Burn that Bridge

Yesterday, Stripe acquired Bridge for $1.1B

This marks the largest acquisition in the cryptocurrency / Web3 space

build foundation

Bridge is a FinTech startup that allows businesses to accept stablecoin payments

The journey started in 2012 with Zach Abrams and Sean Yu

The two co-founders started building Evenly, an app that made it easy for friends to send and receive payments for splitting bills and otherwise.

Square acquired Evenly just a year later, and they shut down the app while retaining the acquired talent to build out related Square products.

→Fun Fact: Braintree acquired Venmo for $26M in 2012. Then PayPal acquired Braintree for $800M in 2013. Venmo is now worth an estimated $30B+

Zach went on to work for Coinbase and Brex, where he would lead consumer products.

Sean went on to work at DoorDash and Airbnb, where he would be an early SWE hire.

In early 2023, the duo reunited to form Bridge.

Bridge is built on blockchain and it enables payments to take place in any country, 24/7, for as little as 10% of traditional foreign exchange fees. It provides payment stability for unstable economies

Stablecoins - Tether, USDC, Dai - have a combined market cap of $170B+.

Bridge has managed to capture $5B of annual payment volume. Their customers include:

• U.S. Treasury

• U.S. State Department

• Coinbase

• SpaceX

In August 2024, Bridge raised a $40M Series A round at a $200M valuation. The round was led by Sequoia and included Index, Oak HC/FT, Ribbit Capital, Haun Ventures and more

Just two months after their Series A, the team achieved a 5X+ exit to Stripe ($70B), one of the largest startups in the world.

To top it off, Bridge is Stripe’s largest acquisition to date.

Headlines

• Great piece by Packy McCormick, “Burn the Playbooks”. Read it here

• Benchmark is raising $170M for a partners-only fund. TechCrunch article here

• More startups are being spun out of Klarna than any other European unicorn. CNBC article here

• Nassim Taleb says markets are as fragile as they’ve been in 20 years. Markets Insider article here