Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech!
This week, we’re looking at Rippling’s controversial decision to ban some former employees from selling their stock, Carta’s massive valuation drop, a GenZ-focused fintech raise, and more!
But there is one big exception: It has banned former employees who work for a handful of competitors from selling their stock.
What else we’re writingIn early 2022, the fintech startup Bloom was accepted into Y Combinator as the first-ever startup from Sudan to participate in the famed accelerator.
In an unusual move, Capital One is teaming up with payment giants (and rivals) Stripe and Amsterdam-based Adyen to offer a free product aimed at fraud reduction, the financial services giant told TechCrunch in an exclusive interview.
When Josh Silverman started shopping around the idea for his methane-eating microbe startup, Windfall Bio, eight years ago, the market just wasn’t ready.
Menlo Park–based Windfall Bio raised a $28 million Series A round to expand its commercialization efforts.
The round was led by Prelude Ventures with participation from Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund, Incite Ventures and Positive Ventures, among others, as well as existing investors, including Mayfield.
Windfall works with industries that produce large levels of methane, such as agriculture, oil and gas, and landfills.
The startup supplies methane-eating microbes that absorb methane emissions, turning them into fertilizer.
Autism Impact Fund (AIF) was a pioneer when it emerged in 2021, three years after the son of its co-founder and managing partner, Chris Male, was diagnosed with ASD.
A joint effort of Male and others, its ambition was to become “the investment and innovation arm of the autism community,” Male told TechCrunch.
Since then, startups in the neurodiversity space gathered momentum, and so did AIF, which recently closed its first fund at $60 million.
AIF’s decision to broaden its scope has to do with autism itself, Male said.
It’s also global, with healthtech Genial Care raising $10 million to help kids with autism and their families in Brazil.
Heidy Khlaaf is an engineering director at the cybersecurity firm Trail of Bits.
She specializes in evaluating software and AI implementations within “safety critical” systems, like nuclear power plants and autonomous vehicles.
Imposter syndrome has a strong hold on women within tech, and leads many to doubt their own scientific integrity.
The way AI systems are trained embed human bias and discrimination within their outputs that become “de facto” and automated.
AI systems should not be exempt from standard auditing processes that are well-established to ensure public and consumer protection.
Veho, a package delivery company, confirmed that it laid off 19% of its employee headcount, or about 65 jobs.
As first reported by The Information, these layoffs came after Veho grew revenue nearly 90% in 2023.
That was after announcing $125 million in Series A funding two months prior, the round that pushed Veho into unicorn territory.
At that time, Veho said it had 910 employees across corporate and warehouse teams and was looking to fill additional positions.
Veho remains optimistic, telling TechCrunch that its capital position “is very strong and we are building on our strong momentum and record peak season in 2023.”
Employee performance reviews take time and effort — and aren’t always conducted very efficiently.
Seeking to make the performance review process easier — or at least less of a headache than it has been historically — Ben Hastings and Jon Malpass founded PerformYard, a platform that provides a collection of software-based retention, staff management and upskilling tools.
“PerformYard has been cash-flow positive with attractive unit economics for the majority of our existence as a business.”Prior to launching PerformYard, Hastings spent the majority of his career in tech as a go-to-market sales leader.
“In early 2013, I decided to go all-in on building a software-as-a-service platform for employee performance management and personally funded the initial team.
“Our mission is to simply enable and facilitate any performance process that our customers are looking to automate and improve,” Hastings said.
EV sales remained strong in Q4.
They could have been stronger All automakers, including Tesla, are at a crossroadsIf you’ve only been reading headlines these past few months, you’d think demand for electric vehicles has fallen off a cliff.
In some countries, like Norway, where 82% of new vehicles are electric, it has already landed.
That jibes with other forecasts that predict EVs will make up around 25% of the market in 2026.
The demand will be there, but to make the most of it, automakers have some work to do.
Most tech startups are born from a few early engineers building the company’s initial product.
As those first builders work together, they begin to establish a developer culture — sometimes deliberately, sometimes not.
At Web Summit in Lisbon in November, two founders discussed the importance of building a developer culture that’s distinct from a company’s overall culture.
And we really wanted to instill that in the developer culture early on,” she said.
Ludmila Pontremolez, CTO and co-founder at Zippi, a Brazilian fintech startup, spent time as an engineer at Square prior to launching Zippi.
According to DocSend data, investors aren’t scouring pitch decks as earnestly as they were in the past.
“For founders now, perfecting the pitch, having an efficient sales strategy, and scoping the product with urgency will create a strong foundation for success that attracts investors.”Thanks for reading and happy holidays!
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“The drier funding climate of 2023 only served to weed out the weaker businesses that had managed to secure capital in 2021,” she writes.
Wednesday’s results showed that Roblox is still thriving, as the company saw an increase in revenues and users. Investors should be excited, as this means that the platform has a…
