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Solo GP fund Andrena Ventures hopes to carry startup talent onto its next challenges | TechCrunch

April 30, 2024 11:38 AM0


In the world of startups, it’s not uncommon to see talent from successful companies go on to found their own ventures. This is particularly evident in fintech in Europe, where alumni from unicorns like Monzo, N26, Revolut and others have started a flurry of new companies.

Andrena Ventures, a solo GP fund based in the U.K, wants to support this startup factory snowball effect by investing in such second-generation startups at the pre-seed and seed stages. To do so, it has raised $12 million from backers including several VCs and entrepreneurs.

The firm’s general partner, Gideon Valkin, told TechCrunch that while he will fund talent with roots in European and British fintech, Andrena itself is sector agnostic. He expects most of his portfolio companies to focus on other categories like AI, climate tech and B2B enterprise solutions.

Andrena has already made its first investment: Nustom, an AI startup founded by Monzo’s co-founder, Jonas Templestein, whom Valkin reported to when he worked at Monzo. Nustom hasn’t publicly launched yet (which explains its succinct website), but it already boasts a long list of investors including OpenAI, Balaji Srinivasan, Garry Tan, Naval Ravikant and others.

Andrena’s participation in Nustom’s party round reflects the firm’s thesis and strategy: Most of the time, it will contribute between $100,000 and $400,000 to rounds that will be led by others. However, Valkin hopes that his network will make it easier for founders to raise Series A rounds, potentially from his limited partners or from other investors he’s connected to.

The solo GP approach

By leveraging his network and by writing relatively small checks, Valkin hopes to gain access to hot deals in which larger funds may not be able or willing to participate.

Having a small fund means that small investments have the potential to return all of the invested capital; for a larger firm, such investments wouldn’t move the needle or be worth the risk. Valkin knows that side of the equation: After leaving Monzo, he became an angel investor himself and started working as a seed investor at VC firm Entrée Capital, which is now one of Andrena’s limited partners.

But managing a solo fund isn’t without challenges, and not just because the management fees are proportionally smaller. As my colleague Rebecca Szkutak noted last year, “emerging managers have been on the same roller coaster as startups for the last few years.”

Valkin says he’s taken a significant pay cut, but he sees this as a plus: Founders can see him as a trusted partner who has equally as much at stake. “I think that aligns us really nicely,” he said. His value proposition is to open up his network to founders and help them raise a Series A round, while also relying on his operational know-how.

This mix is more common in the U.S. than in Europe, where many local VCs have never started a company. But things are changing, and angel investing is increasingly common among European entrepreneurs, especially in fintech.

One of Andrena’s LPs, Taavet+Sten, is an investment vehicle run by Wise co-founder, Taavet Hinrikus, and Teleport co-founder, Sten Tamkivi. Both are former Skype employees, and have now formally launched an early stage venture fund, Plural, with two other partners.

The fact that the pair chose to back Valkin can be seen as a validating signal for his thesis. With swarms of early fintech employees looking for their next challenge, the name that Valkin picked for his venture is fitting: Andrena is a type of bee, and “pollination, in my mind, is probably the best analogy for what I do,” he said.


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Ethiopian plastic upcycling startup Kubik gets fresh funding, plans to license out its tech | TechCrunch

April 29, 2024 11:40 AM0


Kubik, a plastic upcycling startup, has raised a $1.9 million seed extension, months after announcing initial equity investment. The startup’s latest investment is from African Renaissance Partners, an East African venture capital firm; Endgame Capital, an investor with a bias for technologies around climate change; and King Philanthropies, a climate and extreme poverty investor.

The fresh capital comes as the startup scales its operations in Ethiopia following the launch of its factory in Addis Ababa, where it is turning plastic waste into interlocking building materials like bricks, columns, beams and jambs. Kubik co-founder and CEO Kidus Asfaw, told TechCrunch that the startup intends to double down on its operations in Addis Ababa, as it lays ground for pan-African growth from 2025.

Kubik’s approach involves upcycling plastic waste into “low-carbon, durable, and affordable” building materials using proprietary technology, which Asfaw says they will out-license for faster pan-African, and the eventual global growth.

“What we want to do is solve problems for cities and so, we’re thinking about our business model being truly circular. The way we’ve set up our business strategy, is that now we’re in the focus phase of proving this model here in Ethiopia. We’ll expand it to a few more markets to prove the diversity of the context in which this business model can work. But over time, what we actually want to do is transition to becoming a company that’s licensing out this technology,” said Asfaw, who co-founded Kubik with Penda Marre in 2021.

“That’s how we feel that we can truly scale. It’s not by having factories all over the world, but having this industry adopt a new way of making materials globally,” he said.

