Mexican fintech Kapital raised $40 million in a series-B funding this month and $125 million in debt financing to expand to new markets.
This week, we cover these ideas:
The Acorns SPAC deal, including its valuation and detailed metrics
The growth levers and obstacles for point-solutions as they scale into the millions of users and hundred of millions of revenues
What a $50 billion fund should do to roll this stuff up
It is looking like a pretty good time to go consolidating individual financial product footprints. Leaving aside whether consolidated companies are good or bad for some particular reason, the simple observation is that there are just far too many point-solution brands out there. Too many to be left alone to operate. And now a number of them are going to be public, which means that a number of them are going to be up for sale.
Coinbase is going to go public.
The news hit Reuters, then Coindesk, and then the rest of the world. It feels like big news! The crypto broker is beating Robinhood, Acorns, Stash, Revolut, Betterment, and Wealthfront to the public markets. It's even beating SoFi, which is trying to get a national bank license (and who doesn't want to own a bank!).
In this conversation, we talk with Paul Rowady, who is the Director of Research for Alphacution Research Conservatory. Paul has a deep background in capital markets, derivatives, and the macro structure of the industry. He has been uncovering the transformation of that structure with data driven analyses, making visible the economics of market makers like Citadel and retail order flow aggregators like Robinhood. This is a rich discussion of what trading stocks is really like. And make sure to check out Alphacution.
E-commerce fintech SellersFi secured a $300 million credit facility from Citi, leveraging the increasing popularity of alternative payments.
In this conversation, we talk with Maximilian Rofagha, who serves as the CEO and Founder of Finimize, about how to do personal finance right and how to do it bottoms up for the world.
Additionally, we explore Max’s journey to becoming an entrepreneur, the nuances of the e-commerce business, the building of and drivers behind community and creating business activities around it, the influences of FinTok and crypto assets on financial community, and the drivers of value back into said communities fulfilling the feedback loop.
Last quarter, fintech funding rose to $30 billion, the highest on record. $14 billion of SPAC capital is waiting to take these companies public. Robinhood and Circle are about to float on the public markets, via SPAC and IPO. In this analysis, we explore the fundamentals of both companies, as well as the unifying thesis that explains their growth.
In this conversation, we talk all things capital markets and investing with Yoni Assia, the founder and CEO of eToro, one of the fastest-growing and largest global digital investing companies, brokerages, and applications out there.
More specifically, we discuss the eating habits of Warren Buffet, community-driven investment challenging incumbent investing practices, the purposes of investing and trading, of financial health, of investment education, of gamification of investment strategy, of capital markets and GameStop and the connection between capital, memes and fashion, and finally machine learning’s influence of investment behaviour.
Interest rates remain high, valuations have fallen and overall deal volume is down across sectors — including fintech M&A activity. But deals are still getting done, albeit slowly and with more caution from investors. BPM Partners James Lichau and Craig Hamm outline their top strategies for navigating the current fintech M&A environment.
Capstack Technologies’ founder and CEO Michal Cieplinski believes he has the antidote to the Silicon Valley Bank meltdown, and Citi Ventures agrees.