Anybody remember THE BLUES BROTHERS out there? One of my favorite movies EVER (I love the blues, spent many a night in the blues bars of Chicago in my younger days with my gal pals, “the dudettes”), and of all people, went to see that movie with my mother (who also loved it, btw)!!
WELL, it would APPEAR that I don’t have a really good reason for not publishing this column last week (other than the short week with the Labor Day holiday), so I will revert to this famous scene as (ALL) my excuse(s) for that….
In the meantime, here’s a quick look at the top trends we’re seeing in this week’s funding winners:
- The top deal came in this week with an impressive $300M funding round from a firm led by several former Facebook employees that is also looking for employees familiar with game theory;
- Another first – a fintech (which has actually been around for decades) focused on trading cards made this week’s cut with $175M in funding – that’s a lotta cards;
- Web3 – two of the five fit within that category. Clearly this is an emerging sector of fintech and one we’ll need to watch in the future.
Without further ado, here are this week’s top 5 fintech VC deals for the week below, in order from highest to lowest funding levels.
1Mysten Labs
$300M, Series B| Palo Alto | Rental Proptech | FTX Ventures, a16z crypto, Jump Crypto, Apollo, Binance Labs, Franklin Templeton, Coinbase Ventures, Circle Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sino Global, Dentsu Ventures, Greenoaks Capital, O’Leary Ventures | https://mystenlabs.com/
LinkedIn Overview:
“We create foundational infrastructure to accelerate web3 adoption! Come join us! We are looking for researchers and engineers, product builders, entrepreneurs in fields spanning distributed systems, cryptography, compiler & VM, programming language, verification, and game theory.“
2Wayflyer
$253M, Debt | Ireland | Financial & growth platform for e-commerce | Credit Suisse | https://www.wayflyer.com/
LinkedIn Overview:
“Providing eCommerce businesses with fairer, faster, and more flexible funding. Our mission at Wayflyer is to support the ambition of the eCommerce businesses we work with. We do this by solving the toughest problems in eCommerce, giving founders the power to pursue their ambition and achieve their big goals. We started by tackling the single biggest problem in eCommerce; working capital. By giving founders access to unsecured, non-dilutive funding at great rates, we solve their working capital challenges, unleashing growth. So how are we doing on our mission? Well, since 2019, we have funded over 1,500 of the world’s top eCommerce businesses, providing them with over $1bn of capital, and in 2021 alone, companies using Wayflyer generated over $13bn in sales...”
3PWC Marketplace
$175M | Oregon | Commercial Lender & Trading Card Investment Marketplace | WhiteHawk Capital Partners, D.A. Davidson & Co, Wingspire Capital LLC | https://linktr.ee/PWCCMarketplace
LinkedIn Firm Overview:
“Since 1998, PWCC has provided buyers and sellers of both vintage and modern-graded trading cards with an efficient, secure and informed marketplace. Compared to traditional, more fragmented auction environments, PWCC offers technology-driven efficiencies in line with electronic financial exchanges, including reduced transaction costs, faster turn-around times, increased liquidity and greater transparency. PWCC’s proven platform provides collectors and investors with the most trusted way to invest in trading cards. .”
4VTS
$125M, Series E | NYC | RE Asset Lending Technology Platform |https://www.vts.com/ CBRE Group, Inc., BentallGreenOak, AmTrust, Brookfield Ventures, Insight Venture Partners | https://www.vts.com/
LinkedIn Overview:
“VTS is the commercial real estate industry’s leading technology platform that transforms how strategic decisions are made and executed across the asset lifecycle. In 2013, VTS revolutionized the commercial real estate industry’s leasing operations with what is now VTS Lease. Today, the VTS Platform is the largest first-party data source in the industry and delivers data insights and solutions for everyone in commercial real estate to fuel their investment and asset strategy, leasing and marketing automation, property operations, and tenant experience. With the VTS Platform, consisting of VTS Data, VTS Market, VTS Rise, and VTS Lease, every business stakeholder in commercial real estate is given the real-time market information and execution capabilities to do their job with unparalleled speed and intelligence. VTS is the global leader with more than 60% of Class A office space in the U.S., and 12 billion square feet of office, retail, and industrial space is managed through our platform globally. VTS’ user base includes over 45,000 CRE professionals and industry-leading customers such as Blackstone, Brookfield Properties, LaSalle Investment Management, Hines, Boston Properties, Oxford Properties, JLL, and CBRE.“
5Animoca Brands
$100M | Hong Kong | Blockchain Gaming & Investments | Temasek | https://www.animocabrands.com/
LinkedIn Overview:
“Animoca Brands, a Deloitte Tech Fast winner and ranked in the Financial Times list of High Growth Companies Asia-Pacific 2021, is a leader in digital entertainment, blockchain, and gamification. It develops and publishes a broad portfolio of products including the REVV token and SAND token; original games including The Sandbox, Crazy Kings, and Crazy Defense Heroes; and products utilizing popular intellectual properties including Disney, WWE, Snoop Dogg, The Walking Dead, Power Rangers, MotoGP™, and Formula E. The company has multiple subsidiaries, including The Sandbox, Blowfish Studios, Quidd, GAMEE, nWay, Pixowl, Bondly, Lympo, and Grease Monkey Games. Animoca Brands has a growing portfolio of more than 170 investments in NFT-related companies and decentralized projects that are contributing to building the open metaverse, including Axie Infinity, OpenSea, Dapper Labs (NBA Top Shot), Yield Guild Games, Harmony, Alien Worlds, Star Atlas, and others. For more information visit www.animocabrands.com or follow on Twitter or Facebook.“
We’ll be back next week with more news on fintech VC funding.