He said their product allows developers to erect walls without the need for cement, aggregates or steel, making the construction faster and bringing the cost down by “at least 40% less per square meter”. Cost is a key barrier in construction and the availability of affordable or cheaper building materials presents a better option for developers of affordable-housing projects.

Asfaw said Kubik’s materials have passed safety tests by the European standards agency, Intertek, which checked, among other things, strength, toxicity and flammability.

“We don’t want to be selling something that’s harmful for human beings. We did not start sales until these reports were available,” he said.

The startup currently recycles 5,000 kilograms (and can do 45,000 at capacity) of plastic waste a day. It has signed partnerships with corporates and Addis Ababa municipality for a regular supply of plastic waste. In the near-term, it is looking at product diversification to cover pavers and flooring material.

It is estimated that the world produces 430 million tonnes of plastic a year, two thirds are for short-term use. Evidently, the world is choking on plastic waste, and while the situation is exacerbated by consumerism trends in developed countries, in regions facing rapid urbanization and economic growth like African cities, plastic waste is getting out of control too, requiring urgent responses. In the coming days, startups like Kubik will play a leading role in providing sustainable solutions for the menace.

African climate startups set to gain ground as VC funding shifts their way


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Stripe's big changes, Brazil's newest fintech unicorn and the tale of a startup shutdown | TechCrunch

April 28, 2024 8:07 PM0


Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech! This week, we’re looking at Stripe’s big product announcements, a bump in valuation for a Brazilian fintech startup and much more!

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important fintech stories delivered to your inbox every Sunday at 7:00 a.m. PT, subscribe here. 

The big story

Stripe announced that it will be de-coupling payments from the rest of its financial services stack. This is a big change, considering that in the past, even as Stripe grew its list of services, it required businesses to be payments customers in order to use any of the rest. Alongside this, the company is adding in a number of new embedded finance features and a new wave of AI tools. The fintech giant also announced that after a six-year hiatus, it will let customers accept cryptocurrency payments, starting with just one currency in particular, USDC stablecoins, initially only on Solana, Ethereum and Polygon.

Analysis of the week

Brazil got a new fintech unicorn last week. Banking-as-a-service startup QI Tech achieved unicorn status after raising an undisclosed amount of capital in a General Atlantic-led investment that was an extension of its $200 million Series B raise, which TechCrunch covered last October. QI Tech said it is also preparing to close on the acquisition of Singulare, a Brazilian fund administration services provider, in the third quarter. Meanwhile, another Brazilian startup, Vixtra, secured $36 million in debt and equity funding — another example of companies in the region continuing to attract venture dollars.

Dollars and cents

Bump, a platform that helps creators manage and grow their businesses, announced a $3 million seed round, with investments from ImpactX, Capitalize and Serac Ventures. Bump allows creators to track income and market value, which can help them negotiate better deals and see how much money partners owe them.

Y Combinator alum and B2B fintech startup Fintoc raised a $7 million Series A round of funding to consolidate its presence in its home country, Chile, and in Mexico, where it expanded one year ago.

Pomelo, a startup that launched in the Philippines in 2022 — allowing people in the United States to send money to the country while at the same time building their credit — has raised $35 million in a Series A round led by Dubai venture firm Vy Capital with participation from Founders Fund.

You can hear the Equity crew talk about this deal and more here:

What else we’re writing

Bengaluru-headquartered CRED, valued at $6.4 billion, has received the in-principle approval for a payment aggregator license in a boost to the Indian fintech startup that could help it better serve its customers and launch new products and experiment with ideas faster.

Winding down a startup can be bittersweet for founders. In the case of Fundid, rising interest rates killed the business finance startup. But VCs and partners hurt it, too, founder Stefanie Sample says in this compelling read by Christine Hall.

After a tumultuous year, banking-as-a-service (BaaS) startup Synapse has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and its assets will be acquired by TabaPay.

High-interest headlines

401Go raises $12M Series A to fuel next phase of growth

Ramp vs. Brex risks becoming fintech’s Uber vs. Lyft, some VCs warn

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Investors won't give you the real reason they are passing on your startup | TechCrunch

April 27, 2024 11:32 PM0


“When an investor passes on you, they will not tell you the real reason,” said Tom Blomfield, group partner at Y Combinator. “At seed stage, frankly, no one knows what’s going to fucking happen. The future is so uncertain. All they’re judging is the perceived quality of the founder. When they pass, what they’re thinking in their head is that this person is not impressive enough. Not formidable. Not smart enough. Not hardworking enough. Whatever it is, ‘I am not convinced this person is a winner.’ And they will never say that to you, because you would get upset. And then you would never want to pitch them again.”

