Participated · Series C · Feb 2025

Sardine, headquartered in San Francisco, offers an agentic risk platform that unifies data across risk teams to stop fraud in real time, prevent AI-driven attacks, and automate fraud and AML operations. Its platform leverages device intelligence and real-time risk scoring and is used by customers across retail, commercial, and wealth lines. Sardine’s fraud consortium profiles over 6 billion devices, 800 million consumers, and 3 million businesses worldwide. The company counts customers such as FIS, GoDaddy, Intuit, Edward Jones, ZoomInfo, and Checkout.com and is expanding its footprint in financial services. Recent commercial momentum includes a multi-year partnership with National Bank of Canada, which followed a live evaluation demonstrating improved fraud detection and reduced false positives.

Led · Equity · Jan 2025

Keyless provides privacy-preserving facial biometric authentication via its Zero-Knowledge Biometrics™ technology, delivering multi-factor authentication in one glance in 300 milliseconds without storing biometric data. The product is available via app and web and is used by banks, fintechs, crypto platforms, and gaming companies to reduce account takeovers, secure high-risk actions, and improve operational efficiency. Keyless holds ISO 27001 and ISO 30107 accreditations and is FIDO Biometrics and FIDO2 certified. The company has 50 employees across multiple offices in the UK, US, and EU and reported rapid growth in 2024 with new customers in the UK, EU, and North and South America. Keyless added industry advisors and expanded its US commercial team as part of its increased US presence. The company intends to accelerate its North American expansion and invest in innovations to combat deepfake technology, particularly for the financial services sector. Keyless unifies the entire end-to-end identity lifecycle with privacy-preserving biometric authentication, continuously assuring genuine user identity from onboarding through step-up actions, transaction signing (including PSD2 SCA compliance), and account recovery. Its patented technology fortifies protection against account takeover attacks and identity theft and is designed to ensure compliance with global data protection and privacy regulations such as the GDPR. Led by CEO Andrea Carmignani, the company positions its platform across multiple stages of the user journey. Keyless said it will use the new funds to expand operations and broaden its business reach. The company raised an additional $6M in funding, bringing its total raised to $26M. Keyless develops a passwordless biometric authentication product, the Keyless Authenticator app, that replaces usernames and passwords with biometric multi-factor authentication. The app authenticates users in milliseconds using secure multiparty computation and a distributed-cloud network without ever exposing raw biometric data. The solution is device- and cloud-agnostic, enabling quick integration with existing security systems. Keyless stores encrypted fragments across a distributed network rather than on devices or centralized servers to reduce the risk of biometric data disclosure. The company is GDPR-compliant and prepared for upcoming Strong Customer Authentication regulations. Keyless markets primarily to enterprise clients in the financial services sector but positions the product as applicable across industries to prevent breaches from compromised or weak credentials.

Participated · Equity · Nov 2024

KeySavvy is a Seattle, WA–based provider of a transaction platform that simplifies and secures private-party vehicle transactions. Its platform eliminates payment and title fraud and guides buyers and sellers through complex private-party transactions. For peer-to-peer vehicle marketplaces and lenders it enables used, end-to-end transactions that help partners deliver a superior customer experience. The company intends to use the $4.25M in funding to grow its operations and engineering teams to support new partnerships, continue improving platform automation, and launch a fast‑financing product for buyers. The round was led by Bonfire Ventures with participation from Experian Ventures, Daher Investments and Founders’ Co-op. KeySavvy’s newest e-commerce partners include Cars & Bids, AutoCheck by Experian and Hemmings. KeySavvy operates a peer-to-peer vehicle payment platform designed to remove the risk of title fraud for buyers and payment fraud for sellers in private used-car transactions. The company charges buyers and sellers a flat fee of $79 and also partners with other peer-to-peer vehicle marketplaces, offering various integration options. KeySavvy was founded last year by former colleagues from Seattle auto-sale platform Tred. The startup is led by CEO Andrew Crowell and CTO Jason Hoetger. Financially, the company announced a $2 million seed funding round from Porsche Ventures and Founders’ Co-op. The product focus and marketplace integrations suggest a go-to-market strategy centered on embedding KeySavvy into existing peer-to-peer vehicle marketplaces.

