FINTECH VENTURE DEALS2020

We begin our weekly roundup with a first-in-FinTech experience sure to wow! you out of those COVID blues: pick six lucky numbers and you could win millions.

Alas, this is not an advertisement for your local lotto but a VC-backed FinTech adventure called Millions.app. The age of lotto FinTech has dawned with this stealthy startup “gamifying altruism through social media” having just landed $3M in seed funding. The Empire brain trust continues to tussle with the exact classification of this scheme: Is it wealth? Is it personal finance? Or is it just some combination of gaming or gambling? If it is the latter, the now disingenuously named Robinhood trading app may well be a gaming company. ($GME to the moon.)

On to the recent funding rounds. Our lucky numbers selection this week is Cincinnati-based Coterie Insurance. The team has another $11.5M to continue to tackle commercial insurance with an API-based approach. Later stage deals and pouring one out for our Cap Mkts homies, NYC-based Axoni, landed $31M in funding from big-name capital behemoths such as Citi, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan. While your crypto-investments skyrocket, these folks are using the underlying distributed ledger technology (DLT) to reimagine financial market infrastructure. Personally, I’ve been somewhat surprised by the balance-sheet strategy here. Last up, wealth management firm Human Interest and its $55M Series C. The firm is headquartered in San Francisco and works tirelessly to help SMBs with 401(k)s and other employee retirement investments.

RECENT DEALS

Period: 02/03/2021 - 02/17/2021

This week’s magic number is 1.7 – one billion, seven hundred million dollars in total funding flooding into the wide world of FinTech. Lending in Q1 is off to an especially active start. Let’s hit the list to see which startups are making waves.

New York-based startup Instnt, having lost a key vowel, has managed to find that sneaky letter at the end of a Series funding round. The $7M-and-change Series A is powering this core tech/fraud company. Fun fact: In a previous work-life iteration, Instnt CEO and Founder Sunil Madhu was CEO and Founder of an Empire alum and crowd favorite, Socure. Sunil, cheers to you old sport!

Digital Banking is a hot ticket that was given a boost by COVID-19 and the transition to Zoom-life. Yotta Savings is another innovator in the space, offering free savings accounts and other goodies. This startup pulled in a $13m Series A raise just months after closing a Seed round. Lead investor for this most-recent round, Base10 Partners, must have been wowed by Yotta’s Q4 2020 growth numbers. Oh, and before we forget, do take a minute to check out the recent Forbes article on the work these fine folks are doing.

Our secretive seed this week comes in the form of Pontoro, a capital markets FinTech on a mission to transform infrastructure financing. This involves creating “custom portfolios of infrastructure assets within its tokenization platform and facilitate bi-lateral liquidity among participants”. Two interesting developments worth noting. 1) The startup is now Techstars-backed, and 2) They are backed by the Abu Dhabi program, which highlights how FinTech and digitization are growing in the Middle East.

RECENT DEALS

Period: 01/18/2021 - 02/02/2021

RECENT DEALS

Period: 01/04/2021 - 01/17/2021

We made it – 2021 is here. And with this new year comes a rapidly evolving venture funding situation in FinTech. A first major trend is the influx of capital at Series A. Early-stage investment firms, such as QED Investors and Coatue, have both played king-maker in 2020. In Q4 of 2020, QED filled the coffers of Provide with a $34M Series A. That same quarter, Coatue raised a king’s ransom for both Ramp ($34M) and Gorillas ($44M) Series A funding rounds.

This brings up a second point. Series A funding rounds averaged $8.6M in 2020 nationally. Our question: Can businesses move fast enough to catch up to the valuations from these funding rounds? As Series A funding rounds continue to grow, a chasm is created between Series A and seed rounds. We may need to consider a new round name. Seed extensions doesn’t sound quite right. Maybe, seed-plus? Food for thought.

In the spirit of a dawning new year, we are focusing on those just-blossoming companies at the seed stage. Our list this week comes packed with eight seedlings, of which we’ve selected three.

The FinTech lending startup TradeUp out of Y Combinator in Q1 of 2020. Three quarters later the company announced a $4M-and-change seed round. The company is following the path-of-most-disruption in the student loan market, and offers income share agreements (ISAs) to those training for a new career. Umba, a digital bank made for Africa, landed a recent $2M seed round. The bank operates in Kenya and Nigeria, and will likely capitalize on the worldwide growth of digital banking. Business intelligence startup XILO raised $2M+ in December 2020, having had two pre-seed rounds earlier in the year. This startup makes a sales and quoting platform for insurance agencies.

