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| Here's a look at today's Startups briefing. - 🛰️ Former Disney star launches a new satellite data startup called Northwood Space
- 📈 PatientFI bags $25M as Series B valuations start to rise again
- 🤝 Xalts acquires digital trade platform Contour Network
Thank you. Karan
p/karan-chafekar | |
| 1 | | Former Disney actress and singer Bridgit Mendler co-founded a new space tech startup called Northwood Space with her husband, Griffin Cleverly, and former Lockheed Martin engineer Shaurya Luthra. Mendler is leading the firm as its CEO, with Cleverly and Luthra taking up the chief technology officer and head of software roles, respectively. The firm launched with $6M funding from Founders Fund, Andreessen Horowitz, and Also Capital. More: - The firm is building ground stations to increase the data transfer quantity and speeds between Earth and satellites in orbit.
- Northwood's solutions will initially be focused on low Earth orbit satellites.
- Later this year, Northwood plans to conduct its first connection test with a satellite in orbit.
Zoom out: - Northwood Space says that data transfer speeds remain slow as the ground architecture has been relatively unchanged since the 1960s.
- Improving data transfer speeds is the need of the hour, especially as the number of satellites in orbit is expected to increase vastly from 5,500 in 2022 to about 58,000 in 2030, per the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
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| 2 | | PatientFI, a financing platform offering patients options to pay for elective procedures, closed its oversubscribed Series B funding round at $25M. 
Relevance: Healthcare-focused VC firm Questa Capital led the round, with additional participation from existing investors. The fresh funding will help the firm ramp up sales and marketing, launch new products, and ink partnerships, especially in the fertility space. Since its founding in 2017, the firm has raised $70M in capital to date. PatientFi reported $45M in revenue last year. The startup provides loans between $200 and $50,000 to pay for the elective procedures. What the numbers say: PatientFi's fresh funding comes as Series B valuations have started increasing again. Median pre-money valuations of Series B startups surged 23% in Q4 2023, reaching $100M, per Carta. Median pre-money valuations of Series B bridge funding rounds plateaued at $85M in Q4 2023 after declining for four straight quarters. | | | |
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| 3 | | Singaporean fintech startup Xalts acquired the digital trade platform Contour Network. While the official financial details of the transaction are unknown, sources estimate the acquisition price to be in the high single millions. More: - Founded just 18 months ago, Xalts specializes in assisting financial institutions in developing and managing blockchain-based applications.
- It raised a $6M seed round in October 2022 led by Accel and Citi Ventures.
- With the acquisition of Contour Network, Xalts aims to transform the platform into a comprehensive solution that connects banks, corporations, and other institutions securely and compliantly, starting with embedded trade and supply chain apps for banks and logistics companies.
- The startup sees an opportunity to connect corporate customers and offer B2B finance solutions, including trade finance and lending.
- Contour Network was set up in 2017 by eight major banks, including HSBC, Standard Chartered, and BNP, to digitize trade.
- 22 banks and over 100 global businesses use the platform.
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| 4 | | Brazilian fintech startup Stark Bank has doubled its net income to $14.4M (71.5M reais) in the 2023 financial year. Income doubled after Stark Bank saw a threefold jump in the payments processed through its platform to $31B (155B reais). The surge in profitability has helped Stark Bank strengthen its financial position and conserve the cash from previous funding rounds. More: - Stark Bank provides payment processing services plus billing and payroll automation to over 600 clients, including Gol Linhas Aereas Inteligentes, Localiza Rent a Car, Cia Ultragaz, Loft, and QuintoAndar.
- Founder Rafael Stark, who still owns 38% of the company, emphasized the importance of sustainable growth, adding, "There's no need to keep raising money and diluting my stake. It's better to grow and create much more value further down the road."
- The firm last raised a $45M Series B round from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' family office, Bezos Expeditions, and Ribbit Capital, at a valuation of $250M.
- The firm has kept growing its market share due to its ability to customize solutions for clients.
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| 5 | | Seven startups have spun out from the University of Washington (UW) since last July, as confirmed by the university's tech transfer office CoMotion. In addition to launching startups, CoMotion also helps them secure patents. Over the past five years, about 52 startups have spun out from the university and secured over 2,000 licenses. More: - UW started the tech transfer office in 1983.
- About 110 startups that emerged from UW over the years are still actively functioning and have collectively raised $4.1B in the past five years alone.
- The seven startups that emerged since last July are smartphone-based neurological disorder identification platform Apetur, cancer-fighting drug biotech firm Axxis Bio, precision epigenetic reprogramming startup Histone Therapeutics, gene therapy firm Kinea Bio, non-viral gene therapy platform Myosana, high-resolution DNA array firm TopoGene, and 3D printing company Polyfos.
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| 6 | | Smart-home device startup Wyze issued an apology following a camera breach that allowed about 13,000 customers to briefly see thumbnail images from other users' cameras. The breach impacted 0.3% of Wyze's users. In response to the breach, Wyze is implementing new security features to prevent similar incidents in the future. More: - Wyze said the breach happened after it resolved an AWS outage on Friday.
- The startup confirmed that the incident was caused by its third-party caching client library, which "received unprecedented load conditions caused by devices coming back online all at once. As a result of increased demand, it mixed up device ID and user ID mapping and connected some data to incorrect accounts."
- The latest incident comes on the heels of another security incident from last September, where users could access live feeds from other users' cameras.
- The firm last raised a $110M funding round in 2021.
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| 7 | | Quick Hits: - Astrotwig, an African early-stage music streaming startup, lost about $20,000 in an apparent investment scam. CEO Samuel Adeleke has stepped down from the role due to the incident.
- The Indian government is meeting with local fintech startups next week amidst recent actions taken against Paytm Payments Bank by the Reserve Bank of India.
- Blockchain rollup infrastructure startup AltLayer has secured $14.4M in strategic funding. Polychain Capital and Hack VC co-led the round, with additional backing from OKX Ventures, HashKey Capital, SevenX, Mask Network, IOSG, TRGC, and other investors.
- UAE-based foodtech startup The Cloud has bagged $12M in Series B funding from MENA Moonshots and other investors.
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 | Analyst | | Karan Chafekar is a Management Consultant, Business enthusiast, and Licensed Pilot. | | This newsletter was edited by Aaron Crutchfield | |
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