By a very wide margin, the most effective thing the federal government can do to address FAMGA’s impact is to provide a friendly regulatory environment for crypto and let capitalism do its thing.
Finance
PayEngine Raises $1.6M for its Payment Facilitation Platform for SaaS Companies
There are countless options for SaaS platforms to collect payments from their customers within their applications. But what if the application is designed to enable clients to accept payments from their customers. PayEngine is a payment platform that seamlessly integrates into SaaS applications to directly address this. SaaS businesses using PayEngine are able to set […]
Trust Raises $9M for its Corporate Card and Community Focused on Maximizing Advertising Spend
The digital ad spending market in the US is expected to exceed $190B in 2021. Businesses need to embrace the online ad revolution and be willing to adapt as the paid marketing environment is constantly evolving. The days of setting up a simple Facebook campaign and hoping for returns are no longer viable. Trust is a corporate card and community focused on optimizing advertising spend. The card, which has no annual fee, offers flexible payment terms and increased spending limits while the community puts data front and center, allowing businesses to really understand their marketing spend and the platforms that they are spending on through dedicated support and curated expert resources. With Trust, marketers are able to leverage scale to ensure that they are able to compete with larger advertisers from an informed standpoint to drive growth. Founded in 2019, the company recently launched with support for campaigns on Snap, Facebook, Pinterest, TikTok, Google, Apple, Amazon, Hulu, Instagram, Youtube, et al. LA TechWatch caught up with Cofounder and CEO James Borow to learn more about how the founding team’s experience at Snap led to the inspiration for the business, the company’s strategic plans, and recent round of funding from Lerer Hippeau, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Upfront Ventures, and Upper90.
Alternative Investments to Look Into: Know This
The truth is, when it comes to investing, the world is in a very different place today than it was for your parents or even your older siblings. For older generations, investing sat in the context of three main things: stocks, real estate, and just sitting on your actual cash.
Dibbs Raises Another $13M for its Sports Card Marketplace That Allows Fractional Ownership
The pandemic has led to renewed interest in many childhood collectibles like baseball cards as we have had more time to spend at home to sort through old boxes. At the same time, there has been a meteoric rise of blockchain-based technologies using non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to create a new class of digital assets. Dibbs is a fractional sports card marketplace that issues NFTs for individual cards (the physical asset) and allows collectors to purchase fractional shares on the blockchain. Shares are available as low as a $1 and the platform has already processed over 100K card trades for 17,000 users since launching in beta in March. The sports card marketplace is expected to soar to $100B per annum by 2027 and Dibbs is providing the infrastructure that ensures that this opportunity will be easily accessible to the masses through fractional ownership. LA TechWatch caught up with Cofounder and CEO Evan Vandenberg to learn more about the resurgence of sports cards, the company’s strategic plans, and recent round of funding from investors that like Foundry Group, Tusk Venture Partners, Courtside Ventures, and Founder Collective.
Have Retail Investors Been Treated Fairly in the World of Stocks and Shares?
As we’ve already seen with the cases of the GameStop and AMC short squeezes, retail investors have the ability to make their presence felt in the modern stock market, so why does it feel like they’re still the little guys on Wall Street? Let’s take a look at the uneven playing field of retail investing…
Mythical Games Raises $75M to Marry NFTs and Gaming in One Platform
There has been a meteoric rise in the popularity of NFTs with creators scrambling to find novel use cases for the digital assets. Scarcity and hedonistic benefit are two of the fundamental core elements of game design that also align well with NFTs. Mythical Games is building a player-owned economic engine to seamlessly bring NFTs to games along with a marketplace where these assets can be transacted safely and securely. The company just launched early access for Blankos Block Party, its first title and an open-world multiplayer game, that allows users to earn, buy, and sell characters in its marketplace with plans to open up the marketplace technology to publishers, developers, and creators. LA TechWatch caught up with COO Jeff Poffenbarger to learn more about building an ecosystem for blockchain-based gaming, the company’s strategic plans, and latest round of funding from investors that includeWestCap Group, 01 Advisors, Gary Vaynerchuk’s VaynerFund, Galaxy Digital, Javelin Venture Partners, Alumni Ventures, and Stuck Capital.
GameStop, Dogecoin, and The Rise of Meme Investing: Why Robinhood’s IPO Could Send Retail Investing Social
A look at Robinhood’s role in the rise of meme investing.
A CEO’s 5-Step Guide on How to Manage Online Retail Finances: The Startup Edition
Synder is a personal financial assistant for small to medium-sized businesses in the eCommerce sphere. Synder carries out all bookkeeping and accounting tasks for your business. It doesn’t matter which sales channels or payment processors you use, whether it is Stripe, Square, Shopify, Amazon, eBay, PayPal, Etsy, or WooCommerce.
iLife Raises $4M to Empower Life Insurance Professionals to Offer Modern Digitally-Focused Customer Experiences
Like most industries, the pandemic has accelerated the pace of digital adoption in the insurance industry. Life insurance professionals need to leverage technology to successfully engage with prospective and existing clients to deliver services that today’s digital-savvy consumers demand. iLife is a sales automation platform for the life insurance industry that streamlines building a digital presence, increases sales, manages leads and prospects, matches customer profiles to policies, and allows the seamless collection of application materials. The company’s most popular plan is offered for a nominal $99.99 per month and offers unlimited prospects, customized quote generation, one-click submission for underwriting, and a selection of more than 670K policies. By leveraging iLife, insurance brokers are able to reduce the time to quote from days and weeks to seconds, bringing a much-needed better tech-enabled customer experience to the customer. LA TechWatch caught up with CEO and Founder Nelson Lee to learn more about the inspiration for the business, how iLife is bringing much-needed advancement to a traditionally stalwart industry, the company’s future plans, and recent round of funding from investors that include Foundation Capital, AME Cloud Ventures, Plug and Play, Cherubic Ventures, and Expansion VC.
The 10 Australian Fintech Startups That You Need to Know About That Hit the Stage at Demo Day
This burgeoning Australian Fintech ecosystem is ready to showcase some of the leading Fintech innovators in Australia to the rest of the world. Here are ten-market ready startups that are poised for international expansion.