Finance – Page 310 – Product Management Confabulation

May 25, 2018

Yahoo shuts down social savings app Tanda only months after launch

Well, that didn’t take long. Yahoo Finance’s new social savings app Tanda, which launched just this January, is already shutting down. The company announced the news of the app’s closure via a blog post, which vaguely hinted at a lack of traction. That appears to be true – the app isn’t even in the top 1,500 in the Finance category on the App Store, according to Sensor Tower’s data.

It had been installed around 37,000 times to date across both iOS and Android.

Still, tens of thousands in the first few months isn’t an entirely horrible showing for app that received almost no attention, marketing effort or media outreach. (We happened upon it practically by accident – not because Yahoo reached out to press. Yes, even though Yahoo is owned by Oath which also owns us, there wasn’t any internal heads-up. Or even any external pitching. In case you’re wondering!)

The app had allowed people to save money together for short-term goals using the concept of a “money pool” where a group of friends pay a fixed amount to the saving pot monthly, and every month someone takes the pot home. You didn’t “win” this pot, you took turns claiming it. In the end, it was just another way to save money, but the social element helped you stay on track.

Money pools are popular outside the U.S., in places like Mexico and the Philippines, Yahoo notes. It may have been hard to convince the U.S. audience to give them a shot, though.

In any event, Yahoo says Tanda is no more.

“While we garnered valuable insights around how consumers can benefit from financial planning tools and the opportunity for Yahoo Finance to offer a diversified suite of financial products, we’ve made the decision to begin sunsetting Tanda this week,” the blog post reads.

“Every trial run helps brands better optimize, and create a better experience for users. We’ve learned a lot from launching and running Tanda, and then scaling it back. Key learnings around audience segments, engagement rates, consumer preferences, and UX will inform the projects we are creating, and how we improve the ones that are already in the market to fuel future innovation,” it says.

Still, that was a fast learning experience, guys.

In an email sent to Tanda users, the company says the app will be shut down starting on May 29.

Any funds owed to you will be refunded in full, and then your Tanda account will be deactivated, the email states.

Yahoo declined to comment further on the reasons behind the shutdown, but said the Tanda team will continue to support Yahoo Finance.

May 25, 2018

Rover’s epic raise, Uber’s Q1 results, and a trio of IPOs

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

This week was fun for a few reasons. First, it was our own Connie Loizos’s first time leading, and it was our very first regular episode that included us recording remotely. I mention that as Matthew Lynley and I were in different places, meaning that we had a bump or two to smooth out. Your patience is more than appreciated.

Happily, we didn’t have to adventure alone, as Jonathan Abrams of Founders Den was on hand to help us cart through the news.

Up first: A huge round for Rover, bringing even more money into the dog- and pet-focused space. As you’ll surely recall, this is not the first time that a tectonic sum has been disbursed into the pet-care vertical. Hell, Rover’s $155 in new capital, while impressive, still can’t touch Wag’s epic $300 million infusion that happened earlier in the cycle.

While we were on the subject, another Softbank-backed company made waves: Uber . Yes, our favorite and least favorite topic is back.

This time Uber released yet another grip of statistics relating to its financial performance in the first quarter. The big picture? More gross spend, more net revenue, smaller losses. But how you measure Uber’s pace of financial improvement depends on how you measure its losses and its remaining markets.

This being Equity, however, we couldn’t avoid the IPO topic. So, in order:

A Foxconn subsidiary will soon be making big waves in China with a huge debut;
A Dutch payments unicorn is going public on the back of great results;
GreenSky went out, and did pretty ok, which was a change of pace from recent debuts.

All that and we had a laugh. Thanks for listening in, and we are back next week.

Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Downcast and all the casts.

May 24, 2018

Adyen confirms it will IPO and list in Amsterdam, valuing the payments giant at $7B-$11B

The floodgates are definitely open for IPOs in the tech world right now, and the latest is coming out of Europe. Adyen, a company that powers payments for large and smaller e-commerce merchants and others, has said that it plans to publicly list on the Euronext Amsterdam exchange, keeping the company’s financial future close to where Adyen itself was founded and is based rather than taking it to the US markets as some other European unicorns, like Spotify, have opted to do.

