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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Nine Finovate alums raised more than $113 million in Q1 of 2024. The relatively low fundraising results for the first three months of the year do reflect larger trends in fintech funding. But the fact that nearly half of the alums that raised funds in Q1 did not disclose the amounts raised tells us that the quarterly funding haul for Finovate alums was higher than the $113 million we have been able to confirm.
The biggest fundraising month of Q1 was likely January, which featured the $58 million investment secured by Digital Onboarding. Again, the high number of “amount undisclosed” investments makes comparison difficult.
Top Equity Investments from Q1 2024
Digital Onboarding: $58 million
Argyle: $30 million
Amplify Life Insurance: $16.3 million
Altro: $4 million
As noted above, Digital Onboarding pulled in the biggest investment of any Finovate alum in the first three months of the year. Also noteworthy was the $30 million raised by Argyle, a real-time income data platform that made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring in 2022.
Here is our detail alum funding report for Q1 2024.
January: More than $58 million raised by three alums
If you are a Finovate alum that raised money in the first quarter of 2024 and do not see your company listed, please drop us a note at research@finovate.com. We would love to share the good news! Funding received prior to becoming an alum not included.
For a second year in a row, Finovate is commemorating Black History Month by showcasing those Black and African-American founders and executives who demoed their company’s fintech innovations on the Finovate stage in 2022.
Ariam Sium – VP of Product with FinGoal
Sium not only leads Product at FinGoal, the self-described “Listener. Thinker. Doer” also led FinGoal to a Best of Show award at FinovateSpring last year. In her role at FinGoal, Sium said that she uses the tenets of focus and value to govern each product decision made in the rapidly changing world of fintech.
FinGoal most recently demoed its technology at FinovateFall in September. The Boulder, Colorado-based company offers an insights platform that helps financial institutions better understand their customers.
Joseph Akintolayo – CEO and Founder of Deposits
Akintolayo is a “builder of ethical products that solve complex problems in fintech, insurtech, and social enterprise.” As CEO and founder of Deposits, Akintolayo heads a startup that offers banks, brands, and communities a plug and play solution to deliver financial services such as payments and lending, without requiring coding experience.
Deposits made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall in September. The Dallas, Texas-based company was founded in 2021.
Left to right: Joseph Akintolayo and Samuel Ailemen of Deposits
Samuel Ailemen – Director of Mobile and Identity at Deposits
As Director of Mobile and Identity at Deposits, Ailemen helped lead the company’s demo at FinovateFall 2022. A fraud prevention expert who is “building cool stuff everywhere”, Ailemen leverages his talent as “a software engineer who loves research” to solve real-world problems using new technologies.
Nathan Gibbons – Chief Experience Officer at QuickFi
Gibbons oversees the customer experience at QuickFi, a company that provides “nearly instant,” self-service 24/7 term financing to business equipment buyers. Demoing the company’s technology at FinovateFall last year, Gibbons and colleague Jillian Munson earned QuickFi its first Finovate Best of Show award.
A C-suite executive with QuickFi since 2018, Gibbons previously spent more than 11 years as Project Manager and later Vice President with First American Equipment Finance. QuickFi was launched by founders of First American Equipment Finance in 2018.
Michael Duncan – CEO and Founder of Bankjoy
Founder and CEO of Bankjoy, Duncan demoed his company’s Business Banking Platform at FinovateFall 2022. The company he launched in 2015 offers a range of modern banking technology solutions, including mobile and online banking, as well as a banking API.
Before founding Bankjoy, Duncan spent more than four years as a Programmer/Analyst and later Software Development Manager at Michigan First Credit Union.
Michael Broughton – CEO and Co-founder of Altro
Broughton co-founded and is CEO of Altro, a solution that helps consumers build credit through non-traditional recurring payment processes such as rent and even monthly subscriptions to services like Netflix. Altro’s app is free-to-use, and helps increase financial literacy while boosting existing credit and helping stabilize credit histories. The company made its Finovate debut last May at FinovateSpring.
Broughton is also Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors for the USC Credit Union (since 2017), and was both a Scout at Sequoia Capital and a Thiel Fellow at The Thiel Foundation.
Christen Wright – Head of Product at Spave
As Head of Product at Spave, Wright was part of the three-person demo team that won Best of Show at the company’s Finovate debut last May at FinovateSpring. Spave is a financial wholeness solution that enables users to easily save and donate as they purchase products and services. The Spave app provides purchase tracking and analysis, goal setting, group giving, and more.
Wright has a diverse background, having served in senior management roles at AT&T and Delta Air Lines. A member of 100 Black Men of Atlanta, a mentoring and empowerment organization for African American youth, Wright is a graduate of the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business, where he earned an MBA.
Anthony Heckman – as Director of Sales at unitQ
Heckman was part of the founding team at unitQ, a company that turns customer insights into data-driven decisions for firms ranging from Chime to fellow Finovate alum Klarna. At FinovateSpring 2022, Heckman led the company’s live demo of its unitQ monitor, which serves as a centralized, searchable, repository for customer feedback.
Heckman founded TWC Advisors in October of last year. The firm specializes in providing go-to-market and sales support to early-stage, high-growth, VC-backed startups.
We may have missed an alum or two. But with the second quarter of 2022 in the books, here’s a look at our Finovate alumni funding for April, May, and June of this year.
As of our current count, eight Finovate alums have raised more than $984 million in Q2 of 2022. Of the eight alums that received funding in the quarter just ended, two – Allied Payment Network and Chekk – did not disclose the total amount of their investments.
Two of the quarter’s biggest investments were received in June, giving that month the lion’s share of capital raised by Finovate alums in the second quarter of the year.
Previous quarterly comparisons
Q2 2021: More than $2.8 billion raised by 14 alums
Q2 2020: More than $975 million raised by 15 alums
Q2 2019: More than $1.8 billion raised by 29 alums
Q2 2018: More than $1.5 billion raised by 25 alums
Q2 2017: More than $726 million raised by 25 alums
As we noted last year around this time, it is not unusual for second quarters to produce more moderate funding numbers compared to other quarters. And, as with last year, April proved to be an especially “cruel” month for fintech funding – at least as measured by our alums – with only FinovateEurope alum and relative newcomer Crowdz reporting funding that month.
That said, this year’s Q2 haul surpassed that of two of the previous five second quarters – and with significantly fewer alums participating.
Top Equity Investments
SumUp: $624 million
ThoughtMachine: $160 million
Backbase: $122 million
The top equity investment for the quarter was far and away the $624 million raised by London-based e-commerce innovator SumUp. In fact, all three of the top equity investments in Q2 of 2022 were greater than the largest investment in the previous quarter. SumUp’s massive capital infusion rivals all Finovate alum investments since NuBank raised $750 million in the second quarter of 2021.
If you are a Finovate alum that raised money in the second quarter of 2022 and do not see your company listed, please drop us a note at research@finovate.com. We would love to share the good news! Funding received prior to becoming an alum not included.
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateSpring in San Francisco on May 18 and 19. Register today and save your spot.
Altro helps consumers build credit and financial power through the recurring payments and subscriptions they use every day. Build credit and financial power with the free Altro app.
Features
Boost existing credit
Increase financial literacy
Stabilize credit history
Why it’s great
One thing the audience should remember about the product: Altro doesn’t believe in barriers. Altro is in the business of empowering great people to do great things by helping them get their money right.
Presenter
Michael Broughton, Founder Broughton is the co-founder and CEO of Altro, a free-to-use app that allows anyone to build credit using nontraditional forms of payments, including rent and monthly subscriptions like Netflix. LinkedIn
