BI caught up with Belinky to find out what he finds hot in fintech right now, how he sees blockchain and distributed ledger technology evolving, what he looks for in a company, and whether he thinks we're in a tech bubble. Check out the edited highlights of our chat below.
Business Insider: What excites you in the fintech market at the moment?
Mariano Belinky: There’s so much hype at the moment about blockchain but the curve went up so quickly. [The blockchain is the software that underpins blockchain, using a distributed open network to replace a trusted middleman in transactions by using the scrutiny and trust of the crowd instead].
We went from this time last year where people wouldn’t even talk about it [the blockchain] and it was bitcoin, to an acceptance by institutions that the underlying technology looks good and is incredibly powerful.
From then on we saw pretty much every bank announcing something around blockchain, some of them investing. R3 came about. If you ask me, I think the actual technology is probably 3 to 5 years out. Are we going to keep investing around this space all the time? No, we need to broaden the space.
Earlier today, The Information reported a story suggesting that the “smart money is betting less on early-stage tech startups.”
Its evidence? Data provided by SignalFire, a venture firm and real-time information platform that says blue-chip VCs accounted for 5.3 percent of Series A funding in the first nine months of this year, down from 6.1 percent last year and 7.5 percent in 2013.
The downward trend isn’t entirely new, as investor Keith Rabois tweeted this morning.
Let us revisit the do’s and don’t’s of approaching a VC investor
Industry estimates suggest that nearly two startups are born daily in India adding to the already existing pool of strategically placed companies knocking at the doors of various investors to fund their startups to growth and expansion routes. However, in recent times, the country has seen a tilt from investors taking interest in startups that have proven product/service profile for ideas gaining grounds with internet savvy consumers looking for consumer and lifestyle needs.
India has heard of competitive turnarounds in fundraising aspect in recent times with valuations and adjustments being the buzzwords. Some notable names have had significant markdowns to valuations before having convinced the investors to shell out money. Corrections help the heated markets to cool down, thereby making investment scenario little tougher. Nonetheless, the pleasant news is that valuations did not dip as much to stop the deals altogether. Given the sentiments, the investment community has become further prudent and deals worth value are still being signed. This has led to a longer gestation period to examine and recheck the values or prospects of a good business idea.
Nonetheless, the winning survival strategy is to keep building the business with profit for all relevant stakeholders. In any case it becomes more and more important for startups to really scrutinize the way in which they approach the investors. At a time when VCs tighten their purses and examine the expenses closely based on business models adopted and raise questions on self-sustainability, let us revisit the do’s and don’t’s of approaching a VC investor.
ADEO (ex. Groupe Leroy Merlin) intègre la technologie Particeep et lance ADEO Innovation Awards
ADEO utilise la solution de gestion d'appel à projets Particeep pour son concours d'innovation.
ADEO en quelques chiffres :
ADEO compte 87 000 collaborateurs, 30 entreprises autonomes présentes dans 12 pays et dédiées à 15 enseignes. C'est aussi 300 millions de « clients-habitants », 17,3 milliards d'€ de CA TTC en 2014, et 6,5% de croissance annuelle.
Le constat :
Une innovation résulte à la fois d'une nouvelle idée, faisant appel à la créativité, d'une réalisation concrète et de la réponse aux attentes des consommateurs. Elle vise à obtenir un avantage compétitif en satisfaisant les besoins du marché.
Pourquoi la solution Particeep ?
Les Innovation awards d’ADEO distinguent les projets novateurs ayant rencontré un succès, qui sont en ligne avec la stratégie des entreprises.
