Swedish Fishntech🐟️

This is The Startup Breakdown, the newsletter where we learn, laugh, and love startups. By joining this growing community of hundreds of future startup aficionados (think i spelled that right?), you're getting a beachside view of the ocean that is the startup and VC scene. This ain’t your grandpa’s newsletter, so prepare yourself for an inbox full of 4/20 jokes and Succession references.

Happy Tuesday, folks.

I mentioned it a few weeks ago, but I purged the subscriber list.

It was getting a bit crowded in here, and instead of starting to ration off food, I opted to keep a few of my favorites and send everyone else to one of those other newsletters.

My sub count dropped by like 25% which is ☹️ 

But I expect my open rate to increase by at least 100% as those that I removed had not opened a single email in 10 weeks.

This tanks my deliverability, so I’m likely to do these juice cleanses fairly regularly going forward. Your best bet to avoid accidentally getting booted? Just keep opening and engaging. Thank ya in advance.

Finally, I ran a poll on whether you would prefer to continue to receive a single email or whether you would prefer to receive your weekly news split up and spread out over a few days per week.

The bite-sized emails came out on top, and though this intro is already testing the limits of what your mouth might consider “one bite”, you’ll get four shorter emails this week, 3 news pieces and the regular premium edition which will still go out on Thursday.

As always, if you hate it, lemme know and we can reassess.

House cleaned. Starts up.

Swedish Fishntech

Klarna, the Swedish buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) unicorn fueling every teen’s unaffordable Urban Outfitters splurges, is flirting with an IPO. While this fact alone is not surprising given the company’s size and status, what is a bit more mysterious is whether the company will be received like a hoodied up fintech or like a buttoned up traditional bank?

It was not long ago that the company suffered a $200 million loss, prompting smart people everywhere to question whether BNPL was a thing of the past, like Kodak or Jimbo Fisher.

However, after Q3’s $12 million pre-tax profit, a massive turnaround that shows a level of growth and volatility traditionally associated with a real “startup,” the company’s WeBull dreams are seemingly on the right track.

On the other hand, the company holds $8 billion in customer deposits which is sorta starting to push on bank tiers.

This is an important distinction because investors tend to value the industries through different lenses, and the company’s last $6.7 billion price tag in its most recent fundraise was already a far cry from its once-glamorous $45.6 billion valuation.

Because there can never be too many public companies named after geometric shapes, Circle, the artist behind the USDC stablecoin, is also tuning up for a 2024 IPO show.

After a failed SPAC attempt (throwback to when those were en vogue), a direct listing seems to be the audible. With USDC’s market cap north of $24 billion and backed by traditional powers like Goldman Sachs, Circle's IPO ambitions herald the verified badge on stablecoins, even as the rest of crypto weathers a chill (spoiler, but for how long? 👀)

Moving to a slightly more controversial crypto company, Ripple, might also wading into IPO waters, though it’s worth noting that using LinkedIn job postings to predict billion dollar business moves prolly has a wider margin for error and signals that some people need to touch grass. It’s me. I’m people.

Regardless, a job listing was posted for a senior manager of shareholder communications, which, and stay with me here cause this is super complicated, might mean they plan to have shareholders with which they might communicate 😳

Ripple's ongoing legal tangle with the SEC adds a layer of suspense, but it seems like we’re going to have some clarity sooner rather than later and as the even his fellow siblings in office are coming around to the fact that Gary Gensler isn’t great at his job.

While seeing more public examples of how the market is valuing companies in the current era will be invaluable from a pricing perspective for companies looking to raise, these offerings are going to be particularly telling for the status of the fintech and crypto sectors specifically.

Plus, though I hate to beat a dead horse, who unless he was the one who snorted at me and scared me to the point where I would never do any of the trail rides at summer camp in 4th grade has likely done literally nothing to me, these listings are going to free up billions of dollars of cold, wirable cash which can be injected back into the market, financing the next wave of aspiring giants and giving other investors the sense of belief in the potential of their investments actually being realized via exit in the future.

Pour one out for all of the IB analysts pulling all nighters on decks to try to win these deals, 99% of which will be moved into the trash folder before anyone even reads them 😪 

I often wonder what voice you read my writing in. Personally, I hope it’s Ryan Reynolds.

If you ever want to unveil the curtain and hear me live, though, I’m excited to share that Infobot now does a weekly live show on Spaces. This Thursday’s show will be at 11AM PT, and starting next week, we’ll be live every week at 5pm PT.

If you want to come and chat about tech, investing, and regulation, there’s nowhere else you’d want to be. Set a reminder now so you don’t miss it 🫡 

If you’re reading this rn, you’re a nerd.

It’s okay. I spent hours writing this, so just imagine the multiple on the minutes you spent reading this in comparison to that, and use that to estimate how much of a life I really have.

Regardless, we both like learning. So why not double down and learn something new via an interesting story every single Friday? Check out One Story Friday and get your first edition this week :)

Cheers to another day,

Trey