RECENT DEALS

Period: 12/17/2020 - 01/03/2021

With this, our final FinTech funding round report, we want to breathe a collective sigh of relief that the end is just around the corner. While this was a difficult year for all of us, we want to end on a positive note. In addition to a few select funding highlights from the week, we have a gift for you: a FinTech Year In Review. First up: two startups.

Andreessen-Horowitz-backed Moov just landed a $27M Series A to build up a financial services tech stack for embedding bank software. This funding round comes just four months after the company secured a $5.5M Seed round. Step, a digital bank for teens, made our list this week with a Series B to the tune of $50M. The company is off to a strong start, having garnered 500,000 users in just two months post-launch.

Now, read on for our FinTech Year In Review: a breakdown of the sectors that saw the highest and lowest growth in 2020, including total deals and year-over-year deals by percentage.

RECENT DEALS

Period: 11/30/2020 - 12/16/2020

The FinTech deal buffet continues despite the best efforts of the post-Thanksgiving tryptophan overload. The dozen-plus seed deals alone last month show the appetite for more less Turkey and a second portion of FinTech. There is a general hunger among individuals and family offices for exposure to the FinTech space, as private equity piles on the value creation, and the public market grow to large for their stretchy-pants.

With the FinTech feast in full swing, how does one get a slice of the investment pie? The many ingredients make for a steep learning curve: deal flow, diversification, investment vehicles, and diligence, among others. Rest easy as we bring you the Empire FinTech Investment Series, a three-part series for family offices, experienced accredited investors, and aspiring angels. RSVP now as spots are going fast!

Let’s look at a few of this week’s funding round companies and the questions new investors will have prior to investing. Our investment series will address these questions and many more.

• Productify. The company raised a $2.35M Seed round to further develop a platform for customers to rapidly build and deploy financial applications. This “Core Technology” of FinTech is white-hot right now, attracting tremendous attention. We call this the platformification of FinTech. Question: How do you value companies like this at the seed stage?  
• Trust & Will. Our friends here raised a $15M Series B to continue expanding online trust and estate planning. This is the second major financing this year as the company looks to grow beyond the 160,000 users it has acquired in just over two years. Question: How do you find a company with this much potential at its seed stage?  
• Tenth. The company raised $5M in Venture funding to erase the wealth gap and to empower financial education for Black Americans. Challenger banks like Tenth continue to attract billions in funding. In a crowded space, is there enough room for more? Question: How should you diligence such deals, assuming you can find them in the first place?

RECENT DEALS

Period: 11/10/2020 - 11/30/2020

It’s to be expected that the past two weeks were light on deals, as much of the world was anxiously refreshing a news provider of choice. Many in FinTech are undoubtedly utilizing this relative calm to pen the “What Biden Means for Fintech” blog posts. Here at Empire, we are instead asking: “What should the federal government's role be in FinTech?" Our brain trust has agreed on these seven primary questions:

• Can regulation be used to spur competition? (Think open banking.)
• How can regulators engage the innovation community? (The last Small Business Administration FinTech Conference was five years ago.)
• Should fiscal policy be used to promote investing in startups? (E.g. tax incentives and credits.)
• What can be done to see real-time payments in the Biden-era?
• Should we continue to re-evaluate the accredited investor threshold?
• How can we end predatory payday lending in the next four years?
• Should we loosen access to bank charters?

But don’t let us have all the fun. What questions do you have?

A special callout to the Empire alums RealBlocks and Hydrogen. NY-based RealBlocks raked in a cool $7M in Series A funding, and is certainly poised to capitalize on the booming growth of alternative assets – $10T, as reported by capital market firm Preqin. NY-based Hydrogen is on a mission to be the most abundant FinTech element with their embedded financial components. The company is still playing sneaky with its funding, but expect a breakout soon.

Last, but certainly not least, we want to give a warm welcome to the FinTech-as-a-Service (FTaaS) powerhouse Arcus. Co-founder Inigo Rumayor and members of his team will join us on-stage at the 2021 Empire FinTech Conference, April 14th. The company is raising funding at a brisk clip, having had four funding rounds in just the last two years. Stay tuned.

