Michael Sidgmore News Today

Every week, I’ll take a look at the hottest fintech news of the previous week. This will include everything from funding rounds to trends to an analysis of a particular space to hot takes on a particular company or phenomenon.

Hello, friends, and welcome to Daily Crunch, bringing you the most important startup, tech and venture capital news in a single package.

It appears that even though VCs are proceeding more cautiously than before and taking their time with due diligence, they are still investing.

Alternative investments — alts — are not just for institutional funds: Individual investors are showing an increased interest in this asset class.

Microtraction, an early-stage venture capital firm that invests in African startups at the pre-seed stage, is announcing that it has reached the first close of its second fund, Microtraction Community Limited. The fund doesn’t have a set target at the moment, the founding partners told TechCrunch, but it achieved the first close at $15 million.  […]

While VC investment in Latin America has doubled every year since 2016, there are still many hurdles entrepreneurs have to go through if they want to be successful in the region. They are up against a large informal economy, analog financial information, weak institutions, high bureaucratic barriers to entry and more. However, these stellar entrepreneurs have learned to navigate the landscape and build successful companies across regions. How did these breakout founders do it? What would they d...