Participated · Seed · Nov 2022

Loopgolf provides a digital wallet and app that coordinates rounds, scores match play and skins, and automatically settles recreational golf wagers in real time. Founders Thomas Reinholm and Matt Rum, who met while working at Block, built the product after personal experience struggling to track Nassau bets and presses. The app requires users to sync to the USGA’s GHIN to deter sandbagging and posts round scores automatically; a scorekeeper can tap a ‘settle’ button to ledger funds into players’ wallets. Loopgolf launched an open beta in September and has raised $1.3M in pre-seed funding while aiming to close the remainder of a $2M round in the next couple months. Notable backers include Jeff Cruttenden, Stephen Piscotty, Fox Ventures, SWS Ventures, and Sendoso CEO Kris Rudeegraap, and the company is launching a Republic crowdfunding campaign to offer early adopters equity. The team forecasts 30,000 monthly active users by year-end 2023. Roadmap items include adding closest-to-the-pin and longest-drive side bets, issuing a debit/credit card with a golf-oriented rewards program, hosting a March-style Play For tournament, integrating curated commerce, and eventually partnering with a sportsbook to add pro and in-round betting.

Participated · Seed · Sep 2021

QisstPay is an installment payment service for emerging markets that enables customers to pay for purchases in installments with 0% interest and no late fees. The company is led by co-founder and CEO Jordan Olivas and Saad Ahmed and is based in Islamabad, Pakistan. QisstPay serves over 500 retailers in Pakistan, including Samsung, Camelbak, Diesel, Philips, Xiaomi, Lenovo and regional leaders such as Sapphire, Uniworth, Logo Shoes and elo. The company raised capital to scale its merchant network and operations and plans to expand services to Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. QisstPay also intends to grow its Islamabad-based team to over 100 people. The product positioning and merchant roster indicate a focus on both international brands and strong regional e-commerce partners.

Participated · Seed · Aug 2021

Onramp Invest provides a turnkey, fully integrated digital-asset platform that enables financial professionals to onboard clients, open discretionary accounts across multiple custodians, invest in and track a wide variety of digital assets, and access model portfolios via the Onramp Model Marketplace. The platform includes integrated dashboards, broad integrations with commonly used tools, and an educational library, Onramp Academy, which will be made free to all financial professionals. Onramp emphasizes rapid client onboarding (under five minutes) and plans to add the ability to build and share custom models and offer separately managed accounts. The company intends to use the new funding to accelerate product innovation and expand marketing and communications to financial professionals. Leadership says the product roadmap has been informed by input from the financial services community to ensure compliance and compatibility with regulated institutions. Onramp Invest is a San Diego–based integration platform as a service (iPaaS) that provides RIAs with education, access, and tools to offer cryptoassets to clients. The platform enables advisers to view held-away cryptoassets via links to 10 sources, onboard clients quickly through integrations with Gemini and Prime Trust, and buy bitcoin and ETH on behalf of clients. Onramp offers educational resources through Onramp Academy, providing client-ready materials and deep-dive research for adviser continuing education. Since launching its platform at the end of May, the company has focused on expanding adviser-facing services and integrating into existing adviser workflows and billing models. Onramp celebrated its first year in business on August 3 and recently raised $6M in seed fundraising to support growth. It has also made senior appointments and promotions as it scales, including a Chief Innovation Officer and internal leadership advances.

Participated · Seed · Jul 2021

Marco is building an operating system for Latin American SME exporters engaged in cross-border trade, providing them with easier access to financing and operational support. The platform offers a suite of products including LLC creation, bookkeeping, banking, FX payouts, cargo insurance, and financing tools such as factoring and asset-based lending. Founded in 2020 by Jacob Shoihet and Peter D. Spradling, Marco is headquartered in Miami with additional offices in New York City and Montevideo, Uruguay. The company employs over 50 people across its offices. Marco has established itself as a key player in the trade finance sector serving historically underserved SMEs. It intends to use the funds from this round to further enhance its ESG efforts within the LatAm region. Marco provides a tech-enabled trade financing platform that acts as an operating system for SMEs engaged in trade across LatAm and the U.S. The company was founded in 2020 by Peter D. Spradling (COO) and Jacob Shoihet (CEO) and is based in Miami with offices in Montevideo and New York. Marco intends to use the funds to expand its trade finance platform and suite of trade services across target segments in the U.S. and Latin America, including Mexico, Ecuador, Colombia, and Peru. The company reported rapid growth: it lent $100M last year, has financed over $254M with zero losses since inception, and saw 1,500%+ CAGR in funding between 2021 and 2022. Marco aims to fund $750M by the end of 2023. Marco Financial offers a tech-enabled risk assessment and factoring platform to provide working capital to small and medium exporters across Latin America. Its product underwrites lines of credit based on future potential and customer-provided data, shortening loan origination from over two months to about one week and enabling funding within 24 hours. Since launching its product in January 2020, Marco has processed thousands of invoices across 20 countries totaling more than $18 million and now lends as little as $25,000 per month up to $10 million. The company aims to simplify cross-border payments, improve risk assessment by productizing unstructured data, and enable large logistics providers to originate export financing. Marco was founded in 2019 and is based in Miami with offices in New York, Dallas and across Latin America. The company also announced senior hires including Prajwal Manalwar as chief product officer and named Sabrina Teichman chief growth officer (editor's note: as of September 2021, Sabrina Teichman no longer works for Marco Financial). Marco Financial is a tech-enabled financing platform that provides financing to small and medium-sized Latin American exporters selling to U.S. buyers. The company uses an innovative due diligence process that leverages real-time data to dynamically assess risk and mitigate capital loss. Marco intends to use the new capital to continue expanding operations and its business reach across the region. The company was founded in 2019 by Peter D. Spradling and Jacob Shoihet and is headquartered in Miami, FL, with offices in New York and across Latin America. The financing package includes both an equity component and a credit facility, indicating a mix of growth capital and lending capacity to support originations.

Participated · Series A · Jul 2015

Aptimmune Biologics develops mucosal vaccines for swine, focusing on PRRSV and influenza virus. The company’s pipeline is built on patented vaccine technologies invented by founder and Chief Scientific Officer Dr. Federico Zuckermann, a swine immunologist and University of Illinois professor. New CEO Aaron Gilbertie, who joined weeks before the financing, will lead pipeline development, product registration, and commercialization. Management says the vaccines will improve swine health and producer productivity and address diseases with a combined annual economic impact of over $1.4 billion on the U.S. swine industry. Aptimmune is based in the EnterpriseWorks technology business incubator at the University of Illinois Research Park in Champaign, Ill. The company reports a strong and extensive intellectual property portfolio underpinning its product offerings. The recent funding is intended to accelerate development and product registration of its mucosal vaccine candidates.