Updated: ThreatMetrix Raises $20 Million in Funding

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We’re still waiting to hear word from the company, but according to an SEC filing uncovered by Venture Beat, anti-cyberfraud specialist ThreatMetrix just raised $20 million in new funding. 

This rivals the company’s last round from two springs ago in 2012, and takes ThreatMetrix’s total capital to more than $56 million.

In an interview with CIO magazine, ThreatMetrix CEO Reed Taussig discussed how his company uses Big Data and context-based authentication to help companies move beyond VPNs, hardware tokens, and one-time passwords. Instead, ThreatMetrix technologies analyze data ranging from information about employee devices to “transactional or application context.” 

This network of data is key to ThreatMetrix’s effectiveness. Said Taussig, 
“Rather than deriving decision data from a single enterprise, ThreatMetrix customers share anonymous data globally. This increases the perspective, quality, and value of the data while driving down the cost of the  enterprise.”
2014 has been a good year for ThreatMetrix. The company won most Innovative Anti-Malware Appliances Solution and Best Product Network Access Control Solution at the 2014 Cyber Defense magazine awards. ThreatMetrix took home bronze in the 2014 Global Excellence Awards in the Most Innovative Company of the Year (Security) competition.
Founded in 2005, ThreatMetrix is headquartered in San Jose, California, and has offices in New York City, Hong Kong, Sydney, and The Netherlands.
ThreatMetrix is one of Finovate’s oldest alums, demoing their technology as part of FinovateStartup in 2009.
Update: In a piece published today at The Paypers, we get some additional information – and some interesting metrics – about ThreatMetrix.
  • The funding came as part of a Series E round
  • The round was led by Adams Street Partners
  • ThreatMetrix analyzes more than 500 million transactions daily
  • ThreatMetrix’s technology secures more than 160 million active user accounts, covering 2,500 customers, and 10,000 websites.

Finovate Alumni News– March 28, 2014

  • Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Finovate-F-Logo.jpgMambu wins Cloud Computing Innovation of the Year awards at 2014 FStech Awards.
  • eToro launches new version of OpenBook.
  • Nostrum Group ranked 9th in GP Bullhound’s Northern Tech 50.
  • Global Payments to offer MasterCard’s MasterPass digital payments solution.
  • New partnership means V&D customers will be able to pay via Klarna.
  • Innotribe interviews Kantox’s CEO, Philippe Gelis.
  • The Financial News features BehavioSec.
  • BBVA and Google sponsor developer competition for SME business apps geared toward Spanish, Latin American markets.
This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

FinovateSpring 2014 Sneak Peek: Part 2

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This year’s return to California for FinovateSpring will feature both new and old faces, as innovative startups make their fintech debuts and established veterans continue to remind us all that they’ve still “got it.”

Maybe your interests in FinovateSpring lie in something specific like security or mobile payments. Or maybe you are just looking forward to taking in all that this year’s crop of FinovateSpring presenters has to offer. 

Whatever your fintech appetite, we think you’ll find our Sneak Peek series a helpful way to get to know the entrepreneurs that will be taking the stage next month in April.

So today we introduce you to another set of six companies: Interactions, Kreditech, Market Prophit, Personal Capital, Yseop, and ZenPayroll. And if you missed the first installment of our FinvoateSpring 2014 Sneak Peek series, click here.

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Interactions Corporation is the only truly conversational, self-service solution to move more activity to self-service and free up agents for higher order tasks.
Features:
  • Delivers a fully unstructured, open-ended conversation between businesses and their customers
  • Understands with an unrivaled 95% accuracy in both speech and text
  • Deploys in 12 to 18 weeks
Why it’s great: We put customers first by engaging them in a free form dialogue, allowing them to solve problems quicker, and with less effort.
Phil Gray
Responsible for leading business development. Phil is a successful startup executive with extensive experience in natural language understanding and contact center technologies. 
Dan Fox, Marketing Manager

Kreditech uses Big Data and complex machine-learning algorithms to enable faster, better, and more sustainable credit decisions.
Features:
  • Developing self-learning, self-calibrating Big Data scoring
  • Building the “Amazon for consumer lending”: 24/7, always and everywhere available lending platform
  • Innovative FinTech products
Why it’s great: Based on Big Data scoring, Kreditech is building a centralized and global online lending service for innovative consumer finance products.
Sebastian Diemer, Co-Founder and CEO
Started building one of the most innovative global Big Data technology companies in 2012. Today, Kreditech is innovation leader in Big Data scoring.
Alexander Graubner, Founder and CTO
Combines cloud-based big data infrastructure and machine learning to build the world’s consumer scoring technology.

