Page 74 - Forbes - USA (March 2020)

T H E FO R B E S F I N T EC H 5 0

And they actually should have a pretty high rate
of failure. Otherwise, we’re not thinking big MAKERDAO Ì N E X T I N S U R A N C E Ì
enough.”
NEW YORK CITY PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA
INSURANCE
BLOCKCHAIN & BITCOIN Mobile-first insurance carrier
Decentralized finance platform
C rypto has been condemned lets borrowers use volatile sells small business lines
as rat poison by Warren Buf-
cryptocurrency as collateral
(liability, commercial auto
fett, as a fraud by Jamie Dimon
72 and the mother of all scams by for loans of stablecoins pegged and workers’ comp) packaged
for specific industries (e.g.,
to the U.S. dollar.
doomsday economist Nouriel restaurants). Sells in all states
FUNDING: $63 million; latest
Roubini. Where’s the payoff to the economy? except New York and is a
T valuation of $500 million
S It’s coming, Armstrong says. He posits a fu- licensed carrier in 26.
I BONA FIDES: Generated
L
ture in which thousands of startups use crypto $10 million in interest in 2019 FUNDING: $381 million; latest
E
H to raise capital in a global marketplace no longer FOUNDER AND CEO: valuation of more than $1 billion
T Rune Christensen, 29
controlled by Wall Street firms. Within a decade, BONA FIDES: Serves 79,000
•
he predicts, the number of people participating small businesses
E
D in the blockchain economy will explode from 50 COFOUNDERS: CEO Guy
I Goldstein, 52; CTO Alon Huri,
U million to 1 billion. We are destined to enjoy a MARQETA
G 43; VP of R&D Nissim Tapiro, 50
financial system that is “more global, more fair, OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA
T
N more free and more efficient.” PAYMENTS
E
M There is an emotional component to the quest Debit-card transaction proces- N OVA C R E D I T
T for financial liberation. Coinbase’s newly hired
S sor gives companies that issue SAN FRANCISCO
E chief product officer, Surojit Chatterjee, talks cards to workers or customers
V PERSONAL FINANCE
N about what happened when India all but de- more control over which trans-
I Draws on credit-report infor-
stroyed currency holdings in a surprise attack on actions are approved.
the money supply. His 80-year-old father spent FUNDING: $378 million; latest mation from eight countries to
produce a standardized num-
five hours in line to retrieve the equivalent of $30. valuation of $1.9 billion ber similar to a U.S. FICO cred-
Many countries, including Mexico, Argentina, BONA FIDES: $300 million-plus in it score, enabling newcomers
2019 revenue, Forbes estimates
Russia and Cyprus, have perpetrated wealth con- to the U.S. to qualify for loans
COFOUNDER & CEO:
fiscations of this sort, in which some store of val- and apartment rentals based
Jason Gardner, 50
ue is frozen or forcibly converted into something on their home-country records.
less valuable. The U.S. is an offender, too. FDR FUNDING: $65 million
seized gold in 1933, replacing it with pieces of pa- BONA FIDES: American Express
per that have since lost 95% of their value. uses Nova data to instantly
Like gold, bitcoin is too cumbersome to be approve immigrants from
Australia, Canada, India, Mexico
used as a means of exchange. The convoluted and the U.K. for U.S. cards
mechanism for adding transactions to the ledger COFOUNDERS: CEO Misha
means it takes 10 minutes to confirm a payment Esipov, 32; COO Nicky Goulimis,
and that only four transfers can take place per 31; Loek Janssen, 30
second. You can’t run a global economy on that.
Solutions are on the way, Armstrong says. One JASON GARDNER
is to consider bitcoin a store of value and add a O P E N D O O R
SAN FRANCISCO
M O N E Y L I O N Ì REAL ESTATE

Home sellers in 21 cities can
NEW YORK CITY
request all-cash offers from
PERSONAL FINANCE
Money Moves 2020 Opendoor online, receive bids
Digital bank provides users free in 24 hours and close in as lit-
GIVE YOUR IRA A SECOND WIND checking, debit cards, paycheck tle as two weeks. New app en-
advances (with direct deposit) ables buyers to make offers on
Effective January 2020, Congress made a bunch
of changes to the rules governing retirement ac- and managed ETF portfolios. any home for sale in six cities,
counts. For one, if you have earned income, you can FUNDING: $207 million; latest including Dallas and Phoenix.
now contribute to an Individual Retirement Account valuation of $630 million
no matter your age (the old cutoff was 70½). That’s FUNDING: $1.3 billion; latest
great if you continue to work part-time after you BONA FIDES: 6 million–plus users valuation of $3.8 billion
“retire.” Another boon to Boomers: The age for tak- COFOUNDERS: BONA FIDES: Purchased
ing mandatory retirement-account payouts was CEO Dee Choubey, 38; CIO 19,000 homes in 2019
pushed from 70½ to 72. One new gotcha: Leave your Pratyush Tiwari, 43; CTO Chee
Individual Retirement Accounts to non-spouse heirs, Mun Foong, 42 COFOUNDER AND CEO:
and in most cases they must withdraw the money Eric Wu, 37
within 10 years. —A.E.

F O R B E S . C O M Ì NEW TO LIST M A R C H 2 0 2 0
1 According to PitchBook