Personal Finance Startup MX Pulls In $30 Million Series A Funding From USAA and Digital Garage

MX, the personal finance startup formerly known as Money Desktop, has just inked a $30 million Series A funding deal led by a subsidiary of USAA. Tokyo-based VC firm Digital Garage also participated in the round.

MX had previously raised a healthy seed round from various early stage investors for $20 million late last year. This now brings the total amount of funding to $50 million for the startup. 

MX founder Ryan Caldwell was hesitant to talk about the valuation, but we’ve heard it’s about triple the previous $100 million valuation.

Much like Mint, Simple and others in the personal finance space, MX aims to make financial management easy for the consumer by providing real-time monetary data from various banking institutions and money accounts.

Most of these competitors work by scraping financial data and connecting to APIs to offer a snapshot of where you are financially. MX differs in that powers a backend money management solution to the existing infrastructure of these financial institutions. This allows customers of those institutions to see all their financial information in one place within their own banking platform, rather than on a third-party site like Mint.

This latest round was a strategic one that will help MX to rapidly build out this backend with larger financial institutions, according to Caldwell. As an investor, USAA, one of the largest banking institutions in the United States, has incentive to help the startup work with its more than 10 million customers. In return, MX offers USAA a simplified personal finance solution that can “enhance the customer experience,” according to USAA.

The investment from Digital Garage offers another strategic opportunity for MX – helping it go overseas. Digital Garage was instrumental in helping other technology companies like Twitter and Path expand internationally and can offer a possibly lucrative opportunity for MX to get into the Japanese banking market – one of the leading centers for finance and banking in the world.

“We look forward to marshaling the full resources of the Digital Garage Group behind MX to bring industry-leading services to Japanese financial institutions hungry for full-stack solutions,” Digital Garage president Kaoru Hayashi said in a statement about the funding round.

MX is already preparing for what might come next by building out new headquarters in Lehi, Utah and adding 150 employees to its current 130. Most of those hires will be in engineering in order to work on building a framework to help banks and other financial institutions integrate and automate personal financing into their platforms.

“We’re helping banks be truly cross-platform. Sometimes banks struggle with integrating us into their current offering. We now offer a framework that makes this process much easier. This is part of what we’ve been developing,” Caldwell said.

Caldwell also plans to use some of the funds to hire on the sales and client services side to help guide a fast-growing base of new customers. The current customer growth rate is at 200 to 300 percent, according to Caldwell.

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Jeremy Allaire’s Bitcoin Startup Circle Takes $50M From Goldman Sachs, IDG

Circle, the Bitcoin startup that veteran entrepreneur Jeremy Allaire started, just raised $50 million from Goldman Sachs and IDG Capital Partners.

It’s another sign that the finance industry’s most powerful players are starting to take the crypto-currency and its ecosystem seriously. All of Circle’s existing investors including Breyer Capital, General Catalyst Partners, Accel Partners, Oak Investment Partners, Fenway Summer, Digital Currency Group and Pantera Capital participated. Rival Coinbase recently did a large growth round too that involved the New York Stock Exchange and USAA.

With the round, Circle is letting customers send and receive U.S. dollars as well as Bitcoin. The key point about this feature is that it takes advantage of Bitcoin’s promise in settling transactions and reaching consensus much more cheaply than traditional online financial transactions.

In its purest form, Bitcoin’s public ledger, the blockchain, allows multiple parties to transact with each other without a third-party mediator.

But of course, lots of third-party and more centralized institutions have emerged over time to serve as wallets, exchanges and merchant processors. They merely take advantage of the currency’s less expensive settlement costs. Circle is betting that dollar-based transactions will also be attractive to customers who don’t want to deal with Bitcoin’s price swings against fiat currencies.

“They can do this without knowing anything about Bitcoin and without exposing themselves to price volatility,” said Allaire, who previously took video company Brightcove public. “We really think of Bitcoin as a global interoperable payment network instead of a store of value.”

The other interesting part of the round is that Circle took funding from IDG Capital Partners, which is a well-established East Asian firm.

They could be a key partner in breaking into the Chinese market, which has an entirely different set of regulations around Bitcoin. Two years ago, after Chinese Bitcoin enthusiasts started piling into the market and driving up the price of the currency, the government intervened and ruled that banks couldn’t directly handle transactions. Transactions between private individuals are allowed, however.

“This could take a long time, but there is a savings glut in China where consumers have built up a lot of wealth. And now, the economy needs to shift toward a more consumer-driven model. Part of that involves Chinese consumers interacting with the rest of the world over the Internet,” Allaire said. “So I think there’s a need for services that will make it easier for Chinese consumers to spend globally. The Bitcoin network could be an attractive solution.”

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The Art Of Giving Feedback

Editor’s note: Allison Hopkins is the vice president of people at Hampton Creek, where she assists in the growth of its business, people and culture.

