FinTech news in Sequoia category

The 12 startups gathered in the presentation hall had been hand-picked from about 3,600 applicants for the latest cohort of Sequoia’s four-year-old early-stage-focused Surge program

The startup was founded in March 2022 by Katz and Parker Jou, CTO of Caldera, in an effort to simplify the process of creating app-specific blockchains so builders can create layer-2 blockchains in the span of hours, opposed to months or years, the team said.

Sequoia India and Southeast Asia has launched a new program to help its portfolio early-stage founders connect with international operators who can help the startups expand to new markets, the venture firm said, as it aggressively scales its offerings in the key regions. The program will open up to much of the venture firm’s portfolio, but Sequoia expects early-stage startups — in seed and Series A stages — will find it especially useful, said Harshjit Sethi, managing director at Sequoia India, in an interview. In addition to providing founders with advice, connections and help, the operators will also invest in the startups as part of the program, called Pathfinders, the storied venture firm said. The firm, which launched a $2.85 billion fund for India and Southeast Asia earlier this year, chanced upon the idea of Pathfinders on a Zoom call in 2020 while discussing ways to provide greater help to firms looking to expand outside of the country.

Islamabad-headquartered startup Dbank said on Thursday it has raised $17.6 million in a seed round, the largest in Pakistan, co-led by Sequoia Capital Southeast Asia, the recently unveiled $1 billion fund, and Kleiner Perkins.

MoHash has been working to solve this challenge for a year and has assembled several experienced tech and finance individuals from firms such as Goldman Sachs, Amazon, Oliver Wyman, India Stack and Samsung.

In his view, CaptivateIQ alleviates these pain points by taking the flexibility of spreadsheets and combining it with the scalability and performance of software technology to configure commissions plans with minimal support.