Meet the New Team Members
Networking Success
If we have learned anything in the past year, it is all about your network and working it hard to find success. This month we want you to meet our newest team members at Vestigo. They are collectively brilliant and driven to succeed. Individually they are interesting to know and filled with great life experiences.
We wanted to make sure our focus on building a great venture capital firm in early-stage FinTech stayed consistent throughout the pandemic. We saw no reason to change our standards or slow down but rather to add processes to make the right decisions.
A key decision is about adding to our team. We are thankful that Bill, Nick, and Kelly are adding so much value to our firm. We held our first team dinner in June to celebrate the reopening of Massachusetts (Note: Ian was taking the photo above!).
We held it at Mama Maria’s, our favorite Italian spot in Boston, in the North End near Paul Revere’s house. Such amazing history to enjoy on your way in and out of the restaurant!
The funniest moment was as we gathered to toast being together and discovered our relative height. Having Zoomed for months, you miss your relative size vs. others. We have hired a rather tall group of people.
As we have nearly doubled the team, we have been working on three areas:
- Culture - How did we define it? Are we living our principles?
- Diversity & Inclusion - How do we guard against bias in our culture and our investment selection?
- Deal Sourcing - Pulling deal flow in the FinTech world and comparing it to what we choose and what we saw and learned from this data?
This has been very helpful in reaffirming what we value at Vestigo. It has also been helpful to learn more about our investment process and style. We have learned a great deal that we want to be sure our newest team members benefit from this experience.
Since the formation of Vestigo, we have seen nearly 2,000 startups as we looked to find the best in which to invest. We are essentially investing in only 1% or less of the companies we review to show some perspective to ensure we choose only the best companies/founders.
Thank you for being part of our network, and as always, we are happy to hear from you on any topic or are thrilled to meet any entrepreneurs you know if they are doing a FinTech startup.
— Mark & Dave
Vestigo in the News
Mark Casady Interviewed by RIA 40
We are pleased to see our GP, Mark Casady, interviewed by RIA 40 (page 20), where he speaks about his experiences at LPL Financial, his move to early-stage venture capital, and launching his SPAC: Lefteris.
Envisions Interview
Meet the New Team Members
w/ Nick Kim, Bill McCarran, Kelly Shaw of Vestigo Ventures
The Student Loan Crisis and How Vault Enables Employers to Address This Issue
This month, we were pleased to see Romy Parzick, CEO of Vault, featured in Voya Financials Health and Wellness podcast. In this podcast, Romy speaks about the growing student loan crises and how Vault can enable employers to address these issues by adding student loan payments as a benefit. You can find the full podcast below.
Below we include a few snippets from the podcast and hope that you enjoy its insights!
Why is student loan support from employers a crucial wellness offering?
For decades wages have been stagnating whereas, the cost of education has risen significantly. As a whole, tuition for some colleges has increased over 3x since the early 90s. Further, we see that there are 45 million Americans who are carrying a debt load of $1.7 trillion that is expected to more than double by 2027.
Do employees want student loan support as a benefit?
Of course! On average, about 70% of 4-year grads have around $40k in student loans when leaving school, and this corresponds to surveys depicting that student loan support is highly sought after, usually only behind health insurance or retirement plans.
Are there benefits for the employers who do offer student loan support?
Definitely - In many cases, student loans act as a hold on people’s lives as they wait to buy a home or start a family so that they can pay off their student loans. Therefore, as an employer aiding their employees to take their lives off hold, we have found that it leads to higher retention rates, better hiring success, and higher productivity. One example from one of our clients in the healthcare industry saw a 50% increase in retention for their nurses after adding student loan support.
What are some ways employers can offer student loan repayment assistance?
There are many ways to begin offering assistance in student loan repayment. First, employers do not necessarily need to include payment or match on the student loans. Not all businesses may be in the right financial situation to fit this into a budget. However, with Vault, employers could offer advice or guidance on navigating the complex student loan landscape. For example, student loans are issued each semester, leading to 4-year grads having 8-10 different loans with various interest rates leaving fresh graduates with a portfolio of complex loans. In this case, Vault can provide technology to help optimize and advise these new professionals on navigating their student loan debt.
New Portfolio Company
We are very excited to announce our newest investment in the checkout space. Acquire is developing a fully branded checkout experience that enables e-commerce to meet their customers where they are.
Portfolio Updates
Wagmo Raises $12.5 Million Series A Round
We are excited to announce that Wagmo has closed a $12.5 million Series A round led by Revolution Ventures. Wagmo continues to impress us all at Vestigo, and we look forward to their continued success.
Jordan Crook
CEO of ZenLedger Talks About Government Regulations for Cryptocurrencies
Pat Larsen, CEO of ZenLedger, speaks about how or if governments will have the ability to regulate cryptocurrencies.
Riley Adams
Interesting Reads
Karen Hao
Rich McGhee
Expert Panel
Apply to One of Our Portfolio Companies!
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