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BFD Expert Voices - Private Credit

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Vanilla, an estate planning fintech, raised $30 million in funding from a group of investors led by Insight Partners, Lucinda exclusively reports.

Venture capital firm Venrock, basketball legend Michael Jordan, former Vanguard chairman and CEO Bill McNabb, and Vanguard itself joined the round.

Why it matters: Vanilla sits among a nascent class of startups seeking to use technology to simplify the complex world of death planning, in particular the financial part.

In late 2020, Trust & Will raised $15 million to digitize the will-signing process. Earlier this year, Wealth — a company with a digital dashboard for managing estates — raised $16 million.

How it works: Estate planning comes with a knot of legal and difficult-to-track tax implications. Vanilla, which sells to investment advisors, aims to be a one-stop shop for the process.

Vanilla says it can automatically calculate and recommend an optimized portfolio for estate taxes. 

Details: The deal, which values the company at around $120 million, is the company's first fundraise under new CEO Gene Farrell and marks the launch of Vanilla's growth phase.

The company plans to reach $1 million in revenue this year, Farrell tells Axios. 

"We had not planned to raise cash, but had a lot of inbound interest from VCs and we saw the chance to scale faster," says Farrell, noting Vanilla has doubled its head count since January, to more than 50. The company was last valued at around $60 million, after a funding round in August. 

Of note: Having joined only in January, Farrell is realizing a long-time dream of becoming a CEO. It's been a long and twisty road for him.

Amazon sued Farrell in 2017 after he left the company, accusing him of breaching a non-compete. Farrell had told Amazon he wanted to take a company public as CEO, and joined work collaboration startup Smartsheet.

Amazon later dropped the suit. But Smartsheet CEO Mark Mader  decided to stay on even after the company's 2018 IPO.

It's all now in the past for Farrell, who says his relationship with his former Amazon boss (now Amazon CEO), Andy Jassy, is friendly again. Nor does he have any hard feelings against Smartsheet.

Editor's note: This item was updated to correct Smartsheet's IPO year to 2018.

1 big thing: Jordan, Vanguard and Vanilla’s $30M round

Private equity firm Thoma Bravo is weighing a buyout of Swiss banking infrastructure provider Temenos, Bloomberg reports.

Context: Temenos provides core banking software to several big banks in Europe and elsewhere, including Credit Suisse, HSBC, and ABN Amro. 

But the firm has recently been making a big push into cloud banking infrastructure, and it has shifted its business to more of a subscription model over the last year.

And it's also going after the fintech market in a big way, powering the infrastructure of digital-first providers like FlowBank, Green Dot and Varo Bank.

Of note: Shares in Temenos, a publicly traded firm, jumped about 15% on the news, giving it a market cap of about 7.3 billion francs ($7.5 billion). 

Still, that valuation is 25% lower than it was when reports of a buyout first began circulating last October.

2. The BFD: Banking infrastructure buyout

Illustration of a bank building as a glittering golden trophy.  

Ripple's fight against the SEC: How the case is going and how it might end (Decrypt)

The case, which turns on whether Ripple and its executives sold unlicensed securities in the form of the token XRP, poses an existential threat to both the company and the broader industry.

Block takes a swipe at Canada banks with loans service (Bloomberg)

The company is expanding its small-business loan service, bringing it into more direct competition with Canada's big banks.

Crypto mortgages let homebuyers keep bitcoin, put down nothing (Bloomberg)

A Miami-based startup called Milo Credit is offering 30-year fixed-rate mortgages secured by bitcoin and ethereum.

PayPal is shuttering its San Francisco office (TechCrunch)

Multiple sources told TechCrunch that the payments giant is closing the office at 425 Market St., which housed its Xoom business unit.

3. Credit score

Illustration of a credit card headed towards a goal post to score a touchdown.

• Taxfix, a Berlin-based tax filing startup, raised a Series D round of $220m at a $1b valuation. The funding was led by Teachers’ Venture Growth, with Index Ventures, Valar Ventures, Creandum and Redalpine also participating. http://axios.link/VobQ

• Argent, a London-based DeFi wallet startup, raised $40m in Series B funding led by Fabric Ventures and Metaplanet, with participation from Paradigm, Index Ventures, Creandum, Starkware, Jump Crypto and Animoca Brands. http://axios.link/bkUO

• Minka, a Colombia-based payments infrastructure startup, raised $24m in new funding led by Tiger Global and Kaszek. http://axios.link/5tRn 

• Kard, a credit card reward startup, raised $23m in Series A funding led by Tiger Global, with participation from Fin Capital, s12f and Underscore VC. http://axios.link/cy4C

• Symmetrical.ai, a payroll tech provider, raised $18.5m in financing led by Target Global with participation from Global Founders Capital, Finch Capital, Partech, Market One Capital and Inovo. http://axios.link/SPO6

• ModusBox, a Seattle financial services integration startup, raised $7.5m in a Series A round led by Patamar Capital and Choice Bank, with participation from BankTech Ventures and American Capital Partners. http://axios.link/A8ly

• Our Happy Company, a Singapore and U.S.-based NFT company, raised $7.5m in seed funding led by Infinity Ventures Crypto and Animoca Brands, with Cherubic Ventures, Circle Ventures, FBG Capital, Highstreet, HTC, Jump Trading and North Island Ventures also participating. www.ourhappy.company 

• CoreChain Technologies, a B2B blockchain payments network, raised $4.2m in seed financing led by Ulu Ventures with participation from Connecticut Innovations, Bloccelerate VC, New Form Capital, Motivate Venture Capital, SaaS Venture Capital, Next Coast Ventures and Angeles Investors. corechain.tech

• Streamlined, a B2B payments infrastructure startup, raised $3 million in seed financing co-led by Greycroft and SignalFire, with participation from Unusual Ventures and others. http://axios.link/IfD2

• Finbots.AI, a Singapore-based credit scoring firm, raised $3m in a Series A round from Accel. http://axios.link/dUWB

• Carbon Collective, a climate-focused investment, retirement, and robo-advising platform, raised a $2.2 million seed round, Axios Pro Climate Deals reports. Powerhouse Ventures, HyperGuap and Elevation Ventures all participated in the round. http://axios.link/rG5A

4. Deals of the day

• Apollo Global Management hired JPMorgan crypto executive Christine Moy as it looks to invest in the web3 industry. http://axios.link/kDoQ

5. It's personnel

Good morning, fintech friends. Happy NFL Draft Day to those who celebrate.

Situational awareness: Aave founder Stani Kulechov's Twitter account was permanently banned after he jokingly tweeted that he was joining the company as interim CEO.

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April 28, 2022

1 big thing: Jordan, Vanguard and Vanilla’s $30M round