This is a blog dedicated to building in public, where founders can see what goes on behind the scenes at a venture-backed startup. Weekly internal team emails (on a delay) are juxtaposed against interviews and articles published in real-time.
And that's a wrap
April 24, 2023
And that's that. We're done. We've successfully closed on our Series B. There's of course still a few administrative items to get to the finish line but all the commitments are in and ready to be signed for and wired. Amazingly enough, we were actually oversubscribed, with several groups this past week trying to figure out how to squeeze into the round with checks as large as up to $[ ]M beyond this $[ ]M we already have committed.
Another one
April 17, 2023
It was a good week. Starting things off on Monday with a $[ ]M commitment from [ ] was a huge win. Following that up with another full day of diligence with [ ] on Wednesday just kept that momentum going. [ ] has done a tremendous amount of diligence work on us already, with many of you involved in that process.
A crucible moment for the industry
April 10, 2023
As Q1 numbers start to roll in as well for the rest of the industry, it paints a sobering picture of the tech and startup ecosystem as a whole. Just 21 Series Bs were done in fintech in all of Q1, averaging $25M. It’s important to note that these are just reported fundraises, meaning most of these probably closed in Q4.
And that's a wrap for Q1!
April 3, 2023
With that, we've officially closed the books on Q1. For the first time ever in the company's history, we've managed to post three consecutive beats on revenue and also the highest quarter ever for technology revenues. This is no small feat, especially in as volatile and unpredictable a year as this.
Fundraising in 2023
March 27, 2023
Some stats came out recently about just how difficult it is to fundraise in this environment, particularly for Series Bs. Historically, Series Bs have always been the most challenging as companies at this stage are moving beyond product market fit and for the first time are using the new growth capital to scale the business.
Divide and conquer
March 20, 2023
This past week, across continents, across time zones, across teams, we came together to solve the many different challenges and problems thrown our way. Over the last weekend, we put ourselves out there as a viable bridge financing platform for startups staring down a situation where their operating company cash was trapped at SVB.
An update on the news this weekend
March 13, 2023
It's certainly been a hectic last few days so I wanted to share our weekly team email with you earlier than the usual at 8AM on Monday mornings. It was an almost unbelievable week but not in the conventional sense of the word. In what felt like shades of 08/09, we had the second largest failure of a bank in US history when Silicon Valley Bank shuttered its doors on Friday.
Strong starts to the year
March 6, 2023
Another month in the books and another month of further validation of the diversity of revenue streams we have at our disposal. Revenue came in at [ ] and more importantly, we had initially forecasted a [ ]d increase month over month from Jan to Feb in terms of revenue and we were still able to meet these lofty targets. As a result, we're coming in ahead of our YTD forecast of $[ ]K in revenue by [%, the first time we've ever been able to meet and exceed targets on a consistent basis.
Investors, investors, investors
February 27, 2023
It’s going to be a busy week as our team is dividing and conquering several conferences and events in Park City, Las Vegas, and San Francisco. The theme for all three is driven entirely by our search for capital from investors, particularly those Qualified Purchasers we had mentioned in the last all hands.
Firing on all cylinders
February 21, 2023
There's certain weeks where everything just seems to be humming and this past week was most definitely one of them. Everything was in sync (even with some mini crises along the way) and we managed to have a few chips fall our way as well.
Breaking down the month of January
February 13, 2023
Ahead of our board meeting on Tuesday and the subsequent all-hands on Thursday, I thought it would be helpful to recap our results in January as the board is keen to track every single metric we're measuring ourselves against.
Breaking down our January financial results and it's a tale of two narratives. On the one hand, we missed on Borrower Platform Fees as deals from existing borrowers we underwrite were downsized more than we had anticipated and we also predicted we would be able to ramp up our new higher fee structure faster than we actually were able to.
Validation from all corners of the market
February 6, 2023
We’ve officially kicked off the conference season in 2023 as we made our way down to Miami for the iConnections Global Alts conference for family offices and other institutional investors. This is a fairly unique conference as there are two sides of our market in attendance - investors looking for debt opportunities and also underwriters / credit funds who manage debt funds and are looking for capital but also have opportunities to underwrite against.
Setting the tone for the year
January 30, 2023
Nothing like starting the year off right! As we've been driving the point home consistently over the past few weeks, this year is all about hitting and exceeding our numbers in a year where most companies will struggle to make their projections. Thanks to everyone's efforts this month, we're going to come in at a forecasted [ ] in revenue compared to our initial projection of [ ]. This is the first time we've actually exceeded our projected revenues in a given month in over half a year and it's been a long time coming.
The industry benchmark
January 23, 2023
It's funny how the world works sometimes. For those who don't know, when we first started we were actually a blockchain company, touting the future of private credit and securitization on chain. We were doing "real world assets" as the crypto/blockchain community likes to call it, before it was in vogue. Fast forward a few years later, we've shied away from that vision for many reasons, most notably of which is that the blockchain really can't help that much with the securitization process as it exists today.
The model is working
January 17, 2023
With the imminent close of [ ] this week which was underwritten by [ ], we have our first ever deal that’s closing with an underwriter who's signed on to our new master services agreement with the latest fee schedule, as we mapped it out in the all-hands last week. This one could not have gone any better - the [ ] team was eager to get going, [ ] is a well funded venture backed company, and the webinar roadshow we did to market the deal was extremely well attended.