ADEO a fait appel à la technologie Particeep pour créer une plateforme d'appel à projets en marque blanche dédiée à ses collaborateurs avec comme objectifs :
Identifier les projets mis en œuvre dans les entreprises d’ADEO
Valoriser les projets les plus novateurs et créateurs de valeur pour en faciliter la duplication
Développer la culture d'innovation dans les entreprises ADEO
Engager l’ensemble des collaborateurs dans la démarche stratégique d’innovation d’ADEO
Marie RODRIGUEZ, Responsable du projet ADEO Awards commente :
La technologie Particeep nous a permis de mettre en oeuvre très rapidement une solution répondant à nos besoins : faire participer à un concours tous les collaborateurs des entreprises d'ADEO de façon sécurisée. Cela nécessitait de pouvoir éditer et soumettre des dossiers en ligne, puis les faire noter par un jury et permettre à chacun de voter par catégorie.
« L’économie du partage, et plus particulièrement le financement participatif, font partie de nos axes de développement prioritaires », explique Anne-Sophie Grouchka, directrice de la stratégie et des projets innovants chez Allianz France. AFP PHOTO / DPA / ANDREAS GEBERT ++ - AFP
L’assureur Allianz France s’associe dans une opération de « crowdlending » dédiée à la transition énergétique en partenariat avec la plate-forme Lendosphère et le gérant Eiffel Investment Group. Il prévoit d’investir 5 à 10 millions d’euros en cinq ans.
Allianz France creuse son sillon en matière de financement participatif. L’assureur s’associe à une opération de « crowdlending » dédié à la transition énergétique en partenariat avec la plate-forme Lendosphère, le gérant Eiffel Investment Group et le pôle d’innovation Seinergy Lab. « L’économie du partage, et plus particulièrement le financement participatif, font partie de nos axes de développement prioritaires », explique Anne-Sophie Grouchka, directrice de la stratégie et des projets innovants de l’assureur. « Le rôle d’Allianz est aussi d’impulser une démarche citoyenne et responsable », ajoute-t-elle.
Dans le partenariat annoncé ce lundi, Allianz France va contribuer au financement de projets de collectivités locales dans le domaine de la transition éne
Four French IPOs on the NASDAQ in just 24 months (Criteo, LDR, Cellectis, DBVTechnologies), American VCs investing in France (BlaBlaCar, La Ruche, Believe Digital, Scality, ShowRoomPrive), three new Unicorns (BlaBlaCar, Sigfox, Teads), US market M&As (by Microsoft, Zendesk, Salesforce, Facebook, Adobe), French venture capital industry ranking second in Europe, the forthcoming creation of the world’s largest incubator La Halle Freyssinet in Paris, success stories by French entrepreneurs in the US (Lending Club, Symphony, Tango, PeopleDoc, SmartRecruiter), an American CEO — Cisco’s John Chambers, — declaring that “France is the next big thing.” …
Sacrebleu! What is happening in France?
The talent pool, France’s best asset
France has a strong scientific tradition: 13 Nobel prizes in physics, 8 in chemistry, 13 in medicine. French mathematicians have won a quarter of Fields Medals awarded since 1923. The higher education system is efficient and free. Oui! You heard it, free! The system now produces around 80,000 engineers and 70,000 PhDs — half of them foreign born — per year. Such educational efforts have created a 1,000,000+ strong engineering workforce, the largest in Europe alongside Germany. No wonder so many French engineers work at some of the best of America’s high-tech companies, including Apple, Tesla, Facebook, Salesforce and Google.
This powerful education system continues to be enriched with the emergence of new players such as School42 in Paris, founded by the French tech Tycoon, Xavier Niel. This two-year-old coding school trains 900 developers a year. And that’s just the beginning. School42 is disrupting education in many ways. For example:
Anyone can be admitted regardless of previous educational background (high-school diploma not required)
75,000 applicants go through a month long selection process involving a grueling 15 hours a day, 7 days a week routine — and you thought the French don’t work?
The 900 admitted candidates (this year, the youngest student is 14 year-old, the oldest is 55) go through a curriculum built exclusively on team-based projects, are assessed through peer review (no teachers), and will graduate, not in 3 or 4 years, but as soon as they reach a pre-fixed (high) coding level (so far, only one student — obviously pretty skilled –, has graduated since the birth of the school in 2013).
