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Tag: VC

  • Citi Ventures’ Jelena Zec to speak at FinAi Banking Summit

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    Jelena Zec, director of venture investing at Citi Ventures, will speak at the inaugural FinAi Banking Summit in Denver on March 3, 2026. 

    FinAi Banking Summit will bring together a curated community of executives, technologists and decision-makers across the FinAi ecosystem.

    Jelena Zec, Citi Ventures

    Zec will speak on the panel “The next 5 years in FinAi” on Tuesday, March 3, at 4:15 p.m. local time. Panelists, including BankTech Ventures’ investor Katie Quilligan, will address: 

    • What to watch for in AI development;  
    • Assessing startups; and  
    • Balancing technology realities in the AI revolution. 

    View the full event agenda here.  

    Citi Ventures’ recent investments include agentic AI startup Spinwheel, according to FinAi News reporting. The VC arm of $1.8 trillion Citi has also invested in short-term financing fintech Defacto, fraud fintech IVIX and payments company OneText, according to Crunchbase. 

    Register for the FinAi Banking Summit here to take advantage of early-bird pricing. 

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    Whitney McDonald

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  • AI is dominating 2025 VC investing, pulling in $192.7B – FinAi News

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    Venture capitalists poured $192.7 billion into AI startups so far this year — setting new global records and putting 2025 on track to be the first year where more than half of total VC dollars went into the industry, according to data provider PitchBook. Most of the capital went to established startups – Anthropic and […]

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    Bloomberg News

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  • Citi Ventures adds agentic AI startup to investment portfolio

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    Citi Ventures is looking at agentic AI startups as a compelling area for investment.  Agentic AI “could reimagine workflows across compliance, onboarding, payments, wealth management and more,” Arvind Purushotham, global head of Citi Ventures, told Bank Automation News.  The venture capital arm of $1.8 trillion Citi announced an undisclosed investment in agentic AI-powered credit data […]

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    Whitney McDonald

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  • Citi Ventures adds agentic AI startup to investment portfolio

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    Citi Ventures is looking at agentic AI startups as a compelling area for investment.  Agentic AI “could reimagine workflows across compliance, onboarding, payments, wealth management and more,” Arvind Purushotham, global head of Citi Ventures, told Bank Automation News.  The venture capital arm of $1.8 trillion Citi announced an undisclosed investment in agentic AI-powered credit data […]

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    Whitney McDonald

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  • Citi Ventures adds agentic AI startup to investment portfolio – FinAi News

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    Citi Ventures is looking at agentic AI startups as a compelling area for investment.  Agentic AI “could reimagine workflows across compliance, onboarding, payments, wealth management and more,” Arvind Purushotham, global head of Citi Ventures, told Bank Automation News.  The venture capital arm of $1.8 trillion Citi announced an undisclosed investment in agentic AI-powered credit data […]

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    Whitney McDonald

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  • Mallard Bay is the Airbnb for guided hunting and fishing | TechCrunch

    Mallard Bay is the Airbnb for guided hunting and fishing | TechCrunch

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    Americans spent more than $144.8 billion on fishing and hunting in 2022 alone, according to a survey by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Guided hunting and fishing excursions are a substantial part of that industry, but they’ve largely remained offline. Bookings are done over the phone and paid for by physical checks or cash. Mallard Bay is looking to change that.

    The Houston-based startup is a marketplace for consumers who hunt and fish to find and book guided tours the same way they would book a hotel online. Mallard Bay is also a vertical SaaS platform for the outfitters themselves to bring their back office online and provide additional services like marketing.

    The startup announced this week a $4.6 million Series A led by Soul Venture Partners with participation from existing investor Acadian Capital Ventures, and other angel investors. Logan Meaux, co-founder and CEO of Mallard Bay, told TechCrunch he got the idea for the company after a botched hunting trip with his dad back when he was in college. He thought he had booked a three-day guided duck hunt in Oklahoma. When they showed up, they found out the hunt was double booked and their only option was to hunt for one day with 13 other people. Meaux never fired a single shot.

    At the time, Meaux was working for his dad’s startup Waitr, which raised $24 million in venture capital before exiting in 2018, and thought he could launch a company of his own. In 2019, he and two other co-founders got to work. The original idea was to just create a marketplace like Airbnb for people to book these guided hunts. Once the company started asking outfitters and guides what they thought of the idea, they realized that they were going to need to bring more to the table to get guides to sign on. That led them to start building out Guidetech, Mallard Bay’s back office solution for outfitters.

    “[Outfitters] were receptive to the idea, knew that keeping up with the times was something they wanted to do, but inherently outfitters are not business owners first,” Meaux said. “They started out as guides, and they’re doing what they love, and they’re building a passion-based business. [With] us being passionate about not only outdoors and going hunting and fishing, but also the software space, we kind of brought that domain expertise to them to tell them, ‘Hey, if you guys are going to make this transition, we’re the guys for that.’”

    After the company got Toby Brohlin, a hunting influencer, on the platform, more outfitters started to sign up. Brohlin has booked more than $1 million in gross bookings, Meux said. The platform as a whole facilitated more than $6 million in gross bookings in 2023 and is on track to reach $30 million to $35 million in 2024.

