🌊The Fintech Wave(#37)
We are welcoming 5 new members of the Fintech Wave community who have joined us since Monday.
TLDR: Layoffs across fintech startups. Check out the new social investing app. £300M round for UK fintech. New crypto VC fund. Make sure you check the Twitter thread from ConvertKit CEO about how they built a profit sharing within their company. One of the best threads this year.
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Europe News and Funding
Layoffs across fintech companies
Swedish Buy Now Pay Later startup Klarna, lay off 10% of its workforce. That is around 700 people. The company is looking to raise a new $1B round, but there is a problem. In the last round of funding, Klarna was valued at $45B, but it looks like they will see the valuation cut down to $30B.
Also, one-click checkout startup Bolt will lay off around 130 people in USA/Canada and 100 in the EU. The startup was valued at $11B in the last round of funding. You can read a message from the CEO here.
£300M round for UK fintech
Massive Series A funding for revenue-based financing (RBF) startup Bloom. RBF financing space is getting really crowded.
The company is offering up to £10M of financing within 24 hours. Their target market is e-commerce where sellers could use financing to cover the short-term gap between paying for merchandise and waiting for customers’ payments.
In order to qualify you to have to be in business for 12months and have annual online revenue of at least £120k.
Americas News and Funding
New social investing📈app
Social investing apps are getting incredibly popular. I came across one, which I think is pretty cool. It’s called PersonaFi - a social investing application that puts creators investments, trades, and analysis at your fingertips. It's a great platform to feel safe investing with transparency, grow with a community of like-minded individuals from all trading platforms, and get coaching from our creators. Join thousands of active investors and Download today.
Also if you are a creator and want to share your trading tips, this could be a good side income for you.
The buy now, pay later (BNPL) solution for banks🏦and credit unions
equipifi raised $12M Series A to give Buy Now Pay Later infrastructure to financial institutions.
The startup is offering a white label BNPL solution that integrates with banks and credit unions to offer BNPL to consumers via existing banking apps. With this, even debit card holders can use Buy Now Pay Later. Credit Unions can use it to attract new younger customers (I don’t know anybody who has an account in a credit union, so BNPL offer could probably help).
Crypto ₿ites
New crypto venture capital fund
Although we are in the middle of the crypto winter, Andressen Horowitz just raised a new $4.5B Crypto Fund 4. Of the $4.5B in Fund 4, $1.5B will be allocated to seed investments and around $3B for later rounds. If you are building anything in web3 check the announcement.
Tweets and Threads of the Week
Profit sharing thread from ConvertKit CEO