FinTech news in Airbnb category

When Sequoia’s portfolio company Stripe eventually goes public, for example, rather than distribute Stripe’s shares to its investors, Sequoia — assuming it has the blessing of its limited partners —  is more likely to move the prized company’s shares from the many different vehicles that it has used to back Stripe into its Sequoia Capital Fund with the expectation that those shares will continue to rise in value. Indeed, presumably to ensure some stability at its outset, Sequoia banned redemptions from the Sequoia Capital Fund for its first two years, though going forward, if its investors want some liquidity from Sequoia Capital Fund, they will have two chances each year to ask for this via some combination of shares and cash. The number represents two things: the value of the stock that Sequoia has rolled into its permanent fund from its legacy funds — these are shares in now-public companies that Sequoia backed as startups, including Airbnb, DoorDash, Unity, and Snowflake. Almost a year ago to the day, the 50-year-old investing powerhouse Sequoia Capital announced that it had reorganized itself around a singular, permanent structure: The Sequoia Capital Fund.

Represas notes that Able’s focus on the tech that is used for processing, but not decision-making or risk-profiling (which Represas told me is just a small aspect of loan approval and not where the pain point is); the fact that it focuses on commercial loans and not SMB loans (too small an opportunity, he said); and that it does not directly interface with borrowers itself but works through banks I write that it is launching into the wider market because although it’s coming out of stealth, Able’s actually been around since 2020, and the customers it’s picked up are already using Able’s technology — which involves RPA, computer vision and other forms of AI to ingest and process data related to loans as part of their evaluation process.

Pebble’s 5% cash back is higher than what traditional credit cards tend to offer because traditional credit card providers rely on middlemen like Visa and Mastercard as well as fraud protection services and other third parties to process their transactions, leaving less in reward cash for the customer, Bai explained.

In a statement Ashutosh Bhatt, CEO of Pillar, said: Ever since I moved to the U.K. and found I couldn’t access any of the everyday products I had in India this has been a problem I have been passionate about solving. Adding to this roster is fintech startup Pillar, which has now raised a pre-seed round of £13 million ($16.9 million) led by Global Founders Capital and Backed VC. The company claims it will be able to provide immigrants with access to credit products when moving to a new country. Founded by Revolut alumni Ashutosh Bhatt and CTO, Adam Lewis, Pillar has an Open Banking-led data and analytics engine that will be launched in Q3 in 2022.

The $1.5 billion in capital puts Haun Ventures in the company of other crypto native funds like Paradigm and Electric Capital, which have debuted large funds in recent months.

YC says 16% of the companies in its current list (44 out of 267) are based outside the U.S., compared to its first list, which included just seven non-U.S. companies.

Hopper, the mobile travel booking startup and app that lets users book flights, hotels, cars, and — most recently — short-term home rentals a la Airbnb and VRBO, has been on a fast pace of growth in the wake of Covid-19 travel restrictions loosening up in the last year, with 70 million downloads to date and $2 billion+ in travel sales last year.