Global fintech venture capital firm providing the best advice in financial technology. 200+ investments and 28 unicorns, including
@creditkarma
@nubank
@kavakmx
🚨🚨
We are humbled, fortunate and excited to share that we have closed $925 million in new funds - Fund VIII and Growth II - that will allow us to invest in the best
#fintech
companies globally.
Thanks
@business
and
@Katie_Roof
for covering our story.
Huge congratulations to QED portfolio company
@nubank
, officially the most valuable neobank on the planet.
We couldn't be more excited for
@velez_david
,
@junqueira_cris
and the entire Nubank team.
Nubank was QED's first LatAm investment in 2014 when we joined their Series A.
We're excited to announce two new hires to the QED Investors team as we expand our global footprint into Africa.
Please join us in welcoming Gbenga Ajayi and Chidinma Iwueke.
Read more:
Join us in congratulating co-founders Frank Rotman and Nigel Morris on being named to
@Forbes
' annual Midas List.
The Midas List recognizes the Top 100 investors across the world.
Frank has been on the list every year since 2018; Nigel since 2021.
We're delighted to share that Nigel Morris and Frank Rotman have been named to
@Forbes
' Midas List of the Top 100 investors worldwide.
Frank (
#45
) appears on the list for the fifth consecutive year. Nigel (
#54
) is recognized for the second year in a row.
🚨NEW FUND🚨
We're incredibly excited to announce our new $12 million network-driven fund—Fontes—dedicated to seed and pre-seed fintech investment in Latin America.
🧵👇
Market conditions are putting stress on how much
capital LPs can allocate to VC firms.
The best firms are demanding greater allocations from LPs given their performance which further strains capital availability.
Is your VC in a stable point or is it in a death spiral?
🚨🇳🇬🇳🇬🇳🇬🇳🇬🚨
We are incredibly excited to announce our first-ever investment in Africa.
@TeamAptHQ
is Nigeria's largest business payments platform, supporting more than 400,000 businesses.
The opportunity to democratize access to financial services in Nigeria is mind-blowing.
QED Founding Partner Frank Rotman, formerly head of domestic investments, will take on an expanded role as chief investment officer.
Bill Cilluffo is elevated from head of international investments to lead QED’s early-stage investments globally.
In the U.S. today there are:
20,000 LPs allocating capital to
42,000 VCs, PE firms and angels funding
126,000 private companies.
It is a giant many-to-many-to-many matching problem of LPs looking to match with VCs and of VCs looking to match with founders.
🚨🚨
Big fundraising news out of Canada today as QED leads
#bitcoin
technology company
@Shakepay
's $44 million CAD Series A round.
Shakepay surpassed $6 billion in total volume in 2021, growing 381 percent to more than 900,000 customers across Canada.
Monday: Led
@Payhawk
's $20 million Series A 🇧🇬✅
Tuesday: Led Hash's $15 million Series B. 🇧🇷✅
Wednesday: Led
@TribalCredit
's $34.3 million Series A and debt round. 🇺🇸✅
Today seems ... quiet.
Just kidding, we're busier than ever. Tag a founder who'd love to work with us.
A busy Wednesday at QED for announcements and content:
Led $40 million Series A in Zubale🇲🇽
Led $31 million Series B in Financepeer 🇮🇳
Invested in $5 million pre-seed in Morado 🇨🇴
Invested in $2.5 million pre-seed in Superjoi 🇺🇸
Congratulations to the QED portfolio companies that have been selected as finalists in the
@LendIt
Fintech Industry Awards.
Now in its fifth year, the LendIt Fintech Industry Awards recognize the fintech leaders who have done the most outstanding work in the past year.
“Vertical banking is about focusing on the 6-7 products that a specific customer, such as a landlord, actually needs… Being world-class in 6 or 7 products—that’s a solvable problem” –
@fintechjunkie
on our portfolio company
@zibo_inc
@mdharrisnyc
@pitdesi
@iamjakestream
@maiab
We’re probably biased, but how about Nigel Morris? Co-founded Capital One and QED Investors.
Maybe the only person to create a top-10 bank and a top global VC from scratch.
