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Plaid, the fintech giant, has announced the inaugural cohort of startups in its new accelerator program, FinRise.

The equity-free and capital-free program has chosen five early-stage fintech startups out of 100 applications to join its cohort, working on issues central to the financial services industry such as simplifying payments and access to credit. The accelerator, announced two months ago, is explicitly focused on backing underrepresented founders in tech.

Last week, The Information reported that Plaid is nearing a new financing deal that would value the company at between $10 billion to $15 billion. Beyond a high valuation, Plaid sports a key characteristic that positions it well to help early-stage startups: it has gone through regulatory hurdles. Months ago, Plaid announced it would not merge with Visa in what would have been a $5.3 billion dollar acquisition. This event, as well as advice on how privat fintech startups can deal with policy issues, will be part of FinRise programming.

While participants don’t get funding, FinRise has collated a number of “capital access partners” which basically means investors who are committed to meeting with these companies and potentially writing a check. This network includes Accion, Acrew, Amex Ventures, Flourish, Harlem Capital, Kapor, Matrix, Village Capital, Visible Hands, and First Round.

Here’s a look at the five startups:

• Global Data Consortium is building a process for global digital identity verification for businesses. Co-founded by Bill Spruill and Charles Gaddy, the startup is building a data supplier network of more than 200 sources to help build a standard of processes around digital identity verification. “As we continue to scale our platform it’s important to make sure our technical infrastructure continues to be enterprise-ready. Plaid’s engineering expertise and knowledge will prove useful to our team to help us plan and execute around our next level of service support architecture,” Spruill told TechCrunch.
• Guidefi is a marketplace focused on connecting communities of color to culturally-savvy financial advisors. Led by Charlene Fadirepo, the financial wellness startup doesn’t charge for matches to advisors, but only begins pricing once services begini.
• OfColor wants to be the go-to enterprise wellness platform for employees of color. Founder Yemi Rose tells TechCrunch that “a lot of companies we encounter generally pride themselves on being colorblind in their HR benefit practices, in spite of outcomes that show a different approach is needed…our biggest hurdle is education.” The startup focuses on features like a personalized financial manager as well as loans that allow employees to maximize their 401(k) contribution.
• Walnut is a point-of-sale lending platform that wants to make healthcare more affordable for patients. Roshan Patel, founder and CEO of the startup, says that its biggest competitor is PrimaHealth Credit, which focuses on elective care. “Walnut is care-agnostic: no matter where you are in the healthcare system, you can use Walnut to break up your bill into an installment plan that works for you. That can be at the dentist or cosmetic surgery practice, but it can also be in the emergency room or at your primary care physician,” he said.
• Zeta wants to build a better joint-bank experience for the modern couple. First covered by TechCrunch in February, Zeta has already raised $1.5 million in venture funding to create a platform that makes it easier to join accounts and split purchases. “In some ways, we see ourselves as part of a replacement for Venmo,” CEO and co-founder Aditi Shekar said. “We saw couples Venmoing back and forth to each other sometimes six times a day…we want to take over your money chores.” While Zeta is entering the market as a tool for couples, Shekar sees the startup’s moonshot as being the go-to operational account for any modern household.

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

For this week’s deep dive, the Equity team brought on Gumroad CEO Sahil Lavingia and Hustle Fund General Partner Elizabeth Yin to talk about equity crowdfunding. It’s been about a week since the SEC increased the equity crowdfunding cap from $1.07 million to $5 million, creating the perfect opportunity to go beyond the dollar amount and understand how the change impacts founders, venture capitalists, retail investors, and future fund managers.

Here’s a brief rundown of the show:

• We talk about the basics of this new SEC regulation, and understand which platforms might be leading the pack for these bootstrapped campaigns. Indiegogo’s founder wrote an op-ed grading the new regulations on the site.
• Some banter on Gumroad’s 12-hour campaign that led to a successfully crowdsourced $5 million for the company. Lavingia talks about his decision to crowdfund a round in his company, why it made sense for the company, and what it will take to make this raise mainstream.
• Of course, Yin shared a ton of helpful nuggets around crowdfunding, providing a venture capital perspective that was still bullish on growing the amount of check-writers in the ecosystem. Some recent equity crowdfunding campaigns have shown that there are thousands of individuals willing to fund the enterprises they want to see succeed. Juked.gg is one such example.
• There are also notes on the Testing the Waters dynamic that could usher some wiggle room to early-stage founders thinking about this.
• Will equity crowdfunding supplant venture capital, or will it merely augment it? Our discussion leads us to ponder both possibilities. What seems clear is that equity crowdfunding could widen the band of companies that are “backable,” if not the band of companies that traditional venture capital players find enticing.
• And we end with a whole bunch of meta debates, from the role of the platform in vetting campaigns. As with every innovation, including crowdfunding itself, there will be fraud and failure. But if there will be enough bad news to limit consumer interest is far from certain.

This is one of those nerdy topics that gets us really excited about the future of dollar allocation and startup creation. We hope you love the show and leave with a better understanding of what’s ahead.

Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PST, Wednesday, and Friday morning at 7:00 a.m. PST, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.

WhatsApp’s planned policy changes aren’t sailing smoothly in India, the instant messaging service’s biggest market. Indian antitrust body Competition Commission of India on Wednesday ordered (PDF) an investigation into WhatsApp’s privacy policy changes, alleging that Facebook-owned service contravened competition law provisions through “exploitative and exclusionary” conduct in “garb of policy update.”

WhatsApp didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

This is a developing story. More to follow…

As the Ubers of the world continue to scale, a smaller on-demand transportation startup has raised some funding in Germany, underscoring the opportunities that remain for startups in the space targeting specific service niches. Blacklane — the Berlin startup that provides on-demand black-car chauffeur services in Berlin, London, Dubai, Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Singapore and 16 other cities — has closed a round of €22 million ($26 million at current rates). After taking a majority stake in Havn, the Jaguar-hatched electric car service in London, in February, Blacklen said that it will be using this latest round of funding to continue expanding sustainable travel initiatives, and to continue expanding its existing business with more flexible options for riding.

The funding, which is being made at an upround valuation, is a sign of how the company is showing signs of growth after a year in which monthly revenues dropped 99% in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and the resulting drop in travel, and specifically people willing to be in small spaces that are shared with others.

“The global travel and mobility industries have suffered, with several players struggling between drastic cuts, hibernation or ceasing operations. Blacklane has taken the opportunity to cater to travelers’ emerging needs,” said Dr. Jens Wohltorf, CEO and co-founder of Blacklane, in a statement. “Thanks to this financing, we will continue to fast-track our innovation, with zero layoffs.”

The company said that the investment is coming from existing investors German automotive giant Daimler, the UAE’s ALFAHIM Group and btov Partners. And while it is coming at an upround, Blacklane is not disclosing any figures, nor has it ever disclosed valuation. Previous backers of the company also include the strategic investment arm of Recruit Holdings, the Japanese HR giant, and it has raised around $100 million to date, including a round of about $45 million in 2018.

The funding is coming after what has been an extremely rough year for travel and transportation startups due to the Covid-19 pandemic, with Blacklane itself seeing monthly revenues drop 99% after the pandemic hit last year, the company tells me.

Some others in the space that diversified into other areas like food delivery or other kinds of transport (eg, bikes or scooters) were able to offset declines in their more core ride-hailing services, which in the meantime were repositioned as a safer alternative to public transportation. Blacklane, however, had never positioned itself as a ride for “everyman” — its core use case were higher-end rides and airport trips (which had also died a death) — so when movement shut down, so Blacklane’s business nosedived.

It was particularly bad timing for Blacklane, considering that in the lead up to the pandemic, it looked to be on course to turn a profit on its focused model. (While financials for 2020 will take a while to be posted, the most recent results for the company showed a net loss of about $18 million in 2018.)

The reason that Blacklane has managed to raise at an upround tells another side of the story, however.

As companies in transport and travel gingerly started to show the smaller signs of recovery last summer, so too did Blacklane. It coupled that with the first steps of diversification itself.

Earlier this month, it added “chauffeur hailing” in 22 cities, an on-demand service that reduced the lead time for an order to under 30 minutes (its previous service was based on more advanced bookings). It also changed its pricing structure to get more competitive on shorter distances, since so many of the airport rides that were the basis of its revenues have yet to return.