Oh, and, by the way, School42 charges no tuition at all.
“School 42”, a new and disruptive coding school in Paris
Besides, let’s not forget prestigious design schools such as Les Gobelins (whose alumni can be found by dozens at Pixar)andbusiness schools (according to The Economist, French HEC and INSEAD schools rank respectively #1 and #2 in Europe).
The country also has a network of fundamental research centers including CEA, INRIA, LETI, and CNRS which focus on computer science, electronics, medicine, physics, aerospace, chemistry, electrical engineering, and robotics. Specialized scientific clusters on semi-conductors, life-science, optics, telecommunications, energy, robotics, IoT, drones, etc have developed throughout France.
The talent pool has four major characteristics:
High-quality engineers, working an average of 60 hours per week. They are highly-skilled and creative, especially in Big Data (Criteo, Talend, Scality, Qunb, and PRICEMATCH), Artificial Intelligence (Wit-ai, Snips, Cardiologs, JulieDesk, SearchXPR), IoT (Sigfox, Parrot, Withings, Netatmo, Sense and Aldebaran), Telecommunications (TextMe) and Biotech/Medtech (Cellectis, DBV, LDR),
Easy access to a vast pool of talent,
Reduced cost compared to the USA: approximately $60,000 for a junior developer. The government offers a powerful tax credit mechanism for unprofitable startups, and 30% of R&D expenses are supported up to $110M, in the form of a Treasury check — an overall government’s investment of $7B per year,
There is low workforce turnover due to a cultural mindset of greater loyalty to a company and lower competition.
Renaud Laplanche, a HEC Alumni, founder and CEO of Lending Club, a San Francisco-based peer-to-peer lending platform, valued at $5B
A new entrepreneurial culture
France has started importing the American pay-it-forward culture, a key component of Silicon Valley. The first generation of web entrepreneurs, made in the early 2000s, have reinvested heavily in the country. Xavier Niel, founder of Iliad (a $17B ISP) is investing seed money in 3 startups every week; Jacques-Antoine Granjon founded a billion-dollar business called Vente-Privee.com; Marc Simoncini founded Meetic, which was acquired by IAC/Match.com; Pierre Kosciusko-Morizet founded PriceMinister, which was acquired by Rakuten; and many others.
Above all, the entrepreneurial culture grasps the whole French society. Recent polls are quite enlightening: over 50% of the 18–24 year-old French people now want to start their own business. In other words, the times of “I dream of a corporate career” are over.
This trend is even more pronounced in the Millennial generation with 75% of the HEC classes of 2013, 2014 and 2015 wishing to create a startup right out of school. Same underlying trend in the numerous engineering schools: 15% of the 2015 class from the number one engineering school in Europe, Polytechnique, spent six months of their curriculum in the Center for Entrepreneurship at UC Berkeley to create their startup.
La Halle Freyssinet, the world’s largest incubator, will open its doors to 1,000 startups in Paris in 2016
Why such an excitement?
