Berlin secret start-up champions
3-in-1: 3 digital news in 1 minute. On Monday. Episode 237
Discover 3 original digital news, invest one minute and be a better professional!
News 1: Mambu banking as a service, backed by mighty TCV
Mambu is a typical SaaS (Software as a Service) to build financial services, like Lego blocks. Mambu claims 7.000 different banking products, thanks to a comprehensive partner system. The news: recently raised $110m from TCV. TCV, a prominent investor, also in Mollie (similar to Mambu), in Spryker (e-commerce), in Klarna and Revolut. Opinion for B2B: Mambu is not well-known, even in the fintech scene. Second look: a very good set-up of banking services, APIs, ecosystems and partners. All of it betting for a large market of anyone building banking services or banks adding the services instead of building them themselves (Commerzbank is an early investor).
Very good discovery, Mambu! A fintech to follow-up.
News 2: SellerX buys sellersXYZ
SellerX rocketed in the news with a funding of $100m. The plan is to buy independent Amazon sellers. A copy of successful Thrasio in the US that already bought 6.000 sellers. The Idea: integrate the sellers into a standard system and grow. Opinion for B2B: This reflects how big the Amazon seller ecosystem is. Estimated 10.000 just in Germany. SellerX is in a recruiting phase with a transparent buying process. It only happens right now in the 3 largest Amazon countries, US, UK and Germany.
What an extraordinary development — Amazon seller market is mature, concentration comes.
News 3: Rescue Omio — too big to fail.
Omio is a search tool that compares rail, air, bus, and car for destinations. It can combine means of transport. Omio had a good run until the pandemic came. Now with a new funding of $100m. Mainly from existing investors. It sounds like a financing to bridge the tough time of world travel. Opinion for B2B: Omio gathered funds from very prominent venture capital companies: Kinnevik, Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Kleiner Perkins. What a line up. In a way a success story, but the travel market is suffering so much, it stopped this shooting star.
Good luck for the post-pandemic time — certainly also a new market situation for the travel industry.
Author is the research team (10 trend scouters) at specialist Space and Lemon (Hamburg, Berlin) — scouting in main tech geographies, in AI development, virtual worlds and e-commerce. Excerpts of research are gathered here in original weekly news since 2016, always with a professional opinion — no re-write of TechCrunch. Research time: January 2021.
Come back next Monday and share your opinion.