🚨We're hiring🚨
QED is looking for a principal to be based in São Paulo.
The successful candidate will help build our
#LatAm
presence in Brazil from Day 1, driving pipeline for new investments, meeting local founders and representing the QED brand 🇧🇷🚀
We're thrilled to announce our investment in Miami-based
@QuickNode
which today raised a $60 million Series B round to build infrastructure to support the future of Web3.
We can't wait to work with
@10TFund
,
@Tigercapital
and
@sevensevensix
.
We are very excited to announce to the world that Bitso has closed its Series B round. Two of the most important VC funds in the world (QED & Kaszek) have decided to bet and invest in the crypto space for the first time. 🚀
We're excited to announce that QED co-founders Nigel Morris and Frank Rotman are named to
@Forbes
' 2021
#MidasList
.
A wonderful achievement for Nigel, a newcomer to the list, and Frank, who makes his fourth-consecutive appearance among VC royalty.
Looking back on a memorable 2021, here's QED's year in numbers, including:
37 new investments to the portfolio
5 new members to the team
Markups of $1.9 billion
An AUM increase to $4.6 billion
5 portfolio company IPOs
QED Investors backed 15 unicorns in its first 13 years, a remarkable feat for what started as a family office.
Today,
@Amountdotcom
became the 19th unicorn in the QED portfolio -- and the fourth in the past eight weeks, joining
@current
,
@signifyd
and
@Bitso
.
#fintech
🦄🦄
Where are we in
#fintech
's journey?
Are we in Chapter 2, where the story is just beginning and the most interesting narrative is still to be written?
Or are we closer to Chapter 8, where nearly all of the tale has been told and only the epilogue remains?
A thread 👇
ICYMI: We announced our first-ever investment in Africa today.
Make that 15 different countries across five continents.
🇺🇸
🇬🇧
🇸🇪
🇮🇪
🇧🇷
🇲🇽
🇨🇭
🇨🇦
🇵🇪
🇨🇴
🇦🇷
🇨🇱
🇧🇬
🇮🇳
🇳🇬
QED is truly 🌎
If you’re a
#fintech
entrepreneur solving a big, real problem, come talk with us.
Nigerian fintech
@TeamAptHQ
raises $50M+ from
@QEDInvestors
, a global fintech-focused venture capital firm and other existing investors.
It is QED’s first check in Africa after announcing its plan to focus on the continent this January.
We're thrilled to lead
@nuvocargo
's $12 million Series A.
“After ... seeing the connection points and parallels between what we were looking at in e-commerce and the challenges of actually getting goods across border, the fintech spark went off in my head,” said
@LaurenConnolley
It’s official. We're so proud and excited to announce that we've raised a $12M Series A funding round to continue simplifying trade across the Americas! 🚀
Explore open positions:
Check the full story here
@TechCrunch
:
Another groundbreaking move from
@current
, which has launched a new high-yield offering called “Interest” that allows any Current account holder to earn a 4.00% Annual Percentage Yield (APY) — a rate that’s 60x higher than the national average.
🚨Promotion News🚨
We're thrilled to announce that Laura Bock has been promoted to partner.
Laura is on the board of
@spinwheelio
and
@Decent
and she is a board observer at Trellis,
@WildfireSystems
and Easy Health.
Great to see QED Founding Partner
@fintechjunkie
hit 20k followers here today.
Some of the best insights, knowledge and commentary in VC today. His feed could be part of an MBA syllabus. Follow him and see for yourself.
A big thank you to
@Fintechnexus
and Chairman Peter Renton for the fireside chat with Chief Investment Officer Frank Rotman (
@fintechjunkie
) about the structural flaw in today's VC ecosystem.
If you don't already, follow Frank on Twitter for more world-class insights.
What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.
Unless you’re talking about the insights that Managing Partner Nigel Morris and U.S. Senator Mark Warner will drop on the
@money2020
stage this afternoon.
📍Lido stage
⌚️3:20pm
#Money2020
starts NOW.
