Blog Archive
Sunday, November 17, 2019
VC Deals Only: VC Deals Only. Weekend Edition. DroneDeploy raises...
VC Deals Only: VC Deals Only. Weekend Edition. DroneDeploy raises...: VC Deals Only HealthCare.com , a NYC-based provider of technology-enabled health insurance solutions, secured $18m in Series B funding. Th...
VC Deals Only. Weekend Edition. DroneDeploy raises $35 million for drone management and logistics tools
VC Deals Only
HealthCare.com, a NYC-based provider of technology-enabled health insurance solutions, secured $18m in Series B funding. The round, which brought the total capital raised to over $27m, was led by Second Alpha Partners, with participation from Axis Capital and CNO Financial Group.The company intends to use the capital to fund technology, engineering and data-science investments, expand consumer experience solutions and accelerate the development and marketing of its proprietary insurance products. More
Chip, the London-based fintech that created an automatic savings account, has raised £7.3 million, with £3.8 million crowdfunded by customers and the remainder from unnamed angel investors. The campaign ran for three weeks in September and is currently Crowdcube’s most participated-in crowdfund, with 7,182 investors. More
LawnStarter, an Austin, TX-based on-demand platform for outdoor services, raised $10.5m in growth funding. The round was led by Edison Partners with participation from existing investor Lerer Hippeau.The company intends to use the funds to continue its growth in lawn care across the US and add new outdoor service lines including landscaping, fertilization, pest control, and tree care.More
Convoy, the digital freight network that connects truckers with shippers, has raised $400 million in a Series D funding round as it aims to scale its business amid an increasingly competitive market.The funding round brings Convoy’s post-money valuation to $2.75 billion.More
Mobile monetization gets harder and harder every year (heck, I’d bet this gets more difficult by the week in this ultra-competitive market). Companies have long been trying to solve this problem for studios and publishers, and the latest one to offer tools to help here is Wappier.Wappier is a platform that uses AI models to predict consumer and user behavior, and it just raised $4 million in a seed round More
DroneDeploy, a startup developing a holistic cloud-based drone mapping and analytics platform, today announced that it’s closed a $35 million series D round led by Bessemer Venture Partners. Energize Ventures, AirTree, Emergence Capital, Scale Venture Partners, and Uncork Capital also participated in the tranche, which follows on the heels of a $20 million series C in June 2018 and brings DroneDeploy’s total raised to $90 million.More
Sponsor
To compliment this platform the company also offers an innovative care management app that centralizes communication and task management among family members and the caregiver, along with a Care Concierge service to help family members with administrative, navigational or organizational tasks.
New Funds
CVC Capital Partners, a private equity and investment advisory firm, closed CVC Growth Partners Fund II, at $1.6 billion.Fund II exceeded its $1 billion target and, including a sidecar co-investment vehicle, has secured commitments of $1.6 billion. Fund II enjoys a diverse global investor base, spread across North America, Europe, the Middle-East and Asia. More
Angular Ventures, the early-stage enterprise and “deep tech”-focused VC firm founded by former DFJ Esprit partner Gil Dibner, is announcing the closing of its debut fund at $41 million. Targeting startups in Europe and Israel, Angular Ventures has been operating in so-called “stealth mode” for almost two years, seeing its portfolio grow to 12 companies. The VC typically invests between $250,000 and $1.5 million, from writing a startup’s first cheque to Series A. It says it aims to do five-seven new investments per year.More
Alibaba
Group Holding, the record holder of the largest global initial public
offering, has unveiled a secondary listing plan in Hong Kong, in a vote
of confidence for the local financial market as the worst political
crisis in the city’s history threatens its status as a global financial
centre.The
e-commerce giant aims to sell 500 million new shares, with 487.5
million set aside for international offering and the rest for Hong Kong
public, according to a filing in New York. More
When Beyond Meat's post-initial public offering expired on October 29, the company's stock fell 24% as roughly 48 million shares suddenly became eligible to trade on the market.In the weeks since, the post-IPO lockup expiration has continued to add downward pressure on shares of the plant-based meat alternatives company. The stock has fallen an additional 6% percent from October 29 through Monday's close. More
Sponsor
This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the venture capital, private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.
Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.
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HealthCare.com, a NYC-based provider of technology-enabled health insurance solutions, secured $18m in Series B funding. The round, which brought the total capital raised to over $27m, was led by Second Alpha Partners, with participation from Axis Capital and CNO Financial Group.The company intends to use the capital to fund technology, engineering and data-science investments, expand consumer experience solutions and accelerate the development and marketing of its proprietary insurance products. More
Chip, the London-based fintech that created an automatic savings account, has raised £7.3 million, with £3.8 million crowdfunded by customers and the remainder from unnamed angel investors. The campaign ran for three weeks in September and is currently Crowdcube’s most participated-in crowdfund, with 7,182 investors. More
LawnStarter, an Austin, TX-based on-demand platform for outdoor services, raised $10.5m in growth funding. The round was led by Edison Partners with participation from existing investor Lerer Hippeau.The company intends to use the funds to continue its growth in lawn care across the US and add new outdoor service lines including landscaping, fertilization, pest control, and tree care.More
Convoy, the digital freight network that connects truckers with shippers, has raised $400 million in a Series D funding round as it aims to scale its business amid an increasingly competitive market.The funding round brings Convoy’s post-money valuation to $2.75 billion.More
Mobile monetization gets harder and harder every year (heck, I’d bet this gets more difficult by the week in this ultra-competitive market). Companies have long been trying to solve this problem for studios and publishers, and the latest one to offer tools to help here is Wappier.Wappier is a platform that uses AI models to predict consumer and user behavior, and it just raised $4 million in a seed round More
DroneDeploy, a startup developing a holistic cloud-based drone mapping and analytics platform, today announced that it’s closed a $35 million series D round led by Bessemer Venture Partners. Energize Ventures, AirTree, Emergence Capital, Scale Venture Partners, and Uncork Capital also participated in the tranche, which follows on the heels of a $20 million series C in June 2018 and brings DroneDeploy’s total raised to $90 million.More
Sponsor
myCareBase™is a platform for seniors and their families to find, evaluate, hire and manage home support services, to improve the seniors’ ability to remain living safely in their current home for as long as possible. The caregiver marketplace currently offers candidates in Greater Toronto and Greater Vancouver.