RECENT DEALS

Period: 10/26/2020 - 11/09/2020

Is there no FinTech gospel?

Many of our Empire faithful are perplexed that the ecosystem continues to cite different venture round statistics each week. The data across CB Insights, Crunchbase, Pitchbook, and Empire simply differ.

The problem: FinTech has no creed and is loosely defined. In a past report, we highlighted how startups game the system when they announce rounds – but even this is contingent on the definition of FinTech. Here at Empire, we start with the CB Insights sector schema, while expanding into two areas: business insights and digital banking. Our view: drive consistency through solidarity.

Example: REACH Canada, a PropTech accelerator backed by the National Association of Realtors, recently graduated its inaugural class. It may be tempting to lump the entire class into FinTech, but the startups have a range of moats, vertical-risks, and go-to-market strategies. Everything is not FinTech. Of the class, we congratulate three companies on our FinTech funding list: Clik.ai, Local Logic, and RentMoola. Importantly, only one is considered real estate, while the other two are more precisely defined as payments and lending.

Okay, enough data pontification. Let’s move on to celebrating the geographical diversity in FinTech this week. While we aren’t ready to waive the fully-distributed victory flag yet, this week we did see deals coming out of a few ecosystem-diamonds-in-the-rough: Columbus, Houston, Montreal, Seattle, and Vancouver. On to the companies from these stellar locales.

Columbus-based Matic Insurance, a digital insurance agency for the mortgage world, raised $24M in Series B funding. The round was led by IA Capital and included another Midwestern VC firm in the form of Cultivation Capital. Our Houston-based pick completed an undisclosed Seed round by blockchain-social-impact firm Topl. Expect your next cup of joe to come free and fair via the magic of blockchain.

The aforementioned Local Logic is representing Montreal with a similarly sneaky Seed round raise. The company’s pitch: all imaginable real estate data all the time. Delightful! Nothing is impossible with Seattle-based Possible Finance. The startup pocketed $11M in a Series B and will continue the dream of enabling everyone to be financially healthy. Last, but certainly not least, we return to the Vancouver-based RentMoola and a similarly undisclosed Seed round. The company simplifies renting and payments through its digital platform.

RECENT DEALS

Period: 10/13/2020 - 10/26/2020

Get ready – we have two metrics for you this week, one good and the other not: 1.82 and 2 of 32. The good: $1.82B is the total funding, a banner week demonstrating that FinTech VC’s are banking on the upcoming round of “emerging resilients”. The not-so-good: 2 of 32, or 6%, of the past two weeks funding rounds were raised by teams with a female CEO at the helm. Those companies: Papaya Global and Propy.

FinTech needs more diversity in funding – and six percent is not enough. Our mission is to rally the community around this metric. We can only change what we can measure; although some metrics can paint a certain picture. Recently, consulting companies are using the metric “women-led companies”, defined as a company with all founders who are female. VCs, on the other hand, are using the metric “diverse teams”, defined as having at least one female co-founder. Food for thought.

Papaya Global, the “people and payroll company”, landed a $40M Series B to beef up company growth and launch new products. This Israeli startup has been booming with “300% year-over-year annual growth since 2016”. Propy, the blockchain-powered real estate startup, banked $1.2M in Venture Round funding. The startup attracted the attention of big-name-backers in the forms of VC Tim Draper and TechCruch owner Michael Arrington.

Before we end this week, a few select standouts: SF-based Collective, the back-office platform for self-employed folks, netted an $8.65M Seed; Dallas-Fort-Worth-based Payrix, API-payments enablement platform, garnered a $50M Series A; NYC-based Unqork, no-code enterprise app platform, pulled in a $207M Series C, led by BlackRock.

RECENT DEALS

Period: 09/26/2020 - 10/12/2020

The case against venture bloat strengthens this week with a slew of late-stage funding rounds.

Investors and founders are chasing the promised land: successive funding rounds with less time elapsed between each round. 2020 may be the dawn of an era where 18 months between funding rounds is a negative signal. Case in point: six out of the 16 recent funding rounds are a company’s second round this year alone. Let’s see that traction!

An example this week of a successive funding round is NY-based Alloy, one of our hometown favorites. This rockstar team just reached the stratosphere, propelled by a Canapi-backed $40M Series B. The team at this digital identity FinTech plans to “bring new products to market in the areas of transaction and credit decisioning, as well as document verification”.