The news comes in the wake of reports that it was planning to announce its plans this week.

Adyen’s offering prospectus does not detail how much it plans to raise, or what sort of valuation it’s likely to reach in a public listing. It confirmed will be selling up to 15 percent of its shares, valued at a valuation of between €6 billion and €9 billion ($7 billion – $11 billion) after the IPO. We have reached out to the company for further detail on that front.

For some context, Adyen last confirmed its valuation publicly back in 2015, when it raised funding from Iconiq, the investment firm that manages funds from Mark Zuckerberg’s family and other high-net-worth tech leaders, at a $2.3 billion valuation. In other words, it’s a big jump, reflecting the company’s growth over the last couple of years.

Adyen said in the prospectus that its net revenues for the year that ended December 2017 were €218 million, up 38 percent on 2016, with total processed volumes of €108 billion in 2017 up from €66 billion in 2016, or 63 percent growth. It’s also profitable, with an EBITDA of €99 million, or a margin of 45.5 percent. Net income for Q1 was €24.1 million, up €10 million over the same period a year before.

Adyen has also clinched some key deals that point to continuing growth. Competing against the likes of Worldpay and PayPal, Adyen stole a march on the latter when it moved in to become the primary payments provider to eBay. After the former parent of PayPal spun out the company, it subsequenly put the deal out for tender and Adyen clinched it. (PayPal will still remain an option, but will not be the main provider.)

“We feel that we are still in the early stages of a remarkable journey. Our focus remains on building new functionality and on helping our merchants grow,” Pieter van der Does, the CEO and co-founder of Adyen, said in a statment. “This offering provides us with the freedom to keep building the company, while offering our shareholders a path to liquidity. Adyen will remain a company that is driven by a long-term vision and strategy.”

Other key customers include Uber (itself still growing like a weed, despite its many setbacks and divestments), Netflix, Facebook, Spotify, Etsy, Vodafone, Sephora, Tory Burch, L’Oréal and booking.com — underscoring how the company’s own growth is mirroring the increasing ubiquity and acceptance of digital payments.

The other area to watch and note with Adyen is that it’s looking to extend beyond basic payment processing technology: the company picked up a banking license at the end of last year and plans to expand in settlement services that would have previously been provided by banks. This will also help it grow its margins and overall revenues.

May 24, 2018

Revolut adds Ripple and Bitcoin Cash support

Fintech startup Revolut is adding Bitcoin Cash and Ripple to its cryptocurrency feature. While cryptocurrency isn’t really Revolut’s focus point, it’s a good way to get started with cryptocurrencies.

If you have a Revolut account, you can now buy and hold Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, Ripple and Bitcoin Cash. Behind the scene, the startup has partnered with Bitstamp to process the transactions. Revolut currently charges a 1.5 percent fee for cryptocurrency transactions. There are currently 100,000 cryptocurrency transactions per day.

Compared to a traditional cryptocurrency exchange, you can’t send or receive cryptocurrencies from your Revolut account. You don’t get a bitcoin address for instance. All you can do is buy tokens in the app. If you want to transfer those tokens somewhere else, you’ll have to sell them for USD, GBP, etc. and then buy cryptocurrencies on a traditional exchange using your fiat money.

Recently, the startup also announced a new feature called Vaults. Revolut users can set up a vault to save money over time.

You can round up your spare change every time you make a transaction. For instance, if you pay $3.47 for that delicious ice cream, you’ll save 53 cents in your vault. You can also multiple that amount so that you save multiple times your spare change with each transaction. Many fintech startups also provide this feature.

You can also set up recurring payments to set aside a bit of money each day, each week or each month. Interestingly, you get to choose the currency of your vault. So it means that you can decide to buy ethers with spare change and weekly payments for instance. It’s a great way to hedge against the volatility of cryptocurrencies.

Users don’t earn interests on vaults. It’s just a way to set some money aside that doesn’t appear in your main Revolut account. You can decide to close your vault whenever you want.