Why a SoCal startup’s $105 million round could have positive ripples in the Portland startup community
In case you haven’t noticed, Portland has more than its fair share of interesting regional offices — often established through acquisition. There are the obvious ones. Like AWS (via Elemental). And ebay (via Critical Path). And Akamai (via Janrain).
Today, I caught some news about one of those more recent acquisitions in the fintech space that may not immediately jump to mind. But all of that may soon be changing. Irvine-based Acorns, which has a Portland office through the acquisition of Vault, just raised a $105 million round.
Acorns, it appears, want to be more than a savings app. By moving into the debit space, it feels more like a neo-bank with a savings focus than a nifty app to help people save their first few hundred dollars.
And that’s why its new round (the $105 million Series E) is interesting. With so much new capital, Acorns can afford to do quite a lot on the product front; I’m curious how far it will take the banking side of its service, and how much focus the savings element will receive.
Portland already has a small but vibrant fintech cluster, here in town. In addition to Acorns, we’ve got a variety of crypto activity and companies like Bumped, Expensify, Mirador, Nvoicepay, Sila, and of course, Simple, among others. Not to mention a bevy of folks who have spent time working in traditional banking.
With capital at its disposal and highly talented workforce, could Acorns be the new go-to name in Portland fintech? That remains to be seen. But it will be interesting to see where this goes.
For more information on the raise, see Crunchbase News.
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Originally published at siliconflorist.com on January 29, 2019.