Blomfield should know – he was the founder of Monzo Bank, one of the brightest-shining stars in the UK startup sky. For the past three years or so, he’s been a partner at Y Combinator. He joined me on stage at TechCrunch Early Stage in Boston on Thursday, in a session titled “How to Raise Money and Come Out Alive.” There were no minced words or pulled punches: only real talk and the occasional F-bomb flowed.

Understand the Power Law of Investor Returns

At the heart of the venture capital model lies the Power Law of Returns, a concept that every founder must grasp to navigate the fundraising landscape effectively. In summary: a small number of highly successful investments will generate the majority of a VC firm’s returns, offsetting the losses from the many investments that fail to take off.

For VCs, this means a relentless focus on identifying and backing those rare startups with the potential for 100x to 1000x returns. As a founder, your challenge is to convince investors that your startup has the potential to be one of those outliers, even if the probability of achieving such massive success seems as low as 1%.

Demonstrating this outsized potential requires a compelling vision, a deep understanding of your market, and a clear path to rapid growth. Founders must paint a picture of a future where their startup has captured a significant portion of a large and growing market, with a business model that can scale efficiently and profitably.

“Every VC, when they’re looking at your company, is not asking, ‘oh, this founder’s asked me to invest at $5 million. Will it get to $10 million or $20 million?’ For a VC, that’s as good as failure,” said Blomfield. “Batting singles is literally identical to zeros for them. It does not move the needle in any way. The only thing that moves the needle for VC returns is home runs, is the 100x return, the 1,000x return.”

VCs are looking for founders who can back up their claims with data, traction, and a deep understanding of their industry. This means clearly grasping your key metrics, such as customer acquisition costs, lifetime value, and growth rates, and articulating how these metrics will evolve as you scale.

The importance of addressable market

One proxy for power law, is the size of your addressable market: It’s crucial to have a clear understanding of your Total Addressable Market (TAM) and to be able to articulate this to investors in a compelling way. Your TAM represents the total revenue opportunity available to your startup if you were to capture 100% of your target market. It’s a theoretical ceiling on your potential growth, and it’s a key metric that VCs use to evaluate the potential scale of your business.

When presenting your TAM to investors, be realistic and to back up your estimates with data and research. VCs are highly skilled at evaluating market potential, and they’ll quickly see through any attempts to inflate or exaggerate your market size. Instead, focus on presenting a clear and compelling case for why your market is attractive, how you plan to capture a significant share of it, and what unique advantages your startup brings to the table.

Leverage is the name of the game

Raising venture capital is not just about pitching your startup to investors and hoping for the best. It’s a strategic process that involves creating leverage and competition among investors to secure the best possible terms for your company. 

“YC is very, very good at [generating leverage. We basically collect a bunch of the best companies in the world, we put them through a program, and at the end, we have a demo day where the world’s best investors basically run an auction process to try and invest in the companies,” Blomfield summarized. “And whether or not you’re doing an accelerator, trying to create that kind of pressured situation, that kind of high leverage situation where you have multiple investors bidding for your company. It’s really the only way you get great investment outcomes. YC just manufactures that for you. It’s very, very useful.”

Even if you’re not part of an accelerator program, there are still ways to create competition and leverage among investors. One strategy is to run a tight fundraising process, setting a clear timeline for when you’ll be making a decision and communicating this to investors upfront. This creates a sense of urgency and scarcity, as investors know they have a limited offer window.

Another tactic is to be strategic about the order in which you meet with investors. Start with investors who are likely to be more skeptical or have a longer decision-making process, and then move on to those who are more likely to move quickly. This allows you to build momentum and create a sense of inevitability around your fundraise.

Angels invest with their heart

Blomfield also discussed how angel investors often have different motivations and rubrics for investing than professional investors: they usually invest at a higher rate than VCs, particularly for early-stage deals. This is because angels typically invest their own money and are more likely to be swayed by a compelling founder or vision, even if the business is still in its early stages.

Another key advantage of working with angel investors is that they can often provide introductions to other investors and help you build momentum in your fundraising efforts. Many successful fundraising rounds start with a few key angel investors coming on board, which then helps attract the interest of larger VCs.

Blomfield shared the example of a round that came together slowly; over 180 meetings and 4.5 months worth of hard slog.

“This is actually the reality of most rounds that are done today: You read about the blockbuster round in TechCrunch. You know, ‘I raised $100 million from Sequoia kind of rounds’. But honestly, TechCrunch doesn’t write so much about the ‘I ground it out for 4 and 1/2 months and finally closed my round after meeting 190 investors,’” Blomfield said. “Actually, this is how most rounds get done. And a lot of it depends on angel investors.”