Hooman and
@CollectiveFin
continue to make it easier than ever to help self-employed founders and solopreneurs access world-class financial help and advice from one back-office digital platform. Huge congrats on your $20 million Series A.
#BusinessOfOne
In a paper to be presented
@Fintechnexus
on May 26,
@fintechjunkie
says there are four types of VCs in a stable position.
1. Scaled VCs
2. Funds investing in non-obvious, non-derisked businesses
3. Late-stage generalists
4. Solo capitalists
🏆Achievement unlocked!🏆
In celebration of
@fintechjunkie
's 100th tweet storm, we've built out a page where you can view all of his threads in one place and download any of them as PDFs for easy sharing.
The solo capitalist allows for the LPs to be active members of a community. By only accepting small checks, solo capitalists create opportunities for
individual investors and small LPs to invest in the VC asset class.
Our first investment in Africa has received a lot of attention this week.
Thanks to
@bayareawriter
for inclusion in today’s edition of The Interchange.
We’re excited to invest in Nigeria’s
@TeamAptHQ
and we promise more great
#fintech
portfolio companies are on their way.
We're excited to announce Current and
@MrBeast
's long-term, exclusive partnership and investment, which allows for a commitment to building integrating products together and will give MrBeast a new platform to create content and give back to more people.
QED is thrilled to continue investing in Indian earned wage access portfolio company
@Refyne_India
, which today announced it has raised $82 million in new funding led by Tiger Global.
ICYMI: With our new $925 million
#fintech
funds, we will remain diligent, intentional and disciplined about the pace of our investments.
Thanks
@bayareawriter
for the Q&A with our managing partner Nigel Morris.
@TechCrunch
The beauty salon industry in
#LatAm
has largely not adopted digital tools over the past 40 years, according to Morado CEO Angela Maria Acosta
That's about to change.
QED is bullish on what Angela Maria is building and we couldn't be happier to invest in Morado's pre-seed round.
18 active
@QEDInvestors
portfolio companies, including seven of the 13 businesses from LatAm, are named to
@CBinsights
' list of top 250 fintech companies of 2021.
Huge congratulations to each and every one of you. We're excited to see what comes next.
The collapse of SVB and the ripple it caused across the banking sector has reminded people about the need for sound treasury management and financial hygiene.
Here's our "Treasury Management 101" deck with our Top 5 actionable insights.
Download the deck
QED Partner and Head of Europe Yusuf Ozdalga (
@yusufozdalga
) shares why he's excited about three key
#fintech
themes:
1⃣ Embedded finance
2⃣ Back-office automation
3⃣ Cross-border payments
Full video:
We're excited to announce our investment co-leading Mottu's $50 million Series C.
Mottu is a motorcycle rental company focused on enabling income generation for hard-working delivery gig workers while also building the power grid for LatAm's last-mile.🏍️
Welcome to
@Bicyclevc
.
Great sessions at our 2023 Fintech Demo Day either side of lunch today, including
@JoinMeow
CEO Brandon Arvanaghi,
@Coru_mx
CEO Fernando Gonzalez and
@ntropy_dev
CEO Naré Vardanyan.
🚨New video on the QED website🚨
@startsummering
CEO Paul Kromidas (
@PaulKromidas
) and
@wander
CEO John Andrew Entwistle (
@jaentwistle
) discuss the future of proptech and how their startups are set to transform short-term rentals.
QED's Chief Investment Officer
@fintechjunkie
shares an updated framework for how to think about market corrections.
Two key takeaways to keep in mind:
1. Absolute ownership of an asset is fixed.
2. Value creation takes time.
Market corrections happen😱. This one happens to be brutal because there doesn’t appear to be anywhere to hide.
I thought I’d share an updated version of my “investor’s framework” for how to think about corrections and how to navigate the choppy waters.🧵👇
We had a great time at
@HarvardHBS
with Professor Rodriguez and his Global Entrepreneurship class to talk through the latest HBS case study surrounding QED’s decision to enter Africa.
Chief Investment Officer Frank Rotman (
@fintechjunkie
) breaks down what banks *actually* do and why they do it.
