Participated · Series A · Nov 2022

FrankieOne provides a single API that connects banking, fintech, crypto and gaming companies to hundreds of identity and fraud vendors and over 350 data sources across 48 countries to enable KYC and fraud detection. Founded in 2019 by Simon Costello and Aaron Chipper, the company works with about 170 financial institutions and customers such as Westpac, Shopify, Afterpay, Binance, Zipmex and PointsBet. FrankieOne says it has seen 4x revenue growth over the past 12 months, its team doubled year-over-year, and it opened a new San Francisco office. Its platform allows customers to switch on vendors, create dynamic workflows and add fraud signals so they don't rely on a single provider. Use cases include PointsBet increasing customer onboarding conversion by 14% and Westpac rolling FrankieOne into its banking-as-a-service KYC flow to improve pass rates. The company plans to scale faster internationally across North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific and will invest in its ecosystem of vendors, data sources and fraud capabilities. FrankieOne offers an automated platform that harnesses roughly 350 data sources to verify identities at onboarding and monitor subsequent activity for fraud. The product is delivered via APIs and supports data sources across 46 countries, positioning it for multinational customers. The company has about 90 customers (80 added in the last 18 months), including Afterpay, Westpac and Zipmex, and says ARR grew 20-fold in the past year with roughly half of sales coming from outside Australia. FrankieOne plans to expand its international footprint and will add transaction monitoring for both fiat and cryptocurrencies later this year. The business was born from a 2017 neobank effort by co-founders Simon Costello and Aaron Chipper that pivoted into identity/fraud tooling; the founders returned earlier investor funds from the original neobank effort. FrankieOne is based in Melbourne and has reached this traction without a marketing or sales team.

Participated · Series A · Jul 2022

XSET is a gaming organization and lifestyle brand that fields some of the world’s top competitive esports teams across titles including Valorant, Rocket League, Rainbow Six, Fortnite, Warzone, Apex Legends and eNASCAR. Founded in 2020 and based in Boston, MA, the company partners with brands such as Ghost Lifestyle, SCUF Gaming, Roots Canada, HyperX, Quality Control Music, Respawn, Fanshark and Wahlburgers. Since launch it has attracted talent from music, sports and entertainment including Swae Lee, Ozuna, Ezekiel Elliott, Nigel Sylvester, Tee Grizzley and Minna Stess. XSET raised $15M in a Series A to support growth. The company intends to use the proceeds to hire executive talent, expand marketing, and create content. It is opening a west coast office, gaming and content studio in Compton, CA and works with socially positive causes including Big Brother Big Sister of America. XSET is a gaming and lifestyle organization founded in 2020 that fields competitive esports teams and builds culture-driven merchandise and content. The company emphasizes diversity and equity, aiming to elevate representation of communities of color, women, and other underrepresented gamers. XSET partners with consumer brands such as Ghost Lifestyle, HyperX, SCUF Gaming, Roots Canada and Wahlburgers, and attracts talent across music, sports, and gaming. Its roster and collaborators include Grammy-nominated artists and pro athletes, and it fields top competitive squads including an all-female CS:GO team. XSET pursues content and brand collaborations alongside competitive play and merchandise as core offerings. The company announced a strategic partnership with QC Media Holdings/Quality Control that includes an investment and planned joint initiatives across content, music, talent recruitment, events, merchandise and licensing.

