Introducing New Finance VC!

New Finance is a term we introduced in our last post here. Simply put it is the intersection of crypto, tradfi, and regulation.

We are excited to announce the launch of a £10m fund New Finance VC to invest in exactly that!

So, who the hell are we and what is the fund’s mandate?:

Mike Kelly- Founder I first bought Bitcoin back in 2011 and have been experimenting with crypto ever since. I led the CMA in mandating world-leading Open Banking access to the 9 biggest banks in the UK — Finextra July 2021. Invented API tech used in trillions of transactions worldwide. Investor & founder member of UK Digital Currency Association. CEO of venture-backed payments startup Curl. Built v1 of Starling Bank’s core banking system and I am a Crypto security researcher

Kieran Parker-Moroney- Advisor — Previously a commodities broker, then an unsuccessful founder, and then an associate at Pi Labs VC where I helped with deal-flow and assisted in running their accelerator program. Involved in crypto, DeFi & NFT arena since 2016. Angel investor & Advisor to start-ups in the crypto and NFT space. More bullish than Mike on decentralized systems- which is why I am here to argue with him :)

Our thesis is simple. We believe the regulators are going to step in and that, at the very least, a meaningful part of the market is going to work with them. This could be via: lobbying, working with regulators to help them craft regulations that minimize their impact on innovation, and by building within the space.

We by no means think this will be the only market in crypto, but we do feel it will be an important one with significant growth potential and a chance to onboard more people to the space.

We are looking for:

• Early-stage founders (pre-seed and seed, even if you just have an idea tinkering around, come speak to us)
• Preferably European based, but we will look outside this for the right teams (this is the preference for Fund 1 as we feel our network is best positioned to help here)
• Business thesis is around open-banking, financial tech, cryptography applications, organizational structures (this includes NFTs, DAOs). An example of these would be Coinbase, Binance, Opensea, Solana, MolochDAO, the LAO…
• Cheque sizes will generally be between £200–500k, we will not look to lead rounds, however, we can where necessary

Even if you only have an idea, reach out! We are able to help you get set up with our network of lawyers and advisors to get the structure right from the start.

If you feel we’ve described you above then get in touch with us at mike@newfinance.vc or kieran.parker-moroney@newfinance.vc

Or find us on twitter here- Mike & Kieran.

Let’s set up a call, we are happy to chat :)