Startups

Three years ago, we released the first edition of the Matrix Fintech Index. We believed then, as we do now, that fintech represents one of the most exciting major innovation cycles of this decade. In 2020, all the long-term trends forcing change in this sector continued and even accelerated. The br

Goalsetter, a platform that helps parents teach their kids financial literacy, announced the raise of a $3.9 million seed round this morning, led by Astia. PNC Bank, Mastercard, U.S. Bank, Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures, Elevate Capital, Portfolia’s First Step and Rising America Fund and

A startup called BlackCart is tackling one of the key challenges with online shopping: an inability to try on or test out the merchandise before making a purchase. That company, which has now closed on $8.8 million in Series A funding, has built a try-before-you-buy platform that integrates with e-

Payments for consumers have made a huge shift to the online world in the last year, a time when they have moved more of their purchasing to the internet to minimize in-person transactions in the midst of a virus-based health pandemic. Today, a startup that has built a similar kind of payments infra

Yac, the Orlando, Florida-based startup that’s digitizing voice messages for remote offices, has raised $7.5 million in a new round of funding. The company’s service has garnered enough attention to pick up a pretty sizable new round from investors led by GGV Capital and a return inves

Wolt, the Helsinki-based online ordering and delivery company that initially focused on restaurants but has since expanded to other verticals, has raised $530 million in new funding. The round was led by Iconiq Growth, with participation from Tiger Global, DST, KKR, Prosus, EQT Growth and Coatue. P

Taboola is the latest company seeking to go public via special purpose acquisition company — more commonly known as a SPAC. To achieve this, it will merge with ION Acquisition Corp., which went public in 2020 with the aim of funding an Israeli tech acquisition (Haaretz reported last month that Ta

The line between social networking and gaming is increasingly blurring, and internet incumbents are taking notice. NetEase, the second-largest gaming company in China (behind Tencent), is among a group of investors who just backed IMVU, an avatar-focused social network operating out of California.

Sano Genetics, a startup with a broad mission to support personalised medicine research by increasing participation in clinical trials, has raised £2.5 million in seed funding. The round is led by Episode1 Ventures, alongside Seedcamp, Cambridge Enterprise, January Ventures and several Europe and

Pula, a Kenyan insurtech startup that specialises in digital and agricultural insurance to derisk millions of smallholder farmers across Africa, has closed a Series A investment of $6 million. The round was led by Pan-African early-stage venture capital firm, TLcom Capital, with participation from

Buzzy live-voice chat app Clubhouse has confirmed that it has raised new funding — without revealing how much — in a Series B round led by Andreessen Horowitz through the firm’s partner Andrew Chen. The app was reported to be raising at a $1 billion valuation in a report from The Informat

When Stripe-subsidiary Paystack raised its seed round of $1.3 million in 2016, it was one of the largest disclosed rounds at that stage in Nigeria.  At the time, seven-figure seed investments in African startups were a rarity. But over the years, those same seed-stage rounds have become more commo

While many deemed 2020 the year of SPAC, short for special purpose acquisition company, 2021 may well make last year look quaint in comparison. It’s probably not premature to be asking: is there any company too big to be SPAC’d? Just today, we saw the trading debut of th

In an unprecedented work environment defined by distributed teams and virtual-only communication, two co-founders think their 2018 bet reigns truer than ever: mentors need mentorship, too. Christine Tao and Lori Mazan, the brains behind Sounding Board, want to train any leader within an organizatio