    Despite the market size, and the company’s traction, Meaux said it was hard to get investors to sign on — the firm spoke to over 270 investors to raise this round — because investors didn’t understand the category or its potential. The startup also had to navigate people’s negative perceptions around hunting and ensure potential backers that this wasn’t a platform to book exotic hunting trips in Africa. Another key point the founders wanted to share with investors: When hunting and fishing are done ethically, it actually helps with conservation, something the company is passionate about.

    “The one thing that comes with hunting and fishing is being a conservationist,” Meaux said. “It just kind of comes with the territory because ultimately, as we were shown the ropes from our parents on how to do things, we want our kids to be able to do those same things. If you don’t have sustainable practices, sustainable wildlife management, overpopulation is detrimental to wildlife in general.”

    Mallard Bay co-founders, from left: Wyatt Mallett, Logan Meaux, Joel Moreau and Tam Nguyen. Image Credits: Mallard Bay

    While I’m not a hunter myself, and only dabble in fishing occasionally, Mallard Bay’s deal caught my eye because I can’t say I hear about hunting or fishing often in the startup and tech ecosystem. Hunting SaaS is an interesting concept! And it’s not even the only hunting-related company that’s recently raised funding: HLRBO, an online platform to make it easier to find hunting land leases, raised a $1 million seed round in February.

    It’s also notable how much Mallard has been able to grow since its 2021 launch. Mallard Bay’s bookings have grown 600% year over year, which is impressive for any category but notable in a category like hunting and fishing that seems relatively niche. As I’ve said before, the riches are in the niches — likely because the niche markets are never as small as they initially may seem.

    People in the U.S. spent over $394 billion on outdoor activities — including hunting and fishing, but also hiking, birdwatching and others — but a lot of those industries are still largely offline or reliant on low-grade, hard-to-navigate tech. I experienced this last month when I tried to find parking to hike Sedona, Arizona’s very popular Devil’s Bridge trail. I had to piece together information from multiple blogs to see whether I even needed a parking pass.

    There are case studies beyond Mallard Bay, too, that show these outdoor-focused applications have customer demand. Strava, an app targeting runners and bikers, boasts over 100 million users. Applications that connect people who share a common outdoorsy activity like fishing also have strong traction. Fishbrain, a social media app for fishers, has logged more than 14 million caught fish in its 12-year history.

    For Meaux, he knows how large this could become and despite the progress they’ve made so far, he thinks there is still so much of the market to capture and more capabilities to build into Guidetech.

    “I like to say that we’ve had some success, but we’re not yet successful,” Meaux said. “And that’s something I learned from my dad along the way. In his companies, even after exit, they still had work that was to be done.”

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    Rebecca Szkutak

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  • Robotics funding saw another dip in 2023 | TechCrunch

    Robotics funding saw another dip in 2023 | TechCrunch

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    In 2021, robotics startups were flying high. Unlike other categories that had buckled under the strains of a global pandemic, interest in automation was at an all-time high, as companies attempted to navigate supply chain issues and ongoing labor shortages. Robotics and automation were insulated from broader investment slowdowns, but eventually, they, too, were impacted.

    It’s not as though the signs haven’t been there. I kicked off the year with a post titled, “The thing we thought was happening with robotic investments is definitely happening.” That thing being investment slowdowns. After a banner year, 2022 was the second-worst year for robotics investments in the past five.

    It was second only to 2020, which was one of those once in a life time global anomalies. Totally understandable in that case. That figure represented the five straight quarters of decline in VC money.

    Image Credits: Crunchbase

    Today, new numbers from Crunchbase point to another annual decline for 2023. The year isn’t quite over, of course, but year-to-date investments in the U.S. market are at $2.7 billion, down from $5 billion last year, $9.1 billion in 2021 and even the $3.4 billion that came through in 2020.

    There are a couple of things at play here. First, we knew that initial excitement wouldn’t last forever. Some of the world has gotten back to normal, relieving some of the pressure to automate as soon as possible. Second, there are macro trends to contend with.

    VC investments have slowed more broadly, and that’s now touching on robotics. The good news, however, is that the category has remained steady relative to the rest of the landscape. The spike in interest around generative AI — and all things artificial intelligence — has been a piece of maintaining its place.

    The last few years have also afforded robotics firms a chance to prove their efficacy in the real world, demonstrating the value of automation beyond the manufacturing sector that we’ve been seeing for several decades now.

    Robot sales also recently saw a decrease, courtesy of economic headwinds following the initial pandemic surge.

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    Brian Heater

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  • How Raise Funds As a Startup | Entrepreneur

    How Raise Funds As a Startup | Entrepreneur

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    The world’s best surfers will tell you that to be incredible, you have to wait for the right wave. Every wave you choose to paddle consumes an incredible amount of energy, time and mental concentration. If you’re able to channel all of your skill and stamina into that one beautiful wave, you will be much more successful than trying to ride 50 bad ones.

    As a new founder, you don’t have the resources to catch every wave — nor is it prudent to do so. You must be calculated and strategic so you can make the most of your chance to make it.

