Pietro Bezza

The latest SERIES B round sizes for SaaS and tech companies. If you'd like the full report that will be sent on Wednesday, join my newsletter below with 68K of your SaaS colleagues. I spent a couple of hours updating my latest fundraising report. Report includes: - Pre-seed to Series F round sizes - 25% quartile, median, 75% quartile round sizes - Employee counts from Pre-seed to Series F - 25% quartile, median, 75% quartile employee counts - Trends back to 2021 See you soon! #SaaS #CFO #fundraising #SeriesB

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📖 Weekend Reading 📖 1️⃣ Simon Taylor recently started a new podcast where he interviews fintech founders. The first trio is now out, highlighting the founders of Ramp (Eric Glyman), Brex (Pedro Franceschi), and Arc (Don Muir). I learned something new from each, and I feel like I have a better sense now of where they seek to differentiate. (sharing the first here) https://lnkd.in/dF__4imY One of the things Ramp and Brex have become particularly well known for is of course spend management. And conveniently, Alex Johnson has a great overview of the category. https://lnkd.in/dswwC7nY Bonus: Simon also wrote about the complexities of ledger reconciliations, worth a read if you’re following the Synapse debacle. https://lnkd.in/dAwz2WGj 2️⃣ Alex Telford has a long piece on the origins of the lab mouse. Definitely new territory for me, but a very interesting example of random contingencies and path dependence leading to outsized impact on how we do research in medicine today. It would never have occurred to me to even question the use of mice, and a particular species of mice at that, for medical research—but once you start asking these (very valid) questions, you start to wonder how pervasive this is across the scientific process. https://lnkd.in/dmxPt6Sh 3️⃣ Thanks to Byrne Hobart, CFA I’ve discovered Bret Devereaux’s writing, and this time it’s a fantastic two-part series on Alexander the Great, exploring the question of his “greatness.” This is a real treasure trove, and Bret goes into quite a bit of detail, first on the sources we have available (which I really enjoyed, and wish others would emulate), then on his track record as a general, king, and man. As is often the case, it’s a nuanced picture.   Part 1: https://lnkd.in/dF7ZjKiw 4️⃣ Finally, Li Jin wrote a thoughtful piece on the limitations of the systems that marketplaces are built on, and crypto’s potential to enable new types of marketplaces to emerge. I like this framework of scaling (via token incentives), portable (and immutable) reputation, and payments as key crypto pillars for marketplaces. In practice, there are still significant barriers with regards to the first 2 (lack of regulatory clarity around tokens, incumbents simply not wanting to make data portable, and KYC/AML regulations). Payments, however, is ripe for disruption, and that’s exactly why we’re focusing on global marketplace payments at Walapay. https://lnkd.in/d2UF_Djc #fintech #ledger #baas #spendmanagement #ramp #brex #synapse #marketplace #crypto #alexanderthegreat #payments

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The fintechs we work with realize their internal resources are best spent on their client facing platform and feature set. They leverage Kooltra to power their back office. You don't need to build it yourself. Get to market faster, stay compliant, and maintain focus on your core business. Bonus? You can leverage our APIs to seamlessly connect and customize the product to fit your unique needs. Ready to get started? Book a call with Adam Katz or Will Cowland today. #fx #forex #fintech

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Sad to hear that Fintech Nexus is shutting down as I’m writing this #Tuesday_alert The industry downturn takes its toll, unfortunately. Last June, the team was forced to sell its events business, and now it's closing all the digital online resource for good. I can only imagine how hard it must be. Thank you, Peter Renton, Bo Brustkern, and the whole team, and I wish you only the best in your new beginnings. I didn’t have the privilege of being a Fintech Nexus contributor, but I’ve been quite a reader there 🙌 ⚡️ Talking about shutdowns, did anyone see the latest updates on the Synapse status? The fintech’s bankruptcy in late April has been a tough blow for customers and end users. The progress of customer funds recovery seems almost stuck, says Synapse trustee Jelena McWilliams, the former chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and current partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP. Here are several updates from her latest report: 👍 Good news: - Most end users received funds from demand deposit accounts (DDAs). Evolve Bank & Trust has distributed more than $5M to over 3,000 individuals. - The bank stays determined to continue the cooperation and help more end users. The trustee asked federal banking and securities regulators for assistance in alleviating the situation for the affected customers. - She also obtained administrative access to Synapse’s key database. 👎 Bad news: - Returning funds from “for benefit of” (FBO) accounts remains a challenge as the fintech’s program ledgers do not match the actual fund transfers between Synapse and Evolve. - Evolve says it needs more collaboration and explanations from the Synapse ecosystem to handle the funds reconciliation and distribution. - American Bank, AMG National Trust, and Lineage Bank have shown slower progress than Evolve due to more complexities in returning the funds. - The amount of funds reportedly missing in the Synapse ecosystem is unknown but spans millions in USD. Alas, the funds return process is further complicated by the fact that Synapse held end-user funds in multiple FDIC-insured banks. So, one end user can have $100 in one bank, $1000 in another, and the rest of the funds elsewhere in the ecosystem. Hopefully, the Federal Reserve, FDIC, and OCC will help detangle this funds chain. ❓How much more time will the reconciliation and funds distribution take? What do you think? #fintechnexus #synapsebankruptcy #fundsreconciliation #fundsdistribution #banking #fintech