The bloat snowball rolls down hill as startups, hip to the trend, game when they report funding to Crunchbase. Hard to say if this practice is better or worse than the deal term machinations of market-leading research firms: mining confidential deal terms from investors and founders and reselling the information to the industry for $12k+ per month. #Shade

Apologies – #RantOver. Our concern here is a venture bloat bubble bursting and causing a premature downturn in FinTech innovation.

Start your engines. Chime and Robinhood are vying for FinTech valuation pole position this week. Chime leads with a $485M Series F against Robinhood’s $460M Series G. Expect a spate of “Chime for XYZ” in the coming months as companies chase its $14.5B valuation.

Let’s finish up the week with our leading seed deals. The LATAM digital bank startup Oyster pulled in $14M in a third “seed round,” just six months after a March 8.7M raise. Last but not least, the fantastic Finch, formerly known as Trio. With a $1.8M Seed, the startup is offering the first of its kind all-in-one checking/investing account.

RECENT DEALS

Period: 09/12/2020 - 09/25/2020

This just in from Empire’s brain trust: “Our research shows that mortgage and real estate FinTech is trending in 2020, up 4.3% in terms of total companies funded in 2019 – and that’s only in Q3.” Expect a further meteoric rise in funding as COVID and ultra-low interest rates drive people from urban centers.

Speaking of urban-rural flight, the world continues to embrace a fully-distributed workforce with SF-based Deel. (Shout-out to a fellow SF-based crypto-platform Bitwage. Our international team loves Empire payments in ETH!) Deel’s payroll and compliance platform for international workers landed $30M in Series B funding just four months after VC firm Andreessen Horowitz – a16z – led their Series A. But wait: Have business metrics moved considerably between deals and this is innovation or is it a sign of VC-bloat? Time will tell.

Ring the bell, it’s time for a funding lighting round. Cyber-fraud prevention startup EverCompliant has a new name to go with its $35M Series B: EverC. InsurTech startup Sana Benefits netted $20.8M in Series A funding to boost SMEs access to better health plans. Last, but not least, PrizePool aims to help consumers save with cash prizes on savings accounts with a $4.3M Seed.

RECENT DEALS

Period: 08/31/2020 - 09/11/2020

Startups and fans – we are off to the races.

First up: mobile platform Esusu Financial and its $2.3M seed. The startup is on a mission to address credit inequality in immigrant and minority groups through a “rotational savings and credit building app”. Hot on the heels of startup success is CommonStock with a stunning $9.7M seed from five investors. Still in beta, this company aims to bring group chat investment knowledge and decisions to retail investing. Step aside for the illustrious Moov, a seed-phase startup embedding banking technology everywhere. The company landed a $5.5M raise from big-name lead investor Bain Capital Ventures and a host of others.

With our seed standouts finished, a few honorable mentions: InsurTech enabler Breath Life and a CA$6.5M Series A; affordable house-sharing service PadSplit and a $4.3M Series A; home insurance transformer Kin Insurance and a $35M Series B; digital identity analytics platform Socure and a $35M Series C.

We leave you with wise words for contemplation and inspiration: “We’re witnessing the creative destruction of financial services, rearranging itself around the consumer. Who does this in the most relevant, exciting way using data and digital, wins!” – Arvind Sankaran

RECENT DEALS

Period: 08/16/2020 - 08/31/2020

Extra! Extra! Read All About It: “In Q2 2020 venture-backed fintech startups raised 28 nine-figure rounds, underscoring the scale of the bet investors are making on fintech’s long-term success” reports TechCrunch.

First, our good friend and an alum of the Empire stage, Omri Mor and Routable. A B2B payment facilitator Routable just emerged from stealth mode to secure a $12M Series A. YC and nine other investors ponied up the cash to launch this startup out.

Next, we have our two twins this week: IDEX.io and Orum.io. IDEX garnered a $2.5M seed to grow its decentralized cryptocurrency exchange which aims to be both effective and “non-custodial”. Orum’s seed round drew 5.2M greenbacks to create instant wallets with financial software wizardry.

Last, a few standouts this week. Chicago-based InsurTech startup High Definition Vehicle Insurance is trucking along with an extra $16M. Charity fundraising platform Omaze amazed us with a $30M Series B (and a top 50 on Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies list this year). Financial service company Buckle continues its mission to ensure the ride-hailing drivers of the world. The company only serves Georgia, but rest assured the $31M Series A will have the company in your neck of the woods soon.

