With the market having changed dramatically since the heyday of the venture funding boom of 2021, fintech valuations have largely changed accordingly.
With only a few exceptions, the once most valuable companies operating in the fintech space have seen their valuations decline significantly, based on secondary stock activity, as analyzed by Notice.co, a company that has built a private markets pricing tool. .
One of the sharpest examples of declines lies in payments giant Stripe, which saw its funding valuation hit $95 billion in March 2021. The company’s secondary market valuation peaked at nearly $200 billion in January 2022 (!) , according to the Notice, which understandably caused frustration among employees who wondered why the company didn’t go public at the time. But as of this writing, its secondary market valuation has dropped 73% to $52.5 billion.
Only three fintech startups have actually seen their secondary valuations increase since January 2022: HR/payroll startups Rippling, Gusto and Deel. These companies have seen their valuations rise by 103%, 5% and 37%, respectively, to $13.2 billion, $10 billion and $6.5 billion, according to Notice.
Greg Martin (a co-founder and managing director at Rainmaker Securities, a secondary trading platform) told TechCrunch+ that while some fintech unicorns are really strong businesses that were slightly overvalued, others haven’t quite come back to earth yet. “Other people who are addicted to their esteem will probably take longer to bottom out and find their way back and have momentum,” Martin said.
Incendiary momentum
Private markets are a great way to understand how companies are doing between funding rounds, said Notice founder and CEO Tyson Hendricksen.