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Faster growth, the path to $100M ARR, the secrets shared on mega exits or founder secondaries. This is what goes down at SaaSociety, our invite only event for 50 B2B SaaS Founders over $5M in revenue up to $50M, that want to get to $100M or even exit before then. Each year we take this select group of founders, to a special location for 2 days, to connect with peers on the same journey and we invite 3 special Founders who’ve passed the $100M ARR mark and maybe had a mega exit or two on the way. It’s chatham house rules (whats said there stays there). Except, you’ll only get the insider knowledge and make the connections by getting out of the office and being there yourself. We’ll also throw in a bit of fun, like Whiskey tasting and clay pigeon shooting. Most that attend learn more in those two days than in one year of running their business. And look at this list of previous attendees who combined have exited for around $10B Co-founder of Pipedrive,  CEO of Segment,  CEO of Brandwatch,  CEO of RD Station,  Co-founder of WalkMe,  Co-founders of Userflow,  CEO of Peakon,  Co-founders of Hotjar,  CEO of Datafox,  CEO of Mention,  CEO of Profitwell Spaces are limited, so apply today should you want to connect with your scaling peers and get the knowledge from those that have done it. Link in the comments #scaling #saas #founders #retreat #saasociety

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Three lessons from building and launching a P2P payments app without doing the proper customer validation first (despite knowing better): 1) Building something you need is a great starting point - but not enough to validate an idea. As someone drawn to building solutions, I’m an early tech adopter. This led me to overestimate consumers’ willingness to onboard, especially with a P2P payments app that requires KYC/KYB compliance and relies on a network effect to be useful. 2) Manual solutions are often best to start with It’s good business to be in business - transitioning from ideating to operating as early as possible is the BEST way to learn effectively. While the move fast and break things mindset has attracted well-deserved skepticism, getting stuck in a multi-year build trap distracted me from critical real-world validation. 3) Consumer appetite shifts quickly In my case, the proliferation of free and instant P2P payment options like Zelle added additional pricing pressure that I couldn’t compete with. This disincentivized the consumer event/payment collection market, turning my bottom-up go-to-market strategy upside down. Pitch (https://www.pitch.fun) is currently on the back burner as I’ve begun building custom solutions in various industries to sharpen my skills, solve specific problems, gain a hands-on understanding of operations, pain points, and workflows, and build a network of experts to lean on as I keep my eyes peeled for high-impact opportunities.

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"What we are saying is, hey, right now you have this unified infrastructure that allows you to do payment experimentation. And guess what, if you want to try and test different services, now you have access to an app store of services, you go in, in the Primer dashboard, they can just like toggle on and off, like the services you want to use. You can add test them, AB testing in the world of payments is simply impossible, right?" - ⁠Gabriel Le Roux The Asia Tech Podcast welcomed Gabriel Le Roux, a co-Founder and the CEO of Primer back to the show for a quick catch up. Gabriel had written a post on how Stripe's new openness would change the payment space and I wanted to record about it. Check it out on the Asia Tech Podcast YouTube channel as well...and subscribe! Listen to the full episode here... #payments #openpayments #fintech #platforms #interoperability #SME

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Exciting news for indie SaaS businesses Stripe has acquired Lemon Squeezy! 🍋💳 This move seems like a smart play for Stripe, here's why: 1. Merchant of Record: Lemon Squeezy's expertise in this area fills a gap in Stripe's offerings, addressing a long-standing customer need. This seems like a natural progression from Stripe's acquisition of TaxJar last year for Stripe to be able to simplify and for some businesses completely absorb the complexity of global tax compliance. 2. Strategic Defense: By bringing Lemon Squeezy into the fold, Stripe protects its market position and prevents competitors from snagging this valuable asset. I'm sure there are other large payment providers who'd have loved to bring Lemon Squeezy into the fold 3. Startup Ecosystem: This acquisition sends a positive signal to startups building on Stripe's platform, that startups are still front and center of Stripe's vision for customers. This isn't an enterprise play! It's impressive to see what the Lemon Squeezy team has accomplished in just 3 years and bootstrapped. Massive congratulations to both teams, and it'll be great to see how this acquisition shapes the future of online payments and merchant services. What are your thoughts?