RECENT DEALS

Period: 08/02/2020 - 08/15/2020

Seedlings, it’s your lucky day. We feature on our report this week those companies just starting out who are raising initial seed capital.

SF Bay Area InsurTech startup Angle Health has an eye towards small-group health insurance for those lean-mean business machines. Next up, Cambrian Asset Management explodes onto the wealth management scene with the promise of uncorrelated riches investing in digital assets. Pulling it together for real estate owners is Chicago-based IoT SaaS platform Cohesion – also a Chicago’s 50 Startups to Watch. With a flourish, Flourish Savings blends financial literacy and game elements to encourage super financial habits.

FLX Distribution, hailing from the greater NYC area, is on a mission to transform asset management distribution for wealth management and financial advisors. Decentralized crypto derivatives exchange Injective Protocol, incubated by exchange giant Binance, is looking to fully launch in Q3 of 2020. Back in the Bay is Meemo, an AI-powered social finance app with a heavy dose of empathy. Teller Finance, which offers risk-assessed loans by connecting to your bank, is about to kick off. Last, but certainly not least, is Trusty.care, which is taking aim at improving Medicare through AI.

RECENT DEALS

Period: 07/21/2020 - 08/01/2020

“In the next five years, fintech will drive some of the biggest VC exits” reads a recent VentureBeat titled The Enormous Opportunity in FinTech. Who do you think will be the next big exit? On to this week’s highlights.

Bond. James Bond. Suave, just like SF-based Bond Financial Technologies. The company raked in a $32M Series A with some big-name backers: Coatue, Goldman Sachs, Mastercard, and Capital B. Bond is building out some serious platform tech to “deliver the infrastructure banks and brands need to innovate with speed, safety and scale”. NYC-based Privacy.com is on a mission to counter data breaches that thieve credit card numbers. Users can create virtual credit cards with purchase limits. $10.2M in Series A funding will help the company “hire and ramp up product development at a much faster pace”.

Digital banking gets another boost with Senso.ai – try that five times fast. This YYZ-based AI brain bank helps financial institutions turbo-charge client retention. Their $3M seed will help the startup expand “into credit cards and other products”. Another Canadian seed-stage startup on our list this week is Oliver POS. This nocturnal startup landed C$3.2M to continue building its point-of-sale (POS) system for the open-source e-commerce platform WooCommerce.

RECENT DEALS

Period: 07/03/2020 - 07/20/2020

As we close the books on Q2 (the quarter not banking platform) it’s no surprise that VCs were social distancing themselves from deals. As many funding rounds aren’t immediately public the early data is only a proxy, but at the moment we’re looking down 25% vs Q1 and off almost 100% YoY! But nom nom nom – FinTech continues to eat the world, says Alex Lazarow at Forbes. With over 30 funding rounds reported this week, we believe Alex.

We begin with the California-based eCommerce solution Scalefast and a $22M Series B raise to turbocharge the direct-to-consumer space. Next, Karat’s $4.6M seed is helping to launch this novel digital bank building “the black card for creators”. This bank skips traditional credit scores, basing the application and rates on total social media followers. For those brave explorers in decentralized finance (DeFi) waters, Opyn ($2.2M seed) is building a crypto-insurance marketplace to help crush risk – kapow!

InsurTech continues to dominate. Atlanta-based Layr garnered $5.25M to continue leveraging machine learning to help businesses get the right insurance at the right price. Boston-based InsurTech venture Openly received $15M Series A to provide lighting-fast home insurance quotes.

Speaking of lighting, our very own lighting round: Cedar $77M Series C to simplify healthcare payments; AgencyKPI $5M Series A to grow the insurance business intelligence platform; DigniFi $14M Series A to further build the FinTech marketplace servicing automotive repairs; Spiff $10M Series A to bring in the new age of commission software.

RECENT DEALS

Period: 06/19/2020 - 07/02/2020

Disruptors to maximum – FinTech is back in business and ready to transform the galaxy. Read on as we alight on a few of the 20 firms expanding horizons.