New Funds
CVC Capital Partners, a private equity and investment advisory firm, closed CVC Growth Partners Fund II, at $1.6 billion.Fund II exceeded its $1 billion target and, including a sidecar co-investment vehicle, has secured commitments of $1.6 billion. Fund II enjoys a diverse global investor base, spread across North America, Europe, the Middle-East and Asia. More
Angular Ventures, the early-stage enterprise and “deep tech”-focused VC firm founded by former DFJ Esprit partner Gil Dibner, is announcing the closing of its debut fund at $41 million. Targeting startups in Europe and Israel, Angular Ventures has been operating in so-called “stealth mode” for almost two years, seeing its portfolio grow to 12 companies. The VC typically invests between $250,000 and $1.5 million, from writing a startup’s first cheque to Series A. It says it aims to do five-seven new investments per year.More
IPOs
When Beyond Meat's post-initial public offering expired on October 29, the company's stock fell 24% as roughly 48 million shares suddenly became eligible to trade on the market.In the weeks since, the post-IPO lockup expiration has continued to add downward pressure on shares of the plant-based meat alternatives company. The stock has fallen an additional 6% percent from October 29 through Monday's close. More
Sponsor
This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the venture capital, private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.
Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.
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Exits
Epic Games announced it has acquired Quixel,
a startup that created a huge “photogrammetry” asset library of real
world imagery that can be used in animated films or video games. More
Friday, November 15, 2019
VC Deals Only: AMP Robotics raises $16 million to sort recyclable...
VC Deals Only: AMP Robotics raises $16 million to sort recyclable...: AMP Robotics, a Denver, Colorado-based startup creating robotic systems that sort recyclable material, this morning announced that it has ...
AMP Robotics raises $16 million to sort recyclable materials autonomously
AMP Robotics, a Denver, Colorado-based startup creating robotic systems
that sort recyclable material, this morning announced that it has closed
a $16 million series A funding round led by Sequoia Capital. BV, Closed
Loop Partners, Congruent Ventures, and Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners
(an infrastructure firm spun out of Sidewalk Labs and backed by
Alphabet and the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan) also participated in
the round, which brings AMP Robotics’ total raised to nearly $20 million
following a seed round totaling $3.5 million.
The news comes just over a month after AMP Robotics installed 14 of its AI-guided
robots at Single Stream Recyclers in Florida — the single largest
global deployment in the recycling industry, the company claims —
following deployments at facilities in California, Colorado, Indiana,
Minnesota, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin, and
elsewhere in the U.S. CEO Matanya Horowitz said the newfound capital
will bolster AMP Robotics’ operations in the nearly $12.26 billion waste sorting robotics market and drive product research and development.
"Our new partners at Sequoia have a history of building category-defining
businesses, and we are deeply excited to be executing on this vision
with their experience, along with our existing world-class consortium of
investors,” said Horowitz, who founded AMP Robotics in 2015. “We are
perfectly positioned to expand the scope of our technology and the
geographies where we do business, furthering our mission to change the
fundamental economics of recycling and help make the circular economy
possible.”
AMP Robotics asserts its platform delivers higher and more consistent
pick rates than typical manual processes and that it offers holistic
monitoring of material streams without requiring retrofitting. It’s
modular in design, enabling facilities mangers to adapt it to existing
workflows, and it’s tailored to individual brands and SKUs of recyclable
objects. To this end, AMP Robotics’ products can process not only
metals, batteries, capacitors, plastics, PCBs, wires, cartons,
cardboard, cups, aluminum, and thin film, but also materials made of
metal, mixed wood, asphalt, bricks, concrete, and mixed plastics.
AMP Cortex, AMP Robotics’ robotics control system, leverages a
combination of AI algorithms and physical robots to orchestrate sorting,
picking, and placing tasks. A three-armed picker machine with an
adaptable frame area and height sits over a conveyor belt, held in place
by a moveable steel frame. It’s fed data from AMP Neuron, which uses
computer vision to distinguish visual features and self-improves by
processing “millions” of images in the cloud across AMP Robotics’
network, such that it’s able to more accurately sort objects and learn
new classes of materials while adapting to packaging design and lighting
changes.
