One Raises $17M in Series A Financing

One, a San Francisco, CA-based new digital banking service, raised $17M in Series A financing.

The round, which brought total funding raised to date to $26m, was led by Foundation Capital, Core Innovation Capital, and Obvious Ventures.

The company intends to use the funds to scale its services to more customers ahead of a public launch this summer.

Co-founded by Chairman Bill Harris, who is the former CEO of Intuit, the founding CEO of PayPal and founder and former CEO of Personal Capital; and CEO Brian Hamilton, who is the founding CEO of Azlo, co-founder of PushPoint, a company acquired by Capital One, and a former SVP at Capital One, One is launching a new digital banking service which will allow middle-class American families to maximize their paychecks. making it easy to save, spend and borrow money. The company is opening up early access to its private beta.

Source. FinSMEs, March 17, 2020

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 & American VCs, PEs, Angels, Family Offices, Endowments/Trusts, and startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.

Are you a Canadian or American GP/LP/CI or an American or 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 the U.S. and Canada

ZenBusiness Raises $15M in Series A Funding

ZenBusiness, an Austin, TX-based online platform to create and run small businesses, closed a $15m Series A venture capital financing.

The round was led by Greycroft, with participation from Lerer Hippeau, and Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund and new investors Rosecliff Venture Partners, Interlock Partners, and Recruit Strategic Partners (RSP).

The company intends to use the funds to further expand its presence and continue to build out the platform and community features.

Led by Ross Buhrdorf, CEO, ZenBusiness provides a leverages Machine Learning (ML) and automation online platform that gives everything needed to start a company as an LLC or Corporation, and operate it over time through a wide array of business services including accounting, taxes, banking, lending and credit, website, domain, and email.

Since its public launch in early 2018, the company has served thousands of small businesses via its platform.

ZenBusiness is a Public Benefit Corporation.

Source. FinSMEs, September 25, 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

Working Capital Financing: Greensill Raises $800M in Funding from SoftBank Vision Fund

Greensill, a London, United Kingdom–based non-bank provider of working capital finance for companies globally, received an $800m in funding.

The SoftBank Vision Fund made the investment.

The company intends to use the funds to:

– accelerate development of new technology to further improve access to capital for companies globally,

– enhance its ability to support the development of a broad, liquid capital market for working capital finance assets, and

– accelerate its recent entry into Brazil and enter multiple global markets including China and India.

Led by Founder and Chief Executive Officer Lex Greensill, Greensill is a provider of working capital finance for companies globally. The company provides businesses with alternative sources of funding, allowing them to provide suppliers with the opportunity for faster payment, while at the same time preserving their own capital position.

Greensill provides Working Capital Finance facilities to customers across Europe, North America, Latin America, Africa, and Asia.

The company owns Greensill Bank, which, founded in Bremen, Germany in 1927, has a suite of proprietary Supply Chain Finance Funds run by world leading fund management organizations, and works with more than 100 institutional investors that together provide stable funding. Greensill has extended more than $60 billion of financing to more than 8 million customers across 60 countries since inception.

The company is headquartered in London with offices in New York, Frankfurt, Chicago, Miami, Singapore, Sao Paulo, Mexico City, Johannesburg, Sydney, Warrington and Bundaberg.

With the Vision Fund, Greensill will build on its partnership with General Atlantic to continue developing its global network, further grow its established origination and distribution strategy, and explore new opportunities for collaboration.

Source. FinSMEs, Staff, May 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.

German Challenger Bank N26 Nets $170M In Series D Extension

Today, Berlin-based mobile banking upstart N26 announced that it raised an additional $170 million, extending its Series D round.

This transaction values the venture at approximately $3.5 billion, post-money, up markedly from the $2.7 billion post-money valuation N26 achieved following the first tranche of its Series D round—a $300 million deal Crunchbase News covered when news broke back in January.