At Hampton Creek we ask, “What would it look like if we started over?” This drives our business philosophy. The one area we have focused on is giving and receiving feedback. Feedback can be real and easy.

Let’s start with the formal aspect of feedback at most organizations: the dreaded performance-review process. The current state of affairs in most companies is an annual focal or anniversary date review tied to feedback, salary increases and promotions. It can be seen as an event versus a focus on feedback done regularly and consistently. And, as many of us have experienced, this feedback is less than ideal, constructive or helpful.

Forms are filled out and the parties discuss the good, the bad and the ugly. Leaders and managers who have little-to-no training perform an event and check a few boxes and give some nebulous constructive feedback.

Over the last few years some have attempted more creativity, adding 360 reviews, quarterly feedback sessions, goal setting, anonymous feedback and external third-party feedback-gathering. But in the end, most of these processes do not drive learning or development.

Where feedback gets sticky and uncomfortable is when the giver and the receiver don’t respect or trust each other.

The best feedback can be done easily and build trust. For example, think about that time you were sitting at lunch with someone you didn’t know – you excuse yourself and go to the restroom where you look in the mirror and see that big piece of spinach covering your front tooth and you think, “why didn’t my lunch partner tell me this?” That leads to a smidgeon of distrust now with this lunch date. You think, if they had only mentioned this, it would have saved me some embarrassment in front of others.

This is how performance feedback can work — be constructive and in real-time — which can enhance trust and growth. I like to refer to this type of feedback as 365-feedback. Practice every day, at least once a day, and it will become easy.

Feedback can be difficult to give, especially when it deals with behavior or a character flaw. And as humans we tend to avoid it. But, feedback, similar to exercise, gets better and easier when the muscle is stretched on a regular basis. You will notice a strength and organizational dynamic that comes with real-time, direct feedback. Think of giving feedback as a gift.

In most organizations conflict-avoidance runs rampant at all levels. We are all a little afraid of rejection and hearing feedback can come with a dose of reality that is tough to hear. As well, some feedback can be hurtful, biased and delivered poorly with the words that are chosen. It’s good to keep this in mind when delivering and communicating feedback.

But the irony is that more often than not when feedback is given with thought and truth, it is valuable. Think about the times you have given or received truthful constructive feedback and how that helped you learn.

Having led people teams (or something like that) for the last 25 years, I’ve had hundreds of folks who come to me to complain about others. Many times my first question is, “what did so-and-so say when you talked with them about this?” Most times, the response is “I haven’t talked with them.” My next question then is, “how can I help you with that feedback?” Driving people to talk to each other about the good, bad and ugly is critical to business success.

Another scenario is when someone comes to me to claim something about someone else; I probe and prod on the truth and the facts, and try to get the emotion removed. In some cases, I gather all parties in a room to hash it out. I find many of these conversations are filled with mistruths, memes and biases. There are always more than two sides to any claim, and it can be liberating to get the parties in the room to work through it in real-time and walk in each other’s shoes.

Over the years there have been many moments when someone gets talked about who isn’t present. I then ask if the person knows about this and if the conversation would be the same if that person were in the room. The goal is to drive the organization to a foundation of trust — giving people the belief that we are working hard as an organization to be truthful whether you are in the room or not.

One-on-one is usually the best way to give feedback, but in a public setting it can also be incredibly demonstrative. Knowing the receiver of the feedback and the audience is critical to your decision to deliver the message one-to-one or publicly.

Where feedback gets sticky and uncomfortable is when the giver and the receiver don’t respect or trust each other. When the bubble over their heads in a feedback session is, “what is their ulterior motive, am I going to get fired, is this politically charged?”

That is the ugly side of real-time feedback and starting over in this circumstance is one area that needs work. I find an objective third party to be helpful in that situation to call bullshit between the two and get them to be really honest with each other. An arbitrator of sorts is sometimes a good way to go.

I remember many times being a bit nervous but stepped up to give honest, direct feedback and address the “elephant in the room,” and when I did it always got the conversation going in a much healthier way. The freedom to open up and discuss, brainstorm and resolve an issue can be liberating and actually fun. How refreshing to know where you or a situation stands. Forms and process don’t get you there. People giving feedback in real-time do.

In most organizations conflict-avoidance runs rampant at all levels.

I was with a group of young children recently and observed their feedback and it was real time and refreshing between them. I heard things such as,  “your breath smells funny, don’t bite me, you are pretty, lets share this book, I will help you.” No bullying, not fake, just pure innocent real-time feedback. How do we lose this as adults? What if we started over as working adults and went back to that more innocent approach?

So when delivering feedback: don’t sugar coat it; humor can help; be factual; try to question yourself on memes or others emotions; check yourself on any bias you might be carrying; feedback when emotional can work, but counting to 10 always seems to be a good thing; wait for the emotion to subside.

