The FinTech & PropTech Weekly Round-Up: Week 1
Tags: Startup, Startup Life, Proptech, Real Estate, Fintech

Raisin is raisin’, Architrave is all the rave, and Stripe… Well, is Stripe. Plus a couple other bits and pieces we came across.

This is something new from the mietwise team. As we love FinTech and PropTech, we will be writing a new weekly post on the top five things we read or heard about from the worlds of FinTech and PropTech. We hope you enjoy.

Raisin just keeps raisin’

Most of us know Raisin by now, better known as ‘WeltSparen’ in their native Germany. If not, they are one of the two leading savings platforms in Europe. The other is Deposit Solutions (Savedo & ZinsPilot), backed by Peter Thiel. Well the story is they raised another $114m, which will feed their already rapid expansion, while also filling up a small acquisitions war chest.

Our verdict: Great product (hurrah for Open Banking!), great team. We can’t wait to see where they spend some of those dollars in acquisitions.

Who invested: Index Ventures, PayPal, Ribbit Capital & Thrive Capital

Source: Steve O’Hear, TechCrunch

Architrave is all the rave

Picking up €2m from Nikolas Samios’ PropTech1 Ventures, Architrave is a digital document management system for Real Estate. It also does a bunch of other things that utilise the usual suspects; AI, Predictive Analytics &Big Data. These can confuse most Real Estate companies, but they have managed to package these all up into a great, easy-to-use product.

Our verdict: They have a great product, which is perfect for an industry that definitely needs it.

Who invested: PropTech1 Ventures,

Source: Mary Loritz, EU-Startups

Stripe… Well, is Stripe

Another quarter and another couple of million dollars, $100m to be exact, pumped into Stripe’s already bulging coffers. The big news here is that the company, essentially the heart and sole of global payments (Deliveroo, Facebook, Lyft, and many more, are customers), is now worth an incredible $22.5bn. Oh, and it’s still a private company.

Our verdict: We. Love. Stripe. Nothing else really needs to be said here.

Investors: Tiger Global Management

Source: Ryan Browne & Kate Rooney, CNBC

The Pig and the PropTechs

It’s the year of the Pig, and Asia-based VCs are putting their heads together to predict how 2019 will look for the PropTech industry. Essentially, PropTech is growing quickly, with this year already looking to outpace the year of the Dog (2018). Funding is up, adoption is up, with Co-Living and Co-Working leading the space. The market is still young, but rearing to grow.

Our verdict: Let’s just wait and see, it’s still February after all. But hey, this is Asia, they adopt technology and grow quickly, we’ll see some amazing things.

Investors: 31 Ventures, Cento Ventures, CoWorks Foundry, G5 Capital, JLL Spark, Swire Properties & Taronga Ventures

Source: Angelica Donati, Forbes

Hanging by a Wire(card)

The FT first picked up on allegations of suspicious transactions back in January, with a follow up article shortly after stating that senior executives knew exactly what was going on. This has put Wirecard’s CEO in a bit of a sticky situation, awkward when he’s known to be a little shy. The news just keeps coming, with rumours of dodgy accounting practices surfacing.

Our verdict: There’s a reason why Wirecard is an industry leader, it did what others didn’t. For the FinTechs, let’s hope that this all clears up.

Source: Anders Melin, Nicholas Comfort & Tim Loh, Bloomberg

Yes, we even have an epilogue

As you might have guessed, this article is somewhat of a plug for us and our startup, mietwise. Even so, we are two founders going through the (sometimes testing) steps of founding and running a new PropTech / FinTech company in Germany. As such, we intend to share our experiences and knowledge in the hope that we can help others do the same.

Don’t forget to take a look at mietwise, and if you ever want to get in touch, we love good coffee!

The Mietwise Team,

Jonathan