There’s been a battle brewing to serve SMBs better with commerce enablement and financial services. Companies like Square, Intuit and Brex have attacked the opportunity directly by providing solutions across these product areas, while several startups (e.g. …

We’ve spent a lot of time in the past few weeks talking with our corporate partners and listening to their views on the market. These conversations provide a window into how the market could evolve. Large corporations don’t have the luxury to pause innovation. On the other hand, a higher cost of capital and economic uncertainty can lead to a slowing in tech investment. — We looked at what happened to corporate venture capital (CVC) during the Financial Crisis and had two takeaways. This provides a proxy for what could happen in the current market environment.

Thanks for joining us last week at the “Virtual AMA: How Emerging Managers Navigate A Downturn.” ICYMI, here are our favorite takeaways from the panelists. Don’t miss the Slack community sign up below too! — 1. Adopt a multi-fund mindset. Your first fund will always be the most difficult. No one said that raising a first fund was easy. Even if that means going below target, lock it down so you can start investing right now. …

Our Market POV Market Timing — Crypto adoption has spread explosively…but is still early in the mainstream. In fact, only 16% of Americans have bought crypto at all, and cryptocurrency trading volume has recently fallen almost 75% since all-time highs in May 2021. Tax Enforcement — Regulation and legislation will increasingly require retail…

A few weeks ago we had the opportunity to attend the VC Global Platform Community Conference in New York City. Below we share our top five takeaways from the conference. …

Brand roll-ups aren’t new, but most have been strictly focused on combining merchants, not software businesses. Thrasio, Perch, and Ellevate Brands are three of the biggest players which have collectively raised over $4B to acquire merchants across platforms. …

New York is back and better than ever for the startup scene, particularly in FinTech. We spent time with about fifty investors and founders during New York FinTech Week last week and walked away with a better understanding of the NY ecosystem and outlook on venture at large. Read on for a quick take on what we learned. — ​​Younger west coast entrepreneurs have been consistently migrating to NYC over the past 24 months but the FinTech community still feels tight-knit and relatively small.

The world is falling in love with crypto and web3, wooed by the industry’s rapid growth, emergent business opportunities, decentralized and democratized access, and liquid value at scale. For those of us who have historically specialized in more centralized tech and innovation opportunities, our task is to learn and adapt…

Beyond a Ready Player One-esque reality for consumers, web3 opens an entirely new universe (or perhaps metaverse) of opportunities for brands and retailers to engage with their customers. We believe brands and retailers will adopt blockchain powered product authentication, loyalty and payments before deeply investing in the metaverse or digital goods. Keep reading for a highlight of what we believe are the most exciting opportunities for retail to innovate on-chain.