Imagine the world with real-time truthful feedback system at all levels. It could change the way we all work and succeed as a business and a team. Try it, you might be surprised.

Featured Image: VLADGRIN/Shutterstock

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LVMH, Accel And More Pour $40M Into Fashion E-Commerce Aggregator Lyst

On the heels of Farfetch raising $86 million last month, another fashion commerce startup out of London has picked up a significant round of funding. Lyst, a site that lets people shop across some 11,500 different online stores using a single check-out, has picked up $40 million in a Series C round of funding.

Investors in this round, which brings the total raised by Lyst to $60 million since being founded in 2011, include strategic backers Group Arnault (the controlling shareholder of LVMH), as well as previous investors Accel, Balderton, 14W and DFJ, and an unnamed New York hedge fund.

While Farfetch’s Series E in March vaulted it into the so-called “unicorn” club with a valuation of $1 billion, Lyst cares little for disclosing where it stands on this front.

“We never disclose valuation,” founder and CEO Chris Morton says flatly. “I don’t think it’s healthy for my team to obsess over. I recognise the industry is all about chasing unicorn status these days but we don’t want to be part of that conversation.”

All the same, the company has seen a big boost in its business in the last year. Total sales to date stand at $150 million compared to $40 million 12 months ago. And Lyst also claims that in that time it has generated “hundreds of millions” in sales for the stores and designers that sell on the site, with its international customer base (150+ countries) on average spending $400 per order.

There are a number of “aggregating” sites online that effectively let users browse styles from different designers and different stores — Farfetch, Shoptiques, and Pinterest being a few. Lyst is different from these in a couple of different ways. First is the sheer size of the pool of online stores and designers that it aggregates — currently over 11,500, with brands including Acne, Alexander McQueen, Barney’s, Burberry, J.Crew, Topshop and Valentino among them.

Second is the singular focus on fashion in its aggregation push, a focus that potentially will attract much more active and less casual browsers.

Third is the shopping experience itself: Lyst uses a lot of algorithms to personalise the experience for visitors, suggesting new items to you based on previous purchases, with a real-time ability to show you what is actually in stock and where.

Lastly, the single shopping cart helps make the whole experience particularly seamless. Morton says that the universal cart increases sales conversions by as much as five-fold.

What Lyst has in common with other aggregation sites is that it is solving one of the big pain points in online shopping: for people looking for a specific item, it can be very time consuming to have to visit different shops’ sites looking for the exact size and color you may want, and to compare prices. While Lyst is currently restricting its scope to clothes and other fashion items, there is actually a case to be made for extending the technology to cover other kinds of items, too, such as furniture from specific brands that might be sold in more than one place.

While Lyst has in the past started to dip its toes into physical commerce, working with PayPal on its Beacon rollout for example to let in-store browsers buy items online if the stock in one place is not available, it looks like right now the focus will be on global expansion and adding more commerce sources to add to its universal shopping cart. That is smart, considering that Lyst makes its revenues on affiliate and referral percentages, ultimately the business model is one of economies of scale.

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Tencent Will Pay $126M For A 14.6% Stake In Glu Mobile, Maker Of Kim Kardashian: Hollywood

Tencent, one of China’s biggest Internet companies, has agreed to purchase a 14.6 percent stake in Glu Mobile, the San Francisco game developer probably best known for the hit app “Kim Kardashian: Hollywood.” Shares of Glu rocketed 23 percent in after hours trading as investors showed their approval for the deal, as well as its strong first-quarter earnings report.

In a statement, chairman and chief executive officer Niccolo de Masi said the deal is meant to help Glu expand its business in China.

Tencent will pay $126 million for 21 million shares of Glu at $6 each.

Not only is Tencent China’s largest gaming company, but it is also the top publicly traded company in the world by game revenue according to research firm Newzoo, making $7.2 billion in 2014 (Sony and Microsoft came in second, with $6.04 billion and $5.02 billion in revenue, respectively).

Its other investments in U.S. gaming companies include a majority stake in League of Legends developer Riot Games, Activision Blizzard, and Epic Games.

One of the keys to the growth of Tencent’s gaming business is its relatively early shift to mobile, which Tencent Games’ vice president Bo Wang said the company made more than two years ago after observing trends in South Korea, another market it focuses on for investments.

In addition to “Kim Kardashian: Hollywood,” Glu’s hits include “Deer Hunter” and “Diner Dash.” It just signed a five-year deal with Britney Spears to make another celebrity game.

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Baidu Sees Revenue Growth And Profit Slump In Q1 2015

Baidu, China’s largest internet search and maps provider, continues to see slowing business as it adapts to the rise of mobile. The company’s latest Q1 2015 financial report continued an ongoing decline in revenue growth and saw net profit dip year-on-year too.