Participated · Series C · Aug 2023

Micronotes provides cloud-based big data, analytics, and digital engagement solutions to financial institutions, using AI and consumer engagement technologies to start conversations and build relationships. The company was founded by tech entrepreneurs from MIT and is based in Boston, MA. Its platform targets banks and credit unions that want to develop relationships and build trust with new and existing customers and members. Micronotes intends to use the new funding to accelerate growth in the community banking sector and help more communities get more out of their banking relationships. Financially, the company closed a $7.5M Series C, comprised of a $5.5M tranche led by Experian Ventures and a $2M extension led by BankTech Ventures. Micronotes is a cloud-based, AI-driven interview-marketing platform-as-a-service that uses machine learning to match and validate banking products and services with individual users. Founded by Devon Kinkead and Christian Klacko, both MIT Sloan alumni, the company focuses on helping financial institutions retain and deepen customer relationships and improve cross-selling through digital channels. Its automated digital interview platform applies AI to customer data to build personalized engagements within an estimated $1–2 billion segment. The company intends to use the funds to support rapid scaling of its platform, expanding sales, marketing and engineering. Micronotes is privately held and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The articles describe the business and growth plans but do not provide operating metrics such as revenue or user counts. Micronotes is a Cambridge, MA–based developer of direct marketing software that uses big-data analytics and interview technology to help digital-banking customers get more out of their banking relationships and to drive cross-sales for financial institutions. The company focuses on applying analytics and interview tech to improve customer engagement and marketing outcomes for banks. According to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Micronotes raised another $1 million of venture capital. Eleven separate investors participated in the offering. The article characterizes this as "another" $1 million, indicating the financing is additional to prior capital raises, though no prior-round details are provided in the article. The article does not disclose valuation, operating metrics, or use of proceeds. Micronotes builds interactive marketing tools that enable marketers to mass-produce digital sales calls. The company is based in Cambridge, MA and began as a research project at MIT. It completed a $1.65M venture financing to support its next phase. Micronotes will use the funding to accelerate product and market development. As part of the financing, several board additions were announced, signaling strengthened operational and academic oversight. The company is led by CEO Devon Kinkead.

Led · Seed · Feb 2022

PayHop is a fintech that uses card receivables as collateral to enable credit and better payment terms between suppliers and retailers. The platform facilitates payments, reduces delinquency, and originated operations in the card-receivables market after its first round. Founded in 2020, PayHop reports more than 400,000 registered retailers, over 60 supplier partnerships, and more than R$200 million transacted in 2023, alongside a sixfold revenue increase year‑over‑year. With the new investment PayHop plans to operate with duplicatas escriturais, deepen its use of data for decision-making, and accelerate its go-to-market strategy. The company also expects technical integration with TOTVS' management systems to support credit flows across ERPs. PayHop operates a single platform serving both suppliers and retailers, enabling retailers to use card receivables as real collateral or BNPL to purchase goods and helping suppliers sell more with lower credit risk. The solution reduces retailers' costs tied to point-of-sale cash-advance fees and aims to broaden access to credit for underserved retail segments. Created two years ago and operating for seven months, PayHop positions its product in line with a Bacen regulatory change from June last year. The company raised a R$11.5 million seed round and plans to invest the proceeds in commercial acceleration and in expanding its technology and product teams. PayHop expects to grow its headcount fourfold and increase the number of supplier clients tenfold. Founders Eduardo Rossi (CEO) and Arthur Fontana (CTO) say the investment and partnership with Serasa Experian will provide strategic distribution channels and credit-risk capabilities to scale adoption.