Investor feedback can be misleading

One of the most challenging aspects of the fundraising process for founders is navigating the feedback they receive from investors. While it’s natural to seek out and carefully consider any advice or criticism from potential backers, it’s crucial to recognize that investor feedback can often be misleading or counterproductive.

Blomfield explains that investors will often pass on a deal for reasons they don’t fully disclose to the founder. They may cite concerns about the market, the product, or the team, but these are often just superficial justifications for a more fundamental lack of conviction or fit with their investment thesis.

“The takeaway from this is when an investor gives you a bunch of feedback on your seed stage pitch, some founders are like, ‘oh my god, they said my go-to-market isn’t developed enough. Better go and do that.’ But it leads people astray, because the reasons are mostly bullshit,” says Blomfield. “You might end up pivoting your whole company strategy based on some random feedback that an investor gave you, when actually they’re thinking, ‘I don’t think the founders are good enough,’ which is a tough truth they’ll never tell you.”

Investors are not always right. Just because an investor has passed on your deal doesn’t necessarily mean that your startup is flawed or lacking in potential. Many of the most successful companies in history have been passed over by countless investors before finding the right fit.

Do diligence on your investors

The investors you bring on board will not only provide the capital you need to grow but will also serve as key partners and advisors as you navigate the challenges of scaling your business. Choosing the wrong investors can lead to misaligned incentives, conflicts, and even the failure of your company. A lot of that is avoidable by doing thorough due diligence on potential investors before signing any deals. This means looking beyond just the size of their fund or the names in their portfolio and really digging into their reputation, track record, and approach to working with founders.

“80-odd percent of investors give you money. The money is the same. And you get back to running your business. And you have to figure it out. I think, unfortunately, there are about 15 percent to 20 percent of investors who are actively destructive,” Blomfield said. “They give you money, and then they try to help out, and they fuck shit up. They are super demanding, or push you to pivot the business in a crazy direction, or push you to spend the money they’ve just given you to hire faster.”

One key piece advice from Blomfield is to speak with founders of companies that have not performed well within an investor’s portfolio. While it’s natural for investors to tout their successful investments, you can often learn more by examining how they behave when things aren’t going according to plan.

“The successful founders are going to say nice things. But the middling, the singles, and the strikeouts, the failures, go and talk to those people. And don’t get an introduction from the investor. Go and do your own research. Find those founders and ask, how did these investors act when times got tough,” Blomfield advised.


Software Development in Sri Lanka

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OpenAI Startup Fund quietly raises $15M | TechCrunch

April 26, 2024 9:13 PM0


The OpenAI Startup Fund, a venture fund related to — but technically separate from — OpenAI that invests in early-stage, typically AI-related companies across education, law and the sciences, has quietly closed a $15 million tranche.

According to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, two unnamed investors contributed the $15 million in new cash on or around April 19. The paperwork was submitted on April 25, and mentions Ian Hathaway, the OpenAI Startup Fund’s manager and sole partner.

The capital was transferred to a legal entity called a special purpose vehicle, or SPV, associated with the OpenAI Startup Fund: OpenAI Startup Fund SPV II, L.P.

SPVs allow multiple investors to pool their resources and make an investment in a single company or fund. In the VC sector, they’re sometimes used to invest in startups that don’t fit a fund’s strategy or that fall outside a fund’s terms. SPVs can also be marketed to a wider range of non-institutional investors.

It’s the second such time the OpenAI Startup Fund has raised capital through an SPV — the first time being in February for a $10 million tranche.

The OpenAI Startup Fund, whose portfolio companies include legal tech startup Harvey, Ambiance Healthcare and humanoid robotics firm Figure AI, came under scrutiny last year after it was revealed that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman had long legally controlled the fund. While marketed like a standard corporate venture arm, Altman raised capital for the OpenAI Startup Fund from outside limited partners, including Microsoft (a close OpenAI partner and investor), and had the final say in the fund’s investments.

Neither OpenAI nor Altman had — or have — a financial interest in the OpenAI Startup Fund. But critics nonetheless argued that Altman’s ownership amounted to a conflict of interest; OpenAI claimed that the general partner structure was intended to be “temporary.”

In April, Altman transferred formal control of the OpenAI Startup Fund to Hathaway, previously an investor with the VC firm Haystack, who’d played a key role in managing the Startup Fund since 2021.

As of last year, the OpenAI Startup Fund — whose ventures also include an incubator program called Converge — had $175 million in commitments and held $325 million in gross net asset value. It’s backed well over a dozen startups including Descript, a collaborative multimedia editing platform valued at $553 million last year; language learning app Speak; AI-powered note-taking app Mem; and IDE platform Anysphere.

