Hi all, Julie here.
Excited to see some of you in person in a few hours at our event with Green Dot here in Austin! Keep an eye out for photos in Wednesday’s community highlights section and on Twitter tonight. Otherwise, see even more of you on our panel with Matt Harris and Stephany Kirkpatrick tomorrow!
Lastly, my Tux Time episode with Aditi Shekar of AskZeta is now out! Loved recording episode 3 of our 4 part couples finances and fintech series with this awesome female founder. Tune in on Thursday for the final installment of the series when I talk to Justin Howell, Co-Founder of Rize.
Sponsored By, Fundrise
Diversify Your Portfolio
While public real estate has been readily available to investors for years, Fundrise’s private real estate investments offer significantly deeper diversification and outsized performance potential — a true alternative to any public market asset.
Since 2012, the Fundrise mission has been to build a better financial system by empowering the individual. They make it easier and more efficient than ever for anyone to invest in institutional-quality private real estate — with just a $500 minimum investment. To date, Fundrise has transacted on over $5.1B worth of real estate on behalf of more than 150,000 active investors. Rest assured that your money is working for you and start diversifying with Fundrise today!
(Here's all the legal jargon we know you love reading.)
The News
SoftBank Backs Zeta
SoftBank investment alert. Zeta (different from AskZeta) announced a $250M raise from the SoftBank Vision Fund II with a valuation of $1.45B. The new valuation is up more than four fold from just two years ago. The company was founded in 2015 and works with banks and other financial firms to help them with their backend tech systems. It currently has 10 banks and 25 fintech companies in 8 countries among its customers, including India’s HDFC Bank and Sodexo.
Payments Platform Moov Hires Fiserv Exec
Our friends at Moov have an exciting new hire announcement. The team has hired Joel Tosi, a former Fiserv executive, as chief technology officer, overseeing the direction of future products. Tosi has been working in software and product development for more than 20 years, most recently as integration services and gateway technology at Fiserv. You can read more in Moov’s blog post.
Aspiration Could IPO
The IPOs are still rolling, this time it might be challenger bank Aspiration. This one is less imminent than others that we’ve been talking about, and may or may not happen this year. I’d love to learn more about how the company has been doing as consumers have continued to focus more on the environment. For those that aren’t familiar with Aspiration, it promises that none of the deposits at the company will go towards projects that Millennials and Gen-Z typically frown upon like fossil fuels, firearms and political campaigns. According to Bloomberg’s sources, the company now has around 4M customers. I’m skeptical of this company going public on its own, but who the heck knows in this market. Back in 2019, the company was running into funding troubles.
Ray Dalio Owns Bitcoin
Coindesk’s Consensus conference is happening this week, and Ray Dalio had some words to share on crypto. At the event, he admitted he owned some Bitcoin despite previously expressing concerns. He said his biggest concern is that Bitcoin is too successful and governments want to gain control.
Coinbase Hires Goldman Verteran
Speaking of crypto, Coinbase announced it has hired Faryar Shirzad as its Chief Policy Officer. Shirzad was most recently Goldman Sachs’ Global Co-Head of Government Affairs, and previously served as the White House Deputy National Security Advisor. This is a big hire (and a big paycheck) regardless of how you look at it. Makes a ton of sense given the government’s increased focus on crypto.
Career Corner
Software Engineer at SigFig: Bain Capital backed SigFig is seeking a Software Engineer with PHP, ReactJS, Laravel, Grav, Drupal, JavaScript, Angular, HTML5, Node.js experience to lead and deliver game-changing financial experiences. As a Software Engineer, you will work closely with other engineers, QA, and product managers to develop and enhance SigFig’s Atlas platform. You will help across the entire software lifecycle, from design and implementation to deployment and operation. You will assist with analyzing business requirements, suggest solutions, and build them as part of a team. You will have an opportunity to design, develop, and deliver software leveraging your technical expertise and grow in the breadth of technology in more than one area. Your strong design, analytical, and problem-solving skills will be crucial to our success.
Community Highlights
Great post here on Nubank from our friend Mario at The Generalist.
And congrats to our friends at Commonstock on hiring Cissy Hu from Google Ventures!
Julie VerHage-Greenberg is the co-founder of Fintech Today, where she focuses on editorial content and brand. Prior to joining, she was Bloomberg’s first fintech reporter, covering Robinhood from before it was a billion dollar company, breaking the news that Plaid was acquiring Quovo, and interviewing executives on Bloomberg TV and at several large conferences.
