Strike spells opportunity for some fintech startups • TechCrunch.

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welcome to Exchange! If you received this in your inbox, thank you for your subscription and vote of confidence. If you are reading this as a post on our site, please register over here So you can receive it directly in the future. Every week, I look at the hottest fintech news from the previous week. This includes everything from funding rounds to trends to niche analysis to hot takes on a specific company or event. There’s a lot of fintech news out there and it’s my job to stay on top of it – and understand it – so you can stay informed. – Mary Ann

Hiring now

Hello hello! I’m feeling great this week because I finally started something that’s been in the works for a while: tracking fintech companies that are hiring. Covering layoffs isn’t fun, and unfortunately we’ve had too many of them. So by shining a spotlight on fintechs that are hiring instead of firing, I thought the coverage would be a little more balanced and give out-of-work workers (and anyone interested in general!) a way to see what kind of positions are out there.

After the article published on February 16, I had a lot More Companies receive news about open roles in their companies.

  • Kickoff is hiring for 10 roles (a mix of hybrid and remote), including Senior Product Manager, Associate Product Manager, Senior Product Designers, Engineers and Development Marketing Manager. The consumer fintech company, which focuses on helping people build credit, raised $30 million in June 2021.
  • Adepar, which makes software to track investment performance, is actively hiring for approximately 50 open positions in the US, UK and India (and many roles have telecommuting options). By June 2021, the company had raised $150 million at a valuation of $2.17 billion. Today, it has nearly 850 customers on the platform and more than $4 trillion in client assets.
  • Nim is hiring and has a dozen open roles. B2B payments company raises $200 million in 2021 unicorn valuation
  • 401(k) provider Human Interest, which recently raised its total funding to $500 million, including an investment from BlackRock, has 23 open roles in engineering, product and revenue.
  • With offices in six countries, cost optimization company Emburse has appointed a new CXO, Johannes Wrede, and is hiring for nine vacancies, including in sales, engineering and customer success.
  • The self-employed all-in-one back-office financial platform, which has raised more than $28 million in funding, is hiring for five roles in engineering, marketing and member services (tax, accounting). Mutual raised its latest round, Series A, in May 2021.

And I’m sure there will be more to come in next week’s spare edition. Stay tuned, and please feel free to share with anyone looking for a new opportunity!

Now hire a neon sign

Image Credits: Vicky Benn/Im (Opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Weekly news

TechCrunch’s Tage Kane-Okafor did a fantastic job reporting this story.Prince Boki Boampong, Founder and CEO DashConnected wallets in Africa, which provide an alternative payment network that allows interoperability between mobile money and bank accounts, have been temporarily suspended pending an investigation into financial misconduct, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter.

later Confirmed Challenging week, I delved a little deeper into the space and found that while consumer-focused BNPL (Buy Now, Pay Later) companies are struggling, several B2B-focused companies continue to raise funds. About BNPL, the technology giant Apple It appears to be pushing ahead with its plan to offer its own purchases now, pay for services later and, according to Bloomberg, “set the rules for how it approves transactions.”

In this TechCrunch+ piece, Amsterdam-based Grant Easterbrook (fintech consultant and co-founder of DreamForward) focused on “fintech ideas that received some initial hype and momentum, but ultimately failed to deliver on their promise. It looks at ideas that “failed to go mainstream and transform financial services in the way the founders had originally intended.” A very interesting read.

On February 15 Lightspeed Venture Partners Ansaf Kareem has published a very detailed blog post entitled “The Alchemy of Fintech Valuations” which covers fintech sectors, recent public comps, key metrics to watch out for and multiples today. The hope, he writes, is that “entrepreneurs will be given a better measure than work as they grow their businesses.” Look here.

On February 7, Austin-based SMB-oriented Benefits of sauna He announced that he was cutting 19 percent of his workforce. It’s unclear how many people were affected, but Austin Inno said the startup had about 170 employees when it raised a $60 million Series B last summer. TechCrunch It also raised a $20.8 million Series A in 2020. High cost” As part of the severance package, the company is politely allowing employees to keep the laptops, saying “having one is critical to the job search.”

It’s great to see more women in leadership roles in the fintech community. Here are two examples:

Former NEA general partner Lisa Landsman joins the fintech startup. StashHe calls himself “the anti-Robinhood”, as the new CEO. The appointment is effective from February 6. Landsman has been an independent member of Stash’s board since mid-2022 and has previously served in operations and leadership roles at Jet.com, Citigroup, BlackRock and e-commerce. At NEA, a venture capital firm with over $25 billion in AUM, she focused on fintech and consumer products. The company has established a new B2B business led by Brandon Krieg, former CEO and now head of business development. My good friend and very talented journalist Suman Bhattacharya covered the activities here. Last October, TechCrunch covered the company’s success in surpassing $125 million in annual revenue and adding a crypto offering.