All that data feeds into AMP Insights, an online visualization tool
that monitors material stream activity and performance. Real-time
notifications sent via text and email keep managers abreast of
goings-on, including potential equipment issues and hazards. And AMP
Insights tracks key commodities to determine things like material
composition per bale, known value created or lost on residual lines, and
per-hauling load.
“We are excited to partner with AMP because their technology is
changing the economics of the recycling industry,” said Sequoia partner
Shaun Maguire, who plans to join the company’s board of directors. “Over
the last few years, the industry has had their margins squeezed by
labor shortages and low commodity prices. The end result is an industry
proactively searching for cost-saving alternatives and added
opportunities to increase revenue by capturing more high-value
recyclables, and AMP is emerging as the leading solution.”
Source. Venture Beat, Kyle Wiggers, November 14, 2019
This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the venture capital, private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.
Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.
Serving Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa and Halifax.
***
This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the venture capital, private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.
Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.
Serving Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa and Halifax.
Thursday, November 14, 2019
VC Deals Only: Convoy raises $400 million to expand its on-demand...
VC Deals Only: Convoy raises $400 million to expand its on-demand...: Convoy, the digital freight network that connects truckers with shippers, has raised $400 million in a Series D funding round as it ai...
Convoy raises $400 million to expand its on-demand trucking platform
Convoy,
the digital freight network that connects truckers with shippers, has
raised $400 million in a Series D funding round as it aims to scale its
business amid an increasingly competitive market.
The round was co-led by Generation Investment Management and previous Convoy investor T. Rowe Price Associates. Asset management firm Baillie Gifford, which has fondness for pre-IPO tech companies, Fidelity and Durable Capital Partners, as well as Series C investors CapitalG and Lone Pine Capital, also participated in the round.
Convoy has managed to attract a slew of high-profile investors — and their capital — such as Jeff Bezos, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and even U2’s Bono and the Edge. In the four years since its founding, Convoy has raised a total of more than $668 million. Early investors include Greylock Partners, Y Combinator, Cascade Investment (the private investment vehicle of Bill Gates) and Code.org founders Hadi and Ali Partovi.
And that money has been put to work. Convoy co-founders Dan Lewis and Grant Goodale set out in 2015 to modernize freight brokerage, a fragmented and oftentimes analog business that matches loads from shippers with truckers.
The company has gone from hundreds of loads per week in 2016 to tens of thousands per week across the U.S. Notably, Convoy’s platform handles 100% of the matching, as opposed to having humans complete the task.
Convoy also has about 100 routes, many of them concentrated around economic hubs such as Chicago, Michigan and California, Lewis told TechCrunch.
The 850-person company wants to accelerate those efforts with capital raised in this latest round. However, it’s bound to face more competition. Uber Freight, Loadsmart and Flexport are just a few online marketplaces that are targeting freight.
Convoy has added new features to its platform as part of its scaling strategy. The company launched in 2019 an automated reloads feature that allows truckers to book multiple loads at a time. It also added Convoy Go, which allows drivers to bring their truck cab and hook up to a trailer pre-filled with cargo.
Source. TechCrunch, Kirsten Korosec, November 13, 2019
This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the venture capital, private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.
Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.
Serving Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa and Halifax.
***
This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the venture capital, private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.
Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.
Serving Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa and Halifax.
Wednesday, November 13, 2019
VC Deals Only: LawnStarter Raises $10.5M in Growth Funding
VC Deals Only: LawnStarter Raises $10.5M in Growth Funding: LawnStarte r , an Austin, TX-based on-demand platform for outdoor services, raised $10.5m in growth funding. The round was led by Ed...
LawnStarter Raises $10.5M in Growth Funding
LawnStarter, an Austin, TX-based on-demand platform for outdoor services, raised $10.5m in growth funding.
The round was led by Edison Partners with participation from existing investor Lerer Hippeau.
The company intends to use the funds to continue its growth in lawn
care across the US and add new outdoor service lines including
landscaping, fertilization, pest control, and tree care.
Led by CEO and co-founder Steve Corcoran, LawnStarter provides an
online marketplace for consumers and lawn care professionals. Through
its online presence and its app, the company provides instant quotes for
consumers, who can schedule lawn mowing and related lawn-care services
from insured professionals.
The company handles marketing, billing, scheduling and other back-office operations so that pros can focus on delivering the service. Additionally, LawnStarter’s algorithms use geolocation data to help pros build route density, increasing their profitability.
Source. FinSMEs, November 12, 2019
This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the venture capital, private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.
Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.
Serving Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa and Halifax.
***
This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the venture capital, private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.
Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.
Serving Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa and Halifax.
Tuesday, November 12, 2019
VC Deals Only: London-based fintech Chip raises £7.3 million thro...
VC Deals Only: London-based fintech Chip raises £7.3 million thro...: Chip , the London-based fintech that created an automatic savings account, has raised £7.3 million, with £3.8 million crowdfunded by cu...
London-based fintech Chip raises £7.3 million through angel and crowdfunding
Chip,
the London-based fintech that created an automatic savings account, has
raised £7.3 million, with £3.8 million crowdfunded by customers and the
remainder from unnamed angel investors. The campaign ran for three
weeks in September and is currently Crowdcube’s most participated-in
crowdfund, with 7,182 investors.
The startup provides a free app “to make saving as easy as spending.” The AI-driven system calculates how much a user could save, gives the option to decline it, and then automatically transfers the amount to user’s Chip account. Chip has saved over £85 million for its users to date.