OpenAI hadn’t responded to TechCrunch’s request for comment as of publication time. We’ll update this post if we hear back.


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Defense startup True Anomaly lays off around 25%, cancels summer internship | TechCrunch

April 26, 2024 4:51 AM0


Space and defense startup True Anomaly has laid off around 25% of its workforce and cancelled its summer internship program, TechCrunch has learned.

“With our rapid growth over the past two years, we looked at every aspect of our company to make sure we are laser focused on our goals and best positioned to execute,” a company spokesperson said. “We identified the duplication of roles and functions across the company, and as such, reduced our headcount. This won’t impact our ability to execute on our contracts with customers or on our mission to bring security and sustainability to the space domain.”

While TechCrunch could not confirm the total headcount prior to these layoffs, True Anomaly had over 100 employees as of December 2023, it told the Denver Business Journal. Nearly 30 people were cut from the workforce, according to a post on LinkedIn from one of the people let go.

Employees started posting on LinkedIn about the layoffs on April 24; according to those messages, people impacted worked in sales, business development and recruiting. At least some interns were abruptly told the summer internship program was cancelled last Friday, on April 19, as well. The internship was set to start on June 1.

The Centennial, Colorado-based startup closed a $100 million financing round last December; at the time, executives said staff had swelled to 107 employees. Earlier this month, True Anomaly CEO Even Rogers told TechCrunch during an interview on the company’s first mission that the company was “well-capitalized.”

True Anomaly hopes to modernize space defense with its Jackal spacecraft and Mosaic software platform for command and control operations. The startup envisions using Jackals on orbit to approach, image, and gather intelligence on other objects in orbit.

True Anomaly launched that first mission, called Mission X, on March 4, though it ended early after the company failed to establish reliable communications with the two spacecraft that were deployed in orbit. The anomaly is hardly slowing them down, however. The startup is pushing to launch at least twice more in the next 12 months, aiming for another launch in October, one person told TechCrunch.

The person was offered an internship, and spoke to TechCrunch on condition of anonymity, saying that a technical recruiter suggested that the internship program had been cancelled because the company didn’t have the human bandwidth to organize and supervise an intern project. The team is also starting work on the $30 million responsive space contract that the company was awarded earlier this month, the person said.


Software Development in Sri Lanka

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Chilean instant payments API startup Fintoc raises $7 million to turn Mexico into its main market | TechCrunch

April 25, 2024 10:12 PM0


Open banking may be a global trend, but implementation is fragmented. The fintech startups doing the legwork to make it a reality in smaller markets could become M&A targets for incumbents like Visa.

One of these is Y Combinator alum Fintoc, a B2B fintech startup that has raised a $7 million Series A round of funding to consolidate its presence in its home country, Chile, and in Mexico, where it expanded one year ago.

Fintoc’s product is an API that lets online businesses accept instant payments coming directly from the customer’s bank account. Known as accounts to accounts, or A2A, this method offers an alternative to credit card transactions, with fewer intermediaries.

For end users, A2A can be as frictionless as an online credit card payment. Instead of entering card details, they can just pick their bank and securely facilitate their bank credentials. But the main selling point is to businesses, which pay a lower commission than the usual credit card transaction fees.

Many countries now facilitate A2A, which has created tailwinds for open banking companies such as Plaid, Visa-owned Tink, TrueLayer and Volt. More generalist fintech players like Adyen and Stripe have also closed partnerships to offer A2A payments to their customers.

Latin America, however, isn’t particularly easy to enter for global players, nor very attractive. It is highly fragmented, and many countries still lag behind in financial inclusion: Fewer than half of Mexican adults have a bank account, according to World Development Indicators.

Mexico’s low banking penetration is a problem, but also an opportunity for Fintoc, CEO Cristóbal Griffero told TechCrunch. He expects neobanks to address the issue, but it will take time. “If we are there right before this boom, we’ll be able to grow with the market.”

Fintoc’s home market was less challenging in some ways. This helped it get quite significant traction: “In 2023, 1,807,000 people paid products, services and bills using Fintoc. This is approximately 13% of Chile’s population,” content manager Pedro Casale wrote in an email. Fintoc says it is used by more than 1.2 million people monthly in Chile.

These numbers are even more impressive considering that Fintoc faces competition from other players such as ETpay and Khipu. But its large clients mean that it is tied to frequent use cases such as topping up public transportation cards, making e-commerce purchases, covering bills and paying credit installments.

