FinTech news in Co-founder category

As previously reported in the Irish media, documents filed in the Companies Registration Office in Dublin, Ireland, where Web Summit was originally launched, show that Cosgrave, Web Summit CEO, is listed as a director of the Web Summit Ventures Management Ltd. While it’s been previously reported that Web Summit co-founder, Paddy Cosgrave, will imminently launch his new vehicle, Web Summit Ventures (WSV), the nature and size of the fund has not, until now, been revealed. The move follows an acrimonious fallout between Web Summit’s co-founders, who first started the now-defunct Amaranthine VC fund in 2018, in part to join the ballooning investment ecosystem that had grown up around the Web Summit events. The Amaranthine Fund was set up by Cosgrave; David Kelly, a Web Summit co-founder; and Patrick Murphy, a fund manager, in 2018.

The full scope of the Yuga’s monetization plans for their network are still in development and the founders have yet to nail down timing for a wide public launch, but while multi-million dollar avatars and massive NFT land sales may be unique among today’s games, Yuga is positioning itself to compete with today’s big platforms including players like Epic Games, Roblox and Meta.

The program has cohorts three times a year for 10 weeks, Qiao Wang, a core contributor at Alliance DAO, said during the event. “Startups from all stages have joined our cohort, from those with just an idea to billion-dollar companies.”

It’s a bold move, and one of the reasons why we’re excited to announce that Solana’s co-founder, Anatoly Yakovenko, will join for a fireside conversation on stage on October 18-20 in San Francisco.

The company is working to streamline operations at other fintech startups, specifically through its reconciliation software that those companies can use to help ensure they’re working with accurate and precise data even when it comes from different places, said co-founder and CEO Kyle Maloney.

The $1.5 billion venture capital firm is entering the crypto market with a new $110 million fund dedicated to the sector that it will operate jointly with Ledger, a French startup focused on digital asset security, said Cathay co-founder Dennis Barrier.

Of the total funds raised in this round, $32 million came from venture capital firms and $38 million from the sale of Flowcarbon’s Goddess Nature Token (GNT), a crypto token on the Celo blockchain backed by carbon credits, Reuters reported.

Even as more traditional financial players enter the crypto world, blockchain investor Fortis Digital Ventures is closing a $100 million crypto fund that aims to bridge the gap between the old and new finance worlds. The firm will focus on investing in web3 companies that are building better user experiences and solving real world issues for people or businesses.

While Bitcoin and Ethereum have sustained over 20% declines each over the past week, a number of emerging projects have been hit even harder, including Silicon Valley darling Solana which has seen its token price decline some 40% week-over-week.

Nnadi says his company will engage more African governments — including those who have an anti-crypto stance like Nigeria and Kenya– to see the benefits of blockchain and assist in drafting licensing regimes for crypto companies to operate in their countries. In a statement, the company revealed that it struck a partnership with the Central African Republic — the first country to legalize bitcoin as a legal tender in Africa and second globally only to El Salvador –to become its official crypto partner and an advisor to the president on crypto strategy and planning.

Multimillion dollar monkey pictures and monkey money are likely not the future you were expecting to capture the undivided attention of Silicon Valley VCs, but Yuga Labs hopes that the new game and token will inspire a mainstream crypto economy built around their their IP, which further expanded last week to include the highly valued CryptoPunks and Meebits NFT collections after Yuga acquired the assets from Larva Labs.

The round of funding is good news for both employees and early backers who took a bet on Wasoko years ago as new investors Tiger Global and Avenir Growth Capital lead its Series B round (the pair also co-led Flutterwave’s Series C investment last March).

This capital raise pushes the Palo Alto-based fund toward the company of larger firms like Andreessen Horowitz, which closed a $2.2 billion crypto fund this past June, and crypto VC Paradigm, which debuted a $2.5 billion fund in November.

On the call, Pillay, who co-founded Stitch with Natalie Cuthbert and Priyen Pillay, didn’t give any update on this metric but said Stitch had seen a 104% month-on-month growth in payments value since launching the product last April.

In a market full of challenger banks — and some very close Vivid competitors such as Sequoia-backed neobroker Trade Republic — Vivid’s backers believe the company’s traction and all-in, easy approach that appeals to new consumer investors will see the company picking up more users and usage as it expands.

Routefusion cofounders Colton Seal and Richard Scappaticci attempted to launch a neobank in 2016, but they ran into significant hurdles when trying to integrate with banks to help their customers move money to other countries.