Market Prophit empowers every investor with real-time intelligence into what’s moving the market by quantifying global, financial-related conversations in social media.
Features:
  • Real-time sentiment and buzz in stock-related social media chatter
  • Identify the “mavens” in the “crowd” with our quantitative blogger ranking system
  • Track stocks and bloggers you care about
Why it’s great: Klout + Morningstar for social media financial influencers
Igor Gonta, CEO
Extensive experience on Wall Street in sales and trading, and brings that to the intersection of Big Data and finance.

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Personal Capital’s One Click Investment Proposals enables our advisors to efficiently analyze prospective clients’ finances and deliver investment recommendations tailored to their unique needs.
Features:
  • Advisors generate 90% of a client’s portfolio with one click
  • Clients see their complete & up-to-date household financial data and a comparison of their existing portfolio to an optimal one
Why it’s great: We’re making it digital – while keeping it personal.
Bill Harris, CEO
Has spent his career dragging the financial industry into the 21st century. He’s developed financial technology for 25 years – including as CEO at Intuit and PayPal.
Jim Del Favero, CPO
Has spent his career designing and building consumer financial software. Before Personal Capital he was head product manager for Quicken at Intuit.

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Yseop is natural language generation software based on artificial intelligence that boosts sales productivity and turns each financial advisor into an expert without additional training.
Features:
  • Yseop automates the sales process from lead generation to the writing of pre-to-meeting reports, customer follow-up and personalized marketing communications — automatically.
Why it’s great:
Yseop turns data into text, leads into clients, and salespeople into experts. Double your sales force productivity overnight with the power of artificial intelligence.
Elizabeth Farabee
Has a background in inbound and direct marketing. She is passionate about Yseop’s personalized marketing potential in both the B2C and B2B markets.
Matt Rauscher
Is a consultant at Y
seop. He lived nine years in the United States, and graduated with a Master’s Degree in Finance.

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ZenPayroll is modern, delightful payroll. Our mission is to make payroll as simple and intuitive as possible using the principles of modern software.
Features:
  • Makes payroll as simple and intuitive as possible
  • Helps business owners build stronger teams
  • Empowers employees by enabling them to be equal stakeholders
Why it’s great: Payroll should be about people, not payments. ZenPayroll is unearthing the human side of compensation currently buried under layers of complexity and government bureaucracy.
Joshua Reeves, CEO and Co-Founder
Believes in the power of software to solve complex problems, and founded ZenPayroll to deliver delightful, modern payroll to businesses everywhere.

Stay tuned for the next edition of our Sneak Peek series coming next week.

Realty Mogul Raises $9 Million in Round Led By Canaan Partners

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CEO and co-founder of Realty Mogul, Jilliene Helman, said that her goal was to “bring the $11 trillion commercial real estate market into the 21st century.”

Thanks to Canaan Partners, the real estate crowdfunding startup now has $9 million more to help make that happen.

Calling her innovation “democratization of deal flow”, Helman’s company saw growth of more than 400% in the six months since July, and now has more than 6,000 accredited investors using Realty Mogul’s platform. And this deal with Canaan Partners arguably helps put Realty Mogul in the same conversation with other crowdfunders that have attracted venture capital interest such as CircleUp.
Total capital raised by Realty Mogul now stands at approximately $10 million.
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Hrarch Simonian, a principal at Canaan Partners who also sits on the Realty Mogul board of directors, compared what Realty Mogul is doing for real estate investing to what another Finovate alum is doing for retail lending. “Realty Mogul will be the next disruption in a massive asset class just like Lending Club has been for the consumer credit market,” he said.
In addition to recently celebrating the first anniversary of its launch, Realty Mogul announced just a few days ago that crowdfunders using the platform had invested in more than $100 million worth of real estate. In a note to investors, CEO Helman noted this and stressed a commitment to technology going forward, saying the company has budgeted more than $2 million toward developing Realty Mogul’s proprietary technology.
Founded in May 2012 and headquartered in Los Angeles, Realty Mogul made its Finovate debut at the spring show in 2013. See a video of the company on stage here.
And for more information about our upcoming FinovateSpring 2014 event, click here.