Chile’s population size, however, puts a ceiling on Fintoc’s potential growth, Griffero said. “You have the limit that we are 20 million inhabitants, so after a certain amount of revenue, it is very difficult to reach $100 million in ARR. It gets very complicated and you have to go out.”

The necessity to expand applies to any Chilean fintech. But Fintoc’s roadmap also reflects that the market has considerably changed compared to 2021.

Toned-down expansion

When Griffero and co-founder Lukas Zorich joined Y Combinator’s winter 2021 batch, their pitch was pretty straightforward: They were building “Plaid for LatAm.” That’s no longer the case; Plaid’s model was too advanced for the region, and the idea to launch all across the region was too ambitious.

VCs, too, have come to the same conclusion, as Fintoc learned during its fundraising process, Griffero said.

“I believe that the funds are still here, only that their thesis has changed a little. Now you have to explain very well why [you’d go into] each country. Saying “I am X for LatAm” is no longer something appealing to investors, especially those in San Francisco, because Latin America is super fragmented and suddenly it doesn’t make sense to be in every country. So maybe it’s Mexico, Chile and one other country, not Brazil or not Colombia; not “we are going to do all of Latin America because we are close.”

This more measured approach doesn’t warrant mega-rounds. “In 2021 this round would probably have been five times larger,” Griffero said. But maybe that’s for the best; TechCrunch followed more than one unicorn having to scale back on its pan-LatAm expansion and lay off staffers as a result.

Food delivery company JOKR confirms closing of Santiago, Medellin operations

Fintoc expects a lot from its Mexican expansion. “Mexico is the market we will most care about in the next two years and we expect it will represent the bulk of Fintoc’s revenue within the next two years,” Griffol said. But the startup is taking it step by step: Out of its team of 48 employees, only five are based in Mexico. Zorich moved there last year, but Griffol might not do so until next year.

With more onerous plans, Fintoc’s Series A round may not have happened at all. In the first quarter of the year, fintech funding slowed to its lowest level since 2017, CB Insights reported. In Latin America, it’s when compared to Q2 2021 that the drop is most blatant: Fintech startups from the region collectively raised $6 billion across 94 deals then, compared to only $0.4 billion last quarter.

Funding LatAm fintech is less en vogue than three years ago. But for VCs willing to wait, the rise of open banking across the region could eventually result in interesting M&As. Not just in Brazil, where Visa shelled out $1 billion for Pismo, a payments infrastructure that will give it access to Pix, the country’s ubiquitous instant payment system. In Mexico, too: In 2021, Mastercard acquired fintech startup Arcus, whose co-founder Iñigo Rumayor participated in Fintoc’s Series A round.

Fintoc’s main investors also have connections to its target market. Brazilian fund Monashees, which previously participated in Fintoc’s seed round and has now made a follow-on investment, has an office there. And its Series A lead, Propel, is based in the U.S., but was able to facilitate introductions to Mexican banks, an important step for the startup’s expansion.

“The closer we get to the payment rails, the better payment experience we can offer,” Griffero said in a statement.

Fintech funding slows to the lowest level since 2017

On the client side, Fintoc is targeting Mexican businesses that accept offline payment methods such as cash payments and post-pay methods, where customers must visit a physical location to complete their transaction. This makes A2A a pretty clear upgrade; but eventually, Griffero hopes it will also replace debit cards, and later on, offer a solid alternative to credit cards.

Mastercard and Visa will clearly face more competition as instant payments become commonplace with systems such as Pix in Brazil, but also UPI and India and FedNow in the U.S. A recent Bain & Company report estimates that 90% of today’s payments revenue could “migrate to software vendors, major technology firms, and other contenders.” This explains some of their past acquisitions, and we wouldn’t be surprised if others followed.


Software Development in Sri Lanka

Robotic Automations

Ex-NSA hacker and ex-Apple researcher launch startup to protect Apple devices | TechCrunch

April 25, 2024 5:48 PM0


Two veteran security experts are launching a startup that aims to help other makers of cybersecurity products to up their game in protecting Apple devices.

Their startup is called DoubleYou, the name taken from the initials of its co-founder, Patrick Wardle, who worked at the U.S. National Security Agency between 2006 and 2008. Wardle then worked as an offensive security researcher for years before switching to independently researching Apple macOS defensive security. Since 2015, Wardle has developed free and open-source macOS security tools under the umbrella of his Objective-See Foundation, which also organizes the Apple-centric Objective By The Sea conference.

His co-founder is Mikhail Sosonkin, who was also an offensive cybersecurity researcher for years before working at Apple between 2019 and 2021. Wardle, who described himself as “the mad scientist in the lab,” said Sosonkin is the “right partner” he needed to make his ideas reality.

