Startups news: what happened in October

Here are October news.

Amazon will accept payments through Venmo, a mobile payment service owned by PayPal since 2013, by Black Friday on Nov. 25. Venmo is a mobile payments platform that allows users to split bills. Shares in PayPal jumped by 7% following Amazon’s announcement.

During its earnings call, Google CEO Sundar Pichai highlighted its Cloud segment, and newly acquired cybersecurity firm Mandiant, as the company’s priority. Google Cloud’s annual run rate reached $27.5B. “The long-term trends that are driving cloud adoption continue to play an even stronger role during uncertain macroeconomic times,” said Pichai.

WATI ($23M) is a wrapper (support CRM) around the management of messages and features in Whatsapp and powered by WhatsApp Business API. WATI capabilities include: shared team inbox, broadcast & bulk messages, custom notifications, API for developers. Interactions can be automated through low-code workflows, and connected to e-commerce platforms and CRMs. It has many integrations such as Shopify, WooCommerce, Hubspot or Zoho plugins, No Code chatbot constructor. There are solutions for Ecommerce, Healthcare, EdTech, Sales and marketing teams. The platform includes a collaborative team inbox used by multiple agents and features like smart routing, canned responses, data tagging and analytics.

Nolk ($21.70M) finds growing, direct-to-consumer businesses and helps them scale to greater success. The core of the company is GeniusWire™ data platform that analyses millions of eCommerce websites, delivering performance metrics and analytical insights with unprecedented detail. Launched in 2018 by experienced entrepreneurs, nolk strives to help the modern household find and use beautiful, sustainable products through a portfolio of appealing environmentally conscious brands, proprietary technology to support their growth, and group synergies.

Banyan ($43M) is a cloud-based storage of receipts for purchases with item details, and works through a Banyan API call on the seller’s side. In order for other companies to receive information about purchases, they must also use the Banyan API. The first type of Banyan customers are merchants who can:

• provide your customers with more detailed information about their purchases in their applications
• conduct a more detailed analysis of the purchasing behaviour of their customers
• offer them more personalised special offers tailored to their favourite brands and the types of items they frequently buy

The second type of clients are banks and fintech companies of “embedded finance”.

Kudos ($7M) will help you choose a card for payment, with which you can get the most cash back, points and other bonuses on the seller’s website. There is a plugin for the Chrome browser. In addition, by analysing the history of purchases, the project will begin to advise which new card you should get in order to receive more rewards. The Kudos plugin is compatible with over 1 million merchant websites and maintains an up-to-date database of conditions and rewards for 3,000 credit cards. The startup claims that with their plugin, the average shopper returns over $750 in rewards per year.

Beebs ($5.86M) buys and sells second-hand products around childhood: more than 1 million second-hand bargains.

ShoprTV ($1.80M) is an app-based platform for live and interactive shopping. All product cards are changed by short video cards

Merge ($55M) to support CRM tools and project management.  The company expanded its integration support beyond the HR, recruiting and payroll systems it launched with to now support CRM tools, as well as project management and ticketing systems.

Bilt Rewards ($150M) works with some of the country’s largest multifamily owners and operators to create loyalty programs and a co-branded credit card for property renters, entered unicorn status. The company’s loyalty program and payment platform was rolled out to more than 2.5 million apartment units across the country so far. Users can earn points and improve their credit by simply paying rent each month. Bilt’s points can be used in 12 loyalty programs, including major airlines, hotels, travel, fitness classes, Amazon.com purchases, credit toward rent or a future downpayment.