We begin with Boston-based towerIQ, a SaaS startup targeting insurance market transparency. The team locked in $4.5M from, arguably, the best-named VC firms: General Catalyst, Hyperplane VC, and Recharge Capital, among others. Next, we have wealth management firm UNest, which uses a mobile app to democratize the management of college savings plans for kiddos – now on Android and iOS. Our science friends in the audience will enjoy this reference: Planck. The company was awarded  $16M Series B to help “underwrite any business”.

Knock, knock. Who’s there? EasyKnock and a $20M Series B. Tech makes it easy to sell your home and/or lease it back to yourself. Next, an upgrade. Not a joke upgrade (or actually...) but a $40M Series D from SF-based neobank Upgrade. Over to cyber/fraud seed startup Unum ID “sharifying” ID with a virtual ID card and $2M to do it – brought to you by VC firm (Don) Draper Associates. Last up, personal finance Pando and $8.5M. Pool your resources to minimize the risk of high-volatility careers.

IN THE NEWS...

African payment startup Chipper Cash raises $13.8M Series A

Lead Investor

Deciens Capital

UNest Raises $9M to Expand College Savings App

Lead Investor

Anthos Capital

Bitcoin Broker River Financial Announces $5.7M Seed Round

Lead Investor

Polychain

RECENT DEALS

Period: 06/04/2020 - 06/18/2020

While they weren’t signed with a handshake, a number of interesting seed-stage companies secured new capital this week starting off a handful of Techstars-accelerated new entrants.

Propagate Ventures, landed a $1.5M seed to bring investment to agroforestry. They are followed by Curu, scoring $3M to help credit applicants avoided the dreaded “your credit application has been rejected”.

Onto the larger checks. Making waves is Splash Financial with $12.3M aiming to counter the $1.6T tsunami of student loan debt headed our way. Next up is Stackin’ with a $12.6M raise and a dream to make personalized financial education services available to everyone via text – :). B2B payment and credit network Fundbox locked in a $20M round-two Series C. Snagging a $27M slice of the funding pie (and a cool $100M in equity financing on top) is Pie Insurance. This D.C.-based startup provides workers’ comp insurance to small businesses. Last but not least is SF-based mobile banking company Varo Money. The bank-chartered FinTech with a monster $241M raise, funded by a veritable cast of characters: Bono, billionaire movie producer Jeff Skoll, and Progressive Insurance.

IN THE NEWS...

Stackin’ raises $12.6M Series B to help millennials navigate the crowded fintech space

Lead Investor

Octopus Ventures

Curu secures $3M in Seed funding for automated lead recovery solution enabling lenders to fund more loans

Lead Investor

Vestigo Ventures

Splash Financial closes $12.3M Series A to save people money on their student loans

Lead Investor

CMFG Ventures

RECENT DEALS

Period: 05/22/2020 - 06/4/2020

FinTech funding has roared back to life this week with a slew of funding rounds. To kick off the week we have four late-stage funding raises: Carta, Brex, States Title, and Coalition for a whopping $543M combined. Next up: early-stage.

We begin with a tribute to the 70s supergroup ABBA – two Series As and two Bs. Our first is AI-powered Deep Labs, signing $16M to work some tech magic with “persona-based risk systems”. AI continues its forward march with Symend, who contracted $52M to help at-risk customers keep from defaulting on debt with sweet behavioral analytics. LoanSnap inked $10M, and won the investor lottery: Richard Branson and an ex-NFL quarterback star chipped in. Our final letter is Vise, completing the trifecta with $14.5M underwritten for AI-driven portfolio management.

With our blast from the past completed, on to the rest. The construction industry gets a boost with Briq’s $10M Series A. School fundraising meets FinTech with MemberHub’s, landing $7.5M to turbocharge PTAs. SF-based Stilt had its first seed round, locking in $7.5M to help people with little to no credit history get started. NYC-based Lolli is a rewards app offering shoppers bitcoin for purchases, now backed by Ashton Kutcher and Michelle Phan to the tune of $3M.

IN THE NEWS...

Deep Labs announces $16M investment to drive next phase of growth

Lead Investor

Gunnar Overstrom

Vise raises $14.5M in Series A funding led by Sequoia Capital

Lead Investor

Sequoia Capital

Briq aims to bring FinTech to construction industry with $10M Series A

Lead Investor

Blackhorn Ventures

RECENT DEALS

Period: 05/07/2020 - 05/21/2020

We begin this week with a special Zen moment. Everyone pause, take a deep breath – meow on to the list! Six first-rate FinTech firms confirmed funding for a total just shy of $30M. Here’s a thematic overview: banking automation, ai-investing, insurance, challenger banking, and e-commerce. There’s a little something for everyone.

