1Q24 Newsletter

👋 Hello, It's BTV

Welcome back to our quarterly newsletter!

Q1 was an exhilarating rollercoaster. Our team was hands on, spending most of our time running the second cohort of our pre-seed program, The Mint!

🚀 The Mint

Our second cohort officially kicked off on March 11, and we just capped it off at Demo Day a few weeks ago. It was energizing and inspiring to work with such driven founders every day in SF, watching them all progress so much over such a short period.

Introducing, the cohort!

How to learn more about these 8 companies:

1. Quick links to their websites, founder info, and contact info: Click here.
2. Watch their pitches at our Demo Day: Click here.
3. If you’re new to learning about The Mint, our pre-seed program, check out a summary from JC here!

We’re already underway selecting cohort #3, which starts in August. If you know of any rockstar folks starting companies in fintech, please send them our way! Feel free to shoot us an email, as well, to highlight any special consideration.

📈 BTV Portfolio Updates 

💰 Fundraising

BRKZ (BTV II) announced their $8 million Series A funding round, and their $5.55 million seed funding round, which we led. To learn more about why we invested, check out some thoughts from Nihar!

Coast (BTV I) raised $25 million in new equity funding and $67 million in debt financing.

Ramp (Pre BTV) raised $150 million in a Series D extension round, co-led by Khosla and Founders Fund, at a $7.65 billion post-money valuation.

Relay (BTV I) raised $32.2 million in a Series B funding round led by Bain Capital Ventures, which we participated in along with Garage, Industry Ventures, and Tapestry. Relay’s CEO, Yoseph West, shared that he thinks Relay will reach $100 million in annualized revenue by the second half of 2025. Their revenues rose 3x in 2022 — and close to 6x in 2023 — thanks to a robust client base that now stands at ~100,000 businesses.

Layer (BTV II) raised $2.3 million in a pre-seed funding round, which we led. To learn more about why we invested, check out some thoughts from Nihar!

📰 In the News

Leeway (BTV II) was featured in QED’s write up on ICHRAs.

Unit (BTV I) 

• Wrote a blog post about their deepening commitment to partner banks.
• Partnered with Rainforest to allow Unit’s customers to easily accept card payments from their customers. 

Coast (BTV I) was featured in a white paper by VISA on innovation in US fleet cards.

Pave (BTV I) 

• Partnered with Method Financial to connect their analytics solution with Method’s cutting-edge, real-time liability data.
• Announced the release of its SMB Cashflow API, which helps output SMB cashflow statements in a few seconds using bank transaction data. This allows SMB lenders to more efficiently underwrite, score leads, and provide personalized product offerings.

Effectiv (BTV II) 

• Partnered with Labor Credit Union to provide Labor Credit Union's members with a seamless and secure account-opening experience.
• Launched KYB Agent, an AI-powered tool that automates the collection of extensive business details and customer reviews from multiple online sources, streamlining KYB procedures for financial institutions and fintechs.

FarmRaise (BTV I) partnered with the USDA to unveil 1.) a new, online Livestock Indemnity Program Decision Tool, and 2.) farm loan resources. Both are available to agricultural producers and cooperators who help producers access USDA disaster assistance, farm loans, and other federal farm programs.

Chipper Cash (pre-BTV) resumed service in the US!

Mercury (pre-BTV)

• Launched a consumer banking product. Users will pay a $240 annual subscription to receive benefits like 5% APY up to $5M in FDIC insurance. Mercury CEO, Immad Akhund, shared that Mercury already has “a few hundred thousand users of [their] business banking product, and a lot of people have expressed that they want a personal banking product.”
• Announced that it is incorporating bill pay and spend management software into its offering, including features such as accounting automation, account-integrated bill pay software, invoicing, and employee reimbursement.

📢 BTV in the Spotlight

Podcasts and articles featuring our portfolio founders:

• Itai Damti (Unit) hosted a webinar on the state of banking-as-a-service and embedded finance. He was also on: 
  • The Barefoot Innovation Podcast, discussing his vision for “fintech 2.0”
  • Cambrian Fintech Podcast, offering insights into fintech's evolution, the significance of infrastructure, and challenging some common misconceptions about BaaS
  • Fintech Family Hour, talking about BaaS, embedded finance, and evolving as a company and CEO
  • Fintech Firsthand, sharing thoughts on the future of core banking and embedded finance
• Daniel Simon (Coast) was interviewed in PYMTNS and on Fintech Layer Cake, where he delivered a “fleet card masterclass.”
• Chris Buttenham (Reins) was on What’s It Worth, talking about what it was like to sell his last business.

Our BTV team also spent some time in the spotlight:

• Jake was surveyed by Allocate, talking about the state of the venture capital industry  
• Lauren was featured in How I Built This Career. 
• Nihar hosted a panel on opportunities for AI in financial services.
• Jake was featured on This Week in Fintech’s OG Series, offering candid reflections on personal growth, the importance of resilience, and the impact of work on personal identity.
• Sheel and Jake made a joint appearance on the I/O podcast, talking about how they built their previous companies, the future of fintech, and the trends they're seeing across the industry.
• Sheel was on Paid in Full, a podcast that explores the journeys of fascinating individuals who chose a different path.

🤙 Community

We love celebrating birthdays at BTV. Fun fact: Sheel and Jake were both born in April, in the same year, just one day apart. Their virtually joint birthday landed within our latest Mint cohort, so we got to celebrate them IRL with the Minters — plus their favorite foods: dosas for Sheel and donuts for Jake.

In May, we also got to celebrate Yoni’s birthday with his classy faves, Scandinavian morning buns.

The number of our portfolio founders who live in/near New York continues to grow, which is such a blast to see whenever Sheel or Jake’s in town and we get the whole gang together for a meal. In April, Sheel and JC took our founders to a delicious Malaysian dinner, and sat back like proud parents while these sharp guys swapped notes and war stories.

In the Bay Area of California, VC happy hours are abundant in San Francisco. But Menlo Park, where household-name VCs are based, doesn’t get much happy-hour limelight. We decided to change that. So, in May, we teamed up with Montage Ventures and SVB to host a sunny Menlo Park hang for GPs and associates alike. As expected, it was a hit — South Bay VC happy hours are now a thing!

💪 Talent

Q1 went by in a blur! It was filled by meeting and engaging: 1) talent to help make great hires across BTV portfolio companies and 2) thought partnership with our founders and leaders on their People & Talent strategy, to help set them up for success in 2024. 

While there continues to be a lot of available talent, we want to reinforce with our founders and teams that the ability to succeed in an early-stage environment is its own competency that needs to be assessed — to keep that in mind when considering talent from “big tech” that's now currently on the market.

📖 Reading 

• Contrary wrote a Deep Dive on The Great Bank Unbundling.
• Matt Brown wrote a piece on fintech adoption in vertical software.

🗓️ Coming Up - Let’s Hang!

Here’s where you’ll find Team BTV over the next few months:

• June 9-10: Nihar will be in London, catching up with our local founders
• June 18-22: Jake will be in NYC, where we’ll be hosting a fintech breakfast on June 20!
• July 2-4: Jake will be in Toronto
• July 14-19: Sheel will be in NYC
• August 5-13: Jake will be in Buenos Aires and São Paulo
• August 15-21: Team BTV will be in SF to prep and kick off The Mint’s cohort #3!

Made it this far? We appreciate you. Feel free to hit reply and tell us what you want from this newsletter so we can be better tomorrow (and next quarter).

Until next time,
Team BTV