FinTech news in lux capital category

He will continue developing the company’s technology, including automating the process of acquiring merchants on Shopify and accelerating the operational efficiencies running these online stores through OpenStore, even going so far as to reduce the acquisition offer from the current 24 hours down to an hour, the company said. The early success of the company may lie in the makeup of its founders: OpenStore is led by some heavy hitters, including Founders Fund general partner Keith Rabois and Jack Abraham, Atomic founder and managing partner, who started the company along with Matt Lanter and Jeremy Wood. In addition, while funding to aggregators has slowed to a comparative trickle — $9 billion of funding went into aggregators by September 2021, compared with $2 billion over the same period in 2022, per the Financial Times — the Miami-based company is among the recipients of some of those recent investment dollars. The company said this is a 25% increase in the company’s valuation from its previous round of $75 million in funding announced in November 2021.

It probably won’t stay that way for long, though, as multiple other firms have started cropping up to target early-stage opportunities in many of the sectors Countdown operates in, including Dcode Capital (defense and hard tech), Stellar Ventures (space) and Shield Capital (defense). In a time when most VCs are acting more cautiously and placing focus on companies with a quick path to profitability, Countdown Capital is instead going all in on hard-to-build, capital-intensive bets. Malik said for this fund the firm is really interested in tapping into macro trends, including supply chain issues, bringing manufacturing back to American soil and new innovations related to defense machinery and weaponry. Malik said that apart from deploying pre-seed capital, the firm will be focused on helping its portfolio companies hire talent.