Weekly update #40

Welcome to this edition of the weekly newsletter. The idea behind this activity is to gather all the information in the startup ecosystem in one place, with a special focus on the fintech market.

Before jumping to the main topics for this week, I am exploring partnerships with the newsletter. So this edition is sponsored by Notion, which is offering a 6-months free plan of its plus product to all founders submitting an application for their startups program.

In order to redeem the free trial, submit an application using this linkhttps://ntn.so/michelemattei, select Michele Mattei as partner and include the following partner key: STARTUP4110P62416. I really hope it will be helpful for many founders out there!

Coming back to us, I’ve been reading a very interesting report this week, the “Data-Driven VC Landscape 2024” by Data-Driven VC . The report wanted to get a clear overview of the current state of data-driven VCs in the market, trying to understand main trends, market expectations and returns globally. Here my main takeaways:

Let’s start from the returns. It’s not a surprise maybe, but half of the investments made by VCs worldwide return less than the money deployed. A good 35% of them return between 1-2x, with only 10% giving back between 2-3x the investment made. A very small 5% of the total startups backed return more than 3x, mostly covering for the part of the portfolio that has been a writeoff.

In terms of funding, I believe it is not a surprise that the US are on top of that ranking, bringing home $3.8 billion every 1M people, approximately 52x more what LATAM is doing right now. Europe stands approximately at ⅛ of that amount, with still a long way to go.

Something very interesting was the fund proportion ranked by different metrics. My favorite one: more than 75% of VCs out there have less than 5 engineers as employees, with less than 10% having 11 or more. The main question that pops in my mind is how are they going to perform a good technical due diligence then? Something very interesting to notice also, is the fund proportion by AUM, where you can notice that while smaller funds are still the majority, bigger funds are not that far behind. Recently I was reading another report that was mentioning how smaller funds are more likely to have bigger returns, going in the opposite direction of this statistic.

Last but not least, maybe the most interesting point of them all. 75% of the VCs believe that Augmented VC will be the winning model of the future, with 12% of them believing there will be no space for humans in the VC industry of tomorrow. Augmented VC is a model that believes that the investment decision should be taken only based on data, with humans only involved in the loop.

You can find the full report here if you want to deep dive.

Before jumping to the latest news, a quick request from my side. I will start a small series of podcasts to interview fintech founders and VC managers active in the ecosystem. If you want to be part of it, feel free to drop me a line on Linkedin!

Anyway we saw some very interesting news in the market this week. Bending Spoons completed another great acquisition, buying WeTransfer, while Stripe acquired the payment provider Lemon Squeezy, and the egyptian fintech MNT-Halan acquired Tam Finans. In the payment world, Pix will be integrated in Google Wallet in Brasil, while bezahl.de (NX Technologies GmbH) closed a partnership with Stellantis . In the VC industry, we saw Kennet Partners closing a $266 million VI fund, and Siddhi Capital securing $135 million for its second fund, while Bill Gates’s backed Breakthrough Energy Ventures raised $839 million. In the italian market, Qonto has been imposed a temporary blocking order from Banca d'Italia - Eurosistema while Azimut Group invested $105 million through a club deal in Alps Blockchain . Finally, we saw some very interesting funding rounds from some fintech startups like Fundabl, TigerBeetle, Zolve, Aveni, Rillet, MYNE, Leanpay, Crediko, and many others.

But let's take a closer look at the main news of the last seven days:

Closed deals

• Female Invest raises a $11.2 million series A funding round

• Primary Portal secures a $7.5 million series A to develop new digital equity solutions
• Financial transaction database
• TigerBeetle raises $24 million in series A funding round
• Fundabl secures $3.2m to bridge funding gaps for Australian businesses
• IntelePeer bags $140m to advance AI automation in customer service
• Rillet raises a $13.5 million funding round led by Creandum
• GeoWealth secures $18 million growth investment with BlackRock leading the round
• Aveni secures £11m to pioneer tailored AI solutions in UK financial services
• Axle Automation secures $2.5m in seed funding to revolutionize AML and KYC in financial services
• Saudi fintech TechMal closes a $1 million pre-seed funding round
• Dutch startup Payt secures $55 million for European expansion
• InvestorHub raises $4 million in a new funding round to disrupt capital markets
• Chicago based FranShares raises a $4.1 million seed round to let people invest in franchises
• Egypt based Cartona raises $8.1 million even as investors are pulling back from B2B e-commerce in Africa
• Berlin based prop tech MYNE raises a $40 million series A funding round
• Leanpay secures a $10 million series B to expand BNPL in central Europe
• Agri-Business Capital (ABC) Fund invests $1.1 million in the Colombian fintech Micreditoya Microfinanciera
• Mintify secures $3.4 million to boost its NFT infrastructure
• Bourgeois Bohème Fintech closes a $6.5 million seed round
• Mexican fintech Crediko raises a $2.5 million seed funding round to push financial education in Latam
• Neobanking startup Zolve raises $25 million from Creaegis with a total valuation of $330-360 million

