Friends, for those of you who celebrated Thanksgiving in the US, we hope you had a beautiful time with family and friends over the long holiday weekend.
As you can imagine, holiday weeks always produce wonky VC deal flows the following week, and this past week was no exception. Even so, there are just some hurky jerky trends going on that we’re seeing in this week’s roundup of fintech VC winners.
Some trends worth noting:
- Debt – debt – debt! Four of the five deals are debt-based and this is a big “antenna up” for us. It seems – this week, anyway – gone are the big $$ sloshing around equity investments. Now, the lenders of choice WANT THEIR MONEY BACK UNDER SPECIFIED TIME FRAMES AND STRUCTURES, and debt financing it is.
- Our funding winner this week was a B2B e-commerce payments platform. Love that. Seems SO MANY PEOPLE want to do the retail route – and it doesn’t matter what genre the firm is in – but SO MUCH MONEY can be made in well-designed B2B companies.
- Finally, three of the deals were in the US (all debt) and the last two were out of Paris and Spain. US and Europe. That’s where the VC is flowing right now.
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.
1Balance
$350M, Debt | NYC/SF | Payments Firm for B2B | Viola Credit |
https://www.getbalance.com/
LinkedIn Overview:
“* 250 Promising Fintechs 2022&2021 – CB Insights * 57 Most Exciting Fintechs – Business insider * #1 in Payments & Commerce – Visa and Citi Backed by the best of fintech, Balance is a B2B payments experience company offering the first online checkout built for businesses.”
2PayZen
$220M, Equity & Debt | SF | Healthcare Finance | Digital Currency Group (DCG) | https://payzen.com/
LinkedIn Overview:
“PayZen is healthcare’s Affordability Financing platform. Our embedded fintech solutions provide personalized, zero-cost payment options for healthcare consumers while strengthening revenue capture for healthcare providers. We are tackling the growing consumerization of healthcare that is shifting the payment responsibility for health services to patients. The majority of Americans are on high deductible health plans, yet most people cannot afford a $400 emergency expense. Our Mission is to make healthcare affordable to 100% of patients and medical providers. We have an amazing team, a big market and top tier investors. More importantly, our mission is our motivator: we are hyper-focused on making a big, positive impact in our market and improving the lives of patients and medical providers alike.“
3Prosper Marketplace
$75M, Debt | SF | Lending Platform | Neuberger Berman | www.prosper.com
LinkedIn Overview:
“Prosper Marketplace, a fintech pioneer with a mission to advance financial wellbeing by providing affordable financial solutions to consumers across the credit spectrum, Prosper’s product offering includes personal loans, credit cards, and home equity lines of credit.“
4Karmen
$51.2M, Debt| Paris, France | Digital Business Finance Platform | Fasanara Capital | https://www.karmen.io/
LinkedIn Overview:
“Ordergroove enables Relationship Commerce experiences for hundreds of brands and retailers, including The Honest Company, Stumptown Coffee, L’Oreal, Hotel Chocolat, and PetSmart, shifting consumer interactions from one-and-done transactions to frictionless and highly profitable recurring revenue relationships. With successful subscription and membership experiences, the company’s technology platform coupled with artificial intelligence, analytics and unmatched consumer expertise helps top brands transform their commerce experiences across every channel while making their consumers’ lives easier.”
5Cobee
$41M, Series B | Spain | Employee Benefits Management Platform | Octopus Ventures, Notion Capital, Balderton Capital, Speedinvest, Dila Capital | https://cobee.io/
LinkedIn Overview (translated thru Google Translate):
“Our mission is to help you increase the satisfaction of your employees by increasing their salary easily, without the company increasing salary costs or having to implement complex administrative processes. Implementing a flexible compensation plan has never been easier. Set it and forget it, let employees decide how and when to consume products, with automated management and control. Through flexible remuneration, employees can pay for food, transportation, childcare, training or health insurance from the gross of their payroll and thus save personal income tax (savings of up to 35-47%)...“