News reports and Crunchbase data suggest this was an inside round, with existing investors contributing to the top-up transaction. These include the likes of Peter Thiel-backed Valar Ventures, the corporate venture arm of German insurance giant Allianz, Chinese internet conglomerate Tencent, and Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC, among others.

The capital contracted in this deal brings the company’s total funding to over $680 million in combined USD and Euro-denominated VC backing.

Since the company’s last round there’s been talk of expansion beyond N26’s beachhead markets in Europe. Last week, the company formally announced its launch in the United States. According to the company’s statement, “N26 is the first European challenger banking platform to launch in the US.”

Europe is home to a number of banking upstarts—like Atom Bank, Monzo, Revolut, and others—seeking to unseat incumbents by offering slick branding and a more full-featured banking experience mediated through mobile phones. London-based Monzo launched a “light version” of its app in the U.S. back in June, though a more feature-complete rollout is slated for later this summer.

In its U.S. launch announcement, N26 said it first opened an office in New York City back in autumn 2017, when the company had approximately 500,000 customers. Last month, the company announced it now serves 3.5 million customers worldwide. In addition to its Berlin headquarters, the company maintains offices in New York, São Paulo, Barcelona, and Vienna, collectively employing 1,300 people. N26 said it will use the new funding to continue expanding toward the goal of becoming “a global bank.”

Source. Crunchbase, Jason Rowly, July 18, 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.

Receipt management startup Sensibill raises $41 million CAD Series B

Toronto-based receipt management app Sensibill has raised a $41 million CAD ($31.5 million USD) Series B, led by Radical Ventures.

Other participants in the round include past Canadian investors Information Venture Partners and First Ascent Ventures, as well as National Bank of Canada. The FinTech startup, which uses AI to scan and digitize physical receipts for banking customers via desktop or mobile app, said the raise comes as it expects to triple both its bank customer base and annualized revenues by the end of the year, according to The Globe and Mail. The company’s ultimate goal is to offer advice and improve end users’ financial health through machine learning.

“This is a classic story of an under-the-radar company from Toronto with fantastic data-driven, customer-facing AI solutions being used by a whos-who of global Tier 1 banks,” said Jordan Jacobs, co-founder and managing partner at Radical Ventures, who sold his AI startup Layer 6 to TD Bank early last year. “We are very excited to help support Sensibill’s rapid growth as it transitions from a successful startup into a global powerhouse.”

Positioning itself as a customer value-add for financial incumbents, Sensibill’s software uses machine learning to identify and extract unstructured text from receipts and return structured data in the form of a digital receipt. The company is trying to teach machines to read receipts the same way humans do, by pinpointing specific items and categorizing them.

Founded in 2013, the company raised a $2 million Seed round in 2015, followed by a $17.3 million Series A in early 2017. Since its Series A, Sensibill said its employee headcount has more than doubled, they’ve opened an office in London, England, and have secured partnerships with more than 30 major banks in Canada, the US, and the UK.

Ten million bank customers currently use the platform through their financial institutions, and the company is expected to generate over $10 million in annualized revenues by the end of the year, triple what the company reported last year, according to The Globe. Rather than disrupting banks as many FinTech startups are trying to do, Sensibill is trying to help banks retain their customers through its solutions.

“What we’re trying to do at Sensibill is bridge the gap between what banks are good at today, and where they need to be in five or 10 years to protect their relationships from disruption,” said Sensibill CEO Corey Gross. “Tools beyond core banking, an incredible customer experience, and meaningful customer insights for banks, that’s what we bring to the table.”

Since launching, the company has forged banking partnerships both domestically and internationally. In 2017, it partnered with Quontic Bank to launch a solution designed to instantly catalogue purchases, categorize receipts by expenses, and enable customers to export this record for expense reporting or tax prep. In December 2016, Scotiabank was the first Tier 1 bank to roll out Sensibill’s solution for its customers. It has also partnered with the Royal Bank of Scotland, Ottawa-based credit union Alterna Savings, and digital wallet company Ugo, among others.

Source. BetaKit, Isabella Kirkwood, July 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.