💳 Monzo vs Klarna?
Truelayer hits Unicorn status, JP Morgan launches a digital bank and Amazon launches a new home robot.
So, what happened this week in the Tech & Startup world? 🌍
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The Grapevine Newsflash 🔥
10 tech & startup stories in 149 super-duper short seconds.
💰 Black Female Founders! Sixteen Black female founders have raised VC funding in the UK since 2009. Check out the full list here. Our favourite? Josephine Philips, the founder of Sojo, the company that’s been dubbed the ‘Deliveroo of Clothing repairs’.
🦄 Another Fintech Unicorn? UK Open Banking platform Truelayer has raised $130m at a $1bn+ valuation. Still not clear on what Open Banking actually is? Watch this 6-minute explainer from 11FS here.
🆔 Identity 3.0? Cheqd, a London-based digital identity startup has raised $2.6m in funding at a $42.6m valuation. Cheqd creates a digital ID, that can be stored on your phone, that aims to give users and organisations extra privacy on their own data. This is really one to watch! Read more here.
🏦 JP Morgan Launches ‘Chase’. JP Morgan has launched ‘chase’ a UK digital bank that pays 1% cashback and 5% interest. This is a fascinating move, and it’ll be interesting to see how this product fares in the market given its late entrance and the number of competitors it’ll have. Worth a download? Hear what Money Saving Experts think here.
💳 Monzo vs Klarna? Following the launch of Monzo’s Buy Now Pay Later product, Sifted has written a really interesting analysis of the feature and spoken a little about how it contrasts with Klarnas offering. Have a read here.
📈 Exits & Early-Stage Entrepreneurs! Kleiner Perkins is a highly reputable VC firm that boats early investments in Amazon & Google. Crunchbase has crunched some interesting numbers on the funds performance over the last few years, which you can find here.
💰 New VC Strategy One of the largest investors in Silicon Valley has started a fund to purchase sales contracts from startups for a discount. The fund is aiming to be around $300m. This follows the lead of startups like Pipe & Capchase who offer companies to sell the rights to future revenue streams for a discount. We expect to see more VC firms adopting this strategy.
🏟️ In Another League The collectible unit of ‘Fantatics’ has raised $350m at a huge $10.4bn valuation. This is further evidence of a trend towards collectibles, spurred by the NFT craze. Fanatics has unique licensing deals across basketball, baseball and several other sports. Crazy valuation.
🤖 Astro at Home Amazon has announced a $1000 mini home robot ‘Astro’ that will monitor the house, carry items, and move objects for you. As you’d expect, there’s been a backlash over privacy - especially its use of facial recognition. $1000 doesn’t seem worth it to us.
👶 Origin Story Peter Thiel is a name known by many in tech, but only on a surface level. Now, the co-founder of PayPal, Palantir, and Founders Fund, is the subject of a new book by Max Chafkin. In this excerpt, you get a sense of his philosophy and what made him the man he is today. In related news, check out this video of Thiel essentially predicting Bitcoin in 1999.
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Over & Out,
Nick, Louis, & he who shall not be named