Here's a primer on maturity transformation, leverage and regulatory requirements from QED's co-founder and the first credit risk officer at Capital One.
Every business has a core function. Some businesses make athletic shoes while others make wide screen televisions.
What’s become clear over the past week is that many people don’t understand what Banks actually do.
A simplified explanation if you're interested:🧵👇
BaaS providers sit between consumer apps and “real banks” and do what many banks struggle to do: provide portable, pluggable banking services where consumers need and want them the most.
Read about the impact it will have on the future of embedded finance
IPO momentum is building back up. While it’s important not to get caught in the hype, any IPO is a positive sign for the market given where the market has come from. More from
@mikepacker_QED
on
@theventurenews
.
Based on the feedback of 1,077 venture-backed founders, we're excited to climb to No. 13 on the Founder's Choice VC Leaderboard.
Let's crack the Top 10 this summer.
To learn more about QED and to see our portfolio, visit
🚨Podcast alert🚨
QED Founding Partner
@fintechjunkie
joined
@HarryStebbings
on
@twentyminutevc
to discuss the state of fintech.
It's a *must-listen* that tackles valuations, clarity of thought and having tough conversations with founders.
Nigel Morris, who co-founded Capital One and later co-founded QED Investors, shared an insight into transforming a regional bank into a credit card juggernaut.
This is from Episode 1 of a three-part podcast on the early years of fintech.
We're excited to welcome Chuckie Reddy to the QED team.
Chuckie joins us from J.P. Morgan where he spent 17 years, most recently as managing director and head of the asset-backed securities special opportunities business and head of Global Max Recovery.
Massive congratulations to Partner Laura Bock on being named to
@BusinessInsider
's list of rising stars of venture capital. 👏 ⭐
Laura's portfolio includes Collective, Trellis, Spinwheel, Wildfire Systems, Inc, OatFi, CoverForce, Finch, Decent and EasyHealth.
We're delighted that our very own
@fintechjunkie
is among the inaugural Founding Fellows.
The On Deck Fintech Fellowship is a great mix of innovation and collaboration.
Expand your knowledge ✅
Navigate the ecosystem ✅
Tap into networks ✅
Collaborate with peers ✅
✨Announcing: On Deck Fintech Fellowship✨
Fintech is exploding but barriers to entry and lack of access to specialized knowledge have slowed innovation — until now.
Today we're helping innovators create the new frontier of financial services.
A masterclass thread on bundling and unbundling.
@fintechjunkie
explains why building a durable and valuable business requires putting the pieces together with precision.
"There are only two ways to make money in business. One is to bundle and the other is to unbundle."
A thread on this powerful but very mis-understood concept:
QED's
@fintechjunkie
explains why people are more likely to take on greater risk when it's through reinvesting profits and how that is manifesting itself in crypto today.
With one eye looking back at the early days of online poker, he shares insightful thoughts and parallels.
It didn’t take me long in the crypto world to realize that it’s an ecosystem being fueled by the “House Money Effect”.
Having spent countless hours in the world of high stakes poker I recognized it instantly and now can’t stop seeing it everywhere I look. A short 🧵👇
Join us in congratulating QED Managing Partner Nigel Morris, Chief Investment Officer
@fintechjunkie
, and Partners Laura Bock and Matt Risley for being named Washingtonian Tech Titans for 2022.
APIs 👏 Are 👏 Everywhere 👏
Welcome to the first of seven essays laying out a guide to the next generation of SaaS.
Authored by our own
@amiasmg
and
@whartonfintech
's
@NateSoffio
, read why every SaaS business must become an API-first company.
#Fintech
QED May recap:
🗒️ Co-authored a whitepaper into the future of fintech w/
@BCG
🎤 Keynoted at
@Fintechnexus
🥇 Founding partners named to
@Forbes
Midas List of top global investors
💵 Announced $925 million in two new funds
If you're building in
#fintech
, come talk with us.
Thanks to everyone who showed up at our networking event to celebrate NY Fintech Week.
A special hat tip to our friends at TTV Capital, Commerce Ventures and Visa for sponsoring this meetup.
