Funding

More Than $1 Billion Raised by 21 Alums in Q3 2019

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Funding, Fundings, Quarterly Funding

Finovate alums raised $1.1 billion in funding in the third quarter of 2019. The quarterly total represents a significant rebound over last year’s Q3 sum and is reminiscent of the third quarters from 2017 and 2015 in topping the $1 billion mark.

Previous Quarterly Comparisons

  • Q3 2018: More than $400 million raised by 19 alums
  • Q3 2017: More than $1 billion raised by 31 alums
  • Q3 2016: More than $500 million raised by 30 alums
  • Q3 2015: More than $1 billion raised by 40 alums

As our list of the quarter’s top equity investments below reveals, the $460 million fundraising from Klarna in August represents a significant amount of this year’s Q3 total. The investment, led by Dragoneer Investment Group, gave the Swedish ecommerce innovator a valuation of $5.5 billion and the title of the largest private fintech in Europe.

Also noteworthy was the $200 million raised by San Francisco, California-based payroll, benefits, and HR platform Gusto. Along with a pair of new participants Fidelity and Generation Investment Management, Gusto’s investors boosted the company’s valuation to $3.8 billion in the third quarter. There must be something special about Q3 and Gusto; the company’s previous $140 million in funding led the quarter’s top investments last year.

Top Ten Equity Investments for Q3 2019

  • Klarna: $460 million
  • Gusto: $200 million
  • Trulioo: $53 million
  • Credit Sesame: $43 million
  • Numbrs: $40 million
  • HackerOne: $35.4 million
  • Flybits: $35 million
  • Sezzle: $30 million (IPO)
  • Scalable Capital: $28 million
  • Kyndi: $20 million

Here is our detailed alum funding report for Q3 2019.

July 2019: More than $354 million raised by 10 alums

August 2019: More than $554 million raised by six alums

September 2019: More than $148 million raised by five alums

If you are a Finovate alum that raised money in the third quarter of 2019, 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.

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BlueVine Raises $102.5 Million in New Funding

BlueVine Raises $102.5 Million in New Funding
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: BlueVine, Funding

In a Series F round led by ION Crossover Partners, small business banking and financing firm BlueVine has raised $102.5 million in new funding. The investment takes the company’s total equity financing to more than $692 million, and will help the Redwood, California-based fintech scale its end-to-end banking platform, BlueVine Business Banking.

BlueVine will also use the capital to develop integrations with the company’s financing offerings, such as its line of credit, invoice factoring, and term loan products. The investment will support the hiring of additional talent for the company’s engineering, product, and revenue teams, as well.

“This funding further validates our mission and will help democratize true business-grade banking for small businesses who have been underserved for so long,” BlueVine CEO and co-founder Eyal Lifshitz said. He highlighted the company’s BlueVine Business Checking Account, introducedlast month, which offers small businesses an intuitive financial management dashboard and a debit Mastercard, as well as 1% interest on balances and no monthly fees.

“The recent launch of BlueVine Checking demonstrates our commitment to revolutionize banking for small business owners with a full suite of services designed specifically to meet their unique needs,” Lifshitz said.

This week’s funding featured a sizable number of participants, including all of BlueVine’s current investors, as well as new investors MUFG Innovation Partners, O.G. Tech – Eyal Ofer’s VC, Vintage Investment Partners, ION Group, Maor Investments and other private investors. ION Crossover Partners’ Jonathan Kolodny praised the BlueVine for its “track record of success” and the variety of financing solutions it offers small businesses.

“We’ve been following the company closely since its early days,” Kolodny said, “and have witnessed the demand, and frankly the economic need, for BlueVine’s banking services.” He added that BlueVine was poised to “change the way small businesses manage their financial needs today and in the future.”

BlueVine demonstrated its small business financing solutions at FinovateFall 2014. More recently, the company hired former PayPal executive Brad Brodigan as its Chief Commercial Officer, and appointed former Xero VP Herman Man as Chief Product Officer. Over the course of the year, BlueVine has teamed up with a variety of institutions ranging from its collaboration with GovQuote to its partnership with recruitment industry solution provider Bullhorn.

Founded in 2013, BlueVine earned recognition from Growjo this fall as one of the fastest growing startups in California. Since inception, the company has provided more than 20,000 small business owners with access to more than $2.5 billion in financing.

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Aerospike Raises $32 Million for NoSQL Data Platform

Aerospike Raises $32 Million for NoSQL Data Platform
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Aerospike, Funding

NoSQL data solutions firm Aerospike received $32 million in Series D funding today. The round is the company’s largest investment to date and brings Aerospike’s total funding to $78 million.

