A trio of PayPal Ventures alumni has raised $158 million for Infinity Ventures, a new early-stage venture firm dedicated to investing in fintech startups globally.
Jeremy Jonker, Jay Ganatra and Mario Ruiz left PayPal Ventures in May 2021 and had their first close last June and final close by October 2021. They left PayPal because they wanted to expand beyond just investing in payments-focused startups and “zero in and focus solely on infrastructure and commerce enablement.”
Indeed, infrastructure has proven to be a resilient sector within fintech despite a global venture slowdown. For Infinity, it makes sense because in the founders’ view, “despite decades of fintech growth, supporting infrastructure hasn’t necessarily kept pace.” Specifically, the firm aims to back startups that address “the biggest hurdles” in today’s financial infrastructure: access, utility, flexibility, and cost.
Infinity’s inaugural fund was not previously announced until today, but to date, Infinity has backed 11 companies in the U.S., Asia, Latin America, and Europe. Those startups include Glean, which describes itself as “accounts payable with a brain”; Mexican corporate spend management startup Mendel; and Neo.tax, a company that wants to help other companies get R&D tax credits.
Overall, Infinity plans to invest in about 25 companies out of the fund with an average check size of $500,000 to $8 million in pre-seed to Series A rounds. While the company’s investment thesis hasn’t changed since it first started last year, the trio said they are “emphasizing earlier stage,” such as pre-seed and seed investments, given the change in market conditions.
The firm declined to name its LPs, saying they are a mix of “prominent” fintech execs, family offices and large institutional investors.
While at PayPal, the trio backed companies such as Plaid, Divvy, and Acorns, among others. They also led the M&A transactions of Venmo, Braintree, Honey, Hyperwallet, Xoom, Swift Financial, and iZettle and executed growth equity investments into companies such as Mercado Libre, GoJek, Pine Labs, and Uber.
“Over the last decade the fintech industry has innovated consumer and business applications at a rapid pace, with intuitive design and sleek functionality that have been truly life-changing in terms of access, transparency and convenience,” co-founder and partner Jonker said in a statement. “We see a massive opportunity investing in key infrastructure, making fintech apps and services more scalable and secure. Our team has the experience, and isn’t afraid to get our hands dirty.”
The firm says it wants to help founders with everything from negotiating contracts and formulating a product road map to “delivering on partnership and client opportunities.”
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