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Weav raises $4.3M to knit together a universal API for commerce platforms

by Mary Ann Azevedo

Weav, which is building a universal API for commerce platforms, is emerging from stealth today with $4.3 million in funding from a bevy of investors, and a partnership with Brex.

Founded last year by engineers Ambika Acharya, Avikam Agur and Nadav Lidor after participating in the W20 YC batch, Weav joins the wave of fintech infrastructure companies that aim to give fintechs and financial institutions a boost. Specifically, Weav’s embedded technology is designed to give these organizations access to “real time, user-permissioned” commerce data that they can use to create new financial products for small businesses.  

Its products allow its customers to connect to multiple platforms with a single API that was developed specifically for the commerce platforms that businesses use to sell products and accept payments. Weav operates under the premise that allowing companies to build and embed new financial products creates new opportunities for e-commerce merchants, creators and other entrepreneurs. 

Left to right: Co-founders Ambika Acharya, Nadav Lidor and Avikam Agur; Image courtesy of Weav

In a short amount of time, Weav has seen impressive traction. Recently, Brex launched Instant Payouts for Shopify sellers using the Weav API. It supports platform integrations such as Stripe, Square, Shopify and PayPal. (More on that later.) Since its API went live in January, “thousands” of businesses have used new products and services built on Weav’s infrastructure, according to Lidor. Its API call volume is growing 300% month over month, he said.

And, the startup has attracted the attention of a (Read more...)

Hatch, a neobank for SMBs, launches with $20M in funding from investors like Kleiner Perkins, Foundation and Plaid’s founders

by Catherine Shu

After his last startup, Framed Data, was acquired by Square, Thomson Nguyen began exploring new ideas. While an entrepreneur-in-residence at Kleiner Perkins, Nguyen interviewed hundreds of small business owners and realized that many pay hundreds of dollars in fees to maintain a business checking account. “Most small businesses are low margin, high cash flow, so they don’t have $4,000 just laying around,” Nguyen told TechCrunch. “We found in our analysis that micro-SMBs actually end up paying on average $450 in overdraft fees a year.”

Nguyen’s new startup Hatch recently launched its first two products and announced today it has secured a total of $20 million in funding from investors like Kleiner Perkins, Foundation Capital, SVB and Plaid’s founders. The fintech’s Hatch Business Checking accounts cost $10 a month, don’t charge non-sufficient funds (NSF) or overdraft fees and includes cashback offers. Eligible account holders can also enroll in Hatch Cover, which covers overdrafts up to $100, or apply for lines of credit.

Some of Hatch’s customers have hundreds of employees, but Nguyen said the startup primarily focuses on businesses with up to 20 people. Many are run by only one person, who might be setting up a business account for the first time.

Hatch draws on Nguyen’s professional and personal backgrounds. Framed Data, a predictive analytics company, was acquired by Square in 2016. He worked as Square Capital’s head of data science before becoming an entrepreneur-in-residence at Kleiner Perkins in 2018, focusing on fintech and machine learning problems. As a (Read more...)