The social values of success are about to be disrupted. Ten years ago, founding a startup was considered “suicidal,” while joining a 100-year old corporation was the promise of a successful career. Today, those values are reversed,
New French success stories serve as models for young students, such as Criteo. Founded by three French engineers in 2005, the company opened in San Francisco in 2009, was listed on the NASDAQ in 2013 and is now valued at $3B,
Criteo’ s IPO, NASDAQ, Oct. 2013
Silicon Valley has become a cultural model, often referenced in the French debate,
The fear of failure, a traditional Achilles heel for France, is seriously losing ground, under the pressure of star-entrepreneurs but also Emmanuel Macron, the 37-year-old Minister of Economy who repeatedly encourages young entrepreneurs to take risks and even to “become billionaires”! Additionally the media follows suit with new shows discussing entrepreneurship being broadcast on national TV and radio stations,
Bpifrance, the “French Silicon Valley Bank,” also contributes greatly to promoting such a cultural change, with massive advertising campaigns and giant-events. For example this $25B-fund gathered 16,000 entrepreneurs in Paris last June to deliver a simple but straightforward message: “Yes you can! Jump off the cliff!”,
Dozens of universities have created entrepreneurial programs and on-site incubators, and tech accelerators are flourishing in the country,
Dense networks have been established between the entrepreneurs of France and the large French diaspora abroad, particularly in the US, with 70,000 in San Francisco, 100,000 in New York, and 60,000 in Los Angeles where strong French-led businesses are emerging. Some of these businesses include Lending Club, Tango, Symphony, Scality, Docker, Placemeter, Datadog, Teads, Algolia, Ivalua, SmartRecruiters, SketchFab, and SongPop, to name just a few. Such networks facilitate transatlantic flows of knowledge, create business opportunities and ease cultural pollinization,
A reformed regulatory environment since 2013 with more flexible labor laws that help ease lay-offs and give a clear framework for litigation and a lower taxation of capital gains (subject to income tax with a rebate of 50% to 85%, depending on the holding period of the securities).
The result? Today, Paris alone has 5,000 startups (compared to 1,000 in 2011) and is adding 1,000+ startups every year as well as hosting more than 40 accelerators. Other cities are emerging with bubbling entrepreneurial activities, such as Toulouse, Lille, Nantes, Lyon, Grenoble, Bordeaux, Nice or Montpellier.
Frederic Mazella, Nicolas Brusson and Francis Coat with BlaBlaCar, world leader in ride-sharing, valued at $ 1,4B
The second venture capital industry in Europe
The French VC industry, having appeared in the mid 1990s, has reached a new maturity. Since 2013, it has become the 2nd largest in Europe, behind the UK and ahead of Germany.
Buoyed by a favorable environment, the industry even experienced strong and promising growth in S1 2015 (source: EY): + 30% in number of deals (244 vs. 188 in S1 ‘14), + 115% in dollars ($1,1B vs. $511M in S1 ‘14). This trend is expected to continue in the second half of 2015.
Another indicator of the sharp rise of the French venture: in Q3 2015, two French VC funds rank among the five most active funds in Europe according to Dow Jones. Bpifrance ranked # 1, with 13 deals in Q3 of 2015 and Alven ranked # 5 with 6 deals.
Source : Dow Jones
The Israeli Model
The French domestic market is large enough to build strong businesses. Let’s recall that France is the first market for Airbnb and the second for Uber, after the US. However, it is not large enough to build global companies. French entrepreneurs are now part of a new frenzy that includes having offices in New York or San Francisco to launch their products in the US market. These days, three French startups arrive daily at SFO or JFK. Another fact of the increasing globalization of the French tech scene is that on average, French startups make 43% of their revenue abroad.
The image of “chilly” and “unambitious” entrepreneurs is over. Such movement is strongly encouraged by the government as it promotes “French Tech” in the US, a label created in 2013 to boost the high-tech ecosystem in France. “French Tech in New York” was launched last June with San Francisco next on the list, followed by Boston and Los Angeles.
Scality, a Software Defined Storage company, present in France, USA and 5 other countries
French VC firms like Partech, Bpifrance, ISAI, Sofinnova Ventures and Iris Capital are also pushing their portfolio companies to embark on the global market. Each have since opened offices in the Silicon Valley and New York to build stronger bridges over the Atlantic.
France is thus oriented towards an “Israeli model”: in France, R&D and EMEA functions; in the US, (part of the) top-management and sales / marketing / customer support teams.
No wonder, in these conditions, first success-stories appear in the US: more and more French startups enter YCombinator, 500 Startups, Techstars or BoostVC; high-growth global companies emerge like Scality. This young talent appeals to the best US investors such as Algolia, Wit-ai, UniqueSound, Front, Placemeter, PeopleDoc. Additionally big M&A’s occur more regularly like Neolane, Sunrise, BIME Analytics. It appears a revolution is underway where the French are beginning to dream big.