CEO Simon Rabin commented: “The most powerful way for Chip to grow is to have thousands of investors advocating for the product they believe in. It’s amazing to have this many Chip savers as investors in the company. We’ve proven there’s a big demand for Chip, and we’re ready to scale – we’re going to use our investment to grow and deliver a product that will fill a huge gap in the market. Many of the other big names in fintech are focussed on making spending easier. Monzo have the current account, Curve are disrupting credit cards, Revolut have the travel card, but Chip… Chip is for saving.”
The fintech will use the funds to increase the app’s capacity for large volumes of users, refining the infrastructure and expanding the team. THe plan is also to expand the product to offer access to FSCS protected accounts and deliver an in-app marketplace for returns products.
Already the company has made a number of senior hires, all fintech veterans: David Kavanagh (CTO), former CTO of Purplebricks; Sharon Miles (COO), former innovation director of B2B fintech unicorn Deposit Solutions, as well as Barclays and LeasePlan; Gerard Hurley (CCO), former compliance lead at Funding Circle and an ex-FCA regulator; Gary Dolman (Board Advisor), co-founder and recently retired CFO of Monzo.
New CTO David Kavanagh said: “The savings market is archaic, broken and ineffective. People want more from their savings accounts, so they are voting with their capital. Chip has raised VC-levels of funding from its users and supporters, demonstrating that what customers want is a market-changing product that is easy to use, helps them save, and offers the best possible rates in the market. It’s an incredibly exciting time for the company and I’m delighted to have joined it as such a pivotal stage. I look forward to working with the team at Chip to help set a new standard for savings apps.”
The startup provides a free app “to make saving as easy as spending.” The AI-driven system calculates how much a user could save, gives the option to decline it, and then automatically transfers the amount to user’s Chip account. Chip has saved over £85 million for its users to date.
CEO Simon Rabin commented: “The most powerful way for Chip to grow is to have thousands of investors advocating for the product they believe in. It’s amazing to have this many Chip savers as investors in the company. We’ve proven there’s a big demand for Chip, and we’re ready to scale – we’re going to use our investment to grow and deliver a product that will fill a huge gap in the market. Many of the other big names in fintech are focussed on making spending easier. Monzo have the current account, Curve are disrupting credit cards, Revolut have the travel card, but Chip… Chip is for saving.”
The fintech will use the funds to increase the app’s capacity for large volumes of users, refining the infrastructure and expanding the team. THe plan is also to expand the product to offer access to FSCS protected accounts and deliver an in-app marketplace for returns products.
Already the company has made a number of senior hires, all fintech veterans: David Kavanagh (CTO), former CTO of Purplebricks; Sharon Miles (COO), former innovation director of B2B fintech unicorn Deposit Solutions, as well as Barclays and LeasePlan; Gerard Hurley (CCO), former compliance lead at Funding Circle and an ex-FCA regulator; Gary Dolman (Board Advisor), co-founder and recently retired CFO of Monzo.
New CTO David Kavanagh said: “The savings market is archaic, broken and ineffective. People want more from their savings accounts, so they are voting with their capital. Chip has raised VC-levels of funding from its users and supporters, demonstrating that what customers want is a market-changing product that is easy to use, helps them save, and offers the best possible rates in the market. It’s an incredibly exciting time for the company and I’m delighted to have joined it as such a pivotal stage. I look forward to working with the team at Chip to help set a new standard for savings apps.”
Source. Tech.Eu,. Annie Musgrove, November 6, 2019
This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the venture capital, private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.
Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.
Serving Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa and Halifax.
***
This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the venture capital, private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.
Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.
Serving Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa and Halifax.
Monday, November 11, 2019
VC Deals Only: HealthCare.com Secures $18M in Series B Funding
VC Deals Only: HealthCare.com Secures $18M in Series B Funding: HealthCare.com , a NYC-based provider of technology-enabled health insurance solutions, secured $18m in Series B funding. The round,...
HealthCare.com Secures $18M in Series B Funding
HealthCare.com, a NYC-based provider of technology-enabled health insurance solutions, secured $18m in Series B funding.
The round, which brought the total capital raised to over $27m, was
led by Second Alpha Partners, with participation from Axis Capital and
CNO Financial Group.
The company intends to use the capital to fund technology,
engineering and data-science investments, expand consumer experience
solutions and accelerate the development and marketing of its
proprietary insurance products.
Founded in 2014 by Howard Yeh, Jeff Smedsrud and Jose Vargas,
HealthCare.com is an online health insurance company providing a
data-driven shopping platform for American consumers to enroll in
individual health insurance and Medicare plans. The company also
develops and markets a portfolio of proprietary, direct-to-consumer
health insurance and supplemental insurance products under the name
Pivot Health.
Source. FinSMEs. November 11, 2019
***
This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the venture capital, private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.
Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.
Serving Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa and Halifax.
Sunday, November 10, 2019
VC Deals Only. Weekend Edition. Anti-Fraud Startup Riskified Raises $165 Million
VC Deals
Counterfeiting isn’t a new problem, but it’s a growing one. The
global market for fake goods is estimated to exceed $1.2 trillion.