SF-based API-focused startup Treasury Prime locked away $9M in Series A funding. This cash infusion will enable the company to invest in a go-to-market team who can reach more banks in need of routine task automation. Our international funding round this week goes to Toronto-based Boosted.ai, fusing investment manager and machine. The company downloaded an $8M Series A to distribute its “first-to-market artificial intelligence platform for investment professionals”.

Three seed rounds round out the middle of our pack today. NYC-based tech-driven Covered by Sage confirmed $6M to expand property and casualty insurance operations. San Mateo-based banking and payment services firm Wise landed $5.7M to enlighten the challenger banking world. E-commerce platform Boost garnered $1M to kick off #revolutionary shoppable hashtags. We end with a pre-seed: Vida Life is getting into the game to provide insurance products to the U.S Hispanic community.

IN THE NEWS...

Backers give Covered By SAGE $6M Seed round to boost insurance agent platform

Lead Investor

NFX

Treasury Prime raises $9M to bring its banking APIs to market

Lead Investor

Amias Gerety

Boosted.ai raises $8M to bring AI in Investment Management to the mainstream

Lead Investor

Portag3 Ventures

ALL RECENT FUNDING ROUNDS

Period: 04/24/2020 - 05/07/2020

Name	Funding Type	Money Raised	Lead Investor	Announced
Treasury Prime	Series A	$9,000,000	Amias Gerety	May 5, 2020
Boosted.ai	Series A	$8,000,000	Portag3 Ventures	May 5, 2020
Covered by SAGE	Seed	$6,000,000	NFX	Apr 28, 2020
Wise	Seed	$5,700,000	Base10 Partners	Apr 29, 2020
Boost	Seed	$1,000,000	--	May 1, 2020
Vida Life	Pre-Seed	--	Sagicor	Apr 30, 2020

Source: Crunchbase

Despite the one-two punch of COVID-19 and the Q1 investment dip, entrepreneurs and investors continue to rally. Our funding round this week hosts many exemplary startups as hungry as ever. We begin with three Series A funding rounds.

SF-based OpenInvest landed $10.5M for a strategic A1 investing round. This tech-enabled asset management powerhouse garnered two sweet accolades in March: Fast Company’s Most Innovative Company 2020 and Best Retail Investment Platform. Please: a round of applause. SLC-based employee payroll platform Everee ever-delights with a $10M raise. This round follows hot on the heels of a mid-2019 $3.7M seed. DC-based Savi continues to build the path to student loan freedom with a $6M snag. Inc Magazine featured this savvy startup in 44th place on the “50 World-Changing Startups to Watch in 2019”. Watch out.

These soon-to-be spriggy seeds grew a combined $13.9M. AceTrader tops the list bringing real estate crowdfunding to the wide-world of agricultural land ownership. Trovata (not the clothing brand) uses open banking to automate financial data – take me to your banking leader. Atomic Loans knows crypto is still strong, and crypto loans with no intermediaries means bank. Benepass provides benefit cards for SMBs; Set Labs is a crypto-wizard financial platform. Whew!

IN THE NEWS...

OpenInvest secures $10.4M in Series A round

Lead Investor

QED Investors

Fintech startup Savi Solutions just raised $6M in Series A funding

Lead Investor

Nyca Partners

Everee raises a $10M Series A to scale its worker-friendly payroll software service

Lead Investor

Origin Ventures

ALL RECENT FUNDING ROUNDS

Period: 04/10/2020 - 04/23/2020

Name	Funding Type	Money Raised	Lead Investor	Announced
OpenInvest	Series A	$10,400,000	QED Investors	Apr 16, 2020
Everee	Series A	$10,000,000	Origin Ventures	Apr 16, 2020
Savi	Series A	$6,000,000	Nyca Partners	Apr 14, 2020
AcreTrader	Seed	$5,000,000	RZC Investments	Apr 10, 2020
Trovata	Seed	$4,300,000	JP Morgan	Apr 21, 2020
Atomic Loans	Seed	$2,450,000	Initialized Capital	Apr 14, 2020
Benepass	Seed	$2,150,000	--	Apr 20, 2020
Set Labs	Seed	--	--	Apr 18, 2020

Source: Crunchbase