1Q25 Newsletter

👋 Hello, It's BTV

Welcome back to our quarterly newsletter!

First things first - Mint Demo Day is right around the corner! Hope to see you all in NYC.

Team update: We’re excited to welcome Leslie Sodaro as our new Chief of Staff in SF, stepping in to fill Sloane’s shoes. And we wish Sloane all the best as she traverses the world, checking things off of her bucket list. We also welcomed Mackenzie Flak as our new Executive Assistant, based in Sacramento.

Now the only role we’re looking to fill is an Associate in SF. We're looking for a curious, ambitious self-starter with a passion for working with founders, experience in or exposure to venture, and a track record of excellence—bonus points for deep fintech knowledge and startup experience.

PS - Big congrats to Sheel! He has been featured on the Business Insider Seed 100 every year since its inception four years ago. 

🗓️ Coming Up - Where in the World is BTV?

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

• May 19-23: Team BTV will be in NYC for The Mint Demo Day!
• June 9-12: Sheel will be in London
• July 14-18: Sheel & Jake will be in NYC 
• July 21-25: Sheel will be in Chicago
• Sep 7-11: Jake will be in Sao Paulo

🚀 The Mint, our pre-seed platform

Our fourth cohort, and first in NYC, kicked off on March 17th. It has been energizing and inspiring to work alongside such driven founders every day! 

Want to come to Demo Day? Invite here!

📈 BTV Portfolio Updates

💰 Fundraising (announced rounds)

Mendel (BTV I) raised $35 million in a Series B funding round led by Base 10. 

Mendel is a spend management system for LatAM, like Concur + AMEX in one, focused on large, complex enterprises (including customers Mercado Libre, FEMSA, Adecco, and McDonald’s) They are software-first; they make most of their money by charging customers rather than interchange, which makes sense given lower interchange rates in LatAm.

Divi (BTV I) announced the launch of their payment orchestration product in Latin America, and used that as an opportunity to also announce the $8.2 million in total seed funding that we led back in 2022. 

Divibank is a financing platform that provides non-dilutive capital to SMEs to fund digital marketing campaigns, supplier payments, or inventory. Businesses repay using a percentage of future revenue, aligning payments with cash flow. However, they will use the funds to grow their payment orchestration product, Divibank Pay, which integrates multiple payment processors, gateways, and methods in one platform and finds the cheapest option to process the payment.

Salsa (BTV I) raised $20 million in a Series A funding round led by Altos. 

Salsa is an embedded payroll solution (think Gusto, but built into vertical SaaS platforms) that has earned the trust of 100s of thousands of businesses through platforms like GlossGenius, DaySmart, Jane, HoneyBook & others.

Deck (BTV II) raised $12 million in a Series A funding round led by Infinity Ventures. 

Deck is building user-permissioned data infrastructure to ‘Plaid-ify’ any website, so developers can focus on creating real value for their users instead of hacking together tricky connections.

Want to learn more about why we invested? Click here!

Navro (BTV II) raised $20 million in a Series B funding round led by Jump Capital.

Agree (BTV II) raised $7.2 million in a seed funding round led by Pelion. 

Agree integrates the e-signature process, contract development, invoicing, and payment all in one e-signature platform - it’s like Docusign and Bill.com had a baby.  

Ethos (Mint I) raised $6 million in a seed funding round led by Canapi Ventures. 

Ethos’ platform enables financial organizations to deploy AI and other models with the speed and confidence needed in today's dynamic environment—ensuring that model risk management is a driver of innovation, rather than a barrier.

Want to learn more about why we invested? Click here!

Ponte (Mint I) raised $3 million in a seed funding round led by Harlem Capital. 

Ponte is bridging the growing gap between labor supply and demand in the U.S. by building the first labor platform for Hispanic immigrants. The solution is simple: hotels and restaurants post jobs on the Ponte platform and are connected with skilled, credentialed workers. Their hiring platform pre-vets, matches, and onboards legally authorized hourly workers faster and more efficiently than traditional methods. They've also built an in-house AI recruiter which pre-vets candidates through WhatsApp and voice-based AI interviews.

Want to learn more about why we invested? Click here! 

Mercury (pre BTV) raised $300 million in a Series C funding round led by Sequoia at a $3.5 billion valuation. 

Ethic (pre BTV) raised $64 million in a Series D funding round led by State Street.

📰 In the News

Butter (BTV I) was acquired by Odeko.

Tome (BTV I) was acquired by AngelList.

Selfbook (BTV I) partnered with Perplexity and Tripadvisor, to enable AI-powered hotel bookings directly within Perplexity.