Counterfeits take roughly $300 billion worth of revenue away from brands
that have to compete with them. In worse news still, roughly two out of
every five products purchased online was counterfeit, according to the
U.S. Government of Accountability Office.Perhaps it’s unsurprising that fraud prevention and phishing detection startup RedMarlin
recently secured capital from an investor cohort. The Los Altos-based
company this morning announced that it has raised $10 million in series A
funding. More
As the UK continues on its slow march to leave the European Union, a London-based startup that enables companies to work internationally has raised a huge round of funding from a strategic backer to expand its business. Ebury, which provides foreign exchange, money transfer and other currency services to small and medium businesses and their banking partners, has picked up £350 million (about €400 million, or $452 million) led by Spanish banking giant Santander. With the deal, Madrid-based Santander will become a majority shareholder at 50.1% but notes that Ebury will continue to operate as an independent entity. More
FreeTrade the U.K. challenger stockbroker that offers commission-free investing, has closed $15 million in Series A funding. The round includes a $7.5 million investment from Draper Esprit, the U.K. publicly listed venture capital firm, along with previously announced equity crowdfunding via Crowdcube.The funding will be used by Freetrade for further growth and product development, including “doubling down” on engineering hires. The firm, which claims more than 50,000 customers, is also planning to expand to Europe next year. More
Faire, a curated wholesale marketplace that connects independent retailers and makers, raised $150m in Series D funding round at $1 billion valuation.The round was co-led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Founders Fund with participation from existing investors including Forerunner Ventures, YC Continuity, and Khosla Ventures.The company, which has raised $266m in total funding to date, intends to use the funds to expand into new markets, improve the marketplace, and continue building its tools. More
Boston-based PathAI, maker of artificial intelligence tools for pathology, has capped off its Series B funding round with a $15 million strategic investment from the Merck Global Health Innovation Fund and Bristol-Myers Squibb. This raise brings the startup’s full round to $75 million, and its total funding to just over $90 million. More
Tel Aviv-based online payments fraud prevention startup Riskified Ltd. has completed a $165 million funding round, the company announced Tuesday. The round was led by New York-based General Atlantic according to a company valuation of more than $1 billion, the company said. Minneapolis-based Winslow Capital participated in the round, as did existing investors Qumra Capital, Entrée Capital, and Pitango Venture Capital. More
Sponsor
myCareBase™is a platform for seniors and their families to find, evaluate, hire and manage home support services, to improve the seniors’ ability to remain living safely in their current home for as long as possible. The caregiver marketplace currently offers candidates in Greater Toronto and Greater Vancouver.
To compliment this platform the company also offers an innovative care management app that centralizes communication and task management among family members and the caregiver, along with a Care Concierge service to help family members with administrative, navigational or organizational tasks.
New Funds
London-based VC firm Frog Capital has announced the first close of its second scale-up fund, which is expected to accumulate over €150 million. The fund is dedicated to European software companies that earn around €5 million in annual revenue. More
Foresite Capital has launched a new incubator with one goal in mind: to help usher in a transformation in healthcare.Led by Foresite's managing director—Vik Bajaj, Ph.D., a former exec at Verily and Grail—the incubator, dubbed Foresite Labs, will sit at the intersection of data science and healthcare. More
Aspirant Group, a Japanese middle-market buyout firm, closed a ¥50 Billion fund. AG III’s commitments were secured from European and U.S. investors, and several global fund of funds, as well as major Japan institutional investors. Investors included major financial institutions, pension plans, asset managers, and family offices. More
Sponsor
This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the venture capital, private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.
Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.
Serving Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa and Halifax.
IPOs
China’s Megvii Technology Ltd. is considering whether to delay its initial public offering given uncertainty over whether it can secure its existing $4 billion valuation while on an American blacklist, according to people familiar with the matter. More
Chinese autonomous air mobility company EHang has filed with the SEC the paperwork required to go public in the U.S. on the Nasdaq exchange, with a $100 million initial public offering. The company, which has been flying demonstration flights with passengers on board for a while now, is gearing up to launch its first commercial service in Guangzhou after getting approval from local and national regulators to deploy its drones in the area. More
Exits
Veeva Systems is buying Crossix Solutions with an eye to integrating the Veeva healthcare professional (HCP) cloud software services with the more patient-centric Crossix data and analytics.Under the $430 million cash deal, Crossix will remain an independent unit inside Veeva called Veeva Crossix and will continue to be run by Crossix CEO Asaf Evenhaim. More
As the UK continues on its slow march to leave the European Union, a London-based startup that enables companies to work internationally has raised a huge round of funding from a strategic backer to expand its business. Ebury, which provides foreign exchange, money transfer and other currency services to small and medium businesses and their banking partners, has picked up £350 million (about €400 million, or $452 million) led by Spanish banking giant Santander. With the deal, Madrid-based Santander will become a majority shareholder at 50.1% but notes that Ebury will continue to operate as an independent entity. More
FreeTrade the U.K. challenger stockbroker that offers commission-free investing, has closed $15 million in Series A funding. The round includes a $7.5 million investment from Draper Esprit, the U.K. publicly listed venture capital firm, along with previously announced equity crowdfunding via Crowdcube.The funding will be used by Freetrade for further growth and product development, including “doubling down” on engineering hires. The firm, which claims more than 50,000 customers, is also planning to expand to Europe next year. More
Faire, a curated wholesale marketplace that connects independent retailers and makers, raised $150m in Series D funding round at $1 billion valuation.The round was co-led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Founders Fund with participation from existing investors including Forerunner Ventures, YC Continuity, and Khosla Ventures.The company, which has raised $266m in total funding to date, intends to use the funds to expand into new markets, improve the marketplace, and continue building its tools. More
Boston-based PathAI, maker of artificial intelligence tools for pathology, has capped off its Series B funding round with a $15 million strategic investment from the Merck Global Health Innovation Fund and Bristol-Myers Squibb. This raise brings the startup’s full round to $75 million, and its total funding to just over $90 million. More
Tel Aviv-based online payments fraud prevention startup Riskified Ltd. has completed a $165 million funding round, the company announced Tuesday. The round was led by New York-based General Atlantic according to a company valuation of more than $1 billion, the company said. Minneapolis-based Winslow Capital participated in the round, as did existing investors Qumra Capital, Entrée Capital, and Pitango Venture Capital. More
Sponsor
myCareBase™is a platform for seniors and their families to find, evaluate, hire and manage home support services, to improve the seniors’ ability to remain living safely in their current home for as long as possible. The caregiver marketplace currently offers candidates in Greater Toronto and Greater Vancouver.
