BlueVine raises $102.5M to continue mission of providing financing access to SMBs

In a bid to make financing and banking easier for small and medium sized businesses, BlueVine recently raised $102.5M in a Series F round. Founded in 2013, BlueVine provides business loans from $5,000 to $5m and offers approvals within minutes. The company has over 15,000 customers and has deployed more than $2bn in capital since inception.

The round was led by ION Crossover Partners and saw participation from existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, Menlo Ventures, 83North, SVB Capital, Nationwide, Citi Ventures, and Microsoft’s venture fund M12 among others.

Berlin-based e-scooter startup Circ announces layoffs

Micro mobility company Circ, which provides e-scooter rentals, has announced a number of layoffs. In an official statement, Circ announced the following:

“After fast growth in the initial stage now we focus on efficiency and ops excellence, including switching our operations mode to swappable battery scooters, [we] just introduced the Circ “KAISER” vehicle in a few German cities. Apart from being more cost-efficient that is also more sustainable (cargo bikes instead of vans).”

Robinhood launches in the UK (sort of)

Robinhood, a popular investing platform that provides users the ability to trade stocks without any commissions announced its plans to venture into the UK market. “We’re very excited to be announcing that our waitlist for Robinhood UK is going to be going live,” said co-founder and co-CEO Vlad Tenev.

Customers in the UK will now be able to register themselves for early access on the platform. The platform is expected to go live in Q1 of 2020.