revenue | Biz Builder Mike

No Code Digital Future: EasySend Raises $16 Million

September 22, 2020 by bizbuildermike

EasySend, a company that wants to help insurance companies, banks, and other financial services firms better develop their tech stack with an “AI-powered no-code platform,” has raised $16 million. The Tel Aviv based company reports that the Series A funding was led by Hanaco with participation from Intel Capital.

The new funding follows a previously undisclosed $5 million seed round from existing investors Vertex Ventures and Menora Insurance. The cash infusion will be used to boost staff and offices around the world as well as for further product development.

EasySend’s platform is designed to convert manual processes into “digital journeys” that can be optimized by non-technical staff without any coding via a simple drag and drop interface.

EasySend believes that now more than ever, financial services and insurance companies are searching for ways to digitize their operations effectively.

Tal Daskal, EasySend CEO and co-founder, says the world is changing and COVID has forced traditional businesses to embrace a digital transformation:

“Our no-code platform is uniquely positioned to make this digital transition easier for enterprises from a wide range of industries – especially insurance and financial services – enabling them to create new digital products efficiently and effectively while boosting and creating digital opportunities which not only save on development and maintenance costs, but also drive revenue growth.”

Nick Washburn, senior managing director, Intel Capital, added:

“EasySend’s no-code platform utilizes AI to digitize thousands of forms quickly and easily, reducing development time from months to days, and transforming customer journeys that have been paper-based, inefficient and frustrating. In today’s world, this is more critical than ever before.”

EasySend says it currently works with unnamed leading financial institutions in the U.S.A., Israel, and Europe, including top insurance companies.

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P2P Lender MarketFinance Reveals that Many Small Businesses in the UK Could Run Out of Cash Soon

September 22, 2020 by bizbuildermike

MarketFinance, one of the world’s largest peer-to-peer (P2P) invoice finance platforms, has cautioned that many UK-based SMEs could soon run out of cash. This, as the government-backed funding schemes are scheduled to end soon.

The Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS) will end on September 30, 2020. However, MarketFinance claims that it has found that many small businesses have decided to access funding through the Bounce Back Loan Scheme (BBLS) instead.

But MarketFinance’s research shows or indicates that SMEs have a little over £9,000 (on average) remaining in their bounce back loans. Most small companies expect these funds to run out by the end of this month, MarketFinance claims.

The firm’s research reveals that 77% of SMEs realize that the CBILS can offer a bigger loan facility. About 68% of small companies are aware that they’re refinancing their bounce back loan via the CBILS facility. But 63% of small businesses did not actually realize that applications for CBILS loans are expiring by the end of this month.

Anil Stocker, CEO at MarketFinance, noted that the BBLS may have been a decent short-term solution for small businesses. He believes that it offered the support needed during the lockdowns, however, the CBILS funds should “provide the impetus to do more.” He also mentioned that not having the funds to maintain a business’ cashflow might be “disastrous” for many small businesses.

He added that it’s important for companies to begin looking past the basic survival mode and start looking seriously at how they can change their business model to work productively during the COVID-19 crisis. He believes that there could be new ways for businesses to generate significant revenue, even during these challenging times.

He further noted:

“Securing government-backed funding now, before the deadline, is an opportunity for businesses to access the working capital they need to build for the longer term. The idea of these being ‘unprecedented times’ has been thrown around a lot this year. Initiatives like the CBILS offer similarly unprecedented access to fee and interest-free funding – but only for a limited time.”

MarketFinance has reportedly surveyed 2,000 UK-based company owners and found that 76% are interested in being able to access a CBILS facility if they really need it by the end of 2020.

About 77% of SMEs in the UK claim that they’ll only be able to generate 50% of the revenue this year that they earned in 2019. About two-thirds of business owners stated that a no-deal Brexit could pose major risks to their operations.

Over 1.2 million SMEs have reportedly used the BBLS facility. Meanwhile, around 60,000 UK businesses were approved or qualified for a CBILS loan.

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The Real Lesson of the Snowflake IPO

September 18, 2020 by bizbuildermike

On Wednesday, Snowflake (SNOW) went public in one of the most highly anticipated IPOs ever.

Snowflake is a cloud data platform that helps companies efficiently organize and analyze huge databases. The company’s revenue is growing at a rapid 133% year-over-year rate.

Snowflake’s IPO priced at $120 for a valuation of $33 billion. That alone made Snowflake the most valuable software company ever at the time of their IPO, according to Fortune.

There are two primary problems here for those of us who are “retail investors.” First, only well-connected investors got in at the initial $120 price. Demand for this deal was so high that shares opened to the public at $245 and were trading at $290 at 12:47PM EDT on Wednesday.

So unless they happened to have a connection at a major investment bank or Snowflake, most investors probably didn’t get in at the $120 IPO price. Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway — and other well-connected firms — invested at that price. But the rest of us didn’t have that option.

The second problem is that on its first day of trading, Snowflake was already valued at more than a $60 billion market capitalization! As a comparison, Twitter currently trades at a market capitalization of $32 billion. It’s true that Snowflake is growing much faster than Twitter. But it also only has a fraction of the revenue which Twitter does and is currently losing a lot more money.

The issue is that this week is the first time most investors will get a chance to buy Snowflake shares. And it’s already worth more than $60 billion. Snowflake is an impressive and disruptive company, true. But at that high of a valuation, there’s only so much upside left (and quite a bit of risk). The biggest gains were already made by Snowflake’s early private investors. The public never got a chance to buy when it was still small.

One more thing. In February of this year, Snowflake raised $479 million at a $12.4 billion valuation from private investors. What could have possibly changed between February and today that made the company 5x more valuable? I believe the spike can only be explained by the bubbly financial environment we’re in today.

Private markets are where tech growth happens

Snowflake isn’t the only hot tech company to IPO at a crazy valuation. Today it’s rare to see any hot tech company IPO at a valuation of less than a few billion dollars. Just take Uber’s IPO at an $84 billion market cap and how Facebook was worth $104 billion when it went public as a couple of examples. Those are monstrously large IPO valuations. And Snowflake is right up there with them.

Nowadays when a really hot tech company goes public, it’s often already a big and mature business. And the majority of investors’ gains were made in private markets.

This is one of the main reasons I continue to invest in private startups. It’s one of the only ways to get access to very fast-growing companies today. Of course, there’s also more risk involved in private markets. But that’s balanced out by the higher upside potential. Startup investing also requires a lot more patience than trading stocks — but in my experience that’s a benefit and not a bug.

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