Early stage European FinTech deals include Spoko, Abacum, Clim8 etc. We feature Q&As with Mark Whitcroft of Illuminate Financial and Nico Blanchard of Apiax.
Scaling Enterprise FinTech | The Handbook is out!
Launched in partnership with SixThirty Ventures and Finovate Europe, The Handbook includes proprietary research on ca. 65 Enterprise FinTech scaleups in #Europe, Q&As with 16 founders who have “been there and done it” as well as insights from 10 leading #venturecapital investors. Whether you are a founder with an idea, an early stage startup looking for inspiration and learnings, or an investor or financial institution looking to understand the difficult but rewarding journey to building a world-class Enterprise FinTech firm – download the Handbook here: http://www.fintechforum.de/sef/
If you are an early stage startup in Europe building the next big thing in FinTech, reach out to Frank Schwab or Samarth Shekhar.
Scaling Enterprise FinTech: with Mark Whitcroft of Illuminate Financial
1. A year since the first lockdown – is this is a good time to be building or scaling an Enterprise FinTech firm in Europe?
Good but with challenges!
Digitization has had the shot in the arm and an acceleration with the move to remote and hybrid work environments. The need for enterprise solutions is high on managements’ agendas. However this isn’t uniform and interest is selective – ensuring your product is solving a priority problem within the enterprise is must. If it isn’t, unlikely you will reach the top of your potential buyer’s to do list nor will there be a (big) budget to buy it.
Scaling has changed somewhat with remote working changing hiring (not even getting to meet in person first!) and onboarding practices (that need to be structured better than ever before).
Maintaining a firm’s culture is also very challenging right now – leadership capabilities are on show – both good and bad!
http://www.fintechforum.de/scaling-enterprise-fintech-with-mark-whitcroft-of-illuminate-financial/
Scaling Enterprise FinTech: with Nico Blanchard of Apiax
1. Tell us a bit about yourself and your company.
I’m Nicolas Blanchard, co-founder of Apiax which is a tech compliance solution that makes it radically simple for companies to comply with global regulations.
Apiax’s technology is designed to embed compliance into business processes so that business teams can work more productively and compliance teams can manage their stakeholders much more efficiently.
In four years we have grown to have over 65 employees across 4 countries (Switzerland, Portugal, United Kingdom and Singapore). With our combined compliance expertise and technological abilities we are on the mission to make compliance easy for everyone.
scaling-enterprise-fintech-with-nico-blanchard-of-apiax
FinTech Ventures invests €5 million in Spoko
Specialising in instant international cash transfers, Spoko is seeking to stand apart from competitors through attractive exchange rates and transparent transaction costs. Through the app, Spoko currently offers customers the ability to send from 32 countries to 45 countries. Transfers to Nigeria, Ukraine, Brazil, and Turkey can all be made without a commission fee.
Warsaw-based international money transfer fintech Spoko has obtained €5 million in financing from their strategic investor FinTech Ventures.
FinTech Ventures is an early stage VC based in Madrid investing in companies with high potential focus in Fintech and Insurtech whose recent investment include Finizens and Coverfy.
https://tech.eu/brief/warsaw-based-fintech-spoko-lands-e5-million-from-fintech-ventures/
Creandum among other investors invest €7 million in Abacum
Founded in April of last year, Abacum is a financial planning platform that allows teams to collaborate and make informed decisions faster. Through direct integrations with existing software, real-time data is used to automatically generate reports
Barcelona-based real-time financial and operational data collaboration tool Abacum has raised $7 million in a round led by Creandum. Existing investors Y Combinator, PROFounders, and K-Fundalso participated, as well as angel investors Justin Kan (Atrium and Twitch), Maximilian Tayenthal(N26), Thomas Lehrman (GLG), Avi Meir (TravelPerk), Jenny Bloom (Zapier), and Mike Asher ( Neo4j).
Creandum is an early-stage venture capital firm focusing on technology companies within the consumer, software, and hardware industries whose recent investment include Craft and Payosu.
7pc Ventures, British Business Bank Future Fund and private Investors invest $8 million in Clim8
Duncan Grierson, CEO of Clim8, said in a statement: “We are launching at an exciting time for sustainable investing. 2020 was an exceptional year for environmentally-focused investment offerings, as investors looked harder at climate-related opportunities. Sustainable investments have continued to outperform markets since the beginning of the Covid-19 Crisis and we believe this will continue.”
Grierson has 20 years of experience in the green space and was a winner of the EY Entrepreneur of Year Cleantech award.
Clim8 Invest has raised $8 million from 7pc Ventures (early backers of Oculus, acquired by Facebook), British Business Bank Future Fund and a number of technology entrepreneurs and executives including Marcus Exall (Monese), Marcus Mosen (N26), Paul Willmott (Lego Digital, McKinsey), Doug Scott (Redbrain), Matt Wilkins (Thought Machine), Andrew Cocker (Skyscanner), Steve Thomson (Redbrain), Monica Kalia (Neyber, Goldman Sachs), Doug Monro (Adzuna) and Erik Nygard (Limejump).
Ex-founders turned VCs, 7percent invests in early stage transformative and deep-tech startups and teams with moonshot ambitions whose recent investment include Magdrive and Seyo.
