SAN FRANCISCO, March 23, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Restive Ventures, the country’s premier seed-stage fintech venture capital firm, today announced the nine companies that will be making up their seventh cohort of investments. Restive brings a unique approach to venture investing that combines early capital with a structured fintech program designed to help early-stage companies navigate critical elements of the financial services industry and quickly scale.
“Our goal has always been the same: to provide early stage founders with real, useful, tangible support,” says Ryan Falvey, Managing Partner & Co-Founder of Restive. “Our unique engagement model has been a foundational pillar of the fund for the past five years, and has helped facilitate the success of our previous cohorts of early stage companies. Despite the broader pull back in venture and the disruptions from the traditional banking system, we continue to stick to our strategy of investing in the best early stage fintech companies. We’re very excited about this group of founders, and we remain committed to supporting them as they change the world of financial services for the better.”
The Spring 2023 Cohort of New Companies includes:
AiPrise is building a compliance solution for any company with global ambitions. AiPrise offers a one stop solution with pre-integrated identity verification and fraud detection APIs in markets around the world. Users are able to integrate with AiPrise and then select from numerous top-tier providers to manage and customize their identity verification stack. AiPrise is led by co-founders, Chaitanya Sarda and Rushabh Shah. Sarda was previously a software engineer at Google on the Trust and Safety team focused on fraud prevention. Shah was previously a software engineer at Facebook where he piloted the use of machine learning classifiers to identify top user pain points which are now in use by 28 Facebook app product teams.
Allset is a digital invoice and payment platform designed for small business owners who use invoices as their primary payment method. Their software allows small businesses to send an invoice and get paid out through a text message, along with tools to understand performance and outstanding invoices. Allset is led by founder and CEO, Justin Clegg, who co-founded three previous startups and was formerly in product and marketing roles at Intel, Oracle, and Adobe.
Atlas is a payroll powered credit card to help people access and improve their credit. Users apply and if approved select a spending limit within their budget with 0% APR. Atlas reports on time payments to the credit bureaus and provides customers with money saving deals. Atlas is led by co-founder and CEO, Zane Salim. Prior to starting Atlas, Zane led two companies, GoShip, and Fibo and held product and growth leader roles at Facebook, Thumbtack, Twitter, and others. Vetri Balaji is also co-founder of Atlas. Previously he was at Facebook as a Staff Software Engineer for nearly a decade and Amazon.
Blue Studios builds financial tools to enable families to work together, earn, and learn to reach new levels of success, starting with their flagship product Wallio. Wallio is a family-shared wallet that allows you to invite up to six friends and family members to plan, organize, and manage their banking and assets together. Led by co-founders Kelley Cambry (CEO) and Emile Cambry (COO), Kelley is a third-generation entrepreneur—on both sides of her family—who has been in the fintech and computer science industry for over 10 years. Kelley spent time at Discover Card in Growth, and as Assistant VP of Digital and Product Manager for companies like American Express and J.P. Morgan Chase. Emile worked as Investment Banker in the Global Currency and Commodity Group at J.P. Morgan Chase.
Chargeback helps users cancel, refund, and dispute purchases from merchants. It also helps users locate subscriptions they may have forgotten about and track their spending. Led by co-founders Alek Matthiessen and Zachary Shakked, Alek was formerly the Head of Growth for Speechify and a product manager for Snap Inc. Zachary previously founded Hashtag Expert, a suite of apps that help small businesses, influencers, and anyone looking to grow their social media presence. He holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Stevens Institute of Technology.
Diesta is an insurance reconciliation and distribution platform that uses automation to lower admin expenses, increase the speed of payment processing and provide users data on their payments and business. The UK based company is led by co-founder and CEO, Julian Schoemig, who has spent his career working at insurance firms in underwriting and strategy in the UK, Germany, and the US.
OnOrder is a B2B order and sales platform for suppliers and distributors. Customers are able to place an order, receive confirmation, and pay from a single source. Suppliers and distributors are able to make adjustments and track payments while getting paid automatically. OnOrder is led by founder and CEO, Gilad Rom. Gilad is formerly the Chief Strategy Officer of Clearco, and previously spent years in product and financial services marketing at Shopify and Google.
Prospect Ratings is democratizing knowledge of private companies, allowing prospective employees to develop an informed perspective on the value of various equity packages. Ultimately, the founder’s vision is to create an industry-spanning network of connections and knowledge, bringing the elite-network-driven services provided by the best venture capital firms to everyone. It is led by Billy Gallagher, an early Rippling employee.
Qipt is the digital-first payment rails for equipment finance, leveraging cutting edge technology and AI to power real-time installment payments at point of sale. For B2B merchants that sell capital equipment, payments are a huge source of friction as these items are often too expensive to conveniently finance with a credit card, and businesses don’t want to deplete their working capital or overload their lines of credit. With Qipt, merchants can offer their customers real-time visibility into monthly pricing, a seamless onboarding process, and an integrated payments solution, leading to quicker time-to-purchase, increased conversion, and higher order value. Qipt is led by Le’ora Lichtenstein, co-founder and CEO, a career investor turned entrepreneur.
This marks Restive’s seventh class of startups since its launch in 2018. Over the past 5 years, they have invested $25M into industry-changing companies. Those companies have gone on to raise nearly over $500m in follow-on capital and represent some of the most dynamic startups in fintech. To learn more about Restive and their portfolio companies, please visit https://www.restive.com.
About Restive
Restive is on a mission to help entrepreneurs build the world’s best fintech companies. Restive Ventures (formerly Financial Venture Studio) partners with early founders who have an unrelenting vision to improve fintech and build world-changing companies. The team provides a foundation of early-stage capital, deep operational expertise, and systematic connections to help founders launch and grow more quickly. Learn more at https://www.restive.com or follow Twitter and LinkedIn.
Contact:
Kathy Osborne
P: 607-434-2054
press@restive.com
