Meet the new FVS cohort

This week we announced our newest round of Studio investments. We spent last winter scouring the country for fresh innovations in fintech and were thrilled to find so many strong teams building revolutionary approaches to financial services. After meeting hundreds of founders and teams, we are proud to have partnered with six new firms with the potential to redefine financial services.

We had just begun our formal post-investment process of introducing these founders to our network of potential partners, regulators, investors, digital influencers and founders when the COVID-19 crisis struck. Apart from the extreme healthcare crisis the virus has wrought, the associated economic fallout has only reaffirmed our belief that investing in consumer and small business fintech is both necessary and valuable. The crisis has not only exposed the fragility of most Americans’ financial lives; it has also made clear the significant limitations in how our banking system supports businesses and consumers in times of crisis.

This pandemic has only reinforced our conviction about our most recent cohort of investments, as this group of founders has quickly risen to the challenges presented by their customers and the market:

• Anvil, a platform for automating document-based processes, built a PPP loan application tool that is allowing small banks to keep up with the incredible demands of small business borrowers;
• Agentero has seen record growth as it helps independent insurance agents work in a fully digital environment while meeting the increasingly urgent needs of consumers;
• Copilot is helping Americans from across the economic spectrum to better understand and manage their financial lives;
• NestEgg built a solution to help small landlords be better positioned to support financially struggling tenants so they can remain in their homes;
• Finally, the troubled rollout of PPP has demonstrated the importance of Zaam’s solution to help financial institutions quickly onboard and better serve small businesses, and why we need innovative new entrants like Reserve Trust to bring efficiency and scalable technology into the banking and payments industries.

These six companies join a family of investments that has grown to include 25 of the most innovative fintech companies in the country since we founded FVS in mid-2018.

We’re thrilled to see the innovations these firms are bringing to the market, and it’s clear that other investors recognize the value as well. Of the 12 pre-seed and seed-stage firms that have received investment by FVS since our inception, nine have gone on to raise subsequent institutional rounds and one of them, Sheltr, has been acquired.

If you’d like to know more about any of the new firms in this cohort, more about how companies in our portfolio are helping Americans through this crisis, or are looking for a new role, please reach out.