Amazon commands a vast, dominating empire in the world of e-commerce. While its marketplace has proved a boon for businesses trying to get off the ground, many of the more successful companies are now looking beyond the e-commerce giant’s fences, spurred by a desire to compete on their own terms.

This trend has mushroomed as online shopping burgeoned over the past five years. Businesses such as mattress maker Casper, men’s personal care brands Harry’s and Dollar Shave Club, footwear and apparel makers Allbirds and Zaful, gadget store Banggood, and power-bank maker Anker are just a few of the multitude of brands that choose to leverage their own web stores, social media presence and supply chains to build their business and identity without having a marketplace like Amazon get in the way.

Shein, an online-only apparel store that sells the latest in fashion at very affordable prices, is a shining example of this trend. It’s a rage among budget-conscious young adults across Europe, Asia and the Americas: The app was downloaded 14 million times in the United States in March, according to Apptopia, and currently dominates the shopping category in app stores in over 50 countries.

Its success is proof of its belief in bringing the latest trends to the masses as quickly as it can. In the past couple of decades, brands like Zara, H&M and Forever 21 earned themselves the “fast fashion” moniker when they turned the tables on global behemoths such as Gap and Calvin Klein by drastically shortening lead times — the time it takes for clothing to reach the store floor from the designer’s desk.

Shein takes this fast fashion mindset one step further: While brands like Zara and H&M take about three to four weeks to bring clothing from the ramp to the store, Shein uses a combination of real-time customer and predictive analytics, hyperaware fashion designers and an extremely quick and agile supply chain based in China to bring the latest fashion trends from Instagram, Facebook, Reddit and TikTok to its online store in just a week or two.

Hey, you there — early-stage founders. Yes, you. TC Early Stage 2021: Marketing & Fundraising, our mini master class in entrepreneurship, is right around the proverbial corner. And by mini we mean it’s just two days — July 8-9. There’s nothing mini about the expert advice, information and actionable tips you’ll glean from attending this event.

Buy your pass today and get ready to learn how to build a better startup without reinventing the wheel (good thing we don’t charge by the cliché).

Day one is packed with presentations by a passel of outstanding subject-matter experts. Don’t miss these sponsored breakout sessions — they cover essential topics such as value-added investing, crafting customer experience, building high-performance teams and how to stand out while fundraising.

Check the agenda for exact times in your specific time zone.

More than capital — Value-add investing: There is a wide variety of capital outlets available for entrepreneurs to consider. Today more than ever, founders are seeking out investors that can deliver value-add services to support startups throughout their growth journey. Dell Technologies Capital’s Chris Hillock will discuss the firm’s Portfolio Development Practice, and how their team of company builders helps founding team’s establish and hone product market fit, develop scaling strategies and provide unique access to the Go to Market capabilities of the Dell Technologies Organization. Presented by Dell for Entrepreneurs.

Iterating more effectively with feedback: A great product alone is not enough. To be successful, early-stage companies need to optimize all phases of the customer journey. This session will include tactics, best practices and case studies on how to use customer feedback to understand customer needs, craft more compelling messaging and improve all phases of the customer experience. Presented by Nate Wright, VP of product marketing at UserTesting.

Inspiring high-performance teams — The Movile way: Big dreams — unbelievably big ones — can really help people see the future. And they will rally your team to move faster, together. Learn the proven methodology taught at universities like Harvard and Stanford to create a highly effective, “can do” culture to catapult your startup to the next level. And continue to attract and retain talent, because sizable ambitions inspire teams based on Movile’s wildly successful “Mobile Dream” internship and recruitment program. Presented by Patrick Hruby, CEO, and Luciana Carvalho, VP, at Movile.

Standing out during your fundraising process: Fundraising is never easy, but the right preparation can make all the difference. Three-time founder Waseem Daher joins Katie Myrick, Pilot’s GM, to share the KPIs investors look for, which questions they ask, and what you need to succeed at the various stages of investment. Currently CEO of Pilot, which specializes in bookkeeping, tax and CFO services for high-growth startups, Waseem is a three-time entrepreneur with two successful exits. Presented by Pilot.

How to survive high-speed startup growth during COVID-19 and retooling for growth opportunities in post-pandemic: On a journey to build a virtual real estate world? Meet oVice — an early-stage startup that witnessed massive growth and became the top virtual space in Japan in less than one year. In this session, you will hear from CFO, Daniel Buckley and Shinji Asada, CEO of One Capital and lead investor of oVice, on how to effectively scale as you grow without imploding. Presented by oVice.

TC Early Stage 2021: Marketing & Fundraising takes place on July 8-9. Grab a pass today and take maximum advantage of this mini masterclass.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Early Stage 2021: Marketing & Fundraising? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

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Meet Airbank, a startup that is taking advantage of open banking regulation and related APIs to aggregate all your bank accounts. Focused on startups and small and medium companies, the company wants to build an all-in-one banking interface to access financial data, initiate payments, manage cash flow and more.

Airbank just raised a $3 million (€2.5 million) seed round led by Pia d’Iribarne and Jean de la Rochebrochard at New Wave, with Speedinvest and Tiny VC also participating. A handful of business angels are also joining the round, such as Cris Conde (executive in residence at Accel), Luca Ascani (Accel scout) and Marc McCabe (Sequoia scout).