And

Focused on fintech QED investors has announced the hiring of Melissa Hohn as a principal focused on multi-stage fintech investments in Southeast Asia, with an emphasis on early-stage companies. Ho is QED’s first employee in Singapore. She previously led the investment team at Wavemaker Partners, a seed VC fund in Southeast Asia investing in enterprise, deep-tech and sustainability companies. There she was responsible for the Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and Bangladesh markets as well as the core verticals of SaaS, B2B marketplaces, proptech, edtech, commerce and consumer internet. Last August, the company made its first investment in Africa. He is also very good at LatAm fintech.

ICMI: From Natasha Mascarinhas: “PipeAn alternative finance platform valued by investors at $2 billion has finally announced its new CEO, an appointment months after the company’s three founders stepped down in dramatic and unusual circumstances. New CEO Luke Voyles is joining Pippa after serving as CEO of Square Banking at Block, previously Square. He was also the CEO and President of QuickBooks Capital. Voyle’s role begins on February 20. More here.

On the real estate front, Open door And Zillow They’ve teamed up to offer homeowners in Atlanta and Raleigh a new way to explore more home selling options when visiting Zillow. Customers who have “started their selling journey” with Zillow can request both a financing offer from Opendoor and a Zillow Premier Agent Partner who will put their home on the market at the same time. Sellers who decide to accept the Opendoor offer can use the Opendoor platform to sell their home on their own timeline. Sellers who choose to put their home on the market are paired with a Zillow Premier Agent Partner.

Fintech for good

I recently caught up with Adam Nash who has a few spots under his belt. He is an investor and board member in companies such as Acorns, FIMA and Cabbage. He has also held executive and technical roles at Dropbox, LinkedIn, eBay and Apple. On the fintech front, he is the former CEO and most recently co-founder of Wealthfront. Duffy. As TC’s Connie Loizos wrote last year: “DAF is the lowest-cost, lowest-conflict way to set up and use a donor-advised fund (DAF), a 401(k)-style charitable giving. With DAFs, a person donates a certain amount of money (or stocks or cryptocurrencies), receiving a tax break when the contribution is made, and that donation moves into a managed investment account, where it grows over time. After a certain period of time, the donor directs the money to the charity or charities of their choice.

In the year Since its inception in 2020 and by the end of 2021, the nonprofit has grown to nearly 10,000 members and raised nearly $30 million for charity, he told me. Account sizes range from $10 to $2 million.

“Many of our members use Duffy to donate $10 a week or $100 a month to charity,” Nash added. Other DeFi members contribute tens of thousands and even millions when they experience bonuses, company exits or stock windfalls, for example…many donor-advised funds partner with investment management firms and get their money. By filling the property percentage. And so you don’t really need small labels. They want people who put hundreds of thousands of dollars aside for charity, but that’s not even 1%. It’s like .1% skill. So we are very excited about Daffy.

Duffy is free for members who are just getting started and have an account balance of less than $100. Despite the recession and high inflation, Nash says Duffy has seen it. All time high The donation in the fourth quarter of 2022 – 3 times more than the fourth quarter of 2021. Members contribute in a variety of ways: 20% cash (ACH, debit/credit card), 20% stock/EFF, 20% crypto, and 40% DAF (donor advised fund) transfers. Although all crypto and stock markets will turn around in 2022, Nash said Duffy saw the number of crypto contributions increase by 100% and stock and ETF contributions by more than 128% in Q4 2022 compared to Q4 2021.

Funding and M&A

Featured on TechCrunch.

Riddle is building a modern accounting suite for today’s API-enabled startups.

Tiger Global and Ribbit have invested another 100 million dollars in PhonePe

Ledge aims to build automated tools for finance teams.

IFC leads $17 million investment in South African insurtech startup

Kenya’s fintech power goes to scale after a $3 million seed round

Singapore-based Neobank Aspay Raises $100M From Lightspeed And Sequoia SEA

Andreessen Horowitz supports ModernFi’s deposit market for banks

Neobank Vexi Raises Millions to Offer Low-Interest Rate Credit Cards to Young Mexicans

a16z, GV back Thatch’s efforts to simplify health benefits for startups and their employees

How a Brazilian startup pivots to pay for corporate cards

And elsewhere

Goose, the insurance “super app” closes $4M Series A funding.

VAS is launching a debt management platform with US$ 5 million

Latino-first NeoBank Commune raises $4.5M in seed funding

Hala has acquired UAE-based startup Payment.com to expand its operations in the SME sector

Fintech Adalfi raises funds to mark the life of Pakistan’s VC market

That’s it for now. For those of you in the US, I hope you are enjoying the long weekend and a happy President’s Day! To everyone else, I hope you’re having a great weekend and a great week ahead. Thanks again for your support, and oh, if you want something fun to listen to, check out the Fairness Podcast featuring myself, Natasha Masarenhas, and Rebecca Skutak!



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