🌊The Fintech Wave(#23)
TLDR; Insurtech designed for climate risks🌎raises $120M. Canadian banking solution for underserved. Solana wallet raised $109M. Revenue-based financing💰startup from Ireland valued at $1.6B. DeFi protocol loses $80m in a hack. Bored Ape Yacht Club - from $0 to $4B in 9 months.
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Europe News and Funding
Revenue-based financing💰startup from Ireland valued at $1.6B
Dublin-based Wayflyer raised $150M and became 6th Ireland’s unicorn. J.P Morgan joined the cap table.
So far, the company disturbed over $500M of financing to its 800 customers. The biggest competitive advantage of Wayflyer is that it can offer up to $20M of financing. All other European competitors offer a maximum of up to $4M.
Insurtech designed for climate risks🌎raises $120M
Descartes Underwriting is an insurtech startup that helps corporate customers target their exposure to climate-related and emerging risks through its insurance products. The company is offer up to $200M of insurance per policy.
Descartes is utilizing machine learning and real-time monitoring from satellite imagery & IoT, to help businesses insure against natural catastrophes and emerging risks. They are also covering agriculture and energy risks. For example, you can ensure your solar power plant in case there are not enough sunny days to meet the electricity production. They really found a great product-market fit.
The startup claims it has over 150 corporate clients.
Americas News and Funding
Subscription management platform raises $250M
Chargebee is valued at $3.5B after the latest financing round, led by Tiger Global. Chargebee is a recurring billing and subscription management tool that helps SaaS and SaaS-like businesses streamline Revenue Operations.
Chargebee solution is used by well-known companies such as Calendly, Okta, GetAccept. The company also offers tools to automate recurring billing and invoicing; serve global payment options in more than 100 currencies; and financial reports and analytics. Also, the app is free until your reach $100K of revenue, which is a pretty cool offer.
Canadian banking solution for underserved
Canadian fintech startup Koho raised $210M to offer a free spending and savings accounts.
After sign-up users get a prepaid reloadable Visa for which they get instant cashback. For some purchases, users get up to 3% cashback, which is pretty good (average credit card gives 1.5% cashback).
The problem is that you need to reload your card from the regular bank account. So, if you already have another bank account there is not much incentive to open a Koho debit card (apart from cashback). Also, ATM withdrawals are not free, if you don’t pay for the premium version which costs $84/per year.
Crypto ₿ites
Favorite Solana wallet raised $109M
IMHO Phantom currently offers the best UX for crypto and web3. Design is great, it’s super simple to use + lets you display your NFTs collection. In less than 6 months since the first launch, Phantom already has more than 2 million monthly active users.
DeFi protocol lose $80m in a hack💻
DeFi protocol Qubit Finance lost $80M due to a hacker attack. Hacker took 206,809 Binance coins. The QBridge protocol is an Ethereum-BSC (Binance Smart Chain) bridge that allows users to swap ERC-20 and BEP-20 tokens between the two blockchains.
The company contacted hackers offering the maximum bounty as set by its program, but there is still no response.
Great news for everybody who is using DeFi staking📈
From $0 to $4B in 9 months🚀
Yuga Labs, the company behind Bored Ape Yacht Club, is talking with VC fund Andreessen Horowitz about investment at a $5B valuation.
The Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) is currently the second-most traded collection on the largest NFT marketplace OpenSea, with 380,821 Ether (ETH) ($1B) in total traded volume. The company has only 11 full-time employees.
Tweets and Threads of the Week
