Vestigo Ventures Closes Second Fund!
Growing Vestigo - Please Pardon the Commercial!
When you start a new company, there is always the expectation of success. Here we are about six years after Vestigo Ventures' launch, and I can confidently say we are a firm with staying power.
Over the years, we have built a fantastic team and network to find the best entrepreneurs and ideas in FinTech. With that being said, we are ecstatic to announce we have officially closed our second fund at 2x the size of our first fund. In addition, as our Fund I portfolio companies mature, we could not be happier to see their continued success.
As GPs in this enterprise, we are so thankful for the team's confidence to join us in our journey and the LPs who have invested in us so we can fund the future of FinTech. As for the founders, we feel grateful to be a part of their journey every day and are honored by their confidence that Vestigo can be a key partner in their development.
Regarding data, we love the creation of XPLR, which searched the Cogo Labs data to find great early-stage FinTech companies. Over the past few years, XPLR has combed through millions of domains to find the few we invested in. In addition, the insights we pull from the data have guided us to new and exciting areas in FinTech to explore.
We see so many opportunities to improve upon financial services. Significant progress is being made, but it is still very early in the venture cycle for this industry. We see many ways to improve our ecosystem and plan on being long-term players in helping make this happen.
— Mark & Dave
MIT FinTech Conference
Fireside Chat
w/ Scott Galloway, Professor at NYU, and Frazer Anderson, Principal at Vestigo Ventures
MIT FinTech Conference
With the relaxing of COVID restrictions, we are excited to begin to participate and act as thought leaders within our broader communities. On a very Boston day (aka a blizzard), members of the Vestigo team had the opportunity to participate in MIT’s student-run Fintech Conference. Our first event since the advent of omicron, it was great to not only interact with over 2,000 participants across 60 countries through a hybrid model but build deeper relationships within the MIT and Boston venture ecosystem.
Please be sure to listen to an excerpt from Frazer’s rousing fireside chat with CNN+ host and NYU Professor Scott Galloway, included in this month’s newsletter. Frazer and Scott cover topics ranging from recent public tech valuation drops and its implications within private markets, educational issues within our society, generational wealth and government policies, to managing aging and mental and physical health.
Ian led an insightful panel on Tools for Financial Inclusion in Emerging Markets, with the CEOs and executives from dLocal, Wagely, Stori, FamPay, and Grab Financial. The panel discussed barriers to Financial Inclusion and local nuances, the role of data and advances in technology that better reach and stronger business models, and the influence of government and regulations.
Lastly, I had the distinct honor to serve as one of the judges of the MIT Fintech startup competition, in which the top 8 finalists pitched their early-stage startup for a $30,000 prize. Having previously won the MIT Fintech competition, it was incredibly cool to come full circle and hear these passionate entrepreneurs share their ideas. Money254, a Kenyan start-up aspiring to be Africa’s Credit Karma, ultimately won.
The team is excited for the broader networking and start-up opportunities that in-person events can bring. We are excited to begin traveling as we put the pandemic behind us.
- Kelly Shaw
What Is Our Process?
We have spent a great deal of time defining and honing our investment process as a team. We are constantly asking ourselves the following questions: What are we looking for in a start-up? What is interesting to us? How do we find early-stage companies? What can we discover in the data from Cogo Labs to provide insights and facts on the environment?
I thought it would be great to share some critical attributes we analyze with our readers.
- It's all about the team. Are they serial founders? Where did they attend school? How do they interact?
- Alignment - Are the founders and Vestigo aligned around creating unicorns? Businesses that can do $100 million in revenues are rare, but that is our task - find them and back them.
- Adjust investment levels - While we want 10% of the company to start, we can choose to add more capital based on the business's performance. In Fund II, we can put $5 million to work per company, but some will not work out as planned. Taking that capital and putting it to one getting traction is a way to amplify returns.
- Be engaged - No matter the outcome at a start-up we have backed, we are with them to the end to achieve the most successful result possible. This is as much about coaching as it is about capital.
- Help all entrepreneurs no matter our outcome on investing in them. We turn down the vast majority of the businesses we see. However, we want to be sure we give the founder as much feedback as possible to help them succeed. If we think they need to attack a different market, we say so. We tell them if they are entering a crowded field and do not realize it. At Vestigo, we believe that honest feedback is a gift.
We also make sure we have discipline as we evaluate a prospective investment. If we dig in, all of our investors meet the team, review the data room, and ask questions about the business. This way, we bring our entire team to provide the best perspective and insight.
When it comes to the startup founders, Dave and I are intimately involved, especially in assessing talent. We rely on the team to dig but then spend time with them to add our experiences and perspective. This is perhaps the most interesting part of what we do as the GPs.
While we do not always get it right when we invest, we know a great investment process will result in an excellent outcome for our LPs.
- Mark Casady
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