Triangle Peak Partners led the round, followed by existing investors NewView Capital Partners, Alsop Louie Partners, and Eastward Capital Partners. Triangle Peak Partners Co-founding Partner Dain DeGroff and NewView Capital Operating Partner Tim Connor will join Aerospike’s Board of Directors.

Aerospike will use the funds to expand its geographic presence into Asia Pacific, develop additional data infrastructure integrations, and grow partnerships. There is no updated valuation for the company, which was valued at $90.8 million in 2017.

“Companies are on a journey to convert unprecedented amounts of data into intelligence and push it from the core to the edge and gain a competitive advantage,” said John Dillon, Aerospike CEO. “Aerospike is the critical real-time data platform in a new stack of technologies underpinning this sea change, and our footprint continues to aggressively expand within enterprises as real-time transactions and analytics become more pervasive and mainstream.”

Founded in 2009, Aerospike delivers a NoSQL database for a range of industries, including advertising, ecommerce, financial services, and telecommunications. The technology stores petabytes of data that can be instantly accessed for real time decisioning.

The company, which counts Adobe, Wayfair, and Verizon Media as clients, has been growing at a rate of more than 50% year-over-year and has maintained a 95% customer retention rate for more than five years.

Aerospike is a five-time participant in our developers conference, having most recently presented at FinDEVr London 2017. During the presentation the company’s CTO and Cofounder, Brian Bulkowski, talked about rapid application design in financial services.

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Bill.com Preps for $100M IPO

Bill.com Preps for $100M IPO
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Bill.com, Funding, IPO

Intelligent business payments platform Bill.com aims to raise $100 million in an initial public offering (IPO), according to a recent filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), reports Ruby Hinchliffe of Fintech Futures, Finovate’s sister publication.

Underwriters listed for Bill.com’s IPO include Goldman Sachs, Bank of America (BofA) Securities, Jefferies and William Blair. Pricing terms have not yet been shared publicly.

The fintech provides cloud-based software that simplifies, digitizes, and automates back-office financial processes for small and mid-sized businesses (SMB). Bill.com has customers including company calling service Dialpad, benefits and human resource manager and fellow Finovate alum Gusto, and local professional search engine Thumbtack.

With $347.1 million already in the bank according to Crunchbase, the 2006-founded company has gathered investors such as MasterCard, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and BofA.

Talking about how the procure-to-pay landscape is converging, Mercator Advisory Group’s commercial and enterprise payments director Steve Murphy said: “That’s led technology companies such as Bill.com to add virtual cards to automate accounts payable for small businesses through partnerships with Amex and Mastercard.”

Set up by PayCycle’s co-founder René Lacerte, Bill.com now has more than three million members and processes $60 billion in yearly payments, according to its announcement in April 2019 following its most recent funding round of $80 million.

Bill.com demonstrated its technology at FinovateSpring 2012. More recently, the company launched a new suite of solutions for midmarket companies to help them automate their AR/AP processes to boost efficiency. The Palo Alto, California-based company was founded in 2006.

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Spreedly Raises $75 Million in Growth Funding

Spreedly Raises $75 Million in Growth Funding
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Funding, Spreedly

Online and mobile payments enabler Spreedly has picked up a $75 million investment from Spectrum Equity. The growth funding will help the Durham, North Carolina-based company both accelerate product development and support its international expansion. Spreedly’s total funding now stands at just over $81 million.

“Our platform helps customers unlock their online and mobile revenue streams,” Spreedly CEO Justin Benson explained. “With this investment from Spectrum Equity, we are positioned to extend our leadership globally, in particular to leverage our momentum in Latin America. We’re excited to bring Spectrum’s experience working with other high growth FinTech and commerce platforms to bear as we execute on our growth plans.”

Spreedly provides a payments infrastructure that leverages a single API to enable businesses to grow their online and mobile revenues. The company’s PCI compliant vault securely stores card data for customers like Cabify and SeatGeek who use tokenized card data to optimize nearly $14 billion in transaction volume each year.

Managing Director at Spectrum Equity Adam Margolin praised Spreedly as “uniquely positioned” to help businesses meet the challenges of online and mobile payments. “With minimal prior funding, Spreedly has grown rapidly and today powers nearly one million transactions daily, 108% more than the year before, on behalf of its customers,” Margolin said.

Benson shared some additional thoughts on what the investment meant for the company at the Spreedly blog. And for those curious about Spreedly’s path from founding concept to contemporary success story, Benson’s reflections are especially worth reading. He concludes his remarks by saying:

“Ultimately, for you our customer, all this really means is that we’re more effectively resourced today to execute upon our ambitious product roadmap. We have more financial and intellectual capital at our disposal to build the best payment platform for merchants that we can. Thanks for your support and here’s to the next big chapter.”

