Cambrian Ventures, a brand new early-stage enterprise capital agency led by former Andreessen Horowitz companion Rex Salisbury, right now launched its inaugural $20 million fintech-focused fund investing on the angel, pre-seed and seed stage.
Among the many fund’s traders are a few of the most influential entrepreneurs and operators within the fintech sector. This consists of the founders of Nerdwallet, Plaid, Easy, Alloy, Modus, SentiLink, Jeeves, Betterment, Mix, Routable, Trim, LendUp, One, SoFi, Moonpay, LoanPro, Altruist, Melio, and extra.
By means of the fund, Salisbury will prolong the Cambrian fintech group he established in 2016 to share assets, information, and mentorship amongst trade friends to the subsequent generations of visionary founders. Initially based as a ardour challenge exterior of his day job as a software program engineer at a fintech startup, Salisbury has shortly grown the group to a worldwide community with over 15,000 subscribers, 4,000 meetup attendees, and a Slack group with 1,100+ fintech founders.
Previous to launching the fund, Rex was a founding companion of the fintech staff at Andreessen Horowitz (A16Z), a task he started three years after launching Cambrian in 2016. Whereas at A16Z, he helped construct the fintech vertical and invested in quite a few offers together with Deel and Tally, corporations he had beforehand encountered in his work with Cambrian. In launching the fund, Salisbury goes again to the group roots, the place he is ready to assist founders on the earliest stage.
“In seeing the constructive and significant influence this group of skilled fintech founders and traders has had to date, Cambrian’s enterprise fund was a logical subsequent step. There’s a distinctive alternative to mobilize the Cambrian group to facilitate important connections whereas including operational experience and capital on the earliest and most crucial stage of founder-market match,” stated Rex Salisbury, Founder and Normal Companion of Cambrian. “The fund goals to leverage the entrepreneurial expertise, subject material experience, operational experience, and trade insights throughout the Cambrian group to help the subsequent technology of fintech entrepreneurs.”
“Rex has pioneered a brand new frontier for fintech entrepreneurs by harnessing the ability of group round a fund construction,” stated Andy Carra, co-founder of SoFi and investor within the fund. “Cambrian’s success up to now is because of Rex’s ardour, sense of camaraderie, and in depth perception in each fintech’s potential and the ability of group.”
Cambrian plans to spend money on 30 corporations, with investments of as much as $500K on the angel, pre-seed, and seed stage throughout the fintech sector. Cambrian has made 5 investments over the previous few months, together with Maintain Monetary’s latest seed spherical. Thus far, Cambrian has assisted in matching greater than 500 co-founders and traders and has helped members make key hires by its expertise collective and referral job board.
“Cambrian is a perfect companion for us as a result of they mix a group ecosystem with Rex, an investor with in depth expertise in constructing and scaling fintech startups,” stated Rob Frohwein, co-founder of Maintain Monetary and Kabbage, which was acquired by American Specific in 2020.”
“Rex’s affect, attain, and talent to determine the subsequent nice entrepreneurs in fintech are spectacular and made him a beneficial asset at A16Z,” stated Anish Acharya, Normal Companion on the A16Z fintech staff. “We’re delighted to see how he and Cambrian will proceed to help the fintech ecosystem with the launch of this fund.”