#469
Entering The 2nd Decade Of FinTech Collective!

Highlights From the Year

Portfolio

• +2 Exits: Dharma to Opensea, NextCapital to Goldman Sachs
• +7 new investments from the Fintech strategy
• +10 new investments from the DeFi strategy
• +5 new investments from Opportunity Fund
• +14 follow-on financings in which FTC participated

Funds

• Raised our first Opportunity Fund, a limited capacity vehicle investing in follow-on rounds of existing companies. The fund has made five investments so far: Anyfin, Extend, IMMO, Ocrolus, and Vestwell.
• First close on DeFi Fund II.

Team

• 3 New FT Associates: Kate Wang, Samantha Wulfson and Zein Dayekh
• 2 Summer Interns: Hired 2 MBA interns for 10 weeks from Wharton and HBS
• VC Bootcamp: Welcomed 6 current college students from around the world at the beginning of the summer for an immersive experience covering all things VC and fintech

Annual Meeting

• We hosted our 10th(!) Annual Meeting of CEOs and LPs at the Wythe in Brooklyn, with over 150 people in attendance. Dr Kevin Fong returned as our special guest speaker, and did not disappoint. We have made available a recording of Kevin’s talk here (pw: Kevin_Fong2022)

New Additions to the Core Portfolio in 2022

CapIntel is creating the advisor orchestration layer for the next generation of wealth management. Link

Daisy is creating a new property management standard for residential buildings. Link

Mattilda is building the financial hub for private schools in Latin America. Link

Orda is driving the digitization of the African restaurant industry. Link

Pemo is streamlining expense management for the 23m underserved SMEs in MENAP. Link

Sabi is creating a B2B marketplace with embedded finance to empower Africa's informal economy. Link

Ziina is bringing the next generation of financial services to the Middle East. Link

New Additions to the DeFi Portfolio in 2022

Fuel (equity) is a no code platform enabling any creator to spin up their own ‘Shopify for NFTs’. Fuel aims to provide a full end-to-end solution that allows creators to easily stand-up NFT storefronts, engage with fans and customers in new ways, manage distribution and custody, and more. Link

GoGoPool (equity) is the first permissionless and decentralized staking pool for Avalanche, built specifically for subnets. GGP significantly lowers the barrier for entry for new node operators, improving decentralization and decreasing the cost of utilizing subnets. Link

Hubble (equity) is bringing DeFi to Solana, starting with a borrowing protocol, similar to MakerDAO, where you open a crypto collateralized debt position in exchange for a USD stablecoin (USDH). Link

Immuna (equity) platform helps institutional investors manage their risks of investing in digital assets. The platform monitors and proactively defends investors’ digital asset investments in real-time, providing protection from unexpected exploits, hacks, and downtimes. Link

Lido (token) is a liquid staking solution for ETH2.0 backed by industry-leading staking providers. Lido is greatly increasing the accessibility of non-custodial staking, lowering barriers to entry by allowing anyone, with any amount of ETH, to become a validator for the Ethereum network. Link

MetaStreet (equity) is a liquidity scaling protocol for NFT credit markets - enabling trust, credit and unique ownership of digitally-native assets at scale. Link

NiftyApes (equity) is creating a first of its kind, perpetual lending auction (PLA), enabling lenders to bid on loans for any NFT in existence – even before minting and during an active loan. Borrowers are offered instant liquidity & auto refinancing, and lenders get on-demand liquidity for their assets. Link

Playgrounds (equity) Playgrounds streamlines data access for data teams & engineers, reducing the bottleneck of complexity for data access & analytics significantly. DAOs, protocols, and businesses can leverage Playgrounds to increase protocol intelligence and improve data operations. Link

Uniswap (token) is a core pillar of the DeFi ecosystem that serves critical infrastructure as the largest decentralized exchange in the world. Link

Violet (equity) is building a hybrid on/off-chain identity management protocol for DeFi; allowing wallet addresses with verified credentials to interact with DeFi protocols in a regulatory and compliant manner. Link

Most Popular Newsletters from 2022

The Dark Side of the Moon - May 2022
It is often said that crypto is on a path of speedrunning through the lessons of 100 years of modern finance. The unwind of Terra (Luna) had the unfortunate hallmarks of some of the more painful financial lessons of the past century. While a challenging stress test for the broader crypto ecosystem, the upshot of events like this week is the hope for community-wide alignment in recognizing the pitfalls in specific economic system designs and continuing to iterate and build more robust crypto incentives going forward.

Oi...Lend Us A Tenner - April 2022
As inflation rises and stimulus checks run dry, millions more Americans are borrowing money from friends and family than they were a year ago. Making up the broadest share of the borrowing pie were millennials — and although almost 40m households in the U.S. are headed by that generation, they hold just 6.4% of national wealth, as compared to their boomer counterparts, who hold over half of it. And while millennials often get a bad rap, they are, in large part, the generation who are responsible for some of the most disruptive fintech start-ups out there today that are trying to tackle the problem (globally). Keep building!

Boom! She’s Back! - July 2022
With the summer travel season upon us, flocks of tourists flood many of New York’s busiest streets from Times Square to Wall Street, entertained by the city’s many diverse attractions and cultures. But New York is also constantly evolving. While these past three years have not been easy on NYC residents, the optimism in the air is palpable and the tech scene is thriving. New York is one of the most diverse and multicultural cities in the world, and attracts talent internationally as well as across the US. It also makes New York one of the best places to test new and innovative products like this dude did on his Citi Bike this week!

Imitation Is The Highest Form Of Flattery - June 2022
The latest news on the BNPL battlefield is bound to have left the incumbents shaking in their boots. The announcement of “Apple Pay Later” brings new heights to an already saturated space, but despite being late to game, the newest threat stems from among the most formidable veterans. Having spent years working its way into the digital payments ecosystem, from tap-to-pay to the Apple credit card, Apple’s foray into the $125b BNPL market helps the giant both diversify and consolidate its foothold in the world of consumer finance.

A Bright Spot On The Horizon - May 2022
As whispers of a recessionary environment have amplified throughout our most proximate circles, the glass half full perspective has been tossed to the wayside. A few time zones away, however, Africa is enjoying a well-earned dose of optimism. The explosive success of the fintech sector on the global stage led African startups in raising $5b in funding in 2021 – more than the past seven years combined. ​​As we enter a more uncertain future, fintech companies across the continent are discovering an interesting edge.