Early Stage Funding Activity in Developed Markets: Pre-Seed to Series B, Dec 5th to Dec 9th

Overview: This week was significantly quieter in terms of published deals than previous weeks in the developed countries with just 12 deals that fit my criteria, amounting to US$72ml of total funding. Deals were split across 4 areas, Digital Assets/Defi, Wealthtech, Insurtech, and Fintech.?The largest deal was achieved by Capital Markets/AI SAAS platform provider 9fin, while roughly half were first time published financing. The largest of these was shared for two deals, the US$8.5ml financing for Udon Lab’s, Follow platform, and for Pylon’s embedded mortgage as a service platform.

Digital Assets

Bitwave (Accountancy), Membrane Finance (Connectivity), Mooch (Defi PFM)

Commentary

Bitwave/Providing Enterprise users with a full SAAS finance and accounting system to help them fully manage their digital asset holdings. The system helps finance teams track crypto transactions and move transactions managed on the blockchain into the finance ledger for tax and reporting purposes.

Membrane Finance/A firm that has developed the Euro-E Stablecoin, a Euro reserve stablecoin that is designed to help users move Euro assets on to the blockchain in order to facilitate reduced payment costs, and higher speed transaction fulfilment.

Mooch/ Offering a fully automated personal financial management solution that incorporates budget management and goal planning linked to automated savings and rewards topped up through income earned through DEFI.

?Wealthtech

Kobia (Early Stage Investing), Stellar Fusion (Social Investing), aVenture (VC Funds), Udon Labs (Social Investing via Following)

Commentary:

Koble/ Creating an asset management company that is seeking to apply quantitative techniques to make successful alpha generative investments in early stage companies.

Stellar Fusion/ Creating a retail investment research platform that focused on applying fundamental investment techniques in an accessible and easy to understand way. The system provides tools to help retail investors predict future values and compare them to consensus estimates.

aVenture/ A platform that is offering qualified investors access to curated venture capital funds, as well as offering VC a platform that can help them distribute their funds to this investment cohort compliantly and through a centrally managed reporting process.

Follow/ Developing an SEC RIA that will offer retail investors the opportunity to invest in identified “leaders” or individuals asset manager/traders who provide and execute investment ideas.

Insurtech

Butter Insurance (Digital Insurance Management)

Commentary:?

Butter Insurance/Flexible Digital insurance platform that allows clients to buy, manage and easily cancel insurance on their contents.?Idea is to make it easy to purchase coverage on things that matter, and just as easily cancel it.

Fintech

Cacheflow (Payments), Pylon (Mortgages), 9Fin (Capital Markets), Argus (Trade Compliance)

Commentary:

Cacheflow/Targeted at On-Line SAAS platform, Cacheflow is offering a very easy to deploy proposal to payment solution that is allowed to improve conversion rates by reducing the friction between the sales and payment journey for subscription services.

Pylon/This firm has created an embedded financial capability built around the creation, distribution and management of mortgages. They have the capability to support a full end2end digital experience, bringing together pre-built APIs/UIs and mortgage spending lending capabilities.

9fin/Offering a full data, analytics and research platform to support professionals who underwrite, invest and distribute capital market loan and fixed income products. They use machine learning and AI data extraction techniques to help clients acquire news, understand borrowers from a variety of perspectives, and also fully search and analyze complex documents.

Argus/Full stack compliance platform to trade employee trading in both digital assets as well as in traditional financial assets. The goal is to bring tracking wallets and accounts, and firm wide rules together inside a single platform for compliance professionals to use to create, enforce, and track activities.