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Failed payments can significantly impact revenue, customer loyalty, and the lifetime value of customers, all crucial to the long-term financial success of a business. Chargebee's Vice President of GTM, EMEA, recently shared four key ways in which modern technology helps subscription businesses recover lost revenue. Check them out in this article ➡️ https://chrge.be/3y2J9X4 #ChurnManagement #SubscriptionRevenueManagement

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Great insights from Ash Lomberg, Chargebee's Vice President, GTM EMEA, on the benefits of Apple's recent move to discontinue the Apple Pay Later service! By using third-party BNPL providers and alternative payment methods, Apple can streamline payment processing and avoid the complexities of managing multiple gateways, allowing the tech giant to focus on what it does best. That’s the power of strategic partnerships – they enable you to allocate resources towards improving your product and services while leaving the complex financial operations to the experts! 🤝 Read the full article here: https://chrge.be/46ji4vM

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Rob's goals and progress on contactout and athena.vc 22nd July 2024 Last week: Monday - meetings Tuesday: QA pricing plans, admin,sign and mail company docs, pay capital call community moderation. Wednesday - Talk with deeptech founders, connect with influencers from alex brogan interviewRead about fusion, longevity and sam altman, peter theil investments Thursday - Read about helion, world coin, other sam altman investments. read btc and eth whitepapers, rain ai , lob, cocorobotics, running tide, hermes, boom Friday - Read fcp docs, eth whitepapers, sam altman peter thiel investments. What did I learn: https://lnkd.in/g3D8__Q2 what are the highest impact industries and technologies? study what top investors like sam altman and peter thiel have invested in: https://lnkd.in/gFeutEcM https://lnkd.in/g_ErBh7k lots of stuff from nuclear fusion, to longevity, to a better GPU than nvidia, universal basic income, growing seaweed to capture carbon, building the next google. https://lnkd.in/gYGjbEF2 should we start on researching how to build a better google especially google scholar for scientists: study futurehouse.org and similar and lots of scientists and deeptech founders about problems they face Jessicia Livingston's started a new podcast "Social Radar" interviewing YC founders. Her old book founders at work is really good too. The old YC content from PG, Sam, Jessica is way better than the current YC content. Going through all the startup school interviews from 2012, 2014, 2016 way better speakers. Next week: continue reading YC content write up founders curriculum

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"But do you support in person payments"? How many times I've heard this question. Today we're answering an emphatic 'yes' alongside the liked minded team at Aevi. A holy grail in payments is the ability to craft evergreen, high performing experiences both online and offline. This is now possible in new ways with the Paydock partnership with Aevi. The Aevi team 100% 'get it' when it comes to the future of payments, what it means for merchants and how to move the needle to secure, delightful and interoperable payment solutions across in-store and online. Watch this space for how we're taking orchestration up a level in our support of financial institutions and their merchants. https://lnkd.in/gTFJbedR

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🎙️ Glenbrook Partners, Stripe, Entersekt podcast | Recap 2/2 🎙️ The power of the EMV 3-D Secure protocol lies in its ability to share relevant context between the merchant and the issuer. When it comes to a transaction, however, the context that a merchant would have differs to what an issuer would have. 🛍️💳 How can merchants and issuers, who are seemingly on opposite ends of the ecosystem, work together to make shared 3-D Secure data mutually beneficial? Listen to the rest of the podcast to find out 👉 https://gag.gl/NzMzRW Dewald Nolte

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6,949 Fundraising Data Points Can't Be Wrong 📊 Are you thinking about raising? How much? 👇 I collected 6,949 data points on SaaS and tech fundraising rounds since starting The SaaS News in 2021. My latest report covers Pre-seed to Series F rounds and employee counts with data going back to 2021. I slice and dice by 25% percentile, median, and 75% percentile round sizes. Now, does every round fit in these ranges? No, but the data is very consistent with the early rounds, while later-stage rounds can be all over the place. My news site is completely free (which means makes no 💵), but I’m happy to spread the word on funding events, and the data is great for analysis. Grab my latest fundraising report at the link in the comments 👇 If LI "buries" the link, just tag me in the comments. #SaaS

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📣 Kriya is available on Stripe UK businesses collectively process almost a billion transactions a year through Stripe. That's why we're excited to partner with them. ⚡ The other reason is speed to market. For B2B retail leaders, giving buyers access to flexible payments is key to success, as is getting the jump on your competitors. If you’re a UK B2B merchant, you can now add Kriya’s 30 day payment terms directly to your Stripe checkout without any additional development work. Check it out, it’s just a couple of clicks and off you go! #Stripe #B2B #B2BPayments #BNPL #eCommerce #PayLater #TradeCredit

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In the world of consumer finance: 1. Chase discontinuing working with Klarna -- do Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) customers tend to dispute charges? 2. I had no Klarna balance and was not at risk of late fees; I'd call this somewhat misleading advertising to get people to update payment information proactively. 3. BNPL is going to be an interesting story; they're already funny for providing credit on top of credit. Whatever credit the credit card companies authorized, BNPL companies take just a little extra risk on top of it.

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