France is at a turning point of its digital revolution. No doubt about it. Even French bashing, a popular sport among French people themselves, is fading. The country that invented the word “entrepreneur,” is moving forward, again. But, perhaps, the most surprising remains the attitude of French public authorities: “In high-tech, France is an emerging country” they said. An “emerging country”. Has France lost its legendary arrogance too?
Where is all the innovation in insurance? Let the capital flow.
A giant and heavily regulated industry which many would argue has lost sight of its customers should be ripe for attack. After all, entrepreneurs are tackling some of the toughest challenges in sectors like healthcare, transportation and financial services, using software to radically transform the product offering. Yet insurance has been overlooked, protected by large capital requirements and regulatory complexity.
No more. We’re engaging with a new generation of insurance companies, founded by entrepreneurs who want to take on this $3.5 trillion industry.
Insurance companies’ biggest oversight is simple: they have not been serving their customers. Actually, they rarely interact with their customers, since the vast majority of their business comes through brokers. Brokers are treated as their customers, and collect $45 billion of fees every year from insurers globally. It should come as no surprise that the web and mobile customer experience for consumer and SME insurance is shocking, since the DNA of most insurance companies is heavily B2B. They don’t know how to relate to end-consumers. (In this post, I am primarily referring to consumers and SMEs, rather than large corporate customers that continue to be served well by insurers.)
There are a few notable exceptions, such as GEICO and Progressive in the US and Admiral in the UK, that have demonstrated the economic benefits of going direct, eliminating broker commissions and building a more engaged customer relationship. And some insurance companies are slowly waking up to the need to develop consumer DNA, and to rebuild their internal systems to support a direct model. But most of this is invisible to their end-customers and has little positive impact near-term. The banks are a few years ahead on re-designing legacy infrastructure to support a new customer paradigm; we are sceptical that their transformation will be fast enough, which suggests that insurers too will struggle to compete with focused new entrants.
Founded in May 2013, 21 Inc. is the first computer with native hardware and software support for the bitcoin protocol. Developers can use it to build bitcoin-payable apps and services. The embedded mining chip launched by 21 Inc. is called BitShare; it comes in a variety of form factors and can be used for micropayments, increasing chip sales and IP licensing, or as a new way for authentication. The company recently raised $121.1 million in two rounds of funding. The most recent round took place in March 2015 when the company raised$116 million (a record in the bitcoin sector) from the set of investors which included Andreessen Horowitz, RRE Venture, chipmaker Qualcomm, and founders from companies such as eBay, PayPal, Dropbox, Expedia and Zynga. Other companies backing 21 Inc. are Cisco, Khosla Ventures, Yuan Capital, Thiel Foundation and ZhenFund.
Startup accelerators are an excellent way for early stage startups to get up to speed quickly, identifying their best growth strategy and a reasonable plan to achieve it. The number of accelerators has dramatically increased over the past few years, with many new programs appearing in large metropolitan areas rich with startups.
At the same time, competition for participation in these accelerators has increased, as evidenced by the growing number of applications from startups clamoring for a coveted spot in the accelerator’s next cohort. But is participation in an accelerator program the best next step for all startups? What are the pros and cons of participation?
In my discussions with founders who had participated in accelerator programs, I’ve found that while many deemed them a success — sometimes a big one — there are several instances where the program wasn’t seen as timely for the startup. Others declared victory, but wondered if the accelerator they chose was, in fact, the best choice for their startup. Reviewing the situations in which participation is warranted, and the subsequent selection of programs, is a useful process for founders of any early stage startup.
The traditional accelerator model is based on a program that from a large group of applicants selects around 10 startups to participate in a fixed-term cohort of companies. In exchange for a small seed investment for equity, the accelerator’s management team executes their fast-paced, mentor-based program, ending in each startup presenting to a large group of eager prospective investors a formal pitch for funds.