Insights on the VC industry

• Kennet Partners closes a VI fund at $266 million
• NYC based deep tech VC Deep Future raised $17 million for its first fund
• Siddhi Capital secures $135 million for its second fund to invest in consumer package goods startups
• Bill Gates backed climate VC Breakthrough Energy Ventures raises $839 million for a new climate fund

News on the market

• Stripe acquires payment processing startup Lemon Squeezy
• MNT-Halan acquires the Turkish fintech Tam Finans
• NatWest buys Metro Bank's £2.4 billion mortgage portfolio
• Stripe closes a partnership with Fifth Third Bank to expand embedded financial services in the payment platform
• Canva acquires Leonardo.Ai to boost its AI capabilities
• Did I already mentioned how much I like what Pix is doing in Brasil? Well, from now on, you can also find it integrated in Google Wallet
• Propel Holdings announces upsized $330 million syndicated credit facility
• German fintechbezahl.de (NX Technologies GmbH) announces a partnership with Stellantis to integrate the payment solution in the automotive market

A special look in the Italian market

• Banca d'Italia - Eurosistema imposed a temporary order against Qonto's italian branch, halting the onboarding of new customers
• Bending Spoons just announced the acquisition of the dutch based WeTransfer
• Azimut Group invests $105 million through a club deal on Italian mining startup Alps Blockchain

And here some useful resources for everyone involved in the ecosystem:

Events you don’t want to miss

• BolzanoSlushD | Bolzano - 03.09.2024 (Link to the invite or website) I still have some discount codes for this one, reach out to me if you want one!
• Italian Tech Week | Turin - 25-27.09.2024 (Link to the invite or website)
• Newport investor summit | Newport (RI) - 26-27.09.2024 (link to the invite or website)
• Bits & Pretzels founders festival | Munich 29.09-01.10.2024 (Link to the invite or website)
• Milan Fintech Summit | Milan - 08-09.10.2024 (Link to the invite or website)

You have a cool event you want to mention or to sponsor? Feel free to send me a DM.

Startups raising funds

• Fantalegends - a Fantasy Football free-to-play mobile game that aims to provide an enjoyable and safe experience, user-centered, with more than 2k daily active users. Raising $1M.

• PopulaRise - The platform that allows companies of every dimension to promote themselves on social media through the collaboration with their clients. B2B2C SaaS. Raising $1M.
• Bitcoin People - Fintech company focused on crypto payments between corporate and cross countries. B2B, SaaS. Raising $500k. Round closed!
• Tutornow - Edtech that provides an online tutoring platform for students with learning disorders. Raising $500k to $1M.
• Recivu - Fintech  startup trying to digitize the receipt flow by getting rid of papers. Looking for $150k in SAFE, already $50k committed.
• Weagle - B2B Tech startup that provides the very first browser designed for company, with total security for sensitive data. Raising $6 millions for their seed round.

• Reach Finance - Reach is the fintech platform for wealth accumulation for the Y&Z generations, they provide users with the tools to build wealth such as a budget tracker, a financial plan and a systematization of investments. Looking for $700k, with already $500k committed.
• wrapp.ai - A fintech startups that offers a virtual accountant and CFO that can help SMEs scale globally. Looking for $1 million, $750k already granted from public funds, looking to close the last $350k.
• Shoppy Code:Gift card platform that offers a points based loyalty program. They share part of the profits coming from marketing budgets with their customers. Raising $500k.

Take also a look at the last edition of the newsletter, Weekly update #39