Personio, a Munich-based workplace software suite provider for hybrid environments, raised a $200M Series E extension at an $8.5B valuation. The new price makes the startup one of the most valuable in Europe. The fresh capital is a follow-up to the first tranche of $270M secured in October at a $6.3B valuation. More: - Greenoaks Capital Partners led both the first and second tranches of funding, which saw participation from a group of unknown investors.
- Altimeter Capital, Alkeon, Index Ventures, Accel, Meritech, Lightspeed, Northzone, and Global Founders Capital all have stakes in Personio.
- Despite the round being an overall success, Personio CEO and co-founder Hanno Renner noted that the company is starting to feel the market pressure.
- To wit, the company doubled its revenue in the same time period that its valuation only increased by 30%, reported Renner.
- While it still targets SMBs specifically, Personio has grown past its original purvey of recruiting, onboarding, and basic HR management tools.
- It now also offers third-party app integrations and workflow automation for task management, approvals processes, electronic signatures, and other business aspects.
- The company benefitted massively from the new work environment during the pandemic, which made its software all the more useful for managing remote workers.
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 VC funding for travel/tourism startups has reached only $3.2B globally so far this year, according to Crunchbase data. That represents a big decline from the domain's massive recovery in 2021, where companies went on to raise a total of $10.7B over 765 deals. More: - With a mere 280 deals so far this year, the long-term decline in funding frequency seems to have accelerated.
- The last nine months of 2020 were famously bad for travel-related startups.
- While remote work-enabling companies were the big winners, travel/hospitality companies were in low demand, with their funding haul dropping to $6.2B from $10.9B the year before.
- At this point, consumers are traveling more than ever despite the increasing chances of an economic downturn.
- About a third of all funding deals have been seed-stage companies, meaning that investors are looking to invest mostly in low-cost companies that will be ready to scale on the other side of a recession.
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Singapore-based neobank Stashfin has clinched $270M in fresh capital led by Uncorrelated Ventures, Abstract Ventures, and Fasanara Capital. The funding is divided between $70M in Series C equity and $200M in debt and saw support from existing investors Altara Ventures, Tencent, Kravis Investment Partners, and Snow Leopard. More: - The round values Stashfin between $700M and $800M. The company was valued at about $135M in its previous round.
- With a focus on Southeast Asia, Stashfin targets underserved segments of society: blue-collar workers and individuals aged between 23 to 38 making less than $500 a month, and armed force members.
- It provides its customers with credit line cards, which larger banks are unable to do because of high operating costs.
- A further problem is consumer difficulties entering the young credit rating systems in South and Southeast Asian countries.
- According to Stashfin, it has amassed nearly 10 million registered customers and is issuing close to 100,000 new cards each month.
- It is currently on a trajectory to hit $100M in annualized revenue and further projects that that figure will grow by over four times over the next 12 to 18 months.
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Ming Liao, founding partner of China-focused Prospect Avenue Capital, thinks Silicon Valley venture investors have yet to really understand the country. Recent events give all the more reason for firms to reevaluate their approach. More: - VCs operating in the U.S. are not even aware of the degree to which they navigate the country’s contradictions and contingencies based on an underlying understanding of the system and how strongly these assumptions are built into their strategies.
- That is why they have been caught off guard by the regulatory onslaught and subsequent falling tech stock prices.
- Tech operators in China tend to be fairly isolated from the rest of the country’s economy, enjoying the freedom to list overseas and take foreign investment.
- Those international connections were tolerated in Beijing because of its prioritization of growth, but this attitude was too long taken for granted by investors.
- Due to this attitude and GPs’ reliance on isolated contacts in regulatory agencies instead of structural knowledge of the government’s aims, mistrust built up between partners and the officials charged with keeping track of them.
- Instead, investors need to understand both the macro and micro levels of Chinese economic policy, which is laid out in plenary sessions following each Party Congress and Politburo meeting.
- For example, in July 2020, the Politburo introduced a goal of reducing inequality in education, which was reiterated in the Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th Party Congress Central Committee in Oct. 2020.
- The Ministry of Education began formulating new policies in accordance with the goal and began circulating memos regarding the decommercialization of the after-school tutoring sector.
- Many VCs were ignorant of this, so when the government followed through on its plans, they were caught off guard and lost hundreds of millions.
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 Today’s Funding 💸 Biotech/Health - Carbon Biosciences (Boston, Mass.), novel parvovirus-derived gene therapies: $38M A led by Agent Capital, participation from Longwood Fund, Astellas Venture Management, et al.
- MyOme (Menlo Park, Calif.), clinical whole-genome platform analysis: $23M B led by Healthcare Venture Partners.
Blockchain - Outland (Los Angeles, Calif.), crypto art platform: $5M Seed led by OKX Blockdream Ventures, participation IMO Ventures, Dragon Roark, JDAC Capital.
Cybersecurity - Cyberint (Tel Aviv, Israel), attack surface reconnaissance: ...
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- SoftBank's international CEO Michel Combes has departed after just five months on the job, becoming the latest executive to abandon the investment giant. Combes took over for former COO Marcelo Claure and will be replaced by SBGI Managing Partner Alex Clavel.
- Accel announced its latest global late-stage fund at $4B. The fund's size is notable in the face of the market downturn and particularly given that Aceel's biggest rivals, SoftBank and Tiger Global, have been pulling back in recent months.
- Matrix Partners is raising a fourth India fund at $450M. The vehicle is a solid 50% larger than its 2019-launched Fund III and follows in the footsteps of Sequoia, Lightspeed, and major players in India, all of whom have announced large new funds in recent months.
- Payments technology provider Paya Holdings is reportedly seeking a buyer after seeing its share price fall 50% since its SPAC debut. The company currently has a market cap of around $710M.
- FTX acquired Bitvo, a Canadian crypto exchange, for an undisclosed price and plans to officially launch in Canada.
- BlockFi has secured a $250M revolving credit facility from FTX to keep its beleaguered crypto lending platform afloat. The company recently cut 20% of its staff.
- Adobe tools help you create, manage, and distribute personalized content. Take this self-assessment to test your brand's content velocity.*
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 |  | Inside VC's writer/curator Stephen currently lives in Berlin and is pursuing a Master's degree in philosophy. He otherwise spends his time trying his hand at recipes from India and Southeast Asia, escaping it all at the kickboxing gym, and offending aural sensibilities with his band. |  | | Editor | Aaron Crutchfield is based in the high desert of California. Over the last two decades, he has spent time writing and editing at various local newspapers and defense contractors in California. When he's not working, he can often be found looking at the latest memes with his kids or working on his 1962 Ford. | |
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