Investing in Fintech at White Star Capital
Following a 10+ year career in financial capital markets and establishing a seed stage venture capital fund (Residence Ventures) as well as a boutique, crypto advisory firm for blockchain enabled companies (ICON Partners), I am truly delighted to announce that I’ve recently joined the fast growing and dynamic partnership at White Star Capital — an international, early stage, venture capital fund investing on both sides of the Atlantic with offices in New York, London, Montreal, Paris, and Tokyo. As a venture partner, I’ll continue to engage in my passion for disruptive technologies with a focus on the digitization of finance. My work with White Star Capital will include providing support to exceptional entrepreneurs who are driven to build ambitious, scalable, global, data-driven Fintech companies within blockchain technology, cryptoassets, lending, payments, alternative credit and market structure.
The accelerating pace of technology has transformed the financial sector into a rapidly changing landscape. Fintech is fully disrupting existing business models, altering consumption and spending including the way we send and spend capital, consumer behavior tracking, insurance, investing and borrowing. The financial industry is in real-time, full-blown innovation mode. In the U.S. alone, already 29 private Fintech companies are worth over $1b with 10 of these unicorns (GreenSky, Symphony, PayPal, Credit Karma, just to name a few) now prepping for a potential IPO in the near future. (Source: Pitchbook, April 2018)
For the end consumer, the future is achieved through Fintech. Just as the social media generation has no use for land lines and traditional media, one in three millennials in the United States believes they will no longer need to engage with a bank in the future. (Source: Viacom Media Networks-The Millennial Disruption Index). Historically, the finance sector has been an industry made up of large, well-established, compliance-strong organizations with customers loyal over generations. Today, consumer expectations have been curated and elevated to higher standards through new technology and business models obsessed with serving their customers, offering compelling alternatives that are faster, easier, unencumbered by bureaucracy and cheaper. Fintech investments and solutions have all of those qualities plus accessibility, transparency, communication, trust, and autonomy. Fintech’s objective mirrors what consumers want: the ultimate UX/UI experience for financial products and services.
My vision for the future of the Fintech industry is a collaborative environment with both new technology and traditional financial institutions working together to create the perfect balance between a centralized and decentralized financial experience. The benefits are clear: safety, security and custody alongside autonomy, confidence and the power to choose how to utilize proprietary data.
Blockchains are one of the most promising technologies to combat the lack of trust among consumers in both government and finance and it’s big business: In 2018, the global blockchain technology market is predicted to reach $548m dollars in size and is forecast to grow to $2.3b by 2021 (Source: Statista 2018).
For cryptoassets, 2017 was a hallmark year for ICOs and the token economy with 340 companies raising over $5b in new funding (Source: CoinDesk, April 2018). But too often these ICOs were overvalued, operationally unsustainable with little to no investor protection. Notwithstanding the potential for this current Crypto bubble to burst, in the next 12 months we will see more conservative financial institutions begin deploying capital in cryptoassets and the next transformational companies will likely originate from this sector.
At White Star Capital, we, as a team, will always seek to collaborate and co-invest with like-minded investors on both sides of the Atlantic, keeping a close eye on the evolution of regulation in this exciting space. I am looking forward to helping passionate entrepreneurs with strong financial acumen, to scale, build and innovate within our financial industry.
If you have a compelling and solid venture within this space in New York, Toronto, Montreal, London, Tokyo, Paris or Frankfurt please contact me via email sep@whitestarvc.com or twitter @sepalavi
About White Star Capital
White Star Capital is an early-stage Venture Capital firm that invests in exceptional entrepreneurs building ambitious, data-driven businesses. Based out of London, New York, Montreal, Paris and Tokyo, our international presence, perspective and people enable us to partner closely with our Founders to help them scale internationally from Series A onwards.
Find out more about how we venture beyond at http://www.whitestarvc.com