“Mike might not hype himself up, but he is an incredible software engineer,” Wardle said.

The idea behind DoubleYou is that, compared to Windows, there still are only a few good security products for macOS and iPhones. And that’s a problem because Macs are becoming a more popular choice for companies all over the world, meaning malicious hackers are also increasingly targeting Apple computers. Wardle and Sosonkin said there aren’t as many talented macOS and iOS security researchers, which means companies are struggling to develop their products.

Wardle and Sosonkin’s idea is to take a page out of the playbook of hackers that specialize in attacking systems, and applying it to defense. Several offensive cybersecurity companies offer modular products, capable of delivering a full chain of exploits, or just one component of it. The DoubleYou team wants to do just that — but with defensive tools.

“Instead of building, for example, a whole product from scratch, we really took a step back, and we said ‘hey, how do the offensive adversaries do this?’” Wardle said in an interview with TechCrunch. “Can we basically take that same model of essentially democratizing security but from a defensive point of view, where we develop individual capabilities that then we can license out and have other companies integrate into their security products?”

Wardle and Sosonkin believe that they can.

And while the co-founders haven’t decided on the full list of modules they want to offer, they said their product will certainly include a core offering, which includes the analyzing all new process to detect and block untrusted code (which in MacOS means they are not “notarized” by Apple), and monitoring for and blocking anomalous DNS network traffic, which can uncover malware when it connects to domains known to be associated to hacking groups. Wardle said that these, at least for now, will be primarily for macOS.

Also, the founders want to develop tools to monitor software that wants to become persistent — a hallmark of malware, to detect cryptocurrency miners and ransomware based on their behavior, and to detect when software tries to get permission to use the webcam and microphone.

Sosonkin described it as “an off-the-shelf catalog approach,” where every customer can pick and choose what components they need to implement in their product. Wardle described it as being like a supplier of car parts, rather than the maker of the whole car. This approach, Wardle added, is similar to the one he took in developing the various Objective-See tools such as Oversight, which monitors microphone and webcam usage; and KnockKnock, which monitors if an app wants to become persistent.

“We don’t need to use new technology to make this work. What we need is to actually take the tools available and put them in the right place,” Sosonkin said.

Wardle and Sosonkin’s plan, for now, is not to take any outside investment. The co-founders said they want to remain independent and avoid some of the pitfalls of getting outside investment, namely the need to scale too much and too fast, which will allow them to focus on developing their technology.

“Maybe in a way, we are kind of like foolish idealists,” Sosonkin said. “We just want to catch some malware. I hope we can make some money in the process.”


Software Development in Sri Lanka

Robotic Automations

Xaira, an AI drug discovery startup, launches with a massive $1B, says it's 'ready' to start developing drugs | TechCrunch

April 25, 2024 6:09 AM0


Advances in generative AI have taken the tech world by storm. Biotech investors are making a big bet that similar computational methods could revolutionize drug discovery.

On Tuesday, ARCH Venture Partners and Foresite Labs, an affiliate of Foresite Capital, announced that they incubated Xaira Therapeutics and funded the AI biotech with $1 billion. Other investors in the new company, which has been operating in stealth mode for about six months, include F-Prime, NEA, Sequoia Capital, Lux Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Menlo Ventures, Two Sigma Ventures and SV Angel.

Xaira’s CEO Marc Tessier-Lavigne, a former Stanford president and chief scientific officer at Genentech, says the company is ready to start developing drugs that were impossible to make without recent breakthroughs in AI. “We’ve done such a large capital raise because we believe the technology is at an inflection point where it can have a transformative effect on the field,” he said.

The advances in foundational models come from the University of Washington’s Institute of Protein Design, run by David Baker, one of Xaira’s co-founders. These models are similar to diffusion models that power image generators like OpenAI’s DALL-E and Midjourney. But rather than creating art, Baker’s models aim to design molecular structures that can be made in a three-dimensional, physical world. 

While Xaira’s investors are convinced that the company can revolutionize data design, they emphasized that generative AI applications in biology are still in the early innings.

Vik Bajaj, CEO of Foresite Labs and managing director of Foresite Capital, said that unlike in technology, where data that train AI models is created by consumers, biology and medicine are “data poor. You have to create the datasets that drive model development.”

Other biotech companies using generative AI to design drugs include Recursion, which went public in 2021, and Genesis Therapeutics, a startup that last year raised a $200 million Series B co-led by Andreessen Horowitz.

The company declined to say when it expects to have its first drug available for human trials. However, ARCH Venture Partners managing director Bob Nelsen underscored that Xaira and its investors are ready to play the long game.

