Three Googlers Start a New Venture, Fintech Doubles Job Posts, and a Company Update

Welcome to startup spotter! In the world of startup data, we're like flying private when everyone else is on Spirit 😎

In this week's spotter:

• New dev-tool startup from 3 former Googlers

• Fintech company more than doubles job posts

• Update on a past highlighted company

Three Xooglers Walk into a Bar

It's always exciting to find a brand new startup founded by former Googlers, and this one is hot off the presses.

HighFlux is a developer tool startup very recently started by 3 former Google engineers. Their waitlist only went live on October 23, 2022, and they don't even yet have pricing (the product is free while they're iterating).

In fact, HighFlux is so new that Crunchbase doesn't even have a profile page for it yet (chalk one up for the good guys, baby):

HighFlux is a next-generation version client for the source code version control system git. Software engineers are intimately familiar with git: it's a tool they use constantly all day as part of their jobs.

HighFlux significantly reduces the amount of time engineers spend manually interacting with git; HighFlux automatically commits code and keeps local versions of code up to date with other engineers' versions.

In short: it saves engineers time, which means more engineer productivity.

Next-gen tools for software engineers are a hot business right now; for example, Warp makes a modern terminal for developers and has raised $23mm so far.

Obviously, HighFlux is a company in its infancy and is likely too early to invest in now, but it's a good one to keep on your radar or begin a relationship with; you know, before it's on Crunchbase and everyone knows about it.

Their founders are Guy Tavor, Uwe Maurer, and Mathijs Vogelzang; reach out to them to learn more.

Fintech Finley is Flourishing

According to their website, fintech company Finley does the following:

Finley's software integrates with your existing systems and automates your credit facility management so you can put your financial operations on autopilot and focus on your growth goals.

Hmm, well...I guess they don't write the snappiest landing page copy. They're finance people, not marketers!

But it seems that Finley's software generally helps their customers manage their loans. In particular, large finance companies (Finley counts Ramp and Parafin as customers) have large, numerous, complex loans with varied terms, and Finley's software helps them keep these loans organized.

OK, so we figured out what Finley does (no thanks to their website).

Very recently, Finley has more than doubled their open job posts. Take a look at this chart of their open job posts over time:

The summary here is:

April 3, 2022: 4 job postsNovember 26, 2022: 7 job postsDecember 21, 2022: 9 job posts

For almost 8 months, there was no change at all in their open job posts. This indicates they weren't really doing any hiring.

Typically when a company is hiring and fills a role, they'll close the job post, or they'll add new job posts as new roles open up. We'd see those as decrease and increases in the number of open jobs.

But if a company's job posts remain completely flat for months (like it is above), there isn't really much hiring happening.

That all changed on November 26 when they posted 3 new job posts, and then again on December 21 when they added 2 more.

Finley has all of a sudden ramped up their hiring significantly, including for a Head of Sales role which indicates that there is a ton of growth happening.

We think it's likely that Finley is fundraising or just business is going really well and they're looking to scale. Finley has raised $3mm total and last announced a raise in June 2021.

Their CEO is Jeremy Tsui; reach out to him for more information.

Reminder: we share these companies with big job post spikes in a free Google Sheet here; check it out, tell your friends, etc. etc.

Rocketship Update

2 weeks ago, we highlighted a company called Memfault; they make a software platform to monitor the health and status of IoT devices.

When we did the deep dive on them (see here), their number of open job posts had increased 500% in just a few weeks, which was massive.

For new folks: we record the number of open job posts that companies have over time; if there's a large increase in a short period of time, that may mean the company is fundraising or that business is going well.

This was what we reported at the time:

November 26: 3 open jobsDecember 13: 15 open jobs

This week, we can add one more data point to this:

January 3: 28 open jobs

Uhhh....so their open jobs have now doubled since we first wrote about them for a 900% increase in a month.

That is basically the biggest increase in job posts you'll see.

One way or another, things must be going pretty damn well for Memfault. Check them out if you're interested in the space (their CEO is François Baldassari).

The Hay is in the Barn

That's it for this week! We're working on a premium offering where customers receive all of the startups we identify in real-time; this week we saw 3 other companies with job post spikes. If you're interested, just reach out here.

Happy investing,-startup spotter