To compliment this platform the company also offers an innovative care management app that centralizes communication and task management among family members and the caregiver, along with a Care Concierge service to help family members with administrative, navigational or organizational tasks.
New Funds
London-based VC firm Frog Capital has announced the first close of its second scale-up fund, which is expected to accumulate over €150 million. The fund is dedicated to European software companies that earn around €5 million in annual revenue. More
Foresite Capital has launched a new incubator with one goal in mind: to help usher in a transformation in healthcare.Led by Foresite's managing director—Vik Bajaj, Ph.D., a former exec at Verily and Grail—the incubator, dubbed Foresite Labs, will sit at the intersection of data science and healthcare. More
Aspirant Group, a Japanese middle-market buyout firm, closed a ¥50 Billion fund. AG III’s commitments were secured from European and U.S. investors, and several global fund of funds, as well as major Japan institutional investors. Investors included major financial institutions, pension plans, asset managers, and family offices. More
Sponsor
This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the venture capital, private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.
Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.
Serving Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa and Halifax.
IPOs
China’s Megvii Technology Ltd. is considering whether to delay its initial public offering given uncertainty over whether it can secure its existing $4 billion valuation while on an American blacklist, according to people familiar with the matter. More
Chinese autonomous air mobility company EHang has filed with the SEC the paperwork required to go public in the U.S. on the Nasdaq exchange, with a $100 million initial public offering. The company, which has been flying demonstration flights with passengers on board for a while now, is gearing up to launch its first commercial service in Guangzhou after getting approval from local and national regulators to deploy its drones in the area. More
Exits
Veeva Systems is buying Crossix Solutions with an eye to integrating the Veeva healthcare professional (HCP) cloud software services with the more patient-centric Crossix data and analytics.Under the $430 million cash deal, Crossix will remain an independent unit inside Veeva called Veeva Crossix and will continue to be run by Crossix CEO Asaf Evenhaim. More
VC Deals Only: VC Deals Only. Weekend Edition. Anti-Fraud Startup...
VC Deals Only: VC Deals Only. Weekend Edition. Anti-Fraud Startup...: VC Dea ls Counterfeiting isn’t a new problem, but it’s a growing one. The global market for fake goods is estimated to exceed $1.2 ...
Wednesday, November 6, 2019
VC Deals Only: RedMarlin raises $10 million to fight counterfeiti...
VC Deals Only: RedMarlin raises $10 million to fight counterfeiti...: Counterfeiting isn’t a new problem, but it’s a growing one. The global market for fake goods is estimated to exceed $1.2 trillion. Counte...
RedMarlin raises $10 million to fight counterfeiting with AI
Counterfeiting isn’t a new problem, but it’s a growing one. The
global market for fake goods is estimated to exceed $1.2 trillion.
Counterfeits take roughly $300 billion worth of revenue away from brands
that have to compete with them. In worse news still, roughly two out of
every five products purchased online was counterfeit, according to the
U.S. Government of Accountability Office.
Perhaps it’s unsurprising that fraud prevention and phishing detection startup RedMarlin
recently secured capital from an investor cohort. The Los Altos-based
company this morning announced that it has raised $10 million in series A
funding co-led by Thomvest Ventures and Crosslink Capital, with
participation from Cyber Mentor Fund, Nexxus Venture Partners, and Rain
Capital. CEO Abhishek Dubey said the new funds will be used to grow
RedMarlin’s engineering and sales teams while furthering its
go-to-market strategy.
The funding comes after a year in which RedMarlin’s revenue grew tenfold.
“In today’s digital marketplace, phishing and fraud are [paramount]
security issues to brands. By providing an effective, accurate, and
robust automated system, we are already helping companies in the
finance, travel, transport, social media, and SaaS sectors grow more
confidently and have a robust strategy in place to continue fueling
growth into new sectors,” said Dubey, who cofounded RedMarlin in 2017
with Shashi Prakash.
