4Q23 Newsletter
👋 Hello, It's BTV
Welcome back to our quarterly newsletter!
Not to toot our own horn, but Jake has been dropping some fire!! Over the last year or so, finding himself having many of the same hard conversations with founders, he got an itch to dust off the pen and write them down. Check them out!
- The Startup Community Must Shake Off Its Funding ‘Shell-Shock’
- The Lost Art of F*ck Around and Find Out
These are the first of many pieces to come, so keep your eyes peeled for more 👀
Also, we just revamped the BTV website. Check it out in all of its shiny-ness!
Now, let’s get into it…
🚀 The Mint
We’re gearing up for the second cohort of The Mint, which starts on March 11th. We have a handful of companies lined up, but we still have a little room! If you meet any great folks who are super-early building in fintech, please send them our way!
Want to read up on The Mint?
- Check out this post from Sheel.
- Want to learn more about some of the key themes that surfaced across our fireside speaker series? Check out this post from Sheel.
- Mary, CEO & Co-Founder of Inscope (Mint I), interviewed with Boring Business Nerd, regarding her experience going through the first cohort.
📈 BTV Portfolio Updates
💰 Fundraising
Ethos (Mint I) announced their pre-seed funding round. To learn more about why we invested, check out some thoughts from Sheel!
Navro (BTV II - FKA Paytrix) raised $14 million in its latest funding round.
📰 In the News
Plumery (BTV II) partnered with AMLYZE, a leading RegTech specializing in anti-financial crime solutions.
Effectiv (BTV II) partnered with Treasury Prime to offer their transaction monitoring solution to financial institutions within their multi-bank network.
Cadana (BTV I) announced their White-Label Platform, which offers a no-code, secure, and compliant way for companies to launch their own branded global payroll solution.
Unit (BTV I)
- Released their full White-Label App: the fastest and easiest way for software companies to launch branded banking and lending, with one line of code.
- Announced cash deposits via barcode at retail locations, which allows customers to make cash deposits at nearly 100,000 participating stores, including 7-Eleven and Walmart.
- Published their 2023 Year in Review!
CloudTrucks (BTV I) announced that they acquired Shipwell's brokerage division and launched CT Exchange, their newly formed brokerage division.
Navro (BTV II) rebranded from Paytrix and announced that it received authorization from the Central Bank of Ireland as an Electronic Money Institution, allowing it to provide EU-regulated, global payment services.
P.S. nothing better than seeing our portfolio companies partner up!
🙏 BTV Portfolio Asks
Our portfolio company, Basis — an AI platform built specifically for accounting firms to help automate core accounting workflows — is looking for leads in the following areas:
- Introductions to property management firms with 100-10,000 units under management
- Introductions to the google cloud/vertex team for early access to Gemini models
- Any / all intros to accounting firms - in particular national / regional firms (https://insidepublicaccounting.com/ipa-top-500-firms/)
📢 BTV in the Spotlight
Podcasts and articles featuring our portfolio founders:
- Ham (Chipper) was on The Flip talking about how Chipper Cash has been surviving amidst tough macro conditions on the continent, a slowdown of funding, and tech layoffs.
- Doug (Ethic) was on DEALMAKER$ talking about his unique journey, blending diverse perspectives from his international upbringing and experiences, including in oil and gas investment banking, to building a sustainable investment platform.
- Sean (Kin) was on Nasdaq MarketSite talking about how Kin's platform leverages thousands of property data points to customize coverage, enabling homeowners to get a customizable policy that is suited for them and is easy to understand and afford.
- Juan (Salsa) was on Code Story, talking about the creation of Salsa.
- Itai (Unit) was on The Peel, talking about everything from the first and second waves of fintech innovation to Itai’s framework for leveraging investors.
- Javier (Caplight) was on Sandhill Markets talking about the key takeaways from Carta and the future of liquidity.
Our BTV team also spent some time in the spotlight:
- Sheel was all over the Singapore Fintech Festival. He was featured in:
- An interview covering how to pitch VC investors, bitcoin, and his marriage in the metaverse;
- A panel with Twilio’s CEO talking about CustomerAI and how it will impact the way customers engage with businesses;
- A breakfast podcast talking about what the increasing convergence of AI advances means in the near-term future.
🤙 Community
Humble brag: the BTV community is awesome. We’re lucky to be growing such a solid group of sharp, helpful, fun, all-around good people. And we got to hang out with some of them in Q4!
Jake and Sheel flew over to NYC for a visit, so, naturally, Jake, Sheel, Nihar, and JC got our East Coast founders together for a delicious meal. Our usual priority is to identify how we can be more helpful to our founders, but watching each of them strengthen their connections and help each other is always special to witness.
Back in the Bay Area, Jake co-hosted a small VC dinner with our friends at Allocate, and Sheel co-hosted a small VC dinner with our friends at Stifel. These more intimate gatherings brought some rich whole-group conversations and are quickly becoming one of our favorite community hangs.
Let us know if you want to be on the invite list for future events!
💪 Talent
Q4 was still an active quarter for all things talent.
We partnered closely with some of our recent investments on talent strategy and acquisition, with notable wins bringing on founding engineers to their teams. We also continued to meet and engage fintech talent at large, both for introductions to the BTV portfolio and to keep the BTV brand top of mind within the fintech talent community.
To that end, we engaged early-stage builders for The Mint and will continue that work in Q1 as we gear up for our second cohort.
Reading 📖
Our friend Matt Brown at Matrix wrote some awesome pieces, including...
It’s not reading, but we also recommend checking out the first episode of This Week in Fintech’s OGs of Fintech series, featuring Steve McLaughlin and Matt Harris!
🗓️ Coming Up - Let’s Hang!
Here’s where you’ll find Team BTV over the next few months:
- Feb 26-29: Sheel will be in LA for the Upfront Summit and Chapter One Summit
- Feb 29-Mar 3: Jake will be in Boca Raton, FL, for StepStone’s Annual Meeting
- Mar 3-5: Jake and Sheel will be in Las Vegas for Fintech Meetup
- Mar 11-15: the entire Team BTV will be in SF to kick off The Mint’s second cohort!
- Mar 25-26: Jake will be in CDMX for Yave’s board meeting
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
