Daragh Murphy knows how to milk a cow.
As a kid in Ireland, he spent summers on his grandparents’ dairy farm. Lots of life has since elapsed for Murphy, but it’s still his icebreaker-fun fact.
"It’s awesome and weird to say out loud," he said, careful when asked about how it actually works. "The hardest thing about milking a cow is dodging excrements that may come from the cow. You’re in a pit, you basically get this machine, and…I’m getting too graphic."
It’s an unlikely beginning but a telling one, suggesting that Murphy is someone who makes the most out of difficult, strange things. In his late teens and 20s, Murphy went from small town Ireland to Dublin to Chicago, eventually becoming a Duke-educated corporate lawyer in New York. During the pandemic, he met Gaurav Ahuja, then a partner at Thrive Capital, and the two took socially distanced walks in Washington Square Park, talking about fintech. The result of those talks: Imprint, a startup looking to disrupt the co-branded credit card space, which the two founded in 2020.
Four years later, Imprint has come a long way, and is gearing up to go even further. The startup has raised a $75 million Series C, Fortune has exclusively learned. The Series C was led by Keith Rabois of Khosla Ventures, and was joined by existing investors Thrive Capital, Kleiner Perkins, and Ribbit Capital. This funding round brings Imprint’s total capital raised to $225 million, and represents a massive valuation bump—at its Series B, Imprint was valued at $240 million. Today, the startup officially boasts a valuation of $600 million.
It’s an impressive ascent, especially given the tough couple of years that fintech as a space has had—and the high barriers to entry in co-branded credit cards. For the uninitiated, co-branded cards are issued in a partnership between a bank and a brand. They can, generally, be used anywhere and offer perks like extra shopping rewards or purchase protection. And because dealing with credit cards is capital-intensive (Imprint took on a $300 million credit facility with Citibank earlier this year) and highly regulated, it's a tough but colossal market.
"The U.S. has the biggest GDP of any country on Earth, and 70% of the U.S. GDP is from consumer spending," Murphy said. "Consumerism is America, effectively. If you can give credit to people, you can give them rewards, and you give them a better product—the market is there and it takes care of itself."
There are advantages to the co-branded space, but winning over big customers is vital to Imprint’s success moving forward. It’s a competitive space, with large players in the form of traditional banks, from Chase to Citi, and other companies like Synchrony and Bread Financial.
"There's almost no market bigger," said Nick Huber, previously at Ribbit Capital. "I think unsecured consumer credit is a trillion-dollar market in the U.S. So, if you look at the co-branded space, I’ve heard estimates that range anywhere from one-quarter to one-third of the market is in the co-brand space, so the size of the prize is just gigantic here."
And while we don’t spend too much time on it, Murphy briefly acknowledges that he’s part of a lineage of sorts, as an Irish fintech founder. (Stripe is also an investor in Imprint.) There are headlines from earlier this year touting Imprint as "the next Irish unicorn," so it’s an ambitious lineage, and one beset with expectations that Murphy seems prepared to meet. (Thrive partner Nabil Mallick said via email that "lots of people try to run through walls, but Daragh does time and time again.") A few times in our conversation, Murphy nods to the idea of someday going public, so I ask him: Is an IPO on the table in the near-term?
"I’d think about it a different way," he said. "I’m not a huge American football fan, but someone once gave me Bill Walsh’s book and it’s awesome. He has this concept of 'the score will take care of itself.' The whole thing effectively is that, if you do a good job Monday through Sunday with good training and good values, if you turn up and do the work, you don’t have to worry about the score…That’s certainly true for us."
Imprint’s making headway. The startup's customers currently include Turkish Airlines, Holiday Inn Hotels, retailers Eddie Bauer and Brooks Brothers, and Texas-based grocery chain HEB. But Murphy remains very well-aware of where he started. When talking about scaling Imprint, he compares the progression of brand partnerships to his experience of navigating different visas to stay in the U.S., a process of "joining the dots." We talked about Horizon Hobby, an Illinois-based remote control hobby retailer (think small planes and boats) that was the first-ever Imprint customer.
"We adore Horizon Hobby," Murphy told Fortune. "They took the first bet on Imprint. From Horizon Hobby, we were able to go to Westgate. From Westgate, we were able to go to Holiday Inn and so on."
Because Murphy is someone who remembers where he came from—and is prepared for when life (and cows) get messy.
ICYMI...Cerebras, a VC-backed AI chipmaker, is reportedly looking at postponing its IPO plans.
See you tomorrow,
Allie Garfinkle
Twitter: @agarfinks
Email: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com
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