The natural language understanding and computer vision algorithms
underlying RedMarlin’s platform learn from corpora containing millions
of samples, RedMarlin says. They’re able to detect an instance of brand
hijacking on a webpage, email, or social network in as little as
milliseconds and can understand intent from text snippets alone. More
impressive still, they automatically collect evidence such as
screenshots, web host details, and web history while scaling via APIs
from thousands to millions of queries per day.
RedMarlin’s platform alerts customers when it detects incriminating
info regarding kit authors, stolen credentials, and more. And it sends
takedown notifications and reports websites to blacklists autonomously,
in partnership with global counterfeit and phishing registries.
RedMarlin’s complementary anti-phishing solution, CheckPhish.AI,
provides a URL scanning service that detects tech support and gift card
scams, drug spam websites, rogue streaming sites, gambling websites, and
more using machine learning. The company says over 101 Fortune 500
companies have used CheckFish to scan more than 600 million URLs to
date.
The global anti-counterfeit technologies market is anticipated to be
worth $104 billion by the end of 2024, and RedMarlin is far from the
only startup gunning for a slice of it. One rival is Spain-based Red Points,
which raised $38 million in April to further develop its tools to fight
counterfeiting and piracy. Another is 3PM Marketplace Solutions, a
Chicago-based company that’s worked with clients like HBO to spot
counterfeit products.
But Crosslink Capital’s Matt Bigge has faith in RedMarlin’s ability to stand out.
“The deep experience of the RedMarlin team has helped them gain
evangelical praise from early customers,” he said. “More so, the
automation capabilities they’ve built, which solve critical customer
challenges both in resources and productivity, have already proven to
exceed anything available in this huge and underserved market.”
Source. Kyle Wiggers, VentureBeat, November 5, 2019
***
This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the venture capital, private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.
Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.
Serving Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa and Halifax.
Tuesday, November 5, 2019
VC Deals Only: Ebury nabs £350M for foreign exchange and currency...
VC Deals Only: Ebury nabs £350M for foreign exchange and currency...: As the UK continues on its slow march to leave the European Union, a London-based startup that enables companies to work internationall...
Ebury nabs £350M for foreign exchange and currency services for SMEs, Santander takes 50.1% stake
As the UK
continues on its slow march to leave the European Union, a London-based
startup that enables companies to work internationally has raised a huge
round of funding from a strategic backer to expand its business. Ebury,
which provides foreign exchange, money transfer and other currency
services to small and medium businesses and their banking partners, has picked up £350 million
(about €400 million, or $452 million) led by Spanish banking giant
Santander. With the deal, Madrid-based Santander will become a majority
shareholder at 50.1% but notes that Ebury will continue to operate as an
independent entity.
Ebury and Santander said that the funding
will be used to support Ebury’s growth, and specifically to scale its
customer base in Latin America and Asia, while at the same time bolting
on more modern services to Santander’s offerings as it seeks both to
expand its revenues from existing customers and take on new ones.
Santander
said that it has 4 million SME customers globally, and currently more
than 200,000 of them do international business, while Ebury is already
operating 19 countries and covers 140 currencies, with annual revenue
growth of 40% in each of the last three years.
But putting to one
side 4 million businesses, even providing services to 200,000 customers
would be a big step up for Ebury: the company said that last year it
processed £16.7 billion in payments for just 43,000 clients.
Santander
said that its investment gives it a 50.1% stake in the company, but it
is not disclosing total valuation. On a straight percentage, it would
work out to about £700 million, or $902 million, but it sounds like the
deal includes both primary and secondary investment — “£70 million will
be new primary equity (approximately €80 million) to support Ebury’s
plans to enter new markets in Latin America and Asia,” the companies
note — and that could change the numbers. Santander is optimistic and
said it expects a return on its invested capital in Eubury of higher
than 25% in 2024.
Ebury’s existing investors and co-founders and
management will also invest in the transaction. Past backers include
83North (formerly Greylock Israel) and Vitruvian Partners, among others.
Founded in 2009, it has to date raised $134 million.
Services
that Ebury currently provides include currency transfer and exchange,
but it looks like there will be more down the line. Just last month, Ebury announced
that it had acquired another fintech called Frontierpay, which
specialises in international payroll solutions. The deal is still going
through regulatory approavals.
Many have lamented the fact that
startups out of Europe find it hard to scale and grow and need to look
to markets like the US for that kind of funding and support — often
relocating in the process. Fintech is one of the big areas that bucks
this trend.
Adyen built and still operates its successful online
payments business out of the Netherlands; Revolut, Monzo and a wave of
other so-called ‘challenger banks’ are revisiting what it means to
provide banking services to consumers and businesses; and TransferWise —
itself a major player in currency transfer services focusing both on
individuals as well as businesses — are among the many that have scaled
internationally out of Europe and have valuations in the billions.
Indeed, it’s competition from the likes of TransferWise that may have spurred Santander to invest in Ebury.
If
bringing Ebury’s technology to the Santander platform will give the
legacy bank a better way of competing in a market that’s seeing a lot of
challengers at the moment, it also gives Ebury a stronger underpinning
for those skeptical of doing business with a newer startup.
“Combining
a big bank with nimble fintech means we can offer our clients the best
of both worlds: they can benefit from our technology and high- quality
service safe in the knowledge that they are counterparty to one of the
world most important financial institutions,” said Juan Lobato and
Salvador García, co-founders of Ebury, in a joint statement. “It is an
exciting time for Ebury, we have just completed our first acquisition,
and the new capital from Santander and our existing shareholders will
allow us to invest in new ways to serve SMEs trading internationally and
continue the growth in our business while keeping our entrepreneurial
culture.”