Participated · Equity · Jun 2021

Zeller is an Australian neobank for SMBs that provides an integrated suite of merchant payments and business banking products. Its current offerings include an EFTPOS terminal, business transaction accounts and Zeller Mastercards, built around a point-of-sale/merchant-acquiring product. Over its early months the company signed up more than 10,000 Australian businesses and more than 80% of customers in the first 10 months switched from traditional banks. The majority of those customers now use Zeller as their primary financial services solution, and average customer call wait times are under 45 seconds. Zeller’s roadmap includes omni-channel commerce (online payments and Xero invoicing), new accounts with broader transfer capabilities, tools to track spending across profiles and locations, and Zeller Financial Services with cards, expense management and enhanced analytics. The company aims to replace fragmented banking and payments stacks for merchants by offering a centralized, capital-efficient alternative. Zeller was founded by former Square executives Ben Pfisterer and Dominic Yap and launched its first products on May 4, including EFTPOS terminals, business accounts and cards. The company targets small- to mid-sized businesses and says more than 1,500 Australian businesses signed up in the month after launch. Weekly payment volume has been growing 200%, and roughly 80% of customers switched from Australia’s four biggest banks citing lower fees and better support. Zeller has raised capital to expand its research and engineering hub and will recruit 18 engineers to support its plan to become a fully regulated business bank. Its total funding to date in less than a year is A$81 million and its latest round values the company at A$400 million. Zeller builds a fully integrated payments and financial-services platform that combines software, a payment terminal, a transaction account and a business Mastercard to help small- and medium-sized businesses accept and send payments and manage finances. The product targets merchants that process up to A$10 million annually, has no lock-in contracts and charges one low fee for card payments; the company estimates a domestic market of just under 1.5 million merchants. Zeller plans integrations with point-of-sale and accounting software and intends to introduce additional payment and financial services products to scale with growing businesses. The startup has grown its team to about 50 people after 38 hires in six months as it prepares for an imminent launch. Financially, Zeller completed an A$25 million Series A following an A$6.3 million seed round in June 2020, and will use the funding to expand product development, engineering, marketing, sales and customer support. The company positions itself to serve merchants that still rely heavily on in-person payments and to simplify the mix of terminals, accounts and e-commerce services used by SMEs. Zeller is building payments and financial-services products aimed at business customers, with a focus on payments and cash flow rather than business lending. The company will not pursue the business banking ground covered by neobank Judo and does not plan to offer business loans. Founders Ben Pfisterer (former head of Square APAC) and Dominic Yap aim to offer an all-in-one solution that makes account setup simple and aligns essential business products and services. Zeller argues current solutions are clunky and that limited competition has kept a lid on innovation. The company highlights that in-person payments account for 67% of sales while ecommerce is 33%, and plans to launch its first product in Q1 2021. Zeller positions itself to help businesses transition further toward cashless payments as they rebound from COVID-19.

Participated · Equity · Dec 2019

Arbor Fintech is a mobile app that aims to improve users' financial health by helping them save and invest through automated rules. Its core product uses four saving mechanisms—round-ups, recurring transfers, salary‑based saving and temporary saving challenges—to build users' savings automatically. Users can withdraw their savings at any time and the company says it will soon add debt‑management features. Arbor's platform relies on payment and custody support from Lemonway, which operates under the supervision of the Bank of Spain. The company highlights support from corporate partners and accelerators such as Google for Startups, PayPal, Seguros Santa Lucía, Tetuan Valley and Seedrocket. CEO and cofounder Nicolás Salguero framed the funding close as validation of the company's mission to make financial health simple and automated for individuals.

Participated · Series A · Sep 2019

Immutable provides Immutable X, a Layer 2 NFT technology platform for Ethereum that aims to bring scalability and zero gas fees to NFT trading and gaming. The protocol, powered by StarkWare’s StarkEx technology, can process up to 9,000 transactions per second with zero gas fees. Immutable has integrations with marketplaces such as OpenSea and Mintable and powers large NFT projects and games including Gods Unchained, Guild of Guardians, Ember Sword, Illuvium, GreenPark Sports, Vee Friends and TikTok. The company is also a developer and publisher of NFT games, including Gods Unchained and Guild of Guardians, and counts partners such as GameStop and ESL Gaming. Immutable plans to accelerate global expansion, invest in the Immutable X platform, scale its Immutable Gaming Studio, and hire aggressively to support growth. The company has a team of 165 people. Immutable builds infrastructure and tools to monetize nonfungible tokens (NFTs) in games and is the creator/publisher of the Gods Unchained collectible card game. Its Immutable X Layer-2 protocol uses StarkWare’s ZK-rollup to scale NFTs on Ethereum, offering zero gas fees, lower environmental impact, and transaction throughput up to 9,000 TPS. The company is also developing a $GODS utility and governance token that will be used for staking, gameplay rewards, and governance within Gods Unchained. Immutable offers developer-facing tools to enable mainstream adoption, including credit-card purchases, AML and KYC services, and end-to-end NFT integrations for game studios. The business operates a marketplace for game items and has announced multiple partnerships across gaming, collectibles, and fashion NFT projects. The company reported 120 employees and plans to grow to about 200 within six months; it recently raised $60M to support engineering, sales, partnerships, and scaling its in-house games. Immutable builds video games that use blockchain to give players true ownership of in-game items. Its flagship title, Gods Unchained, is a play-to-earn, AAA trading card game directed by Chris Clay and remains in beta. The company also develops the open-source Immutable Platform, a toolkit for third-party developers to create immutable, ownable in-game assets. Gods Unchained has sold more than 4 million cards and generated over $4.5 million in revenue through a limited Genesis Sale, which ends on October 10; one digital card sold for $62,000. Immutable plans to use new funding to accelerate development of Gods Unchained and build out the Immutable Platform, and is using some revenue to contribute to next year’s World Championship (current prize pool around $450,000). The company positions itself as a market leader in blockchain gaming.