VC Deals Only: April 2021

Sunday, April 25, 2021

VC Deals Only: Exclusive: GoalBased Investors Banks $2.75M Seed T...

VC Deals Only: Exclusive: GoalBased Investors Banks $2.75M Seed T...: GoalBased Investors aims to provide access to anyone who wants goal-based financial planning and advice, and now has $2.75 million in n...

Exclusive: GoalBased Investors Banks $2.75M Seed To Gamify Financial Planning

GoalBased Investors aims to provide access to anyone who wants goal-based financial planning and advice, and now has $2.75 million in new seed funding to continue developing its platform.

The New York-based company, founded in 2019, asks users three questions: How much you have now, how much you want to save and the trade-offs you are willing to make. It then matches users and advisers through a free gamified app experience.

“We are creating a platform where conversations can happen,” said Chip Castille, founder of GoalBased Investors who previously spent time as an investment strategist at BlackRock. “We saw people without financial literacy, and we want to help individual investors build a financial plan and lower the barriers around finding advice.”

True Ventures led the seed round with participation from The Venture Collective.

“This team is on a mission to strip away some of the intimidating jargon from financial planning that makes it daunting for people,” said Phil Black, co-founder of True Ventures, in a written statement. “Bridging communication between the average investing consumer and advisors who can help them is an incredible use of technology. We believe in Chip, his team and their honest mission to help people achieve their life goals.”

GoalBased’s smartphone app offers a social media-like interface so the experience is something familiar, Castille said. Even before a plan is set in motion, app users can anonymously and confidentially share information with financial advisers until they get comfortable enough to share additional information.

When speaking with an adviser, goals are expressed in points, Castille explained. Each time the user adds more information or works on their financial plan, points are earned. For example, when the user answers an initial question, they earn 100 points. Someone could then “spend” points in a way to reach their goals, such as spending points to retire three years early or create a college fund, he added.

Because GoalBased is still early in its journey, there are no growth metrics Castille could reveal yet. While the app is free for consumers and advisers, the company aims to monetize the investment manager, he said.

In the meantime, the app will launch this summer, and the new funding is being used to continue testing it with the adviser community. The company is also using advertising to encourage users to get on the waitlist, as well as building out its engineering and sales teams.

“We understand the existing distribution channels and want to make them better,” Castille said. “You will be able to talk to your adviser and say, ‘I’m two points to my goal, what can I add to get there?’ Consumers can express their own way to achieve a goal, and the dialogue will have more meaning.”

Source. Techcruch, Christine Hall, April 22, 2021

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Saturday, April 24, 2021

VC Deals Only: France’s Sendinblue, an all-in-one digital marketi...

VC Deals Only: France’s Sendinblue, an all-in-one digital marketi...: As more companies and brands put the internet at the core of how they run their businesses these days, it’s giving a strong push to the grow...

France’s Sendinblue, an all-in-one digital marketing platform, raises $160M

As more companies and brands put the internet at the core of how they run their businesses these days, it’s giving a strong push to the growth of startups that are building tools to help them. In the latest development, Sendinblue, an eight-year-old French startup that has built a platform to help small and medium organizations run all of their marketing — from email, SMS and chat marketing through to automation services, Facebook ads and retargeting — has picked up $160 million in funding.

Bridgepoint, Bpifrance, Blackrock and previous investor Partech (which led Sendinblue’s $35 million in Series A in 2017) all invested in the round.

The money will be used to help the company build out its presence in North America — where it grew 100% last year — and to continue to add more tools to the mix, both organically and by positioning itself as a consolidator, acquiring smaller marketing tech startups. The company is also building CRM tools and other adjacent areas in the SMB back office, so you can see how it might evolve. It’s profitable and is active already in some 60 countries, with some 180,000 customers on its books.

The huge funding, for a startup that may not have been on many people’s radar — you could say Sendinblue has come out of the blue — is a sign of the times.

SMBs (like retailers and brands doubling down on e-commerce) have long used the internet for marketing, but the recent pandemic, with its social distancing measures, has highlighted just how many people are spending time (and spending money) online, which has led to a boost in how organizations are using the internet to communicate with customers.

“The whole COVID pandemic has accelerated our business,” said Steffen Schebesta, who runs the company’s North American operations (and joined the company when his startup, Newsletter2Go, was acquired several years ago). “We’ve seen a lot of SMBs finding that they need to digitize in order to survive.”

It’s also notable that it’s a French startup raising a large growth round: It’s a signal of how companies from the country are scaling, filling out a mission that French President Emmanuel Macron set out to see the country produce (and invest in) more unicorns.

“Sendinblue is positioned in a growing market as more and more SMBs are going digital, especially in the past few months of lockdown,” said Olivier Nemsguern, partner at Bridgepoint, in a statement. “We seek investments that meet a critical market need. Sendinblue is the perfect example of a company that will make an impact.”

“We have invested in Sendinblue because the company offers innovative solutions for SMBs and has a strong track record of achieving high growth in the U.S. and European market,” added Louis Molis, investment director at Bpifrance. “We’ve seen that Sendinblue’s value is globally extensible and will increase in importance as integrated marketing becomes more important.”

“Sendinblue has quickly become the leading digital-marketing platform for SMBs,” said Bruno Crémel, general partner at Partech. “As demand for all in one platforms increases, Sendinblue has a unique ability to succeed. We are thrilled to continue to support Sendinblue as the company accelerates its next phase of international growth.”

Source. Ingrid Lunden, Tech Crunch, October 1, 2020

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