Stereo Capital Archives - �� News

Arctic Wolf Lands $60M Series D

Sophia Kunthara — Wed, 11 Mar 2020 12:00:54 +0000

Cybersecurity startup raised $60 million in its Series D round, bringing its to more than $148 million.

The company wanted to raise money before the election year was underway (companies sometimes don’t like to undergo major financing events during election years because of unpredictability in the markets) and actually completed the fundraising in December, Arctic Wolf CEO Brian NeSmith said in an interview with �� News. The money was intended to “build a war chest” so the company could be prepared for the future, he said.

Arctic Wolf is a “security operations center as a service” company, meaning it provides security experts to act as an extension of a company’s internal team and handle things like risk management and threat detection.

The latest round was led by and . Other investors in the company include and , according to ��.

“For a long time, the managed security market has struggled with an acute shortage in security operations talent and misaligned pricing models,” Stereo Capital managing partner Dmitry Dakhnovsky said in a statement. “We are excited to back Arctic Wolf as the only scale platform that combines a state-of-the-art technology stack with top class security analysts in a single offering. Arctic Wolf brings true enterprise grade security to businesses who would not be able to achieve it on their own.”

Arctic Wolf is expecting to increase its headcount by 55 percent, and in about nine months it will begin international expansion. Currently, the company is mainly selling its services in North America, with Eden Prairie, Minnesota, and Waterloo, Ontario, as the largest company offices.

The new round comes after Arctic Wolf saw its customer base grow by 130 percent in 2019 and its revenue to about 115 percent, according to a statement from the company.

Arctic Wolf’s revenue has grown by 4,300 percent over the past four years, and it expects that to double this year. The company is on what NeSmith calls a “10-quarter plan” toward an IPO.

The company is also looking to make some smaller acquisitions in the future, though NeSmith declined to share what kind of companies Arctic Wolf is looking to buy. It has made one acquisition so far, cybersecurity startup in December 2018.

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Zumper Secures $60M To Become The ‘Airbnb For One-Year Leasing’

Mary Ann Azevedo — Tue, 10 Mar 2020 15:00:06 +0000

, a rental marketplace for renters and landlords, announced this morning it has raised $60 million in a Series D round led by new investor .

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New backer also participated in the financing, which brings San Francisco-based Zumper’s total funding since its 2012 inception to more than $150 million. and led the company’s $46 million in September 2018 (at which time the company had a pre-money valuation of $200 million, according to ��). The company has a long list of high-profile investors including , and .

, CEO and co-founder of Zumper, declined to disclose the company’s current valuation, saying only it is “a significant step up from our 2018 valuation.”

Zumper’s self-described mission is to make renting an apartment “as easy as booking a hotel.” The startup claims to be the largest privately held rental marketplace (in terms of users) in the United States. Last year, 67 million people used Zumper to find, list, or rent properties in the U.S. and Canada. Georgiades expects that number to climb to 80 million this year, saying he company helps advertise more than 1 million listings a month.

‘Airbnb for one-year leasing’

The residential real estate market space is a crowded one for sure, and Zumper competes with the likes of publicly traded .

For Georgiades, Zumper differentiates itself in that it helps people in all steps of the process, making it a true “end-to-end” marketplace.

For example, Zumper offers renters the ability to find, apply for and then book an apartment. They can also digitally pay their rent to their landlord. It also helps small landlords and multifamily properties with things like finding tenants, marketing and collecting rent.

The company makes money in two ways: Landlords pay to be at the top of its feed for more exposure, in a classic lead-generation model; and also pay Zumper to close leases. For example, if a landlord uses its tools to conduct a transaction, it pays Zumper a fee per transaction.

Georgiades declined to disclose revenue figures but said the company saw its “pretty sizeable” revenue rise by 100 percent year over year last year.

“We’re not going from a small number to a small number,” he told �� News.

Meanwhile, the company doubled its headcount to 200 compared to about 100 a year ago. Zumper’s employees are spread across offices in San Francisco, Scottsdale, New York, Chicago and Providence, Rhode Island.

Looking ahead, the company will use the new capital to grow its sales and engineering teams and invest in scaling its transactional tools. Currently, 90 percent of its audience finds Zumper organically, according to the company.

“Ultimately, we want to be the Airbnb for one-year leasing,” Georgiades said.

For , co-founder and managing partner of e.ventures, Zumper’s progress so far has been “striking.”

Yesterday, we wrote about a similar offering in the United Kingdom. London-based it had raised about $13 million. Goodlord’s SaaS (software as a service) platform aims to make the rental process smoother and more efficient for landlords, leasing agents and renters alike. It handles a wide range of services from contracts to references to payments.

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Utah’s Lendio, An Online Marketplace For Small Business Loans, Secures $55M

Mary Ann Azevedo — Fri, 28 Feb 2020 16:30:36 +0000

, a Lehi, Utah-based free online marketplace for small business loans, has secured $55 million in capital. That includes $31 million in equity led by Traverse Fund and a $24 million debt facility from .

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According to the company, the equity round was oversubscribed by existing investors including , , , and . It brings Lendio’ssince it was founded in 2011 to $108.5 million. The company’s last funding was a $19 million , raised at a pre-money valuation of $75 million in October 2016, according to Cruchbase data.

Lendio plans to use the new capital “to increase the scope and precision” of its loan marketplace while expanding new bookkeeping and lender services functions.

The startup has 75 loan products on tap and describes itself as a one-stop-shop for business owners looking for capital to start, operate and grow. Lendio has facilitated more than 100,000 loans to nearly 35,000 business owners across the U.S. to date, totaling over $2 billion. It says its year-over-year growth rate has averaged 75 percent over the past two years. The company has more than doubled its customer base in the last two years, according to CEO and co-founder .

It’s also nearly doubled its headcount from 170 people about one year ago to just over 300 today.

Lendio reduced its monthly burn rate to break-even since taking on the Series D round of funding in 2016, according to Blake.

“While the company was in a position of profitability and didn’t need to raise funds, this Series E round will allow Lendio to grow several recently-launched business units,” he wrote via email.

What it does

The company says it wants to make it easy for small business owners to get loans. Owners can complete a 15-minute online loan application that is processed by Lendio’s machine-learning algorithms and matched with” a pool of suitable lenders.”

Lendio’s loan team reviews those options with the business owners and then works to facilitate the loans, often within 24 hours, it claims.

The company has strategic partnerships with the likes of , , , , , Comcast Business, and .

For Mercato Partners’ Senior Investor , Lendio’s “ability to combine data analytics with the human touch to connect small businesses quickly and precisely with ideal lending partners has made all the difference in its success.”

The new capital will be used in part to expand the company’s online bookkeeping platform and further integrate it with its loan marketplace platform, Sunrise by Lendio. It also plans to enhance its lender services division. The company gives banks, credit unions and other online lenders access to its white-labeled online application via a software-as-a-service partnership model.

Meanwhile, lenders are now outsourcing the customer-facing sales function to Lendio, the company said.

The company also has a social component (which I always love). For every new loan facilitated on Lendio’s marketplace platform, Lendio Gives–an employee contribution and employer matching program–provides a microloan to a low-income entrepreneur around the world through .

Blake said Utah was an obvious choice to start a fintech company.

“From a regulatory standpoint, Utah is very business friendly, the cost of living is affordable, and there’s a deep talent pool to draw from,” he said. Plus, he appreciated “the strong VC community and the entrepreneurial culture pervasive across the state.”