The startup’s value proposition is quite simple and can be easily explained in one screenshot. With Airbank, you can enter your login information for all the bank accounts and related accounts that you use. After that, you can view everything from your Airbank account:

Many companies have to deal with multiple bank accounts for several reasons — you may have opened one bank account when you incorporated your company, another bank account to request a loan, a Wise Business account for low foreign transaction fees, a Revolut Business account to get debit cards for everyone, etc.

In addition to bank accounts, chances are you’re also generating revenue with Stripe, PayPal or Shopify. Many executives lose a ton of time connecting to web portals, exporting data as CSV files, importing those files in Microsoft Excel and consolidating all that information.

Airbank automatically refreshes your balances across several accounts. You can see your total balance in multiple currencies. It also can help you reconcile transactions with outstanding invoices, as you can search across multiple accounts at once.

This is just a starting point; Airbank wants to become the only interface for all your banking needs. You can categorize transactions, see how much you’re spending with each supplier, track recurring payments and export everything to Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel. Soon, you’ll be able to use Airbank for cash flow forecasting and automatic reconciliation with your Xero or QuickBooks data.

Open banking isn’t limited to account aggregation. With proper APIs, you should be able to initiate payments from a third-party product. And Airbank plans to take advantage of that as the company is working on payments. As you can manage access rights, Airbank could act as the payment portal for the finance team.

“Open banking has enabled smooth integrations with banks, which we can utilize to offer richer banking and payments experiences for our users. Our vision is to build an all-in-one finance hub that connects all your financial accounts in one place. Our integrations will bring bill payments, expense management, and FX all in a single product that is easy to use,” co-founder and CEO Christopher Zemina said in a statement.

Other startups have been working on cash flow management, such as Agicap, and B2B payments, such as Libeo and Upflow. Airbank is starting with account aggregation and wants to tackle B2B finance in a holistic manner.

Vertical SaaS products have been booming lately. And there’s a reason why the space is quite competitive: There’s still a ton of stuff to do around B2B fintech and specialized software-as-a-service products.

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MFast, a mobile app that lets Vietnamese users in remote areas access financial services, announced it has raised a $1.5 million pre-Series A today. The round was led by Do Ventures, with participation from JAFCO Asia. 

Launched in 2019 by fintech company Digipay, MFast says it has been used by 600,000 people to date. It partners with financial institutions who provide services like loans and insurance, and says it has been used to distribute more than 50 billion VND (about $2.2 million USD) worth of products so far.

The majority, or about 75% to 80% of MFast’s users are in remote provinces or rural areas, which the company says often limits their access to banking and credit-related services. 

The funding will be used to expand MFast to more cities and provinces in Vietnam, develop its technology and partner with more institutions. MFast also plans to enter other markets in the future. 

MFast’s consumer credit partners include Mirae Asset, CIMB, Mcredit and Easy Credit, and its insurance partners include PVI, PTI and BSH. It claims to have a network of more than 350,000 advisors, who offers their services through the app, and that its data analysis tools are able to reduce bad debt and fraud rates. 

Sari-sari stores are neighborhood stores in the Philippines that usually sell daily necessities and sometimes serve as community hubs, too. Today GrowSari, a startup that is digitizing sari-sari stores with features like pricing tools, inventory management and working capital loans, announced it has raised a Series B from several notable investors that brings its total funding to $30 million.

The company’s Series B is at a rolling close, so it has not announced a final amount. The $30 million total it has raised include its seed funding and Series A, which according to a July 2020 profile in Esquire Philippines was $14 million. Participants in its Series B included Temasek Holdings’ private equity unit Pavilion Capital, Tencent, International Finance Corporation (IFC), ICCP SBI Venture Partners and Saison Capital, and returning investors Robinsons Retail Holdings (which is part of the Gokongwei Group), JG Digital Equity Ventures and Wavemaker Partners.

GrowSari was founded in 2016, and says its B2B platform is currently used by more than 50,000 stores in over 100 municipalities on Luzon, the Philippines’ largest and most populated island. Its ultimate goal is to serve one million sari-sari stores.

According to GrowSari, there are more than 1.1 million sari-sari stores in the Philippines, and they account for 60% of fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sold in the country, making them a valuable distribution channel for wholesalers. In addition to its supplier marketplace, GrowSari says it is able to give sari-sari store operators better pricing for products from about a thousand FMCG brands, including Unilever, P&G and Nestle, which it claims can help stores double their earnings. Other services in the app include online telecom and utility bill payments, remittance and microfinancing for working capital loans.

GrowSari’s founding tDeam includes Reymund Rollan, Shiv Choudhury, Siddhartha Kongara and Andrzej Ogonowski, who first launched the platform as a backend system for sari-sari stores to manage their logistics and inventory.

Since most sari-sari stores are run individually, their margins are smaller than large retailers that can negotiate deals with FMCG wholesalers. GrowSari’s supplier marketplace addresses this issue by giving sari-sari stores access the Distributor List Prices seen by large stores and wholesalers. GrowSari’s marketplace does not require a minimum order, and it allows sari-sari stores on the platform to pay with cash on delivery, GrowCoins (or cash credits that can be topped up through GrowSari’s shippers, online transfers, banks or over-the-counter at convenience stores) or E-Lista, GrowSari’s seven-day loan product.

GrowSari’s new capital will be used to expand its userbase to 300,000 new stores in the Philippines, especially in Visayas and Mindanao, increase the size of its supplier marketplace and launch more financial products for sari-sari stores. The startup is part of a new crop of B2B platforms in Asia focused on serving micro to small-enterprises, including BukuWarung and BukuKas in Indonesia and Khatabook in India.

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