#15: Netifi, Swoopos, & more
The newsletter is back with a streamlined version. This format featuring exclusive updates from early-stage venture capital investors and startup founders is one you can count on moving forward.
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Recent Startup Funding Announcements 💰
Even Financial (Phill Rosen, founder and CEO)
Even Financial, a NYC-based fintech company providing a recommendation engine and acquisition platform, raised USD 18.8m in a Series A round earlier this month.
Talks for the capital raise ran between March and August.
On number of investors that the company spoke with: there were a few different options, which is ideal. We are very happy with where things ended up, with great new participants like Greatpoint and Goldman Sachs and returning participants like Canaan and F-Prime.
We will use the funds from this round to continue to accelerate growth and tackle new product verticals, including deposits, credit cards and mortgages.
The USD 18.8m Series A came after Even’s USD 6.2m seed round. To date, we have raised USD 25m in funding. (note: the USD 27.9m on CrunchBase is inaccurate).
We are growing in every department. Engineering, Marketing, Business Development, Account Management and more. Please see open positions posted at www.evenfinancial.com/jobs and get in touch.
Swoopos (Lee Nazari, CEO and founder)
Swoopos, a Birmingham, UK-based mobile payment and ePOS startup, raised £1.2m (USD 1.54m) in funding last week.
The company devoted six months to raising the round.
Swoopos spoke with two investors during the round.
Valuation for the company after the round is GBP 4.5m (USD 5.79m).
This is the company’s first capital raise.
Netifi (Robert Roeser, co-founder and CEO)
Netifi, a San Francisco-based developer of a next-generation platform for reactive microservices and cloud-native applications, raised USD 2m in a seed round earlier this month.
The round took three months to close.
Spoke with approximately 50 prospective investors.
Two strategic goals for the capital: 1) build an active community around open source RSocket, and 2) Bring the Netifi platform to market and prove its value with customer. Netifi is confident that the capital raised will take them through both of these goals.
Total amount raised to date is USD 2.5m: USD 2m in seed funding with Dell Technologies Capital and previously USD 500k from angel investors.
Competitive landscape: The closest we’ve seen to Netifi is LightBend. Netifi is unique with its support for JavaScript.
Macro trend: Microservices and cloud-native applications that take advantage of infrastructure provided by cloud computing providers promise to transform application development. In its “FutureScape: Worldwide IT Industry 2018 Predictions,” International Data Corporation (IDC) reported, “By 2021, enterprise apps will shift toward hyper-agile architectures, with 80 percent of application development on cloud platforms using microservices and cloud functions.”
We are looking to accelerate that trend by filling the technology gap faced by enterprises looking to use microservices and those building cloud-native applications. We started Netifi to address the frustrations we encountered ourselves. Distributed systems are inherently unpredictable in their performance and we know that applying the same techniques and technologies that were used before simply won’t work.
The founders of Netifi have more than 30 years of combined experience building, scaling, and operating large distributed systems at companies such as Netflix, Nike and JPMorgan.
Aggressively hiring for positions, including front-end developers with UX skills and those who can help us build an active community around open source RSocket.
Airspace Technologies (Nick Bulcao, CEO and co-founder)
Airspace Technologies, a Carlsbad, California-based technology enabled provider of time definite logistics, raised an USD 8m Series A round earlier this month.
Devoted 2-3 months to raising our Series A round. During these months, we focused on preparing content, meeting with potential investors, and carefully selecting who would best partner with Airspace.
During the discussion period, we spoke to a few dozen potential investors.
Funds from the round will be used for growth. Airspace is currently looking to scale across all departments. We have 50+ employees and are looking to add an additional 40 using this funding.
The Series A (USD 8m) was the first institutional money. Before that, Airspace was bootstrapped by high net worth individuals and myself.
Competitive landscape: Airspace is competing with companies that have been around for 30-40 years and are widely recognizable by their names alone. While our competitors might have name recognition, Airspace has already made a huge splash in our industry due to our technology, level of service, and continuous growth. Our goal is to make shipping faster, safer, and more transparent than ever before through people, service, and technology; and, it's exciting the industry.
Macro trends: Technology will continue to impact this industry. Better tracking notifications through GPS, RFID, and on-asset devices will become the norm. Additionally, as key partners like the TSA, Airlines, and businesses advance their platforms, integrations will be very important. Anything that will streamline or remove human error will continue to advance our industry.
Year-to-date we have grown our active customer base by 43 percent and are now servicing over 100 different customers. Additionally our shipments have grown over 235 percent this year and we are just getting started.
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If you’re a startup and you’re raising capital and would like to be featured in next week’s newsletter, reach out by emailing: chris@pdreporter.com.
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