In addition to that, Blacklane took a majority stake in Havn, an electric-based car service hatched by Jaguar, for an undisclosed sum, to spearhead a move into more sustainable travel options alongside the fleet of Teslas already operated by Blacklane.

“Worldwide travel restrictions give us a one-time chance to reset our expectations for safe and sustainable trips,” said Wohltorf in a statement. “Blacklane will recover responsibly and continue to grow while caring for both people and the planet.”

Neighbor, which operates a self-storage marketplace, announced Wednesday that it has raised $53 million in a Series B round of funding.

Fifth Wall led the financing, which notably also included participation from returning backer Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and new investors DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and StockX CEO Scott Cutler. Xu and Cutler will join former Uber CEO Ryan Graves as investors and advisors to the Lehi, Utah-based startup. A16z led Neighbor’s $10 million Series A in January of 2020.

At a time when the commercial real estate world is struggling, self-storage is an asset class that continues to perform extremely well. Neighbor’s unique model aims to repurpose under-utilized or vacant space — whether it be a person’s basement or the empty floor of an office building — and turn it into storage.

Colton Gardner, Joseph Woodbury and Preston Alder co-founded Neighbor.com in 2017 with the mission of giving people a more accessible and personal alternative to store their belongings. 

Image Credits: Neighbor

The $40 billion self-storage industry is ripe for a shake-up, considering that most people are used to renting space out of buildings located in not necessarily convenient locations. 

Neighbor has developed a unique peer-to-peer model, connecting “renters” in need of storage space with “hosts” in their neighborhood who are willing to lease storage space in their home, garage or even driveway. The company says it has hosts on the platform making more than $50,000 a year in passive income.

“We really grew into a national business over the last year and now have active renters in more states than Public Storage, which is a $43 billion publicly traded company,” CEO Woodbury said.

Neighbor makes money by charging a service fee (a sliding-scale percentage) of each rent. Its algorithms provide suggested rental fees for hosts.

COVID has only accelerated Neighbor’s business, with revenue growing “5x” and organic reservations increasing “7x” year over year.

“If you think about it, fundamentally on the demand side, everyone’s moving out of these major metro areas like New York and San Francisco, and are moving to these more rural locations. All that moving activity has created a lot more storage demand,” Woodbury told TechCrunch. “In addition to that, people are just spending more time at home and cleaning out their homes more. And they no doubt need storage as a result of that.”

 It also doesn’t hurt that the company claims the self-storage offered on its marketplace on average is priced about 40% to 50% less than traditional storage facilities.

Neighbor also partners with commercial real estate operators to turn their under-utilized or vacant retail, multifamily or office space into self-storage. This provides new revenue streams to landlords hurting from the pandemic keeping so many people at home. And that increased demand led to Neighbor’s commercial real estate footprint growing 10x in 2020. 

With its new capital, the company plans to expand its nationwide network of hosts and renters as well as continue to spread awareness of its marketplace.

“We have tens of millions of square feet of self storage on the platform,” Woodbury said. “The beauty of that square footage is that it’s in every single state. But we want to continue to expand nationally and as we grow and mature, we’ll turn our eyes globally as well.”

Interestingly, before leading the round for Neighbor, Fifth Wall approached the company about business development opportunities. Partner Dan Wenhold said he offered to introduce the concept to the real estate venture firm’s LPs, which include more than 65 of the world’s largest owners and operators of real estate from 15 countries. For example, Fifth Wall partners Acadia Realty Trust and Jamestown are already onboarding properties onto Neighbor’s platform. 

“We are sort of the bridge between the largest owners and operators of physical real estate assets and the most disruptive technologies that are impacting those property managers and landlords, Wenhold said. “And Neighbor fits perfectly into that thesis for us.”

After introducing Neighbor to a short list of Fifth Wall’s strategic LP partners, the feedback the firm got “was fantastic,” Wenhold said. 

“A lot of owners in retail, office and even multi-family expressed interest in working with Neighbor to help monetize space,” he added.

The company’s mission also has a sustainable component considering that creating self-storage space out of existing property can help minimize the amount of new construction that takes place.

Fifth Wall, Wenhold added, is aware of the waste and the emissions that come from the construction process to build new space and admires Neighbor’s role in minimizing that.

“Our firm ardently pursued the opportunity to invest in a transformative proptech business like Neighbor,” he said.