Spreedly demonstrated its Networked Commerce solution at FinovateFall 2018. Networked Commerce enables businesses to connect payment systems to partners for superior scale, helps merchants process multiple-vendor transactions, and empowers consumers to make purchases through the same network – web, mobile, or voice – where they initially encounter a good or service.

This September, the company unveiled Spreedly 3DS2 to help execute 3DS2-compliant transactions across multi-gateway environments. The previous month, Spreedly – in partnership with Webio – won the 2019 Innovation Lab Award at the Payments Ed Forum. This spring, Spreedly was featured in WRAL Tech Wire’s look at local technology companies.

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NLP Innovator Eigen Technologies Closes $37 Million Series B

NLP Innovator Eigen Technologies Closes $37 Million Series B
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Eigen Technologies, Funding

In a round co-led by Lakestar and Dawn Capital, natural language processing technology provider Eigen Technologies has raised $37 million (£29 million) in new capital. The investment, which also featured participation from Temasek and Goldman Sachs Growth Equity, takes the London-based company’s total funding to $55 million (£43 million).

Eigen plans to spend the funds to accelerate growth, including investments in technical and commercial talent. The company will also strengthen its transatlantic profile by basing additional senior management in New York.

“When we founded Eigen five years ago, I wanted to build a research-led transatlantic business,” Liu said in a statement. “Since the Series A, we have made great progress by massively scaling the company, expanding our client base, and integrating cutting-edge machine learning techniques into our NLP product.” Liu added that in this time Eigen has more than doubled the size of its workforce, grown recurring revenues by 6x, and expanded its customer base to now include more than 25% of the global systematically important banks (G-SIBs) in the world.

The funding announcement comes just a week after the release of Eigen 3.0. Eigen 3.0 extracts data 2x to 5x faster and features a new UI that accelerates the training process by 30%. The company noted that the platform will better enable it to serve both its traditional big bank customer base, as well as new customers among hedge funds and asset managers.

“Our customers asked us for three things in Eigen 3.0: a superuser workflow, improved performance for large teams working simultaneously, and easier document handling,” said Eigen Chief Product Officer Dr. Ashley Fidler, who joined the company in August. “Eigen 3.0 delivers all these improvements and more.”

Eigen Technologies demonstrated its platform at FinovateFall earlier this year. At the conference, Dr. Liu showed how Eigen’s flexible natural language processing solution automatically and accurately extracts data from a wide range of document types at scale. The technology can be integrated into customer workflows, and leverages machine learning algorithms to recognize patterns in text data.

Founded in 2014, Eigen’s clients include Goldman Sachs, Hiscox, Allen & Overy, and ING. The company won the Financial Times Intelligent Business Award for Repapering Technology in October and was named to the FinTech50 2019 in September. Eigen Technologies began the year earning recognition from CB Insights, which featured the company in its 2019 AI 100 roster of the Most Innovative Artificial Intelligence Startups.

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SheerID Lands $64 Million for Segmented Identity Verification

SheerID Lands $64 Million for Segmented Identity Verification
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Funding, SheerID

Customer segmentation identification company SheerID is receiving a boost for its platform today with a $64 million investment. The funds bring SheerID’s total funding to $96 million.

The round was led by CVC Growth, which will join SheerID’s board of directors. SheerID will use the funds to fortify its marketing, sales, and engineering efforts; launch in more geographies, and add more consumer segments relating to occupation, interests, causes, and affiliations.

SheerID was founded in 2011 to help companies gate exclusive offers to high-value customer segmentation groups. The segmentation, for example, prevents customers from using their student ID from the 1990s to score a discount on a laptop today. Other segmentations include military personnel, teachers, and seniors. “Our platform allows brands to create offers that honor and recognize an entire consumer tribe, increasing trust and word-of-mouth, and decreasing customer acquisition costs,” explained SheerID CEO Jake Weatherly.

The new funds come at a time of significant growth for SheerID. The company has seen 4.5x revenue growth over the past three years, ranked 243 in the Deloitte and Touche Fast 500, and landed 200 customers including Target, Amazon, Lowe’s, Comcast, Google, T-Mobile and Urban Outfitters.

“Our exponential growth is driven by major shifts in personalization, privacy, and performance marketing,” Wealtherly said. “Marketers are struggling to capture the attention of consumers who want more control over their personal data and less uninvited marketing from brands.”

Oregon-based SheerID demoed its verification platform at FinovateSpring 2019. The demo showed how the SheerID platform can help banks not only verify credentials for exclusive offers but can also fuel personalized marketing.

