The fintechs that raised big money in February: are they hiring?
Ah, February… the shortest month of the year and certainly one of the quietest. It is difficult to achieve success in the second month of the year, and those who have a truly outstanding month are few and far between.
Last February, 22 fintech companies raised over $50 million; this year the number was just 5. Here are some of the biggest fundraisers in February and a look at their hiring strategies.
Cloud specialists stand out
The transition to cloud-based software is happening on a massive scale. In finance, Goldman Sachs prioritizes its cloud-based transaction banking service. In fintech, cloud optimization firm ProsperOps looks like an attractive proposition.
The Texas-based firm raised $72 million in its first ever funding round, more than any other US fintech this month. This comes on the back of a number of recent hires over the past few months as they bring in new staff both inside and outside the engineering department.
ProsperOps’ biggest recent technology hire is senior engineer Paul Kizior, hired in December after spending more than three years as an engineer at Amazon. It also brought in Alex Koontz a month later from Austin-based IT solutions company Spiceworks, where he spent over eight years.
ProsperOps says it’s hiring, but it appears to only have five open positions right now.
Credit Suisse-backed digital asset platform wants engineers
Banks are still happy to get involved in the digital assets and blockchain space. Nomura-backed Laser Digital has seen a hot prospect recently, but Switzerland-based fintech Taurus raised $65 million in Series B funding led by Credit Suisse.
This is not Credit Suisse’s first involvement with the company; the bank’s deputy chairman Christian Gellerstad has been a board member since 2019. However, its influence on the company is increasing as Credit Suisse MD Salvatore Lacangelo became a Taurus board member this month.
This year’s hires include compliance officer Tania Nortik and junior operations officer Victor Bengold, another Credit Suisse alumnus. Noémien Kocher, a machine learning focused master’s graduate just joined after almost four years participating in research projects for Swiss école EPFL.
Of six job advertisements, half are in engineering, including a technology leader position.
The InsurTech Unicorn gets a refill
Last July, Berlin-based insurance tech giant WeFox raised a whopping $400 million to achieve a company valuation of $4.5 billion. This month it received another $55 million; a far more modest sum, but more of an extension than a separate financing round.
WeFox has increased the hiring of engineers in 2023. Three senior Java developers have arrived: Gaurav Gupta, Marcelo Surriabre and most recently Accenture alumni Cristian Castro. Pooja Choudhary previously joined KPMG as a computer engineer; Rohit Anand joined HelloFresh as VP of data engineering.
WeFox has 80 open roles across Europe.
Striving for success
We’ve already had our say on Singapore fintech Aspire’s $100 million funding round.
When we reported their success, the payments fintech had 44 open roles listed. Since then, it has risen to 52.
The new listings have placed greater emphasis on technology and product; almost half of the new listings are across these departments.
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