🌊The Fintech Wave #52

New layoffs in fintech, but it's not all that gloomy...or is it?

Nino Pavicic

Nov 07, 2022

Hi all,

and welcome to our regular Monday recap. Last week was quite eventful, so let’s start!

10 sec recap

👉Great Q3 for Airbnb

👉Revolut becoming super app

👉Layoffs in fintech

👉JP Morgan lending money to fintech

👉Twitter thread with decision process behind layoffs in big companies

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Airbnb Q3 results

Looks like higher fees don’t bother Airbnb customers. Q3 was Airbnb’s biggest and most profitable quarter ever. 99.7 million nights and experiences were booked via Airbnb in the last 3 months. Demand for traveling is strong.

25% growth in booking YoY

$15.6B in booking value (+31% YoY)

$2.9B Revenue (+29% YoY)

$1.2B Net income (+46% YoY)

- Guests are increasingly returning to cities and crossing borders

- Guests continue to stay longer on Airbnb

Carvana stock - from $300 to 8$ in less than a year

Carvana, an online car dealership is in big trouble. Unfortunately, looks like selling cars online failed to be a profitable business. From $300 to $8 in less than a year. During covid, the stock skyrocketed because people were buying more cars online and it looked like that will be the new standard.

Morgan Stanley just announced their target price of $0.10 per stock. Right after that, the stock lost 30%. I hope they will turn this around because their app and service are really great.

European News and Funding

Revolut is becoming a super app🦸

The biggest European online bank with 20 million customers just released a pretty good feature that could transform how we use banking apps. They launched instant messaging with the ability for customers to send fun gifs and stickers while sending and requesting funds to and from other customers. All chat messages have end-to-end encryption. Customers are now able to discuss and clarify payment details within the app, rather than having to swap between Revolut and different messaging apps to send or receive funds. This is a great move by Revolut👏

Americas News and Funding

Stripe laid off 14% of the workforce

One of the most valuable private companies in the world, Stripe, announces 14% (around 1120 people) layoffs due to macroeconomic challenges. You can read the CEO’s letter here.

The layoff package is probably one of the best ever:

- 14 weeks severance

- 2022 bonus + unused PTO will be paid

- 6 months of healthcare

- accelerated RSU vesting

- immigration support for those on visas

Digital bank Chime laid off 160 people

Chime is another victim of the macroeconomic situation. In the last round of funding the company was valued at $25B. Probably they will have to adjust that valuation soon to reflect the reality of the market. Worth to mention that Chime is one of the few neobanks with profitable EBITDA.

JP Morgan lends money to a fintech startup

Lendbuzz secured a $150M loan from JP Morgan to fuel the growth. Lendbuzz is an AI-based auto finance platform that helps consumers with low or no credit history obtain financing when purchasing a car.

The process is pretty simple, the applicant fills in the information and got pre-approved for the loan after which Lendbuzz works directly with the car dealership to finalize the process.

This is a good option to have (especially for immigrants that don’t have credit scores when they move to the USA), but the question is how Lendbuzz is checking the creditworthiness of the applicant. There is nothing about interest rates, but we can assume they are higher than banks or credit unions.

Crypto ₿ites

WalletConnect🔗raised $12.5M

New York-based company wants to connect your crypto wallet to hundred of web3 apps. The biggest crypto players invested the money: Coinbase Ventures, Circle Ventures, Uniswap Lab Ventures, etc.

Currently, the biggest crypto/web3 problem is user experience. There are just too many different wallets, protocols, apps, etc. to connect. The company is working to remove that friction which will also help to onboard more people into web3. WalletConnect establishes an end-to-end encrypted connection between a wallet and an app, enabling the wallet user to securely interact with the app and carry out actions such as transaction signing and token authentication.