Greetings from Curacao!
One week ‘till touch down 🛬
Only one week until the start of New York FinTech week. I can’t wait!
Next week, I’ll share a link to schedule a meeting with me personally in New York, so let me know if you are around so we can meet in person for coffee!
What I’m looking for in startups 😇
Last week, I asked you to point me in the direction of promising open banking payments startups. I want to thank you all for the great suggestions!
Now, you might ask yourself, why am I looking for open banking startups?
For, a few years now, I have been involved as an angel investor with several FinTech startups. As a former payment startup founder, my expertise is mostly in payments.
However, throughout the years, my interest has expanded into digital banking and open banking, as well.
Also, about a year ago, I launched an Angel Investor Syndicate where other investors can co-invest alongside me. If you are interested in the best deal flow in FinTech, you can sign up here.
I’ll share a bit more about my portfolio companies in the upcoming period, to give you guys an impression of the segments I’m really passionate about.
Most of my investments are in payments, open banking, and digital banking. But I guess you already knew that from the news I share on LinkedIn and my other newsletters 😉.
Spotlight of the week
If you haven’t heard of Tymit yet, I’d like to introduce you to them. They are one of my portfolio companies. If you come across any promising companies like them, don’t hesitate to reach out.
More on Tymit: their mission is to reinvent credit to make it honest, safe, and instant everywhere their clients need it, so their customers can achieve more financial flexibility and peace of mind.
I’d particularly like to shed light on Tymit’s CEO Martin Magnone.
I ran into an interesting video interview this week. Martin is an entrepreneur at heart obsessed with achieving product-market fit and creating amazing customer experiences.
In Part 1 of the interview, Martin shares how he got the idea for Tymit in the first place; what helped him get the conviction to leave his stable and well-paying job at Bain & Company in New York after 10 years and move to London to start the company.
So long story short, please let me know when you come across any promising FinTech startups that are raising funds. I’m very much interested to take a closer look at them and see if I can help them out!
My take on current events 🗞
Looking at last week’s news, the article on Sifted about Holvi’s plans for a credit card launch, fundraise and IPO after their split with BBVA was one that caught my attention.
Holvi lost a big chunk of customers and 50% of its staff after buying itself out from BBVA earlier this year. But, according to founder Tuomas Toivonen, the small business banking startup is now making more money than ever.
Business neobanks are one of my favorite segments in FinTech at the moment, and it will be very interesting to see how Tuomas Toivonen will pull this off. I’ll definitely keep my eye on their development!
Talking about business neobanks, I spoke to Rocio Wu from Mercury earlier this week, and she shared a very interesting document with me, that could be of interest to every startup founder out there.
Mercury, which raised 120M a few months ago, enables small businesses and startups to include a range of financial services into their businesses; including FDIC-insured accounts, physical and virtual cards, wires, ACH, checks, cash management, and API integrations.
Aside from that, they also help their startup clients raise funds. I think that is an interesting approach.
As you can see I follow the business banking segment closely so please do not hesitate to share any relevant news/info (or gossip 🤭) from this space. I’m eager to learn more!
That’s it for this week. I’m sending this out, closing my laptop, and lacing up my shoes to go out for an early run before it gets too hot.
Bon Wíkènt - have a nice weekend!
Marcel.