Last year, the number of mobile internet users in China overtook that of PCs, indicating that a shift to mobile is wholly necessary for any tech company operating in the country. While mobile accounted for half of Baidu’s revenue for the first time in Q1 2015, up from 37 precent across its fiscal year 2014, key financial indicators show the transition isn’t quite so smooth.

Baidu’s total revenue for the quarter came in at RMB 12.725 billion ($2.053 billion). That’s 34 percent higher than one year previous, but the figure represents a decline in annual revenue growth compared to recent quarter. In Q4 2014, the previous quarter, Baidu’s annual revenue growth was 47.5 percent; that number was 52 percent in Q3 2014; 58.5 percent in Q2 2014; and 59.1 percent in Q1 2014.

So, yes, Baidu’s revenue continues to grow, but its rate of growth has tumbled sequentially this past year.

Profit is down too. Baidu’s Q1 2015 operating profit of RMB 2.155 billion ($347.7 million) represents a 9.2 drop on Q1 2014. Net income fell 3.4 percent over the past year to reach RMB 2.449 billion ($395.1 million) in Q1 2015.

Baidu chairman and CEO Robin Li focused on the growth of mobile in a statement:

Mobile’s tremendous momentum continued this quarter, with mobile contributing 50% of total revenue. Baidu is redefining the search box by building an ecosystem to connect people with services and drive closed loop transactions. Baidu’s platform is comprehensive and robust, and we plan to fully exploit the huge growth potential ahead — in mobile marketing, online to offline, and key select verticals such as healthcare, education and financial services — by leveraging our solid mobile foundation, exceptional technology advantage, and proven operational experience.

The company retains its position as China’s top search engine — with around 80 percent marketshare — and it runs China’s de facto maps service. It has experimented with an Android operating system (which was recently closed), has introduced web apps, and it forked out $1.9 billion to buy top app store 91Wireless, among other strategies to diversify.

Beyond these services, it is focusing its efforts on big data and deep learning. Baidu hired former Google exec Andrew Ng as chief scientist for its U.S.-based lab, and — separately — it is developing language technologies that will enable it to introduce services in a range of emerging markets in Southeast Asia, Latin America and North Africa.

At this point, it isn’t clear exactly how Baidu will use these technologies in its business — beyond the comments Li made above — but clearly mobile is the focus point for its future strategies.

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Author And YouTuber John Green Tells Advertisers To Stop Worrying About Eyeballs

YouTube just held its annual Brandcast event in Madison Square Garden, where it trotted out online video stars to for an audience of advertisers.

The big message was that YouTube stars are huge celebrities, attracting lots of passionate fans — so advertisers should spend their money on, you guessed it, YouTube. Tonight there was an emphasis on mobile, with YouTube’s head of content and business operations Robert Kyncl predicting that within five years, the majority of ad-supported videos will be watched on mobile devices.

But things got darker near the event’s end, when John Green, author of The Fault In Our Stars, took the stage. Green talked about how he and his brother Hank built a devoted following of “nerdfighters” on YouTube, contributing to the enormous success of his book. In fact, they’ve built an online video business with 30 employees. But Green’s ad revenue is outweighed by things like crowdfunding and merchandise — and that ad revenue is falling by 5 percent every year.

He acknowledged that’s not true for everyone on YouTube. Nonetheless, he argued, “Many of the strongest communities are dramatically undervalued by advertisers, forcing YouTubers to find other paths.”

To a certain extent, this was just a roundabout sales pitch: Advertisers are missing out because they don’t value YouTubers enough. But Green was also suggesting that there’s something fundamentally different about many of YouTube’s popular personalities and shows.

“Here’s the truth: Way down deep in what Robert Penn Warren called ‘the darkness which is you’, there’s a great and terrible feeling that our life and work is meaningless, this clawing fear that everything we do will be for nothing — and CSI Miami is incredibly good for distracting us from that fear,” Green said.

And sure, distraction is fine, but Green doesn’t see himself and other “passionate YouTubers” as being in “the distraction business.” Instead, the best shows are in “the community business”, and he watches them because they help him “grapple with and consider the problems and questions way down deep there in the darkness.”

That’s why he said focusing on eyeballs is a crummy way to measure the success and value of many YouTube shows: “I don’t care how many people watch or read something I make, I care about how many people love something I make.”

Green concluded with a bit of carrot and stick. Sure, he said, “If you want to stay in the eyeballs business, I think that’s cool. It is a good business, albeit a shrinking one — but you risk losing relevance to an entire generation of viewers.”

On the other hand, if advertisers support YouTube, they won’t just be supporting worthwhile content: “If you help us do that, our viewers will notice and they will care, and you will win over this generation just as you have won over generations in the past.”

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