To keep up to date about our events calendar, sign up at
QED’s
@acgadala
and Maryalice Viljoen spoke with
@nicolecasperson
about normalizing discussions about mental health and substance use disorders in the startup ecosystem.
Full story in the WTFintech newsletter:
👀📽️👀
A sneak peak from our video with Wander CEO and co-founder John Andrew Entwistle (
@jaentwistle
) about the importance of tapping into emotion when building a business.
The "feel" and "connection" is vital to building a lasting affinity with customers.
When it comes to low-risk solutions for companies to keep their cash, few options are better than treasuries.
But the UX online is outdated and clunky, and brokers mainly deal with the biggest transactions.
@QED
’s
@fintechjunkie
shares why
@JoinMeow
has a simpler solution.
An important decision every business makes is what to do with its cash💵.
Most thinly capitalized companies keep their cash in a business checking account.
But there are better options for businesses that have a year or more of runway. Much better! 🧵👇
GPs, LPs, MOIC and math.
QED’s Chief Investment Officer Frank Rotman (
@fintechjunkie
) explains how a lack of timely exits are breaking parts of the VC ecosystem.
There’s a lot of mis-information being shared about VC performance and how it translates into LP returns.
There’s also a lack of understanding about how the VC ecosystem broke the LP ecosystem over the past few years and why this matters A LOT.
Here’s what’s going on:🧵👇
We are excited to continue to back
@shopcircleco
, a fintech that provides e-commerce brands the tools they need to start, grow and sustain their businesses.
Congrats to Luca and Gian Maria on the $120m Series A.
Welcome to
@645ventures
, 3VC,
@NFX
, i80.
Hello, Southeast Asia.
We're excited to make our first investment in Indonesia.
Pashouses is an end-to-end transactional marketplace for buying and selling houses, from brokerage and renovation to staging and mortgage.
QED has now invested in fintechs in 18 countries.
🚀🇮🇩
For digital nomads and savvy travelers, the opportunity to work in beautiful short-stay rentals with high-end amenities is incredible.
QED is proud to lead
@Wander
's $20 million Series A. Each property comes with a fitness area, Tesla and fast internet.
Welcome new London principal Ale Piedrahita to the QED team as we continue to scale in the U.K. and Europe.
Prior to QED, Ale was a senior associate with March Capital where she focused on fintech strategy, with a particular emphasis on infrastructure.
We're probably biased, but we'd put our team against any in VC today.
Join us in celebrating the contributions and achievements of each and every one of these incredible leaders.
#InternationalWomensDay
QED’s
@fintechjunkie
is more bullish on in the next 10 years of fintech than the previous 10 years.
“Across every category of financial services, we’ll see new leaders emerge.”
Entrepreneurs with truly disruptive insights that form the foundation for innovation will thrive.
Fintech startups have been on a tear for the past decade and some gigantic companies have emerged including
@stripe
,
@nubank
,
@Affirm
and
@Klarna
.
The question I get asked all the time is: Is there room for the next wave of fintech startups to succeed?
A few thoughts: 🧵👇
We're excited to lead
@GetCapchase
's $125 million Series A round. Capchase helps companies unlock cash that is otherwise tied up in future predictable revenue payments.
We're thrilled to be working with early backers Bling Capital, ScifiVC and Caffeinated Capital.
.
@GetCapchase
launched its platform 8 months ago as an alternative to venture funding. “Founders are flocking to this type of model," said Miguel Fernandez, co-founder and CEO of the startup, which just closed a $125M Series A led by
@QEDInvestors
.
Why does culture eat strategy for breakfast? Frank shares why company culture is so important and why organizations make a conscious effort to hire talent that aligns with their culture.
The idea that each company has its own culture isn’t questioned. Most people claim that it’s important and a contributor to an organization’s success or failure.
But guess what? People struggle when asked to explain what culture is!
A framework and thoughts on the topic:
We're excited to welcome Victoria Zuo (
@VivaLaVZ
) to our early stage team.
Prior to joining QED, Victoria helped lead fintech investing at Gradient Ventures, Google’s early stage venture fund. She started her career in tech M&A at Qatalyst Partners.