🌊The Fintech Wave(#24)
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Hi all, greeting from Maine, it’s still a ski season⛷️, but the fintech newsletter is here.
TLDR; 120.000 BTCs seized by US Government. Call for fintech startups: Visa Innovation Program at Eleven Ventures is open. Finance reporting startup raises $25M. Alchemy is valued at $10B. The app that makes it easy to get R&D Tax credits
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Europe News and Funding
Visa Innovation Program at Eleven Ventures is open🚀
If you are building a fintech startup make sure to check Visa Innovation Program at Eleven Ventures (they just closed a new fund and they are investing in fintechs). The program is designed to help you scale your startup, engage with Visa and its partners. There are no geographical restrictions - it’s open for everybody. Ideally, teams should have a proof of concept or a market-ready solution
Applications are now open until March 14th. You can apply HERE.
Revenue-based financing💸for French startups
Paris-based startup Silvr raises $148M for its revenue-based financing platform. Currently, revenue-based financing is the biggest hit within European VCs. Also, founders like this because it is an ideal option for founders with predictable revenue streams who don't want to give up equity.
This is how European revenue-based financing looks now👇
Americas News and Funding
Finance reporting📝startup raises $25M
LoanStreet helps loan providers automate financial reporting. Admit it or not, most of the financial reporting is still done using Excel, but sometimes it is not the best solution (hint: anybody can manipulate the cells). Using its technology, LoanStreet makes it easy to share, manage and analyze loans for credit unions, banks, and direct lenders.
The team behind LoanStreet is really good - Ian Lampl, the former U.S. Department of the Treasury Deputy Chief Counsel for TARP. Currently, more than 900 financial institutions are using LoanSteet software.
The app that makes it easy to get R&D Tax credits
Neo.Tax is building one of the most useful fintech products, and they just raised $10M Series A led by Infinity Ventures and Google Ventures.
Their product is designed to help startups claim R&D expenses to IRS and get back up to $250K. Even a lot of software startups are eligible for R&D tax credits, but founders don’t request it because the process can be complicated. Neo.Tax automated the process and it takes just 10 minutes for founders to apply. During 2021 revenue grew 3X.
Crypto ₿ites
120.000 BTCs seized by US Government
The government seized $3.6 Billion in stolen cryptocurrency linked to the 2016 hack of Bitfinex. She was writing for Forbes and he was Y Combinator alumni, so probably now they have qualifications to be on the famous Forbes 40 under 40 lists. Funny thing is that they kept keys to BTC wallets on the public cloud, and that is the reason why the government was able to seize BTCs.
Also, Heather is a self-proclaimed rapper (and wanna be TikTok start) - if you want to watch something terrible, check the video below :D
OAK Network raises $5.5M Seed round
The easiest way to explain OAK Network is - Stripe for web3. The startup is building an automation layer-2 blockchain for Defi and recurring payments. The users can schedule future and recurring payments, engage in trustless auto-trading, and place decentralized limit and stop-loss orders on DEXs all without smart contract middlemen or compromising the security of a user’s wallet. The solution is built on top of the Polkadot blockchain.
Alchemy🧪 valued at $10B
Alchemy is one of the leading blockchain development platform. For example, the biggest NFT marketplace, OpeaSea runs on the Alchemy platform. The company wants to become gold-standard when it comes to blockchain development.
The round is led by Lightspeed and Silver Lake (one of the biggest PE funds in the world).
Tweets and Threads of the Week
