4Q24 Newsletter

👋 Hello, It's BTV

Welcome back to our quarterly newsletter!

It's been a whirlwind start to the year for us at BTV. So far this year, ten portfolio companies signed follow-on term sheets — two Seed, four Series A, three Series B, and one Series D — all from investors who we admire and are excited to work with.

We’ve never had such a busy month. Three of the companies that raised were truly not raising (not fake “not raising”). And we’ve got a big couple of months (and year, really) lined up ahead.

🗓️ Coming Up - Where in the World is BTV?

Here’s where you’ll find Team BTV over the next quarter+

• Feb 24-28: Jake and Sheel will be in LA for the Upfront Summit
• March-May: Sheel’s temporarily moving to NYC for The Mint’s first NYC cohort!
• March 5-7: Jake will be in Hawaii for Lobby’s Enterprise Summit
• March 17-21: Jake will be in NYC for The Mint’s kickoff week!
• April 9-12: Jake will be in Toronto/Montreal

++ Get it on your radar now: May 21 is The Mint’s first NYC Demo Day!

🚀 The Mint, our pre-seed platform

The next batch of The Mint kicks off in about a month — this time in NYC! Send us your favorite pre-seed founders, or have them apply here!

Also, if you know great fintech operators interested in joining as mentors or advisors, we’d love an introduction.

📈 BTV Portfolio Updates

💰 Fundraising (announced rounds)

Nilus (BTV II) raised $10 million in funding led by Felicis and Vesey Ventures. 

Basis (BTV II) raised a $34 million Series A funding round led by Khosla. To learn more about why we led their seed round back in the Spring of 2023, check out some thoughts from Nihar! 

Brkz (BTV II) raised $9 million ($8 million in equity and $1 million in debt), bringing its total Series A funding to $17 million. 

OneCard (Opp) raised $25.5 million in a growth funding round. We participated in the round via our Opportunity fund, alongside QED, Peak XV Partners, and Z47.

Jones (Pre-BTV) raised $15 million in a Series B funding round led by NewSpring Capital. 

📰 In the News

Mercury (pre-BTV) launched joint accounts!

Ramp (pre-BTV) launched Ramp Treasury, businesses can store cash in a business account that earns 2.5% or in an investment account with the potential for higher yields.

Unit (BTV I) introduced “Create Card,” a prebuilt component for the banking frontend that enables customers to order their own debit cards. Their last 2 quarters were their best ever, the business is looking up.

Mendel (BTV I) launched a new online booking tool to help LatAm enterprises manage corporate travel.

Agree (BTV II) made it to #1 on Product Hunt! Boom!

Charlie (BTV II) 

• Released FraudShield, a first-of-its-kind conversation guide to help Americans talk with their older parents and relatives about financial fraud. 
• Released CharlieSaver, the most comprehensive source for senior discounts nationwide - over 20,000 senior discounts across 1,000 shopping centers. The best part? It is free to use and available to all older Americans, not just Charlie customers.

Deck (BTV II) launched Rewind, the easiest way to access historical utility data for energy management, billing, and carbon reporting.

And, of course, always great to see BTV portcos partnering up: Salsa (BTV I) 🤝 Farmraise (BTV I)!

📢 BTV in the Spotlight

Podcasts and articles featuring our portfolio founders:

• Chris (Reins) was on Blue is the New White, talking about how Reins is revolutionizing access to compensation and benefits frameworks for small business owners
• Marty (Agree) was on Money Moves with Neil Devani, talking about his experiences raising capital, building and scaling companies, and eventually selling them to prominent organizations like Eventbrite and Twitter. 
• Fred (Deck) interviewed our very own JC to get the skinny on why BTV invested in Deck. 
• Hooman (Collective) was on Builders and Buyers with Stifel, talking about leadership, legacy, and lifelong learning.

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

• Sheel was on Equity Pod, talking about Twitter fame, fintech, and the truth about AI startups
• Sheel was on My First Million, talking about the biggest opportunities he sees right now.
• Sheel wrote a great post on the power of strategic pivots for Mercury, check it out! 
• Sheel was on First Funders, talking about his journey from Founder to fintech evangelist to Internet personality and always a Taco Bell enthusiast 
• Sheel was on The Desi VC, talking about lessons he’s learned from building and exiting two businesses, the profound influence of family on his journey as both a founder and now an investor, and why he believes seed-stage investing allows BTV to have the greatest impact. 
• Sheel was on The Peel, talking about his two decades of building and investing in fintech and starting BTV.

🤙 Community

Food, Fintech Forum, and Fun (at Dave & Busters, where else?)

November kicked off with a Mint Mentor and founder appreciation dinner alongside our friends at Stifel, followed by Jake jetting to NYC to hang with our BTV NYC fam. After that, Jake headed up to Montreal to speak at the FutureTech Innovation Forum — diving into all things fintech today and tomorrow. While he was there, he squeezed in a power lunch with the portfolio teams at Deck, Meroka, and Relay.

December kept the momentum going! Sheel made his way to London for Vintage’s summit, while JC and Nihar held it down in NYC for a fintech founders dinner. Meanwhile, back on the West Coast, we gathered our SF portcos for a dinner to celebrate their amazing year and cheers to their year ahead.

We didn’t forget to celebrate our East Coast founders! In January, Jake, JC, and Nihar rang in the new year with them over dinner, followed by some quality Meroka time at Dave & Buster’s (because dealmaking is better with arcade games, obviously). 

Meanwhile, Sheel took off to Mexico to check in on Mendel, then made the rounds — NYC for our fintech happy hour before escaping to Miami for some sun.

💪 Talent

There's never a slow quarter for hiring across the portfolio! 

We continue to grow the BTV Talent Network, and we’re thrilled to have helped the teams at Caplight, Caliza, Collective, and BrikMate bring on top talent. 

Check out our job board or join our talent network! 

We've also been busy looking at recruiting tools and products to see what might make sense for our founders to leverage. There's a lot out there for AI sourcing and recruiting automation that might help make things more efficient, but a reminder that there are no shortcuts for doing the work.

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