Participated · Series A · Mar 2024

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 · Equity · Sep 2022

Usko Privacy is building a privacy-first personal finance app that provides analytics tools to help consumers monitor spending and stay on budget. The app is in private beta and initially supports Amazon purchases, with plans to add more online retailers and banks. User data is stored locally on the consumer’s device rather than on Usko’s servers, reflecting the company’s emphasis on data control and privacy. In future releases Usko intends to let users opt in to share purchase information with advertisers in exchange for crypto tokens, enabling users to monetize their data on their own terms. Founder Juha Mikkola leads a small team (including a Wyncode Academy graduate) and says the company hopes to release the app fully by year’s end. Usko raised $1.8 million from a group of angel investors and venture capital firms, and is prioritizing feedback from beta users, especially in South Florida.

Participated · Series A · Jun 2022

OnChain Studios develops Cryptoys, fully digital NFT toys that consumers can buy, sell, collect and play with inside an immersive blockchain-based world. Each Cryptoy can gain capabilities through play and unlock new experiences. The company plans a genesis launch later this summer with initial drops of a panda, corgi and kitty, followed by Mattel-branded drops and a lineup of mini-games offering play-to-earn mechanics. OnChain is also developing AI-interactivity, elevated collector experiences, parent-controlled wallets for minors, and an original animated series. The team is 41 people and is Miami-based, operating on the Flow blockchain. The company says it will expand engineering, design, art and animation hiring to build out the ecosystem and more games and experiences. OnChain Studios is developing Cryptoys, an interactive 3D toy, gaming and entertainment universe built on the Flow blockchain where users can buy, sell, collect and play with fully digital NFT toys. Each Cryptoy can gain capabilities as it is played with and can unlock new experiences; accessories and in-game items will also be NFTs. The company plans play-to-earn features and mini-games so players can earn in-game items and rewards as NFTs. OnChain has in-house IP for its characters and intends to open the platform to other toy companies and recognizable brand characters. The team has grown to 22 full-time employees and is hiring Web3 engineers, Unity developers, 3D artists, animators and marketing staff. The company plans to launch its first line of original toys in the next few months and then roll out additional toy lines and gaming layers. Funding will be used primarily for engineering, 3D animation and Unity development to build the gaming components of the platform.

Participated · Seed · Feb 2022

Huddle is a curated social talent marketplace that connects top designers and builders with startups, allowing work in exchange for cash and equity. The MVP began as a landing page shared in a Slack group and was built to serve side projects and highly skilled freelancers. Unlike platforms such as Fiverr or UpWork, Huddle emphasizes a highly curated network and the option for creatives to receive equity, effectively letting them become angel-like contributors. The company raised $3.3M in seed funding across 2021 and also raised a portion of the round on Republic, resulting in backing from over 750 individual investors. Huddle plans to use the capital to further develop its products and community-building efforts and is shifting toward being a community-owned Web3 company. The team comprises eight full-time employees distributed across the U.S., with Miami as the company hub.

Participated · Seed · Feb 2022

TempMee operates a staffing platform that matches licensed dental hygienists with dental offices needing on-demand or permanent placement. Launched at the end of 2019, the company has connected roughly 3,000 dental offices with 6,000 hygienists across Florida and the Southeast. TempMee reports having paid out $2 million to hygienists to date and currently operates with a team of 12 in downtown Miami. The startup plans to open its platform to additional types of dental professionals this year and to add associate dentists and dental assistants within the next year. TempMee is preparing a national expansion over the next 18 months and is hiring developers, marketing staff, and expanding its sales team to scale operations. The founders position the product to serve niche licensed-worker markets beyond dental as a longer-term opportunity.