🌊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.

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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).

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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.

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Tweets and Threads of the Week

Dr. Julie Gurner @drgurner

There is a weird myth that making more money doesn't make you happier. I assure you it does. It makes your entire life easier. It takes away many concerns. It gives you options. No basic need is a concern, and specialized needs are addressed with choices.

Matt Esparza @matthewesp

Y’all really took $3,200 from the government in exchange for crashing 401ks, $5-6 a gallon gas, higher property taxes, and 5.83% mortgage interest rates.

Dare Obasanjo @Carnage4Life

Not sure which is more bonkers – that Substack was trying to raise money at 100x revenue or that said revenue was only $9M in 2021. It’s amazing how little money the most hyped startups of the last few years were making.

nytimes.comSubstack Drops Fund-Raising Efforts as Market SoursAmid an industrywide downturn, venture investors are preaching austerity and halting new deals, particularly for companies that have spent aggressively on growth.

Profit sharing thread from ConvertKit CEO

Nathan Barry 🇺🇦 @nathanbarry

In the last 5 years, we’ve paid $3.9 million in profit sharing to the ConvertKit team. While most companies hope to return money to shareholders in a moonshot acquisition, we’ve created a unique model to help our team think like owners. Here’s how our compensation model works: