Here comes some more funding for a European financial tech company specialising in online loans. Germany’s Smava — a peer-to-peer lending platform where investors provide the funds to loan money to borrowers — has raised $16 million in funding led by Phenomen Ventures, along with existing investors Earlybird and Neuhaus Partners. Phenomen’s track record in… Read More
For the first few years, there was no response from Wall Street. The Wall Street Journal didn’t mention bitcoin until a blog post in June 2011. As the bitcoin community waited, advocates and enthusiasts speculated as to why America’s financial strongholds weren’t talking about the digital currency. Did banks not take bitcoin seriously enough to acknowledge it or feel… Read More
Innovation, growth, technology, user experience, revenue and gross margin have become synonymous with how you define success for a tech startup. What is missing from this list is local, state, and federal regulation; terms that startups in the financial technology sector understand far too well as either barriers to or catalysts for growth and early success. Read More
Ask most people what the state of mobile payments is today, and they’ll tell you it’s just kicking off. With Facebook announcing the option to ‘send money to friends’ via messenger and the release of Apple Pay last year, 2015 has excitedly been dubbed “The Year of Mobile Payments.” Yet what most people don’t realise is that these services are… Read More
A leaked email from the Sony Pictures hack indicates Snapchat set aside .11% of its stock for former Apple head of iOS Scott Forstall to be an advisor. Michael Lynton, Sony Pictures’ CEO, is a Snapchat board member, so when his email was stolen by hackers protesting the release of The Interview, sensitive Snapchat information came to light. WikiLeaks recently made those emails easier… Read More
Etsy, the online marketplace for handmade goods, went public today. It turns out Wall Street investors like those homespun crafts. Shares opened at $31 on the NASDAQ, popping up 94 percent from the initial set price of $16 per share. The company closed its first day of trading at $30 per share, an 86% percent rise from its initial price. The company raised over $287 million… Read More
It feels like Number26 opened its doors yesterday, but the young startup just raised a $10.6 million Series A round (€10 million) from Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures, with Daniel S. Aegerter and existing investors Earlybird and Redalpine also participating. This represents Valar Ventures’ second investment in a European fintech startup — the VC fund also participated in… Read More
Acorns, the micro-investment app that sets up a portfolio for you by collecting your spare change, has today announced the close of a $23 million Series C financing, led by Greycroft Ventures and e.Ventures, with participation from Sound Ventures, Garland Capital, and MATH Venture Partners. This brings Acorns’ total amount raised to $32 million. The company, which rounds up to the… Read More
Shopify has filed an F-1 document, indicating that it will sell shares to the public market. The company indicates in the filing that it will raise $100 million in its IPO. However, that figure is often given by companies as a place holder. Shopify has raised $122 million to date. The company has posted quickly growing revenues, and declining losses in its most recent quarter. Shopify… Read More
Twitter’s former head of investor relations Nils Erdmann has a new job. Instead of doing the logical thing, and going to the beach, Erdmann is now a partner at Battery East Group, a boutique shop that helps facilitate the sale of shares of private companies to external parties. That process is called a ‘secondary’ transaction, in contrast to a ‘primary’ sale… Read More