In consideration of the spectrum of evolution for startups, some just aren’t sufficiently mature to benefit from what the traditional accelerator has to offer. That is, their team, idea or market fit has not evolved sufficiently to withstand superficial scrutiny. Other startups may be so mature that they don’t need the accelerator’s primary benefits.
First-time founders and experienced entrepreneurs will likely benefit most from all the accelerator’s benefits. Because time-to-market can be critical, even serial entrepreneurs may choose to participate for reasons specific to their startup. The importance of startup maturity and founder experience are summarized in the chart below.
A Founder’s First Major Business Decision: Accelerate?
A startup accelerator isn’t necessarily the perfect next step for every startup, so understanding the pros and cons is important. Deciding if participation in an accelerator is best for their startup can be the first major decision for founders. Careful evaluation of the primary costs and benefits can readily answer whether or not participation is worthwhile.
This picture taken on November 10, 2015 shows Jack Ma Yun (C), Chairman of Alibaba Group, reacting during the 2015 Tmall 11.11 Global Shopping Festival gala in Beijing. Shoppers spent nearly 8 billion USD in the first 10 hours of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba's "Singles Day" event on November 11, the firm said, reinforcing its status as the world's biggest online retail promotion. CHINA OUT AFP PHOTO (Photo credit should read STR/AFP/Getty Images)Photograph by AFP/Getty Images
China’s start-up investing world gets even more fragmented and crowded.
In a move that further Balkanizes the Chinese startup world, Alibaba said today that it would spend almost $450 million to fund two new venture capital-type funds in Hong Kong and Taiwan for small companies “who wish to take advantage of the resources offered by Alibaba’s ecosystem.”
That should sound familiar. Alibaba’s chief rivals in China, Tencent and Baidu, have spent the past two years wooing startups to join their orbits, with each trying to convince the country’s 650 million Internet users that they are a one-stop shop. Last year, for instance, Tencent joined four of China’s 10 largest tech venture deals and was involved in deals worth a total of $6.3 billion, according to Preqin, an alternative-assets data company. Alibaba was no slouch either: by the same measure, Alibaba joined $5.6 billion worth of deals.
When it backed startups, Tencent wasn’t explicit in asking those companies use Tencent’s online finance, social network, and back-end support services. Alibaba is being a big more explicit, however. The e-commerce giant offers “e-commerce, logistics, mobile platforms, cloud computing and financial services,” it notes in a statement describing how it will target entrepreneurs who want to take advantage of those services.
Gobi Ventures, a well-known Shanghai venture capital fund, will manage Alibaba’s $130 million Hong Kong fund. A subsidiary of China Development Industrial Bank will manage the $310 Taiwan fund.
Back in 1993, a new book set the marketing world on fire. Dorf stumbled on it and saw an opportunity.
He told me:
"The genesis of our business was a book called The One to One Future written by Don Peppers and Martha Rogers."
"And I said: 'Why are you guys spending all your time trying to sell books? There's a business in here that's much more exciting and lucrative than making $2 per book."
Even better: it looked like a perfect marriage. During speeches, people offered Peppers some consulting work. And Dorf was already at work to sell consulting in this space.
So, if you can turn a few speech inquiries into consulting clients, then instead of $2 multiples, you have a lucrative business. All based on a proven marketing tome. And so Dorf, Peppers and Rogers founded Marketing 1to1.
But wait -- what about capital? Shouldn't you always seek outside money before you do anything? Far from it.
In the last five years, the amount of startups that have received seed money from venture capitalists has skyrocketed.
The average number of "seed round" deals has jumped from 484 in 2010 to 1,943 last year, according to data shared with Business Insider from Pitchbook. It's worth noting that there has been a slight downtrend in the number of deals this year, though the actual capital invested has not dipped.