Finovate Alumni News — March 26, 2014

  • Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Finovate-F-Logo.jpgProfitStars’ Gladiator ranks #36 in MSPmentor’s top 501 managed service providers.
  • Kofax Mobile Capture platform wins “Elegant Implementation” category of Housing-Wire magazine’s HW TECH 100.
  • Online TV host Doug Sleeter interviews Xero CEO, Rod Drury.
  • Jumio wins 2014 METAward in “established” category.
  • miiCard bringing its ID verification technology to eMerchantPay.
  • WTOP News asks: is the credit card with keypad from Dynamics is the “card of the future”?
  • MasterCard selects Anna Yip as head of Hong Kong and Macau.
  • Digital Insight to expand online banking portfolio to include shared access and small business payments. Come see Digital Insight demo at FinovateSpring next month.
  • Kraken, the digital currency exchange platform used by Fidor Bank, raises $5 million.
  • ZipZap pauses UK cash-to-bitcoin transfers through its platform.
  • Boku partners with sunhill technologies to enable direct global carrier billing for sunhill’s services.
This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

Finovate Alumni News — March 25, 2014

  • Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Finovate-F-Logo.jpgEleven Finovate alums win awards at PYMNTS Innovation Project 2014.
  • Bazaarvoice announces partnership with Spredfast.
  • TechCrunch: Wealthfront, OnDeck, Lending Club, Credit Karma, Betterment, and Kapitall “come of age.”
  • CMS Wire reviews Backbase’s customer experience platform.
  • Top Image Systems’ eFLOW to process the digital census of a country in EMEA in a deal worth more than $1 million.
  • Place2Give releases GIVE-API to provide access to its database of charities as well as its payment processing tech.
  • SmartAsset raises $5.2 million in series A funding. Come see their live demo at FinovateSpring next month in San Jose.
  • Netherlands Queen Maxima visits Entrepreneurial Finance Lab (EFL) to see its psychometric credit scoring methodology in action.
This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

Eleven Finovate Alums Win Awards at PYMNTS Innovation Project 2014

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The votes are in. The judges have decided. And 11 Finovate alums have earned awards at the 2014 PYMNTS.com Innovation Project, including three gold medals.

Finovate alums won awards in a diverse range of categories, from “B2B Innovation” to “Best Comeback Story.” Areas where alums dominated included “Best Credit Innovation,” where Credit Karma, Lending Club, and Klarna swept the field, as well as “Best Innovation via ACH” and “Best Check Innovation.”

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The Innovation Project is “powered by PYMNTS.com,” a joint venture between BusinessWire and Market Platform Dynamics. The event is in its second year, and was again held at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
A total of 49 awards were presented. Gold, silver, and bronze in fifteen categories, plus singular Catalyst, Women Driving Innovation in Payments, Lifetime Achievement, and Best in Show awards. 

Also announced were three inductees to the Payments Hall of Fame.
See how the rest of the Finovate family fared below.




Catalyst Award 
  • International e-commerce payments and money transfers
  • Finovate demo video: Europe 2012
Gold
  • Best B2B Innovation
  • Cash flow management solution for business integrating electronic payments, accounting, digital documents, and more
  • Finovate demo video: Spring 2012
  • Best Credit Innovation
  • Aggregates consumer financial data from bank accounts and credit scores to mortgage loans in one location
  • Finovate demo video: Startup 2009
  • Best Check Innovation
  • Enables check payments without having to write paper checks
  • Finovate demo video: Spring 2012
Silver
  • Best Credit Innovation
  • Online, peer-to-peer lender
  • Finovate demo video: Startup 2009
  • Best Cash Innovation
  • Cash transaction network 
  • Finovate demo video: Spring 2013
  • Best New Technology
  • Open-source, distributed payment protocol
  • Finovate demo video: Spring 2013
  • Best Innovation via ACH
  • Best Check Innovation
  • Send money to a Venmo account, bank account or supported debit card for free
  • Finovate demo video (with Braintree): Spring 2013
Bronze
  • Most Innovative Company
  • E-commerce solution mitigates credit and fraud risk for online merchants 
  • Finovate demo video: Spring 2012
  • Most Disruptive Innovation
  • Best Comeback Story
  • Peer-to-peer lending
  • Finovate demo video: Finovate 2007
  • Best Credit Innovation
  • Best Innovation via ACH
  • Solution leverages mobile device camera to enable check deposit, account opening, and bill pay.
  • Finovate demo video: Fall 2013

Finovate Alumni News– March 24, 2014

  • TransferWise recognized as “boldest small company” in winning FT’s Boldest in Business award for 2014.
  • BBVA follows Simple acquisition with launch of new digital banking unit.
  • Currency Transfer featured in Wired UK as Startup of the Week.
  • BillGuard invites beta testers to try its new Android app.
  • Mail Tribune highlights the importance of Credit Karma and Credit Sesame.
  • Ping Identity purchases Accells Technologies to make mobile devices into a tool for logging you in to all of your cloud-based services in one shot.
  • BellaDati launches the next level of visual data discovery with new release.
  • Matt Turck examines opportunities for Kensho and Quantopian in a Bloomberg-dominated world.
This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

Payoneer Wins Role as Payments Provider for Google Trusted Stores

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Fresh off its announcement of a $25 million series D, global payments company Payoneer reports that it was chosen by Google to be a payments provider for Google Trusted Stores Program.

