We are looking forward to Money2020 this year in Las Vegas.  Maybe not the spot we would pick but what a great gathering of many FinTech influencers.

We appreciated the great turnout for our first post fund closing LP’s meeting.  With 70 in the audience, we got great feedback and good connections made between our portfolio companies and our investors.  Thanks to Nutter, our law firm, for providing the space for our meetings.

What a great surprise!  We appreciate the recognition of NASDAQ on our fund closing on their Times Square billboard.

We have been studying blockchain and crypto/digital assets in depth.  We see so many talented people coming into the space that it makes us hopeful for breakthroughs in applications using these tools.  We are looking into ways to monetize our learning.

—Dave & Mark

Our Limited Partners Gather

Our portfolio company CEO’s did an amazing job explaining their company’s advantage to our LP’s in two panels for the event.  Their dedication to their mission and their absolute belief in the market opportunities they are seeing is infectious.  It is one reason why I was so excited to establish Vestigo Ventures.  We appreciate all they did to show what great leader’s they are for their company.  We are privileged to provide capital and our network to them.

Dave and I opened with an overview of what we have learned about deal flow, teams, and new technologies.  We discussed how important it is for our Vestigo team to evaluate and find the best ideas to fund.  We are seeing about eight deals a week from our network plus an additional five a month from our Cogo Labs data.
We discussed how the leadership of the start-up interacts.  What culture are they trying to build?  Are they so connected that they even know their co-leaders dog’s name?  That deep connection helps teams in times of stress keep their focus as well as belief in each other.

Finally, we covered new technologies that we are seeing in action.  There are smart applications of AI.  There are the beginnings of applications/protocols in blockchain that are interesting.  These are not quite there yet but emerging.  The belief that digital assets will come to define an alternative asset class is starting to take hold.  Hedge funds are trading actively additionally many institutions are investigating the space.

Ian and Mike did a great job discussing deal flow, funding levels, and valuation.  We are balancing the portfolio among our four core themes:  markets, operations, worksite and wealth management.

They also unveiled XPLR.  This is our proprietary algorithm to find FinTech companies that are going viral. We can investigate them further and potentially take a stake in them.. This is thanks to the work of Frazer and Farrah.

We appreciate our Limited Partner’s belief in our early-stage focus and in FinTech.  We are working hard to find and fund the best companies to help bring change to financial services.

-Mark

And Then There Were Nine-Welcome to ZenLedger

ZenLedger, the No. 1 tax software for cryptocurrency investors and their accountants, is now part of the Vestigo portfolio.  We lead a $1.5 million round with Castle Island Ventures as a co-investor.

ZenLedger is lead by Pat Larsen as its CEO.  Pat is a US Air Force Academy graduate and former Navy helicopter mission commander.  More recently, he was an Amazon business manager with a $100 million p&l.

The co-founder of the firm and CTO is Bryan Starbuck.  He is a serial entrepreneur and CTO with two of his startups acquired.  He is also an early crypto investor.
They are joined by Drew Nordstrom, President, and Saqib Rasool who is the CRO.  Drew has many years of startup investing experience while Saqib brings his business development skills from Microsoft.

They see an opportunity to provide CPA’s and crypto-asset investors with a smart way to report their gains and losses to the IRS.  It is clear that these are taxable events that need to be reported.

They are seeing early traction from their target audience.  They will push hard to partner with exchanges to provide their services to their customer base.

Check out a recent blog by Pat Larsen here.

Boston FinTech Week-Sold Out!

The number of events tripled this year for the second FinTech week in town.  Mark was on a panel discussing the DNA of Boston’s FinTech scene.  They covered ways that startups can be successful.  There was a good review of how start-ups are helping incumbents innovate.  Jim Urquhart of Bowdoin Group convened the panel to kick off the week at the DCU FinTech Innovation Center.

Check out the panel here.

Both of us led events later in the week.  Two of them were:

1. Coffee with Venture firms and FinTech Professionals
   1. This was a sold out session.  Ian led two separate groups to share perspectives and answer questions from entrepreneurs and financial services leaders.
2. Insurance technology:
   1. This was an experienced panel including: Mike Kryza- Vice President, Business Development at the Guardian Life Insurance Company of America, Jim Gow- Vice President, Head of Innovation, at MAPFRE Insurance, Sam Das, Principal, CMFG Ventures, LLC, CUNA Mutual Insurance, and Dan Hurwitz- CRO, at TowerIQ.  The discussion was around four areas: Greatest areas of opportunity, Major trends today, Internal innovation Vs. external opportunities, Perceptions vs. the reality of the insurance industry.

Vestigo partnered with WPI to sponsor Universities and Innovation Life Cycles.  The panel included both local university leaders as well as entrepreneurs who founded their companies while in school with two companies tackling the $1.5 trillion student loan problem.

FinTech week keeps us in front of the growing Boston startup community and helps us build relationships globally.

-Mike & Ian

Oracle Pushes FinTech in NYC and Boston
It was a productive week with Mark able to co-MC an event with Oracle that brought together over a dozen leaders to discuss their views for startups and incumbents.  This is part of Oracle’s push into this sector.  They are focusing on bringing a family of FinTech startups to the market in partnership with their cloud services customers. 
                            
We are working to gain access for some of our portfolio companies.  

Great News From the IRS

Student Loan Genius is ready for the new demand that may come from a recent private letter ruling on the use of benefits payments.

New CFO For Vestmark

Mark Donohue joins the team to lead the finance effort.  He joined from Rapid7 and loves high growth companies.

LifeYield Integrates For Advisor Opportunities

              
SS&C’s Black Diamond, which is a key player in the advisor technology business, has integrated the Taxficient Score into their wealth management platform.