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Paper.id Lands Funding to Power Digital Invoicing for SMEs in Indonesia

Paper.id Lands Funding to Power Digital Invoicing for SMEs in Indonesia
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Funding, Paper.id

Invoice and accounting SaaS solution Paper.id announced a fresh round of funding this week, closing a Series A investment from Golden Gate Ventures and Modalku.

The exact amount of the round was undisclosed, though the company mentioned the funds total “billions of Rupiah” (one billion Rupiah equals just under $71,500). Paper.id will use the funds to expand its SME client base within Indonesia.

“The pervasive problem of collecting and slow cash flow may not be solvable in the short term. In this digital era, however, SME’s need to be educated to understand their cash flow and business performance with a system that is easy to use,” said Paper.id CEO Jeremy Limman. “With Paper.id, business owners can create an electronic invoice with their favorite device…”

Jeremy Limman and Yosia Sugialam co-founded Paper.id in 2017 to help Indonesia-based SMEs manage their business finances by moving their invoicing processes to the digital realm. Using the freemium product, business owners can keep track of receivables, generate cash flow reports, and receive payments digitally.

“Modalku and Paper.id have the same vision where we want to help SMEs to grow through having a seamless flow,” said Iwan Kurniawan, Modalku COO and cofounder. “Furthermore, Paper.id’s business model is in-line with one of Modalku’s products where the usage of invoice is used as the main document to propose [a] loan fund. Through this collaboration, we hope that we can reach more potential SMEs to have funding access without collaterals.”

Limman and Sugialam demoed Paper.id at FinovateFall 2018 in New York, showing how the company’s Supply Chain Financing helps banks offer businesses invoice financing in real time. Paper.id’s users, which number in “the thousands,” have sent more than 30,000 invoices digitally using Paper.id’s platform.

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Investment Firm Takes Minority Stake in OurCrowd

Investment Firm Takes Minority Stake in OurCrowd
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Funding, OurCrowd

Global crowdfunding platform OurCrowd is padding its pockets today with funding from investment banking firm Stifel. Terms of the deal, which brings a strategic partnership between the two companies, were not disclosed.

Stifel has taken a minority stake in OurCrowd, boosting the company’s total funding up over $112.5 million. OurCrowd’s past investors include Alta Berkeley Venture Partners, United Overseas Bank, and individual investors.

“Partnering with a leading U.S.-based wealth management and investment banking firm like Stifel is yet another major step toward further expanding the OurCrowd brand and investor base,” said OurCrowd Founder and CEO Jon Medved. “We also look forward to collaborating with Stifel’s investment and venture bankers to identify potential ways we can help identify and best support prospects and portfolio companies.”

Under the partnership, the two companies will build an investment portal for Stifel’s accredited investor clients that offers access to venture capital funds and individual portfolio companies on a deal-by-deal basis. In exchange, Stifel will offer OurCrowd’s portfolio companies investment banking services.

Stifel CEO Ronald Kruszewski, whose U.S. retail brokerage has 2,200 advisors overseeing more than $300 billion in client assets under management, said that he anticipates the partnership will offer the firm’s investors access to the “ever-expanding” category of venture capital. “Through this partnership, our clients will gain access to attractive, early-stage investment opportunities that have been typically restricted to traditional VC firms and family offices,” he said.

OurCrowd’s platform hosts almost 37,000 registered investors from 183 countries. The Israel-based company allows these users to participate in startup investment opportunities alongside VCs and institutional co-investors at the same terms. OurCrowd’s curated deal selection process employs a team of investment professionals to review thousands of companies, meet with selected management teams, and select opportunities for investors.

Since it was founded in 2013, OurCrowd has made more than $1.28 billion in commitments and has invested in 200+ companies and funds, 35 of which have made successful exits. At FinovateSpring 2016, the company debuted the OurCrowd mobile app. 

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nCino Raises $80 Million

nCino Raises $80 Million
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Funding, nCino

Cloud banking innovator nCino garnered its largest funding round to date, bringing in $80 million. The round was led by a group of investors advised by T. Rowe Price, with participation from existing investor Salesforce Ventures.

Today’s round elevates nCino’s total funding to over $213 million. The company will use the new investment to boost research and development efforts for the nCino Bank Operating System, expand globally, hire new talent, and develop the skills of its 750 person-strong workforce.

“Since day one, our vision has been to be the worldwide leader in cloud banking,” said Pierre Naudé, CEO of nCino. “We believe that a strong partner ecosystem is critical to maintaining a customer-centric approach in everything we do. This strategic fundraise aligns with that vision and mission by leveraging the investment approaches of two industry leaders to help us further scale our business and Bank Operating System to continue enabling financial institutions to provide the kind of personalized, streamlined and fast experiences that customers have come to expect in the digital era.”

nCino demoed its Bank Operating System at FinovateEurope 2017. The SaaS solution is built on the Salesforce platform and aims to create efficiencies for financial services companies in delivering personalized onboarding, loan origination, and deposit account opening experiences.

Recently, nCino has partnered with Santander UK, teamed up with Mambu to create a banking solution for B-North, and acquired analytics firm Visible Equity.

With offices in London, Sydney, Toronto, Salt Lake City, and Wilmington, North Carolia, nCino serves a growing list of 1,100 financial services clients ranging in size from $30 million to $2 trillion.

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Kreditech Raises $24 Million to Fuel Global Expansion

Kreditech Raises $24 Million to Fuel Global Expansion
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Funding, Kreditech

With FinovateEurope set to make its German debut next February, it is especially gratifying to hear that investors are voting with their dollars when it comes to identifying and backing innovative European fintechs.

Hamburg-based online lender and POS financing firm Kreditech announced late last week that it has raised $24 million (€22 million) in funding. The round, led by Runa Capital, takes the company’s total equity financing to more than $519 million, and will be used to deepen its presence in existing markets, especially in Asia.

“I am really excited about our growth plans in India,” Kreditech CEO David Chan said. “We hold a first-of its-kind digital NBFC (non-banking financial company) license in a large and fast-growing market. We have been successful in finding our niche and have established the right proof of concept. Now it’s time to scale up while a key target customer segment remains unaddressed by the competition.”

Also participating in the round were existing investors HPE Growth and Amadeus Capital Partners, as well as private German investors.

Kreditech specializes in offering financing products to “near-prime” customers. In 2014, the company made its Finovate debut, demonstrating how its self-learning, proprietary algorithm accurately assessed the creditworthiness of loan applicants in less than a minute. The technology leverages up to 10,000 current data points to provide better insights into the finances of underbanked applicants who might otherwise struggle to secure credit.

The funding news for Kreditech comes as the company previews its 2018 financial statement, to be released in October. Chan said that Kreditech was “on track” to hit profitability targets, and added that the company was up to the task of “rapid, profitable growth.” In its funding statement, the company noted that it is aiming for $1 billion euros in revenue by 2025.

With more than 300 employees in seven countries and lending operations in India, Poland, Russia, and Spain, Kreditech is also developing regional centers of excellence and tech centers in its native Poland, as well as Romania and Thailand. The company was founded in 2012.

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Trulioo Accepts Another $53 Million in Funding

Trulioo Accepts Another $53 Million in Funding
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Funding, Trulioo

Canadian identity innovator Trulioo announced today it brought in $53 million (CAD $70 million). The round was led by Goldman Sachs Growth Equity and saw participation from Citi Ventures, Santander InnoVentures and American Express Ventures. Trulioo’s total funding how stands at $73 million (CAD $96.6 million).

The Trulioo team will use the funds to build its presence in new markets, as well as boost its workforce from 130 to 200 people who staff the company’s Vancouver, San Francisco, and Dublin offices.

Trulioo’s team is 130 employees strong

“Today, families, businesses and entire economies are being powered by the global shift towards a truly digital economy, which is exciting but also opens up new forms of risk,” said Stephen Ufford, Trulioo CEO and founder. “We’re committed to leveraging technology to help our customers fight financial crime, money laundering and election fraud. I’d like to thank our investors for their trust in the work we are doing and for enabling us to push forward our solutions that transcend boundaries and channels, and which facilitate trusted transactions from anywhere, instantly.”

Trulioo’s API allows organizations to instantly verify identities of more than five billion consumers (more than two thirds of the global population) and more than 250 million businesses across 195 countries. The company’s GlobalGateway database offers an online electronic identity verification (eIDV) service that helps businesses comply with AML and KYC rules, as well as a range of international electronic identity verification requirements.

Trulioo, which will demo its technology at FinovateFall next week in New York, provides electronic identification technology that has the potential to positively impact people in developing nations who may not have much of an online record to prove their identity. This underrepresented group can now potentially open a bank account, apply for a loan, or conduct other financial activity that was previously out of reach.

Earlier this year, Trulioo’s Head of Growth, Anatoly Kvitnitsky,demonstrated GlobalGateway’s instant onboarding with EmbedID at FinovateSpring. EmbedID enables businesses to query Trulioo’s GlobalGateway API and instantly verify customers in multiple markets by embedding a snippet of code to their website.

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