“You need billions of dollars to be a real drug company and also think AI. Both of those are expensive disciplines,” he said.  

Xaira wants to position itself as a powerhouse of AI drug discovery. However, some view bringing on Tessier-Lavigne as CEO as an unexpected move. Tessier-Lavigne resigned last year from his position as Stanford president amid allegations that his laboratory at Genetech manipulated research data.

But investors are confident that he is the right person for the job.

“I have known Marc for many years and know him to be a person of integrity and scientific vision who will be an exceptional CEO,” Nelsen said in an email. “Stanford exonerated him of any wrongdoing or scientific misconduct.”  


Software Development in Sri Lanka

Robotic Automations

Stainless is helping OpenAI, Anthropic and others build SDKs for their APIs | TechCrunch

April 25, 2024 3:39 AM0


Besides a focus on generative AI, what do AI startups like OpenAI, Anthropic and Together AI share in common? They use Stainless, a platform created by ex-Stripe staffer Alex Rattray, to generate SDKs for their APIs.

Rattray, who studied economics at the University of Pennsylvania, has been building things for as long as he can remember, from an underground newspaper in high school to a bike-share program in college. Rattray picked up programming on the side while at UPenn, which led to a job at Stripe as an engineer on the developer platform team.

At Stripe, Rattray helped to revamp API documentation and launch the system that powers Stripe’s API client SDK. It’s while working on those projects Rattray observed there wasn’t an easy way for companies, including Stripe, to build SDKs for their APIs at scale.

“Handwriting the SDKs couldn’t scale,” he told TechCrunch. “Today, every API designer has to settle a million and one ‘bikeshed’ questions all over again, and painstakingly enforce consistency around these decisions across their API.”

Now, you might be wondering, why would a company need an SDK if it offers an API? APIs are simply protocols, enabling software components to communicate with each other and transfer data. SDKs, on the other hand, offer a set of software-crafting tools that plug into APIs. Without an SDK to accompany an API, API users are forced to read API docs and build everything themselves, which isn’t the best experience.

Rattray’s solution is Stainless, which takes in an API spec and generates SDKs in a range of programming languages including Python, TypeScript, Kotlin, Go and Java. As APIs evolve and change, Stainless’ platform pushes those updates with options for versioning and publishing changelogs.

“API companies today have a team of several people building libraries in each new language to connect to their API,” Rattray said. “These libraries inevitably become inconsistent, fall out of date and require constant changes from specialist engineers. Stainless fixes that problem by generating them via code.”

Stainless isn’t the only API-to-SDK generator out there. There’s LibLab and Speakeasy, to name a couple, plus longstanding open source projects such as the OpenAPI Generator.

Stainless, however, delivers more “polish” than most others, Rattray said, thanks partly to its use of generative AI.

“Stainless uses generative AI to produce an initial ‘Stainless config’ for customers, which is then up to them to fine-tune to their API,” he explained. “This is particularly valuable for AI companies, whose huge user bases includes many novice developers trying to integrate with complex features like chat streaming and tools.”

Perhaps that’s what attracted customers like OpenAI, Anthropic and Together AI, along with Lithic, LangChain, Orb, Modern Treasury and Cloudflare. Stainless has “dozens” of paying clients in its beta, Rattray said, and some of the SDKs it’s generated, including OpenAI’s Python SDK, are getting millions of downloads per week.

“If your company wants to be a platform, your API is the bedrock of that,” he said. “Great SDKs for your API drive faster integration, broader feature adoption, quicker upgrades and trust in your engineering quality.”

Most customers are paying for Stainless’ enterprise tier, which comes with additional white-glove services and AI-specific functionality. Publishing a single SDK with Stainless is free. But companies have to fork over between $250 per month and $30,000 per year for multiple SDKs across multiple programming languages.

Rattray bootstrapped Stainless “with revenue from day one,” he said, adding that the company could be profitable as soon as this year; annual recurring revenue is hovering around $1 million. But Rattray opted instead to take on outside investment to build new product lines.

Stainless recently closed a $3.5 million seed round with participation from Sequoia and The General Partnership.

“Across the tech ecosystem, Stainless stands out as a beacon that elevates the developer experience, rivaling the high standard once set by Stripe,” said Anthony Kline, partner at The General Partnership. “As APIs continue to be the core building blocks of integrating services like LLMs into applications, Alex’s first-hand experience pioneering Stripe’s API codegen system uniquely positions him to craft Stainless into the quintessential platform for seamless, high-quality API interactions.”

Stainless has a 10-person team based in New York. Rattray expects headcount to grow to 15 or 20 by the end of the year.


Software Development in Sri Lanka

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