Premoney 64: Diffgram & Arrenda

Hello & welcome back to Premoney! I took 5 months off of Premoney to focus on growing Swapstack, and am very excited to be back in action. It is arguably still one of the hardest venture markets to raise capital in (exceptions exist, e.g: AI) and the need for a deal distribution is also at an all time high. Pumped to be back, to support more founders and meet more investors & value creators.

A note on format: The first couple issues will likely be a similar format to the past 63 issues. However, I’ll be experimenting with more engaging structures & content (interviews, feedback, polls etc.) - so if you have any ideas, feel free to share.

To all of the new readers of Premoney:

1. Welcome! If you haven’t already, please reply to this email introducing yourself, why you signed up, and what type of investing & scouting you’re interested in. Excited to meet you!

2. What to expect: In each Premoney newsletter you’ll learn about two companies that are currently raising.

3. Meet the founders: If you’re intrigued by the companies featured, hit the “Connect with…” button and we’ll introduce you directly to the founders.

A friend of Premoney:

If you’re looking to meet more founders, investors, or other newsletters to subscribe to check out Andrews Mixers.

Andrew Yeung is one of the unsung heros of tech/start-up world. During the day he leads a product category at Google, and at night he hosts gatherings of all sizes for investors, founders and folks interested in tech. He also runs a newsletter, like Premoney, to help founders and investors connect.

This weeks companies:

Company: Arrenda

Founder: Joe Merullo

Raise Details: Raising a $1m extension

Vertical: Fintech

Business Model: B2B

1-Liner: Recurring Revenue Advance for LatAm

Description: We are building the recurring revenue exchange of LatAm. Today, we enable businesses in Mexico to advance up to 12 months of their future recurring revenues. We raised a $25m debt facility & $1.6m pre-seed last year, and are raising a small extension to reach profitability in advance of our upcoming Series A.

Traction Indicators:

• 30% MoM growth

• $352k booked revenue in YTD

• $1.9M originated

Why we like Arrenda:

• Traction, growth and revenue show healthy growth and adoption within a short period of time. Real problem, strong team, good stable leadership.

• LATAM is a massively underserved but huge startup market, meaning thousands of LATAM companies don’t have click-to-access to foundational services that expedite business growth (think payments, banking, financing) that US-based companies do.

• The silver lining to ^ is that entrepreneurs are able to use the US as a playbook to build value & avoid issues in a LATAM context.

  • ie: Don’t make $80M loans to insolvent crypto co’s.

Company: Diffgram

Founder: Isaac Linson & Anthony Sarkis

Raise Details: Kicking off our seed round. Raising $2-$4m.

Vertical: Artificial Intelligence, Dev tools

Business Model: B2B

1-Liner: Think Wix but for building and stylizing any complex AI/ML product

Description: Every organization wants to implement AI. The biggest bottleneck is being able to create really high-quality data and data sets to power that AI at scale. The future will come down to proprietary, complex, multifaceted data used to train AI for the largest enterprises. Increasingly, highly specific, expert human supervisors (nurses, farmers, oil rig operators, etc.) are, in real-time, experiencing and leading insights that can help train models. The problem is that there is no solution, at scale, that can accommodate a workflow that includes these expert-level humans in AI data training. Diffgram is the Wix/Bubble.io for building and stylizing any complex AI/ML product at scale, bringing together any company's AI data, applications, and human supervision in one place.

Traction Indicators:

• $256k in total revenue

• 50% ARR

• 3 B2B customers

• 0% churn to date

Why we like Arrenda:

• Because AI was in the description 😉

• AI-based dev tools and lower level B2B technologies with revenue, low churn and committed entreprise clients indicate a sticky product.

• Early signs of PMF - devs wont use a tool just because its cool, and in this market, businesses wont pay an annual fee for a technology that isn’t useful.

Stay up to speed on AI with these newsletters:

• AI Tool Report: Latest news, productivity prompts and new tools you should check out to increase your AI knowledge.

• The AI Verdict: A newsletter that tracks regulations on AI and focuses on AI's impact on legal professionals. Also highlights emerging AI tech.

• Natural20: Get smarter about AI with daily AI News. Increase your profits and productivity with AI

That’s all for this week! Thank you everyone, and please share, send feedback and introductions, or reach out to collaborate.

Jake