Spotting Emerging Fintech in Y Combinator Winter 2019 Batch
Y Combinator — the legendary startup accelerator — and its companies are widely regarded as créme de la créme of the startup ecosystem globally; I thought it would be worthwhile to look at what fintech businesses have emerged from the current YC batch of Winter 2019.
After screening the full batch there were 13 companies which could be broadly classified as ‘fintech’ — the word cloud below illustrates the emerging fintech topics prevalent in the batch.
Emerging fintech topics in YC Winter ’19 startup batch
Fintech Startups from Y Combinator Winter ’19 Batch
1 Startup: Upsolve (USA)
Vertical: Financial Wellbeing
Upsolve is a non-profit that helps the victims of our broken financial system erase their debt. They do this through the first TurboTax for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
2 Startup: Dyneti Technologies (USA)
Vertical: Payments
Dyneti Technologies makes an SDK that helps apps stop fraud and process payments faster by taking a photo of the credit card.
3 Startup: Point (USA)
Vertical: Retail Banking
Point is the only digital bank to offer a debit card with travel and dining rewards, 2% APY on savings, and no hidden fees.
4 Startup: Mudrex (USA)
Vertical: Crypto
Mudrex helps crypto traders automate their trading without needing to write a single line of code. Traders can write their trading logic using a flow chart style tool, test their trading rules on historical or live data, and put their strategies live on multiple exchanges to trade automatically.
5 Startup: Catch (USA)
Vertical: Retail Banking
Catch is the first-ever personal benefits platform, offering tax withholding, retirement plans, health insurance, and more — all integrated in one place.
6 Startup: Keeper Tax
Vertical: Personal Finance
Keeper Tax automatically finds tax write offs for gig workers. Tax deductible expenses are identified among bank statements, using a team of certified bookkeepers aided by machine learning.
7 Startup: Alpaca
Vertical: Trading
Alpaca is an API-first brokerage for high volume algorithmic stock traders.Alpaca built a FINRA approved securities broker that provides a commission-free stock trading API.
8 Startup: Truora
Vertical: KYC/Identity
Truora does fast, reliable background checks in Latin America through an online platform; they’re like Checkr for LatAm.
9 Startup: Thrive Agric
Vertical: Lending (Micro)
Thrive Agric provides microloans to Nigerian farmers and a channel to sell produce to large buyers. Nigeria has over 32 million small farmers. Most of them are unbanked and capital constrained.
10 Startup: Verto
Vertical: Payments
Verto is building a currency exchange marketplace that gives African businesses access to foreign currencies and lets them make international payments.
11 Startup: Seawise Capital
Vertical: Lending (Working Capital)
Seawise Capital is a trade finance company for Indian exporters. They provide SMEs working capital against the strength of their international customers.
12 Startup: AI Insurance
Vertical: Insurance
AI Insurance builds claims management software for small insurance companies. By introducing digital workflows and predictive analytics into a 300-year-old space, AI Insurance is changing how claims are handled.
13 Startup: YSplit
Vertical: Payments
YSplit makes virtual debit cards for group payments that automatically charges everyone for their share. By connecting bank accounts to YSplit, roommates can easily split utility payments on a recurring basis, for example.