Santander is not a stranger to making strategic
investments in financial technology startups to grow its business,
specifically by integrating or co-marketing those services alongside its
own. It made an early strategic investment in Sweden’s iZettle,
a Square competitor, that brought the startup into Latin America, and
specifically as a co-provider of services to Santander’s customers in
the region. Although it looked like iZettle could eventually get gobbled
up by Santander, in the end, it was acquired by PayPal for $2.2 billion.
As
with the iZettle investment, the focus for Santander here is on
providing more services for SMEs, a huge sector that is fragmented and
often overlooked and underserved against the bookends of mass-market
consumer services and high-touch, high-end large enterprise services.
The gap in turn becomes an opportunity.
“Small and medium-sized
businesses are a major engine of growth around the world, creating new
jobs and contributing up to 60% of total employment and up to 40% of
national GDP in emerging economies,” said Ana Botín, Group Executive
Chairman of Banco Santander, in a statement. “SMEs are becoming
increasingly global and Santander is the best positioned bank to play a
leading role to help them access global trade finance. By partnering
with Ebury, Santander will deliver faster and more efficient products
and services for SMEs, previously only accessible to larger corporates.”
Source. TechCrunch, Ingrid Lunden, November 4, 2019
***
This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the venture capital, private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.
Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.
Serving Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa and Halifax.
Monday, November 4, 2019
VC Deals Only: Freetrade, the UK challenger stockbroker, complete...
VC Deals Only: Freetrade, the UK challenger stockbroker, complete...: FreeTrade the U.K. challenger stockbroker that offers commission-free investing, has closed $15 million in Series A funding. The round in...
Freetrade, the UK challenger stockbroker, completes $15M Series A
FreeTrade the U.K. challenger stockbroker that offers
commission-free investing, has closed $15 million in Series A funding.
The round includes a $7.5 million investment from Draper Esprit, the
U.K. publicly listed venture capital firm, along with previously
announced equity crowdfunding via Crowdcube.
The funding will be used by Freetrade
for further growth and product development, including “doubling down”
on engineering hires. The firm, which claims more than 50,000 customers,
is also planning to expand to Europe next year.
In addition, Adam
Dodds, CEO and founder of Freetrade, tells me there will be a marketing
and content push to help reach more of the challenger stockbroker’s
target millennial customers and help educate the market as a whole that
investing in the stock market doesn’t have to be prohibitively expensive
or complicated.
Amongst a number of new stock trading and investment apps in the U.K., London-based Freetrade was first out of the gate as a bona fide “challenger broker”
after deciding early on to build its own brokerage. This included
obtaining a full broker license from the FCA, rather than simply
partnering with an established broker.
continued below
______________________________________________________________
Sponsor
myCareBase™
is a platform for seniors and their families to find, evaluate, hire
and manage home support services, to improve the seniors’ ability to
remain living safely in their current home for as long as possible. The
caregiver marketplace currently offers candidates in Greater Toronto and
Greater Vancouver.
To compliment this platform the company also offers an innovative care management app that centralizes communication and task management among family members and the caregiver, along with a Care Concierge service to help family members with administrative, navigational or organizational tasks.
________________________________________
The Freetrade app lets you
invest in stocks and ETFs. Trades are “fee-free” if you are happy for
your buy or sell trades to execute at the close of business each day. If
you want to execute immediately, the startup charges a low £1 per
trade. The idea is to put the heat on the larger incumbents that can
charge up to £12 per trade, which is off-putting to people wanting to
only invest a small amount or regularly refresh a modestly sized
portfolio.
Meanwhile, Dodds says that next on the product roadmap
will be a new investment platform that will give users the option to
purchase U.K. and European “fractional” shares, not just U.S. ones,
which he claims will be a first.
With that said, competition has been steadily increasing since Freetrade set up shop. Silicon Valley’s Robinhood is gearing up for a U.K. launch, having recently received regulatory approval. Bux has also recently launched commission-free trading
and now bills itself as a challenger broker just like Freetrade.
Then,
of course, there’s Revolut, the fast-growing challenger bank that
tentatively launched fee-free stock investing in August.
Noteworthy,
André Mohamed, previously CTO and a co-founder of Freetrade, joined
Revolut as its new head of Wealth & Trading Product, adding a bit of
extra spice to that rivalry. As I wrote
at the time, the circumstances that saw Mohamed depart Freetrade remain
unclear. According to my sources, his contract was terminated last year
and the two parties settled, with Freetrade accepting no liability.
“Freetrade are on a mission to open up investment opportunities for everyone, as are we,” says Simon Cook, CEO of Draper Esprit,
in a statement. “In this sense, their mission is totally aligned with
our own, as a rare tech-focused VC listed on the stock exchange. The
company have shown exceptional growth in the short time since they first
launched the platform last year. We could not be more delighted to
support Adam, Viktor, Ian and their wider team as they enable Europe’s
100 million millennials to benefit from the world’s economic growth.”
Source. TechCrunch, Steve O'Hear, October 31, 2019
***
This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the venture capital, private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.
Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.
Serving Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa and Halifax.
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