Silicon Valley Funding News - Week of February 27, 2023. Tome Raised $43M Series B led by Lightspeed

I am super excited that Huma Finance finally came out of stealth mode this week! 

Here are a few great reads and lists for the week: 

• 💰 Huma Finance Brings Income-Backed Lending to the World of DeFi - I met Erbil Karaman ten years ago, when he was leading  Facebook’s Internet.org effort. I remember his passion in bringing affordable internet to billions of people in which he believes it is a human right. Erbil later on became the chief product officer of Earnin. And now 10 years later, he struck out on their own, and launched Huma Finance! Huma’s first product is an on-chain factoring market going after the $3.5 trillion global factoring market, which enables individuals or businesses to borrow against their future income rather than existing token holdings. Read more
• 🧳 Away is reportedly looking for a buyer. According to CBInsights, the suitcase maker was valued at $1.4B on $150M of trailing revenue — a 9.3x multiple in 2019. Unfortunately market negativity doesn't suggest optimism for its valuation.  Based on these numbers, it looks like Away’s valuation is going to be a lot lower:
  • Samsonite acquired Tumi for $1.8 billion in 2016 at a revenue multiple of ~3.3x
  • LVMH acquired Rimowa for $716 million in 2016 at a revenue multiple of ~1.8x.
• 📉 Venture Fundraising Hits Nine-Year Low - According to the WSJ,  venture capital firms raised $20.6B in funding in Q4 2022, lowest since 2013. Limited partners invested in 226 venture-capital funds in Q4 2022 vs 620 funds in the last three months of 2021. Factors such as inflation, extended effects of the pandemic, and overall market instability are all considered to have caused hesitation among investors and a lack of funding for both startups and, now, VCs.
• 👎 Bad week of Stripe - Stripe's revenue growth slowed substantially in 2022, prompting it to cut 1000 people of its staff in November. Then came a deadline related to the expiration of restricted stock units. To cover a huge tax bill that will come due when it resolves a looming stock squeeze for its veteran employees, Stripe needs a fresh $4 billion from investors. Given its revenue slowdown and the fact that rising interest rates have cut the value of tech stocks, it has to raise that money at a major discount of $55 billion, down from the $95 billion of its round in 2021.
• 🇭🇰 Hong Kong May Bring Crypto Back to Life -  This week, Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) will consult on proposals to regulate virtual asset trading platforms with new licensing regime to take effect on 1 June 2023 which MAY allow licensed platform operators to serve retail investors.  Then earlier this month Interactive Brokers launched cryptocurrency trading in Hong Kong which enables Hong Kong residents with $8M HKD (~$1M USD) investable assets or institutions with $40M USD (~$5M USD) to trade Bitcoin and Ethereum.  Plus Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) announced their attempt to build its Stablecoins by 2023-2024. Exciting time!

This week a total of 11 startups raised $155.2M in funding, 0 M&As:

• $61M goes to 4 Enterprise startups
• $40M goes to 1 HR Tech startup
• $39.7M goes to 4 Crypto/Web3 startups
• $3.5M goes to 1 Real Estate startup
• $11M goes to 1 Logistics startup