Cloudtrucks (BTV I) launched CT Fuel, a Visa-accepted card offering interest-free credit and expense tracking for fuel, parking, and tolls, along with discounts at nearly 1,000 locations including Love’s, Roady’s, and RaceTrac. 

Navro (BTV II) obtained FMSB registration, allowing it to provide money transfer services to businesses in Canada.

Layer (BTV II) partnered with Nav to bring its AI-powered accounting tools to Nav’s small business platform, enabling users to automatically categorize expenses, monitor profitability, and simplify tax preparation.  

Ramp (pre BTV) 

• Doubled its valuation to $13 billion following a $150 million secondary share sale; and 
• Expanded its partnership with Stripe to launch stablecoin-backed corporate cards for cross-border transactions.

Chipper (pre BTV) partnered with Ripple to enhance cross-border payments into Africa.

Cushion (pre BTV) was acquired by Lending Club.

📢 BTV in the Spotlight

Podcasts and articles featuring our portfolio founders:

• Ibrahim Manna (BRKZ) was on "Riyada" at Al Arabiya Business Channel, talking about BRKZ’s latest funding round and future plans.
• Yoseph West (Relay) was on:
  • Gusto Embedded, talking about how banking designed for small businesses can drive cash flow confidence and financial clarity.
  • The Hard Part, talking about the founder journey, the opportunity in SMB, and the future of fintech. 
• YG Lebouf (Deck) was on Real Estate Carbon, talking about how Deck is using AI to solve the challenges of collecting and centralizing first utility data, then any data, that sits behind online user credentials.
• Kevin (Charlie) was featured in a tweet from former President Bill Clinton. The tweet and video regaled the story of how Kevin, at the age of 11, called the White House so many times that President Clinton relented and gave him an in-person interview for a 6th grade project. Incredible stuff!
• Daniel Simon (Coast) was interviewed by Primary General Partner Jason Shuman, talking about why deep domain knowledge is often overrated, how functional skills drive success, and why expense management for fleet transport presents a massive opportunity.

Our BTV team (yes, Sheel) also spent some time in the spotlight:

• Jake was on a panel at the Startup Grind Conference, talking about how to navigate the current fundraising climate.
• Sheel was on Cambrian Fintech with Rex Salisbury, talking about  living on a dollar a day in India, founding and selling multiple companies (including one sparked by a chance meeting on a train), and even hosting nine weddings—one of them sponsored by Taco Bell in the metaverse.
• Sheel was on My First Million talking business ideas
• Sheel was on Building & Buyers, talking about AI, authenticity, and the future of Fintech.
• Sheel was on Silicon Valley Venture & Innovation
• Sheel was on PrimeVP Podcast, talking about the future of financial services, AI’s impact on SaaS, and how VC is evolving in 2025.
• Sheel was on California Future Society, talking about why New York has an advantage in fintech, his thoughts on SF and CA local politics and some startup ideas he’d like to see in the world!  
• Sheel was on a panel at the Insurance Capital Summit, which covered learnings, outlook, and opportunities for VCs in insurance.  
• Sheel also made it on TBPN multiple times, nbd.

🤙 Community

In February, we co-hosted a dinner with our friends at Canapi Ventures and SVB specifically geared towards fintech founders and operators selling to banks.

In March, we brought together all of our NYC founders with SVB during the Mint kick off week.

In April, we co-hosted a panel in NYC with our good friend Seth Rosenberg at Greylock, highlighting three exceptional founders building at the intersection of AI and financial services: Mitch Troyanovsky (Basis), Jamie Cuffe (Foundation), and John Willett (Rogo). Want to learn more about some of the key takeaways from panels? Check it out here. 

During NY fintech week, we co-hosted a rooftop party with Coast, one of our portfolio companies. We got a beautiful NY Spring day - it was great to hang with all of our favorite fintech friends!

We also hosted a Menlo Happy Hour for our Peninsula crew at the British Bankers Club patio. It was the perfect way to kick off summer—beautiful weather, great conversations, and an awesome mix of founders and funders. Always a good time when the community comes together!

💪 Talent

This quarter, much of our focus was on internal hiring as we worked to fill two key roles: Chief of Staff and Executive Assistant (welcome Leslie & Mack!). Both positions are critical to scaling our operations and supporting the broader team. 

Our Head of Talent, Yoni also attended a leading HR conference (Transform) to stay current on talent trends and connect with peers in the space. As you might imagine, AI is everywhere and there are a bunch of new tools and technologies out there innovating at every point in the recruitment process. Some interesting things to keep an eye to see what gets traction and really makes an impact. 

As always, hiring is a top priority for many of our companies. Check out our job board for current opportunities or join our talent network to be kept in the loop for future roles!

And, as always, you can find great opportunities in our portfolio companies here:

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