Village Capital Investments Announced
Last week, we mentioned our involvement as an equity sponsor of the 2015 Village Capital FinTech Cohort. We pre-committed $50,000 to the top-two peer selected companies within the cohort, and we are excited to announce the companies selected were Quotanda and Student Loan Genius.
The final workshop took place in San Francisco, with sessions on product demonstration, sales pipeline development, and capturing impact metrics. The companies also took the “hot seat” where others in the cohort had time to ask questions and evaluate company progress.
We pre-committed $50,000 to the top-two peer selected companies within the cohort.
Additionally, the cohort companies held mock board meetings with leaders within the financial technology space. Representatives from PayPal, Ebay, Bank of America, Silicon Valley Bank, and many others offered guidance and strategic introductions to help cohort companies address current challenges. We at Access Ventures took this opportunity to get to know the companies in greater detail and begin to develop relationships with our new potential partners. Below is a list of companies participating in the cohort:
Crediyo is a transparent, user-friendly billing system that solves cash flow issues and improves patient access. Crediyo creates loan products for patients to make healthcare more affordable and pays providers immediately on behalf of the patient.
Indivisible is a small and medium enterprise lending company that uses smart algorithms on company’s financial software and a percentage-of-sales loan structure to create a faster, simpler, and more flexible lending platform.
LiveWire provides financial professionals with cloud-based practice management tools and marketplace platform to acquire new clients and earn commission by referring clients to other professionals.
PayJoy is a consumer finance company starting with smartphones for the underbanked in the US. Its unique locking technology reduces defaults and enables fair interest rates.
PYT Funds is a financial technology platform that combines crowdfunding and traditional banking institutions to lower the risk profile of prospective borrowers and thus be more attractive to a traditional private student loan lender.
Quotanda is a Lending-as-a-Service (LaaS) platform enables Universities and Banks to launch student-financing programs, white-label or branded, to make education more affordable.
RemitRight is a real-time quality-comparison platform for international money transfers focused on immigrants living in the US.
Student Loan Genius is a platform that allows employers to match contributions in a 401(k) format to help reduce their employees’ student debt.
Sweep is a mobile app that helps you get ahead of your bills, expenses and savings goals so you never have to budget again. Unlike other finance apps, Sweep gives you a complete, forward looking view into your cash flow and makes it easy to take control of your money, grow savings and spend confidently.
Waleteros is a mobile banking solution for the U.S. unbanked Latino consumers enabling them to cash their checks conveniently, send P2P payments and manage their money safely.
The workshop concluded with a venture forum in which fintech investors had the opportunity to meet the cohort companies as well as hear their pitch from the main stage. Each company had five minutes to present their company and another five minutes to answer questions from a panel of investors.
The final step within the cohort program was the peer-selection ranking, which determines where the pre-committed equity capital is invested. Each cohort company ranks the other teams based on:
- Team
- Product
- Customer validation
- Financials
- Scale and impact
- Return of capital
The cohort was comprised of very impressive companies, many of which already receiving seed funding. The final ranking was close, but of course someone had to win. The top-two cohort companies were Quotanda and Student Loan Genius. Access Ventures will invest $25,000 into each company as a part of their current capital raising efforts. Congratulations to these two companies and every company that participated over the past three months!
