In 2020, I wrote about Briq’s $10 million Series A and its mission to bring fintech to the construction industry.
Last week, I covered its $8 million Series B extension at a $150 million valuation, as well as its AI-related growth plans.
Last week, I covered its $40 million Series B financing and the fact that it grew revenue by 200% in 2023.
Other high-interest headlinesStripe, Flexport, TikTok, and other startups were investing in startups.
Stripe acquired Nigeria-based Paystack in 2020 — extending its reach in Africa — after participating in the payment startup’s Series A in 2018.” That level of investing has slowed dramatically, according to CB Insights data.
Alternative sources of liquidity are therefore top of mind — there’s a towering pile of private companies in need of an exit, or a bailout.
The Exchange explores startups, markets and money.
Note that TechCrunch, like many publications, focuses only on private unicorns while Cowboy Ventures is also counting those that have gone public.
But the good news is that some untraveled and overgrown exit paths have a chance of opening up this year.
Let’s talk private equity, startups, and their possible marriage this year.
Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hello, and welcome to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This is our Friday show, in which TechCrunch reporters sit down to talk through the key news of the week.
This time around, Mary Ann Azevedo and Alex Wilhelm chewed through funding rounds and the trends prevalent today in Startup Land.
(And in case you missed it, we recently interviewed Cowboy Ventures’ Aileen Lee about how unicorns have evolved over the past decade.)
This is our interview show, where we sit down with interesting, knowledgeable folk and dive deep into their favorite topics.
This time around, we invited Cowboy Ventures’ Aileen Lee to chat through her massive new article concerning the unicorn world.
If you didn’t know, it was Lee who initially coined the term “unicorn” in a TechCrunch article back in 2013.
Lee talked us through the data and taught us all sorts of new terms.
You can sort of understand what one means when they say “unicorpse” or “zombiecorn,” but apparently there are even more exotic unicorn forms out there.
Reddit could be finally going public this year.
Now, before the rumor mill gets going, let’s make one thing clear: Reddit going public in the first quarter is not going to throw the IPO window wide open for other tech companies waiting to exit.
Still, if Reddit manages to pull off a strong IPO, it would help make going public palatable for companies of all sorts.
Besides Reddit and Circle, huge companies like Shein are also reportedly busy getting their S-1 and F-1 ducks in a row.
The sooner the IPO window can open, the better.
Fintech company Kashable is the latest to also grab some venture capital attention for its approach to offering credit and financial wellness products as an employer-sponsored voluntary benefit.
In total, the company raised $45 million in equity capital and over $175 million in debt capital.
Financial wellness is one of the areas many of the startups get into.
“When we first started our journey in 2013, financial wellness was just an emerging concept,” Kumar told TechCrunch.
In addition, Kashable offers financial education resources, including credit monitoring, individual financial coaching and budgeting tools.
Low-code dev platforms have gained momentum in recent years, in large part because they promise to shorten what’s otherwise typically a lengthy app development cycle.
According to data from analytics firm GlobalData, there was a fivefold increase in VC funding into low-code dev platforms from 2021 to 2022.
But low-code isn’t going anywhere, as evidenced most recently by low-code dev startup FlutterFlow’s financing round.
Leveraging Flutter, Google’s open source UI creation toolkit, FlutterFlow generates what Abel describes as “clean” and “maintainable” app source code.
There’s no shortage of competition in the market for low-code app dev platforms.
“Pier is building ‘Stripe for credit,’ which is a way for companies to automate their own credit products.”Here’s how it works: Developers add Pier’s APIs with a few lines of codes, saving months of labor and millions of dollars, Zhang said.
Pier’s technology then manages the credit lifecycle from end-to-end, including origination, underwriting, compliance and servicing.
Other companies have also claimed to be “Stripe for credit,” for example, Setpoint, a startup that developed software for faster loan transactions.
Even Stripe itself created new credit products for businesses about six months ago.
Other solutions out there address specific components of the lifecycle, like underwriting or Know Your Customer, while Pier provides a more comprehensive offering.
Health in her HUE, a digital health app that focuses on reducing health disparities for women of color, announced that raised a $3 million Seed round today, led by Seae Ventures.
The company is being built during a precarious time for women’s health, where women of color, especially Black women, still face medical discrimination.
Health in her HUE says it has nearly 13,000 members with 1,300 health providers across 60 specialties, from therapy to chiropractic.
Wisdom, who remains CEO, says the company will use its Seed round to expand its products and programs.
Others that participated in this seed round include Johnson & Johnson Impact Ventures, HBCU Founders Fund, Stanford Impact Fund, and Morgan Stanely Inclusive Ventures Labs.
CES 2024 or bust, Superpedestrian e-scooters hit the auction block and Fisker struggles to meet sales goalsThe Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation.
I appreciated a bit of rest and recovery, just in time for CES 2024.
The Big Three U.S. automakers (Ford, GM and Stellantis) won’t have big splashy displays and announcements as in past years.
However, there will be plenty of automotive, and more broadly, transportation companies and startups in attendance.
Shell Ventures, InMotion Ventures, Porsche Ventures, and Revo Capital also participated.