Scott Galit, Payoneer CEO, said, “Payoneer provides a seamless, automated payment process that meets Google’s high standards for technology, security and service.”

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The Google Trusted Stores program is designed to help consumers find trustworthy merchants when shopping online. Payoneer’s job will be to provide the bank transfer services, and deliver the program’s purchase protection consumer payments in some of the countries where the program operates.
Said Galit, “This exciting new program increases sales for merchants and builds confidence for consumers when making online purchases.”
Payoneer’s global payout platform is used by companies in more than 200 countries around the world. In addition to enabling seamless, cross-border sending and receiving of funds, Payoneer also features a variety of payout options, ranging from bank transfers to prepaid debit cards.
Founded in 2005 and headquartered in New York, Payoneer demoed its technology last fall as part of FinovateAsia 2013. See the company’s presentation here.

Finovate Alumni News– March 21, 2014

  • Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Finovate-F-Logo.jpgTechCrunch features an interview with App Annie CEO, Bertrand Schmitt.
  • MasterCard announces MasterPass debut in China.
  • Q2 goes public, shares rally early in trading debut as company earns $533 million market cap.
  • miiCard working with eMerchantPay to offer merchants a more secure payment processing platform.
  • PayNearMe partners with self-storage management software E-SoftSys to enable users to accept cash payments online.
  • PayPal to let UK users order food ahead of visiting a restaurant, and use its app to pay for their food with a four-digit code when eating at a restaurant.
  • Venture Beat: Ping Identity acquires Accells Technologies.
  • Payoneer wins role as payments provider for Google Trusted Stores.
This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

Q2 Holdings Goes Public, Shares Rally Early in Trading Debut

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Here at Finovate Headquarters, we’ve got three reasons for having a little extra skip in our steps today:

  • First day of spring
  • First day of March Madness Basketball Tournament
  • First IPO of a Finovate alum

That alum is Q2, going public as Q2 Holdings this morning through an offering of 7.7 million shares of common stock at a price of $13 per share. The IPO is expected to raise more than $93 million, and Q2 will trade on the NYSE under the ticker symbol, QTWO.

As Q2 CEO Matt Flake said in an interview with CNBC’s Jim Cramer, “we’ve created a platform that allows community banks and regional financial institutions that don’t have the technological wherewithal to do it themselves (to compete).”
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“Our companies are doing very well right now,” he said. “They just need better technology.”
Asked about the interface and user experience, Flake said: 
“It’s a beautiful interface that allows you to get a common look and feel no matter what the device is. So if you’re on a mobile phone, a tablet or a desktop you’re going to have a consistent experience – just like with Netflix or Facebook.”
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The Q2 IPO was the second significant fintech initial public offering of the week, following Paylocity’s successful launch on Wednesday. Offered at $13, the QTWO opened higher at $16.25 and traded as $17.38 before finishing its first day of trading just north of $15. The company now has a market capitalization of $533 million.
 
Q2 demoed as part of the FinovateSpring 2011 show, presenting its risk and fraud analytics technology. The company is based in Austin, Texas. Watch the company in action here.

Lending Club Moves into Small Business Lending Market

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Peer-to-peer lender, Lending Club, announced today that it is expanding into small business lending. The company will provide 1 to 5 year loans of between $15,000 and $100,000, starting at a fixed rate of 5.9%.

Does this make them P2P2B?

In an interview with CNN Money/Fortune, Lending Club CEO Renaud Laplanche said that the move was a matter of meeting a need that had gone unmet in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. “Over the last couple years, the larger commercial loan market has picked up again,” he said. “If you look at smaller commercial loans, that market has continued to shrink since 2008.”

“It’s not for lack of demand. There are a lot of business owners who don’t have the capital to grow their businesses.”
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Laplanche suggested that the market for lending to small businesses “is not all that crowded.” But the new initiative is a shot across the bow for those currently in the sailing in the small business lending space such as CAN Capital, Kabbage, OnDeck, and even PayPal.
Adding small business loans is part of Lending Club’s larger project to add additional credit products, from auto loans to home mortgages. The company’s new small business loans initially will only be available for investment by institutional investors. Lending Club will consider giving retail investors access to these loans in the future, after reviewing repayment and default rate data.
A few key metrics on Lending Club.
  • Originated more than $3.9 billion in loans
  • Doubled annual loan volume every year
  • Raised more than $200 million in funding
  • Paid more than $300 million in interest to investors
A long time Finovate alum (Startup 2009), Lending Club was founded in October 2006. The San Francisco, California-based company includes Foundation Capital, Google Capital, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers among its most recent investors, and was ranked #5 on Forbes’ Most Promising Companies list for 2014.