As late-stage funding plummeted more than 60% year over year in the third quarter of 2022, far fewer companies were raising late-stage fundings at high valuations. Here we look at companies that were able to raise, despite the slower funding environment.

Fintech companies made up two of the newly minted emerging unicorns in October. A further nine companies already on the board .

Fintech

• San Francisco-based , a service that helps users pay off credit card debt, raised an $80 million Series D led by , an earlier investor. The company seeks to alleviate the $900 billion in credit card debt that impacts 30% of Americans. Tally has more than doubled its valuation since its last funding in 2019 led by . and led prior funding rounds.
• U.K.-based invested $57 million in Warsaw-based , a builder of embedded financial solutions for businesses. It also created a U.K. subsidiary majority owned by NatWest to offer banking as a service to NatWest business customers.

Creator tools

• 聽led a $50 million Series C funding in San Francisco-based聽, valuing the company above $500 million. Descript provides simple audio and video editing tools for creators, making it as simple as editing text. Descript was founded by co-founder . The company boasts . , and led earlier funding rounds.

Agriculture

• India-based , a marketplace for farmers in India, raised a $46 million Series D led by , an existing investor. The company claims more than 1 million farmers in its network. Prior investors and also invested in the funding.

A new addition to the board from earlier this year is Paris-based , a photo-sharing app gaining traction with Gen Z users and said to have 20 million daily active users. TechCrunch recently disclosed BeReal鈥檚 . Announced in May 2022, the round was raised at a $587 million valuation (600 million euros).

And Barcelona-based human resources automation service graduated from the emerging board to The Crunchbase 糖心视频 in October at a $1 billion valuation close to double its Series B value of $530 million in September 2021.

Methodology

The curated Crunchbase Emerging 糖心视频 includes private companies with known valuations of $500 million or more but less than $1 billion, based on Crunchbase data. The list is updated whenever a new company reaches that valuation range or there is a change in valuation for a company already on the leaderboard. Companies that are subsequently valued at more than $1 billion will be removed from the board and promoted to The Crunchbase 糖心视频. Companies that exit will also be removed from the Emerging 糖心视频.

Illustration: Dom Guzman

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated OpenAI’s investment in Descript. OpenAI led the startup’s $50 million Series C funding.

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One startup, , is looking to bring the user-centric micro tipping phenomenon to the United States. CEO and Cofounder told Crunchbase News that the mobile tipping phenomenon in Asia inspired Portal.

鈥淸Payments] are now just as easy in the West as they are [in Asia]. It鈥檚 just that a lot of companies have become so addicted to the ad model that they are not exploring these other models,鈥� Swerdlin expressed.

To that end, Swerdlin and his team have created a mobile video app that functions as a peer-to-peer payment-enabled content platform. The company, which is launching out of beta today, has raised an additional $2.55 million in seed funding, bringing its total funds raised to $4.2 million. The company鈥檚 investors include , , the founder of Thinx l, and others.

With the Portal iOS app, creators can upload content, which shows up in a chronological feed. They can monetize their videos through paywalls on specific content and through the tipping model that allows users to instantly give anywhere from 10 cents to $100 with purchased coins. Soon, Portal will be launching an option for subscriptions ranging from 99 cents to $24.99 a month.

In eliminating the ad model, Swerdlin and his team hope to give content creators an open opportunity to create with the support of their followers rather than relying on advertisers that the creators may not support, or that may not support their content.

Portal is similar to other monetization platforms like , which was founded in 2013. Investors have funneled $105.9 million into the creator-focused startup, and it was last valued at just under $450 million.

However, Swerdlin said that while Patreon focuses on crowdfunding, Portal is moving that idea a step further.

鈥淧atreon has done an amazing job. And what they’ve done is they’ve proven that audiences will absolutely unequivocally pay content creators. What we’re doing is we’re taking those tools for those payments, and we’re baking that directly into the experience, rather than making it a crowdfunding tool that you have to go outside to use,鈥� he told Crunchbase News. He also noted that Twitch has implemented tipping and subscriptions for gaming, but that Portal is bringing that model to uploaded content for a more mainstream western audience.

Portal鈥檚 beta users have included well-known content creators like The Young Turks and transgender activist Corey Rae.

Crunchbase News asked Swerdlin how he believed the earnings potential would change as less popular users come onto the platform. 鈥淭he earning potential is limitless. And the ability to earn is important for everyone. It鈥檚 going to depend on the not necessarily a size of your audience, but that the value and depth that you’re bringing to your audience,鈥� Swerdlin said.

In sticking with the ad-free model, Swerdlin says that he expects Portal to grow organically, with the team relying on word of mouth for its future growth. Without a huge amount of traction, battling a tech behemoth that is both deep-pocketed and culturally ubiquitous will undoubtedly prove to be a challenge.

鈥淥ur focus is on making sure that this is a product that solves content creators’ and publishers’ biggest problems and gives people a platform that they can trust, where they’re getting the very best content that’s made. If we do that correctly, then word of mouth will be our greatest marketing engine.鈥�

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