Our Investment in Neo Financial
We’re excited to announce our investment in Neo Financial, as part of its $50M funding round announced today. Neo is a Canadian challenger in the banking industry that is building a better financial experience for all Canadians. We’re thrilled to partner with Andrew and Jeff again, as well as the rest of the Neo Financial team. We’re also excited to work alongside co-investors Valar Ventures, iNovia Capital, Thomvest Ventures, Afore Capital, FJ Labs, Maple VC, District Ventures and Tobi Lutke (co-founder and CEO of Shopify) on the journey. This investment is Golden Ventures’ second Calgary based investment and its 5th affiliated with the fintech industry.
Andrew and Jeff were two of the co-founders of Skip The Dishes (“Skip”). Having had the privilege of being the lead investor in Skip (acquired by Just Eat Takeaway LSE: JET), we witnessed firsthand the passion, drive, and talent of the team in building the company into a billions of dollars GMV business and the largest food delivery network in Canada. We are super excited to watch the team embark on what they consider their next worthy challenge of building a banking platform from the ground floor.
The banking industry in Canada has been dominated by the big five banks who retain 90% of the market. While these banks attempt to innovate, they are bogged down with massive legacy platforms and business units that preclude them from adequately responding to their customers’ modern needs. These banks have largely failed at delivering a user experience to their customers that would be in line with what is possible given the advances in technology in recent years.
Customer First Principles: Andrew and Jeff learned early on that success comes by being maniacally focused on delivering value to the customers and partners you serve. In the case of Skip, this was a challenge because Skip was a three-sided marketplace that had to deliver value to its consumer customers, its restaurant partners and its couriers. We watched the team elegantly create value for all of its constituents and have already watched them do the same at Neo Financial as they seek to deliver value to their customers and merchant partners.
Platform Principles: Neo Financial has the luxury of being able to create its banking experiences from the ground up without being encumbered by legacy platforms. Neo Financial will create natively mobile experiences with deep integrations into its merchant and banking partners that will ultimately deliver a superior banking experience for all Canadian consumers and merchants.
Connection and Location: On a personal level, it is always fun to work with teams you know very well. We started working with Andrew and Jeff over six years ago when we first invested in Skip. The entire Golden Ventures team is thrilled to be a small part of their journey and look forward to the launch of the upcoming products and services. Even sweeter is the fact that this business will largely be built in Calgary and other smaller cities across the country including my hometown of Winnipeg. Andrew and Jeff continue to prove that venture scale companies can be built anywhere and successes in those ecosystems serve as catalysts for future growth and prosperity.
The team is hiring. Visit the Neo Financial website to learn more.
