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BFD Expert Voices - Private Credit

BFD Expert Voices

Last valued at $2.2 billion, neobank Current named Scot Parnell its first CFO yesterday.

Why it matters: The news comes as the company strives to hit profitability by mid-2025, Lucinda writes.

Catch up quick: Parnell was previously Munich Re Life's CFO and was CFO of earned-wage access company DailyPay for three years before that.

Context: Backed by Tiger Global, Andreessen Horowitz, TQ Ventures and Sapphire Ventures, Current last raised $220 million in Series D funding in 2021.

Founded in 2015 with a focus on lower-income consumers, the company competes with the likes of Chime and Square.

Bottom line: Don't expect an IPO before it hits profitability.

Current hires first CFO

1 big thing: Current gets first CFO

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Tabs, which has built an accounts receivable platform for B2B companies, raised $7 million in seed funding, the company tells Ryan exclusively.

Why it's the BFD: Manual processes slow down billing; the company's software speeds up the process of collecting payments.

How it works: Tabs uses AI to ingest B2B contracts and extract relevant information, which is then used to automate invoicing and payments.

The company says early customers, including Findigs, Pinata and Inspiren, have seen a 40% reduction in their time to collect payments.

Context: The Lightspeed Venture Partners-led funding, which included participation from existing investor Primary Ventures, brings Tabs out of stealth.

The company has raised a total of $12 million in funding.

CEO Ali Hussain says he founded the company because accounts receivable was not being addressed, though other ERP functions — like payroll and spend management — were seeing innovation.

"Everyone's figuring out how to automate the spending of money, but no one's focused on ... accounts receivable," Hussain says.

Between the lines: Hussain argues that few companies are trying to solve the AR problem partly because most B2B sales are negotiated at the order or contract level.

"The type of data you need to translate to automate [AR] is one of the more difficult types of unstructured data," Hussain says.

Zoom in: While a number of vertically focused software platforms have emerged to solve the problem of collections for specific industries, Hussain says virtually any type of B2B company can use Tabs.

"Because we don't rely on any structured, vertical-specific data, we're pretty agile. ... And because of the way we're applying AI, we don't have any limitations to structure," he says.

2. The BFD: Automating accounts receivable

Illustration of a dollar sign with an arrow for a middle bar over a grid.

L Catterton and Bessemer-backed GlossGenius neared $100 million in revenue over the past 12 months, CEO Danielle Cohen-Shohet told Lucinda at a conference yesterday.

Why it matters: It's a major milestone for the venture-backed business, which reported revenue in the tens of millions last summer.

Of note: GlossGenius' revenue comes from a mix of subscriptions and payments.

The comments came during a Empire Fintech conference panel alongside chief business officer Leah Cohen-Shohet.

Context: The salon and spa software company raised $28 million at a $510 million valuation, with the deal announced last July.

At the time, Danielle Cohen-Shohet told Axios that the company's revenue had more than doubled, to the tens of millions, during the prior 12 months. 

This story and headline have been updated to reflect that GlossGenius corrected earlier information and noted its revenue was close to $100 million (not more than $100 million).

GlossGenius nears $100M revenue mark

3. GlossGenius' shiny milestone

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🏛️ SEC warns Uniswap Labs of potential enforcement action (Fortune)

The warning came in the form of a Wells Notice, which the SEC sends to a company before launching a formal lawsuit and which provides the recipient a final opportunity to rebut any allegations.

📈 Brevan Howard's crypto fund rises 35% (Bloomberg)

BH Digital, which manages around $1.7 billion of assets, returned 34.5% in the first quarter. That brings total gains since the fund started trading in March 2022 to nearly 51%.

4. Credit score

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Go deeper into our full database with the Axios Pro Deals Tracker.

• Ikas, a Turkish e-commerce platform, raised $20m in Series A funding led by IFC. axios.link/3PVVYse

• Mimo, a London-based B2B payments platform, raised £15.5m. Northzone led and was joined by Cocoa Ventures, Seedcamp, and Upfin VC. axios.link/4d6gxMP

• Alpen Labs, a bitcoin scaling startup, raised $10.6m in seed funding led by Ribbit Capital. Castle Island Ventures, Geometry Research, Stillmark, Village Global, Robot Ventures, Axiom Capital and WillowTree Investments also participated. axios.link/3UbXYzb

• TaxDown, a tax planning and filing platform for Spain and Latin America, raised €5m from Base10, JME Ventures, Abac Nest, 4Founders Capital and Enisa. axios.link/3vM2riI

• Tomo, a crypto social finance startup, raised $3.5m in seed funding led by Polychain Capital, with participation from Consensys, Symbolic Capital, OKX Ventures, Nomad Capital, Story Protocol, dao5, KuCoin Ventures and HTX Ventures. axios.link/4cPLpkl

• Mayan, a cross-chain auction protocol, raised a $3m seed round. 6th Man Ventures and Borderless Capital led and were joined by  Solana Ventures, Hash3, Big Brain Holdings, Arrington Capital and Wormhole Cross-Chain Ecosystem Fund. axios.link/3UeqXm3

5. Deals!

• Checkr, an employee background check startup valued at $5b in April 2022, has laid off 382 employees, or about a third of its workforce. axios.link/4aQdWUW

6. It's personnel

🤠 @Ryan just finished reading "Blood Meridian."

🪴 @Lucinda says "sorry" to her alive but droopy spider plant.

Thanks to George Moriarty and Rob Reinalda for today's edits.

And thanks to you for reading this edition of Fintech Deals. Please tell your fintech friends about this newsletter. They can sign up here.

April 11, 2024

1 big thing: Current gets first CFO