Happy just-over-hump-day! Here’s your roundup of the important and interesting news in the startup world today. 

Slack investor Index Ventures backs its competitor Quill

Quill, a workplace communication startup led by Ludwig Pettersson, former creative director of Stripe has acquired a $12.5 million Series A funding at a valuation of $62.5 million by Sarah Cannon, Index Ventures partner and former Slack board observer.

Walmart joins hands with GreenDot to establish a new fin-tech accelerator

Walmart had partnered with GreenDot to create Walmart MoneyCard in 2006. It is now expanding its relationship by creating an accelerator that focuses on retail and consumer financial services.

The accelerator is called Tailfin Labs and it focuses on developing solutions for startups to integrate financial tech and omnichannel shopping. The new agreement between Walmart and GreenDot will begin on 1st January 2020.

Fountain, a recruiting platform for hourly workers raises $23M

Fountain is making waves in the gig economy. It processes more than 1-million inbound candidate applications each month. It is a platform to find and scree workers for field roles on an hourly wage and has raised $23M to expand its platform. This funding is led by DCM.

“Fountain has been exceptionally capital efficient and has best-in-class customer retention,” says Kyle Lui, partner at DCM.

Trouble brews for Juul with layoffs and lawsuits

After Juul announced that it will layoff around 500 workers, which is around 10% to 15% of its workforce, a lawsuit filed by former Juul executive Siddharth Breja claims that Juul shipped out over a million contaminated units. Breja alleges that Juul refused to issue a product recall or a health safety notice citing billions of dollars in lost sales that would hurt its $38 billion valuation.

In the report released by Buzzfeed, Breja claims that he was fired after complaining about the pods. Breja was replaced in September 2019 by K.C.Crosthwaite, a former executive at Altria, Juul’s largest shareholder.