Building Solutions’ (LP) (NYSE: LPX) Engineered Wood Products (EWP) business for $210 million (Link to article)
Archaea Energy Inc. Announces Agreement to Acquire NextGen Power Holdings LLC (Link to article)
CalPortland® has completed the purchase of the Redding cement plant and other assets from Martin Marietta Materials, Inc. The transaction was completed on June 30, 2022. In addition to the Redding cement plant in Northern California, the assets include related cement distribution terminals and 14 ready mixed concrete plants located in California (Link to article)
ITC Infotech pays $33 mn to PTC for partially acquiring American PLM biz (Link to article)
💻 Recent IPOs & SPACs
Travel payments provider TripActions filed confidentially to go public at a $12 billion valuation. The company last raised a $275 million Series F in October 2021 at a $7.5 billion valuation. (Source: Crunchbase)
HSBC has initiated talks with several banking partners about a potential IPO of its Indonesian bank geared towards retail customers.
📅 An Upcoming Webinar on Fraud
Join Alloy, LexisNexis® Risk Solutions, Prove, and Ekata to hear about where fraud has been and is likely headed on their webinar. The webinar will bring together a panel of fraud and identity experts from Alloy, LexisNexis® Risk Solutions, Prove, and Ekata to discuss:
The recognizable uptick in fraud during economic uncertainty
Fraud trends that FIs of all sizes have experienced so far this year
Predictions on what to expect in 2023, along with the tools and processes that can help you be better prepared for the future
You can register for the webinar here.