Weekly update #41

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 some very interesting data this week, coming directly from Carta , about the fundraising trend in Q2. A couple of takeaways here:

A trend we can clearly see in the US based funding round, is the common use of safe and notes before any priced rounds. This same trend is also very present in Europe, mostly because of capital lacking. Very interesting to note: in deep tech this trend is going in the opposite direction, most probably because of the high capital requirement necessary.

Because of the same reason, and for the lack of capital in the market, safe are eating seed rounds alive in the US in H1 2024. As you can imagine, this is going in line with the amount of capital raised, as more capital is injected, as more structured the investor and the deal it is, minor is the value you can get using a safe.

Unrelated to the safe topic probably, but still very interesting, you can see here a study on the amount of years between each round from 2019 to 2024. The overall trend here is that the amount of time spent in each phase is rising, probably a direct consequence of the lower amount of capital available in the market recently, with startups trying to extend runway as much as possible.

And finally, an overview on valuations between Q1 and Q2, again US based. In terms of valuations, we can see a clear positive trend going on, impacting all stages, except for series A (-0.2%). This is surely a good point for the entire ecosystem, as we are finally starting to see valuation rising up again after years of downturn in the industry.

I think that from those data it is clear that something in the ecosystem changed over the last two years, with a strong change of mentality also for founders, that are trying to de-risk and think more in terms of long term sustainability.

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. Salesforce acquired PoS startup PredictSpring , while Klarna is pushing for a secondary share sales ahead of the IPO. Apple is fighting with Weixin/WeChat parent company Tencent, while Payoneer bought Skuad for $61 million in cash and X wants to introduce the payment button very soon. In the VC industry, VC Partners raised $65 million for a first fund, Thrive Capital raised $5 billion for its biggest fund ever, and Moxxie Ventures raised $90 million for a third fund. In the italian market, proptech Casavo raised $20 million from UniCredit , while the french payment provider Lemonway has been blocked from Banca d'Italia - Eurosistema to onboard new customers. Finally, some very interesting funding round from fintech startups like GCash , Savvy Wealth , Qardy , Monkey , Stori , ACE Alternatives , Mintos , CloudPay and many others.

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

Closed deals

• Morpho Labs secures a $50 million round led by Ribbit Capital
• Bilt Rewards secures $150 million in new funding to enhance its rewarding and loyalty program
• GCash, financial super app in the Philippines, sees its valuation rising to $5 billion after strategic investments from Ayala Corporation and Mitsubishi Corporation
• Global Predictions Inc's PortfolioPilot raises $2 million in a seed round
• Savvy Wealth secures a $26.5 million series A funding round in wealthtech
• Egyptian based Qardy successfully raised a seven figure pre seed investment
• Brazilian fintech Monkey secures a R$67 million series B for its financial services marketplace
• MBS Global Investments enters in Varys Capital as led investor, while the firm is near to close its $75 million funding round
• Berlin based ACE Alternatives secures a seven-figures investment to reshape alternative fund management
• Mexican fintech Stori raises a $212 million funding round
• Layer2 Financial successfully raised a $10.7 million series A to further develop its cross borders payments infrastructure
• Rich Data Co brags a $9 million investment for its AI lending solution
• European alternative investment Mintos raised $3.1 million with a crowdfunding campaign
• Fintech startup Octane® raises a $50 million series E led by Valar Ventures LLC
• ThinCats lands £75m in mezzanine funding from CPP Investments | Investissements RPC
• SKY Brasil ventures into fintech with the launch of six, backed by a $178 million investment
• Payroll service provider CloudPay lands a $120 million funding round
• Trading platform Punch secures a $7 million seed funding round
• Egypt based fintech Lucky ONE secures a $3 million funding round for its credit platform
• finqy

Insights on the VC industry

• CDP Venture Capital SGR, through its fund of funds VentureItaly, invests in $65 million first fund of VC Partners
• Thrive Capital reportedly raising $5 billion for its biggest ever VC funds
• Moxxie Ventures closes a third fund at $95 million
• venBio closes fifth life sciences Venture Capital fund at $528M
• Bitrue venture arm Bitrue Ventures launches a first $40 million fund

News on the market

• Apple is asking Weixin/WeChat parent company Tencent to close loophole in the payment system
• Salesforce acquires fintech PoS startup PredictSpring
• Jio Financial Services just landed its international transactions service in Paris
• KKR to acquire majority position in FGS Global to support long-term growth
• NCR Voyix sells digital banking business for $2.45 billion
• Fintech Payoneer is buying 5-year-old global payroll startup Skuad for $61M in cash
• Klarna is pushing secondary share sale ahead of IPO
• UAE fintech Ziina زينة becomes first venture backed startup to secure a SVF license from Central Bank of The UAE
• X wants to introduce a "payment" button on the social network

A special look in the Italian market

• Italian prop tech Casavo closes a $20 million funding round led by UniCredit
• Lemonway has been blocked by Banca d'Italia - Eurosistema to open new wallets in the country until further notice

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)
• VDS+ | Valencia 23-24.10.2024 (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 #40