Venture capitalists have already invested $1.97 billion in seed rounds this year, up from 2014's $1.95 billion, according to Pitchbook.
Pitchbook looked through its data going back to 2010, and and found that 2,387 investors have participated in at least one seed round.
So which venture capitalists have led this five-year charge?
Here are the venture capitalists who have participated in the most seed rounds since 2010, according to Pitchbook:
Wearable clothing may sound like an oxymoron, but it’s a real thing and it’s an expanding category with promise in the fitness industry. Athos, one of a handful of startups building out its wearable clothing brand, recently closed on $35 million in Series C financing from a number of investors, including Social+Capital.
The startup faces some nominal competition from wearable fitness clothing startups Hexoskin and OmSignal, as well as Heddoko, which makes 3D movement tracking suits, but it’s still early days here. Most of these types of companies launched their products in just the last year. The first Athos products started shipping six months ago, according to the startup.
Nouvelle levée de fonds dans la FinTech avec l’Américain Earnest, qui applique big data et analytique au rachat de prêts étudiants.
Développer sa plate-forme logicielle d’analyse de données, recruter 200 personnes d’ici à fin 2016 et se positionner comme une société globale de services financiers : tels sont les principaux objectifs d’Earnest après son deuxième tour de table institutionnel (« Series B »).
MOSCOU et HELSINKI--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Finstar Financial Group (« Finstar » ou le « Groupe »), un groupe
international de capital-investissement, annonce aujourd'hui que le
groupe a acquis une participation dans Euroloan Group PLC (« Euroloan
»), une société financière internationale en croissance rapide.
Parallèlement à cette acquisition, Finstar fournira à Euroloan une
facilité de financement de 15 millions d’euros. Euroloan entend utiliser
ces fonds pour accélérer le développement de ses produits FinTech et
pour perfectionner ses services. Finstar dispose aussi de l’option
d’accroître sa participation de manière significative.
Les services aux particuliers d’Euroloan comprennent une carte de crédit
virtuelle avec des plafonds de crédit renouvelable personnalisés, ainsi
que des tarifications et des plans de remboursement pour chaque client,
sur la base d’un moteur de notation avancé exclusif. Les clients
bénéficient d’un accès 24/7 et d’un paiement instantané grâce à un
service totalement automatisé. Les solutions d’Euroloan pour les
entreprises permettent aux commerçants de proposer à leurs clients des
solutions de paiement multicanal dans leurs boutiques en ligne et
traditionnelles (POS), avec options de paiement sur facture, par
versements échelonnés ou sur compte de crédit. Ces options de paiement
peuvent être proposées sous la marque du commerçant.
Quelques lignes de code à intégrer à leur site, et hop, les e-commerçants peuvent accepter les paiements par carte bancaire, sans recourir aux services des banques. Ce petit miracle numérique est réalisé par une interface de programmation (API) développée par Stripe, une fintech américaine créée en septembre 2011 par les frères irlandais John et Patrick Collison.
Cette jeune pousse, créée par deux génies de l'informatique qui n'ont pas 30 ans, a rejoint le cénacle très fermé des "licornes", ces entreprises non cotées en Bourse valorisées plus d'un milliard de dollars.
Une levée de fonds à 90 millions de dollars
A la suite d'un tour de table à 90 millions de dollars, bouclé sans peine en juillet 2015, la nouvelle star de la fintech avait atteint une valorisation de plus de 5 milliards de dollars. La fameuse société de capital-risque californienne Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers et Visa ont participé à cette collecte de fonds. Depuis sa création, la start-up californienne a collecté plus de 300 millions de dollars, auprès notamment des deux co-fondateurs de Paypal, Elon Musk et Peter Thiel.
Comment l'entreprise est-elle parvenue à aiguiser l'appétit des investisseurs, alors que le marché du paiement mobile est
SantanderSantander InnoVentures managing partner Mariano Belinky.
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