Here we go – heading into Labor Day – and the deals in fintech are waning somewhat. It’s true that it is the end of summer, and there’s this weird (but normal) summer malaise married with worrying recessionary market trends that are no doubt causing this to happen.
Still, this portends to an overall market trend – VC expenditures are down – deal numbers are lower. AND YET – we’re still kicking out some substantial plays. Now when we started this column in October, 2020, the numbers looked more like they do today. Some in the $100M range but not every one (and you can see how the column has evolved in format since then, too, thru this link, which was our very first column in this series). It was a rarity to see anything over $200M, and yet if you view all our articles along this column’s nearly two year journey – you’ll see numerous $1,000,000,000+ deals (yes, billion). We’re not seeing those of late. Here’s what we are seeing for this week, and there’s quite a few less total deals out there, too – and probably will be thru mid- to late-September, when WE HOPE we start seeing the deals flow again. I guess we’ll see. In the meantime, some observations for the week’s winners:
- We SELDOM (if ever) have seen this, but our top deal came out of Birmingham, Alabama! Not exactly Silicon Valley, but Alabama has some great innovation going on and has long been an epicenter for the space program, after WW2, so there are some great minds living (lurking?) there. SWEET HOME ALABAMA!
- Going back to ALABAMA, we are VERY intrigued with the company that got the top funding this week – a flexible aparment rental platform. VERY innovative.
- Our second and third largest deals both had MASSIVE lists of participating VCs – another interesting new trend – off-setting risk with more participants. Wondering if we’ll see more of this moving forward – my guess is YES.
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.
1Landing
$125M, Series C| Birmingham, AL | Rental Proptech | Delta-v Capital, Greycroft, Foundry | https://www.hellolanding.com/
LinkedIn Overview:
“Landing is reinventing apartment rentals through a membership program that gives members access to flexible leases with no deposits in 200+ markets in our growing network. Our streamlined platform provides access to tens of thousands of furnished apartments across the U.S., and our member benefits allow more flexibility with fewer compromises. Members can book an apartment in minutes entirely through our app (even use a credit card) and be ready to move to a new place in a matter of days. Our goal is to help people explore more, live on their terms, and make sure they feel at home wherever they go.”
2Nitra
$62M, Equity & Debt | NYC | Financial solutions for healthcare | Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Pantera Capital, KB Financial Group, Jerry Yang (AME Cloud Ventures), Will Smith (Dreamers VC), CoVenture, Primer Sazze Partners, SparkLabs Taipei & Global, Dunamu, Expa, Soma Capital, Slope Capital, K50 Ventures, 8090 Partners, Comma Capital, Gaingels, Gold House Ventures | https://www.nitra.com/
LinkedIn Firm Overview:
“Nitra is changing how traditional businesses access credit and financial services – bringing the transformational and disruptive digital finance of Silicon Valley to the rest of America. We are beginning our first chapter as a mission-driven fintech startup by addressing gaps in the healthcare sector. Nitra is focused on the imminent need in Healthcare for modern financial solutions that integrate seamlessly with the complex business processes of the industry. Our goal is to provide an ecosystem of fintech and software solutions that help doctors better manage their practices, so they can focus on their patients. Starting with the first credit card built specifically for doctors, Nitra will expand to bring physicians and medical clinics around the country the loans, accounts, payments, and expense management products they expect, in an all-in-one platform powered by machine learning and blockchain technologies. The company was created by unicorn founders who have successfully scaled to thousands of customers and exited $1B+ public offerings. They are joined by an ambitious and experienced team from Amazon, American Express, Citi, Dropbox, Facebook, Mastercard and PayPal. The team is supported by an expert group of Advisors such as the cofounders of Square and Xendit, executives from Intuit, Governors and White House senior staffers, and is backed by some of the world’s leading VCs such as Andreessen Horowitz and NEA.”
3Ready Player Me
$56M, Series B | Estonia | Gaming platform | Andreessen Horowitz, David Baszucki (Roblox), Justin Kan (Twitch), Sebastian Knutsson, Riccardo Zacconi (King Games), Endeavor, Kevin Hart, Hartbeat Ventures, TikTok-y D’Amelio family, Punk6529, Snowfro, Collab Currency, Plural, Konvoy Ventures, Robin Chan (Fractal) | https://readyplayer.me/
Firm Website Overview:
“The metaverse is not a single app. It’s a network of millions of virtual worlds people visit to play games, socialize and collaborate. Today, most of those worlds are closed and disconnected walled gardens.
Ready Player Me is a cross-game avatar platform for the builders, creators and residents of the metaverse. We’re on a mission to break down the virtual walls to build a more open and connected metaverse.”
4Belvo
$43M, Series A | Mexico | Open Finance API Platform | Citi Ventures | https://belvo.com/
LinkedIn Overview:
“Belvo enables financial innovators to access and interpret data from their end-users in an easy and scalable way through a single API linked to hundreds of financial data sources.“
5Tridge
$37.2M Series D| South Korea | Digital global trade ecosystem | DSAsset, SoftBank Ventures Asia, Activant Capital | https://www.tridge.com
LinkedIn Overview:
“Tridge is a Global Trade Ecosystem in the food and agriculture industry that combines professional network and data intelligence and makes trustworthy and sustainable cross-border trades possible. We create and provide a very unique and powerful global-scale platform for buyers and suppliers to be connected and do business with each other more confidently and seamlessly. Our mission is to become a go-to place for the ultimate sourcing solutions by creating a safe and reliable trade community. For Buyers, Tridge consistently provides extensive market trend data around the globe, creating opportunities in both untapped and existing markets and connecting them with credible suppliers. For Suppliers, we identify and develop sales opportunities from the regions they could not reach ever before. We combine state-of-the-art technology to make this happen. Our tech team and data experts process the massive amount of data to convert it to our solution and are constantly optimizing the system to better connect our Buyers / Suppliers and our entire global staff across +60 countries…”
We’ll be back next week with more news on fintech VC funding.
