FinTech news in personal finance category
The community finance company defines the claim “as a business-to-consumer personal finance banking solution, U.S.-based and Black-owned with registered users or downloads above 1 million. Black-owned is defined as Black majority ownership.”
Nagpal isn’t worried about the seasonality of the 401(k) product because of the upcoming product roadmap, which includes the education product, investment flows into the retirement product like being able to invest in startups and ETFs, and even HSAs, often described as a 401(k) for healthcare. It would be a few years of self-employment, and building a venture firm later, before Nagpal returned to the moment as one of the early catalysts for his newest startup, Ocho. Perhaps the unique connection between Nagpal’s first company, to his firm, to his newest startup, could hint at what his approach to personal finance may be: diversify across multiple vehicles, redefine what a supercharged investment could look like, and keep on learning. To power that ambitious product spree, Ocho has raised $2.5 million from Nagpal’s own venture firm, Vibe Capital.
Spectral, a credit risk assessment infrastructure web3 startup, has raised $23 million in a round led by General Catalyst and Social Capital, the company co-founder and CEO Sishir Varghese exclusively told journalist. The startup built an on-chain equivalent to a traditional FICO score, called the Multi-Asset Credit Risk Oracle (MACRO) Score, which allows users to check their on-chain scores through its platform. DeFi doesn’t have credit risk infrastructure, though, Varghese noted. The long-term vision for Spectral is to make credit scoring a publicly accessible network, Varghese said.
Orman said she pushed back on a number of product roadmap suggestion from her other two co-founders, including making it look less like Mint, a personal finance platform adorned with graphs and data and more like a wallet that can inspire people to save.
Quick thoughts: This is another area that YC clearly sees as beginning to show promise, with past YC companies that include CrowdForce (which raised $3.6 million in funding last month) and Kudi (it raised $55 million last summer at a $500 million valuation). Blocknom Website: https://blocknom.com Founded: 2021 Location: Jakarta, Indonesia Team size: 6 Promises include: Providing an alternative payment infrastructure without the need for a payment card or consumer app so that customers can pay businesses from their phones without internet access. Among them is Mina Shahid, co-founder and CEO, who says he is a two-time founder and previously worked with co-founder Ben Best at another lending company in Ghana that failed.
Partnering with companies rather than providing services directly to users, she added, helps Addition create a more customized offering by leveraging data on the companies’ employees and their specific financial needs.