Paladin Capital Group and joined by Osage University Partners, Brighteye Ventures and existing investors Marathon Venture Capital invest $10.6 million in Hack The Box
Started in 2017, Hack The Box specializes in using “ethical hacking” to train cybersecurity techniques. Users are given challenges to “attack” virtual vulnerable labs in a simulated, gamified and test environment. This approach has garnered more than 500,000 platform members, from beginners to experts, and brought in around 800 organizations (such as governments, Fortune 500 companies, and academic institutions) to improve their cyber-adversarial knowledge.
Cybersecurity training startup Hack The Box, which emerged originally from Greece, has raised a Series A investment round of $10.6 million, led by Paladin Capital Group and joined by Osage University Partners, Brighteye Ventures and existing investors Marathon Venture Capital. It will use the funding to expand.
Paladin is a global investor that supports innovative technology companies through venture investment and growth capital whose recent investments include Decentriq and Menlo Micro.
Swiss fintech Alpian raises €15.1M to launch its digital bank in the Swiss market
Incorporated in October 2019, Alpian is a Swiss digital financial services startup aimed at mass affluent investors. The fintech has raised $18M (nearly €15.1M) in its Series B funding round. This round follows the CHF12.2M (approx €11.1M) Series A round that the company raised in 2020.
Alpian was incubated by the private bank REYL & Cie. It has applied for a full banking license to Switzerland’s Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) and intends to launch its core product and services range in the course of 2021, subject to the issuance of a full banking licence by FINMA.
https://siliconcanals.com/crowdfunding/alpian-raises-15-1m/
Addition, CrowdStrike and Falcon Fund invest $26m in Tines
The start-up’s platform has been designed for use by non-technical employees with click-and-drag functions. Its customers include Box and OpenTable.
Tines was founded in 2018 by Eoin Hinchy and Thomas Kinsella, who both previously worked in security roles at eBay and DocuSign.
“If software is eating the world, automation is eating the enterprise. Yet, the majority of progress in this space still requires non-technical teams to depend on software engineers to implement their automation,” Hinchy, who is chief executive of the start-up, said.
The Series B round was led by Addition, the firm set up last year by VC veteran Lee Fixel, with participation from cybersecurity giant CrowdStrike, through its Falcon Fund, and Silicon Valley CISO Investments. Previous backers Accel and Blossom Capital also invested.
Addition is a venture capital firm that invests in early and growth-stage tech companies whose recent investments include Groq and Tend.
https://www.siliconrepublic.com/start-ups/tines-26m-series-b
Addition with participation from existing investors Anthemis Group, Connect Ventures and more invest $142 million in TrueLayer
Led by Francesco Simoneschi, CEO and Co-Founder, and Luca Martinetti, Co-Founder and CTO, TrueLayer provides an open banking platform for users to create products that bring together payments, financial data, and identity to redefine how people spend, save, and transact online.
The round, which brings the total investment to date to $142m, was led by new investor Addition with participation from existing investors Anthemis Group, Connect Ventures, Mouro Capital, Northzone, and Temasek, as well as Visionaries Club, Surojit Chatterjee (CPO Coinbase), Zack Kanter (CEO Stedi), Daniel Graf (ex-Uber, Google, Twitter) and David Avgi (ex-CEO SafeCharge, CEO UniPaaS).
Addition is a venture capital firm that invests in early and growth-stage tech companies whose recent investments include Groq and Tend.
https://www.finsmes.com/2021/04/truelayer-secures-70m-in-series-d-funding.html
SoftBank invests $210M in OneTrust
Led by Kabir Barday, CEO, OneTrust enables companies to operationalize privacy, security, data governance, ethics and compliance, GRC, third-party risk, and ESG through agile, centralized workflows. More than 8,000 companies, including more than half of the Fortune 500, use the company’s solutions to manage the complex patchwork of privacy regulations, security requirements, ethics and compliance frameworks, and sustainability initiatives.
The round, which brings the Series C round to $510m and total funds raised to $920m, was led by new investor SoftBank Vision Fund 2 with participation from Franklin Templeton.
SoftBank provides fixed-line, mobile telephony, internet, telecommunications, and digital television products whose recent investments include Better.com and Invitae.
https://www.finsmes.com/2021/04/onetrust-raises-210m-in-series-c-extension-round.html
Auxmoney Receives €250M Investment
auxmoney, a Düsseldorf, Germany-based digital-lending platform for consumer credit in Europe, secured a €250m investment for its marketplace loans.
Led by Raffael Johnen, CEO, auxmoney is a digital-lending platform for consumer credit in Europe. Through proprietary risk models and digital processes, the company aims to improve access to affordable credit while reducing the risk and cost of lending.
https://www.finsmes.com/2021/04/auxmoney-receives-e250m-investment.html
Belgian fintech Unifiedpost Group acquires German Crossinx for up to €113 million, gains entry to all-important DACH region
La Hulpe, Belgium-based fintech Unifiedpost Group has snapped up Frankfurt Am Main-based fintech automator Crossinx for up to €113 million.
€100 million was settled with 50% cash and 50% newly issued Unifiedpost shares valued at €20 per share. A conditional earn-out payment of €13 million was also included in the deal.
“The acquisition of Crossinx means a significant expansion of Unifiedpost. Not only do we strongly enlarge our geographical footprint in the DACH region, which is crucial for our pan-European roll out in 26 countries this year … important and new synergies are created by this combination of businesses,” comments Unifiedpost CEO and founder Hans Leybaert.
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