    The traditional bank route

    For startups considering going the bank route, this probably isn’t your wave. With interest rates soaring to nearly double what they were last year, free money is no longer an option. Most startups don’t have the luxury of deep pockets to begin with, making traditional lending unviable. One of the few exceptions is for those running a minority-owned business or a member of a group with historic barriers to capital; in these cases, SBA loans are still worth considering because of their adjusted terms.

    If you don’t qualify for SBA and the bank route is your only option, here’s a word of caution: wait until the rates stabilize. As with any market instability, the next twelve months will tell the country’s financial future.

    For those unwilling to wait out the storm, think about basic accounting: if your company is running at 50% gross profit and 30% net profit, don’t make the mistake of assuming that a 4% increase in sales will make up for a 4% increase in interest on your loan. It won’t. You need to increase your profit by 4% — you need to increase your sales by 12-15%. If you choose to lock yourself into a high-interest loan, be prepared with a solid money strategy and solid reasoning that justifies giving away that much money.

    Another option worth considering is a line of credit. They’re easier to manage, and you can see your borrowed total shrinking, similar to a checking account. At any given time, entrepreneurs are juggling a thousand different things to make their business successful, so do anything you can to simplify the financials.

    Related: 4 Ways to Deal With High Interest Rates in Every Part of Your Business

    The VC route

    While the bank wants to know about your assets before writing you a check, VCs must be approached differently. Your asset is your three-year business plan, and it better be rock solid. As an investor, I’m looking for founders willing to eat, sleep, drink, and marry their business — and I want to make sure I know all of that about you in the first three minutes we’re talking. That may sound like a lot of pressure, and it is — so is starting a successful business from the ground up.

    As a VC, I’m looking for a founder who knows the market, their product, how much money they need and what they will spend it on. The minutiae can come later, but if you can’t convince me that you’re fired up about your idea, and you’ve done your homework, it’s a waste of both of our time. One of the first red flags is when entrepreneurs aren’t willing to commit all their time and money to their own endeavors. If you’re hoping to maintain another job or want VCs to invest money into a plan you’re not willing to invest in yourself, you have the wrong approach.

    When you approach a VC, ask for more than you need. The person who comes to me and tells me they need $300k but is asking for $500k is the person I want to talk to. At the end of the year, entrepreneurs often find themselves back at the VC’s door asking for more money simply because they failed to plan for how much they’d realistically need. Asking for the wrong amount the first time is a mistake, and that second investment will cost you significantly more.

    Related: 3 Ways to Raise Capital and Take Your Business to the Next Level

    Alternative options

    Numerous micro-funding organizations have popped up in the last few years. These non-bank lenders are gaining popularity, offering microloans for anything under $50,000 with a streamlined credit process. Unlike traditional loans, these microloans are designed to give small business owners a leg up without drowning them in debt, making it a smart option for entrepreneurs who only need a small amount of money to launch their businesses.

    Related: What is the Federal Funds Rate and How Does it Impact Loan Rates?

    Preparedness is your biggest asset

    To secure funding for your business, the first step isn’t to ask for money; it’s to determine exactly how much you’ll need. I always encourage entrepreneurs to create an expense budget that includes all their bills for one year. Whatever budget you come up with, increase that amount by 15% because you will need a cushion. Whatever you forecast in revenue, deduct 15% because you likely won’t hit your revenue targets. Within that final number lies the truth of how much lending you need.

    This isn’t pessimistic; it’s just the way that it works — you figure out what’s reasonable, and then you add a safety net for everything unforeseen. We tend to overvalue our ability to create something quickly without any hiccups. By accounting for these contingencies before they crop up, you can better prepare to face them when they inevitably appear.

    Plan your move wisely

    Where and how you choose to obtain funding could make or break your business. Take a breath, look for advice, and try to make smart financial decisions. If the time doesn’t feel right, trust your gut; no one will steal your idea overnight, so it’s OK to wait. As you consider your options, look at the bigger picture, like economic stability, interest rates, and future implications, before making your move. After all, it may be the only move you have.

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    Shannon Scott

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  • 3 Ways for Women Tech Founders to Secure Funding | Entrepreneur

    3 Ways for Women Tech Founders to Secure Funding | Entrepreneur

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    When I started fundraising in 2017, women were getting just over 2% of venture capital. Six years later, women continue to get just 2% of venture capital. For myself and many other women tech founders, the funding gap is personal. We’ve read enough headlines and gotten enough rejections to know that the systems governing grants, debt, and equity are not set up for us to succeed. So, what are we going to do about it?

    With generous support from Tiger Global Impact Ventures, my company set out to research the best possible, most feasible actions that solve (or at least shrink) the funding gaps for women tech founders. This effort involved surveying nearly 20,000 women entrepreneurs and conducting 19 in-depth expert interviews with founders and field experts.

    The resulting report, titled “Standing in the Gaps: A Roadmap to Redesign the Capital Continuum for Women Tech Founders,” presents an action plan for entrepreneurs, institutions and investors to work together and unlock the full potential of women tech founders.

    Based on the report, here are three entrepreneur-focused steps to help women secure the funding they need to grow their startups. It’s our action plan to ensure the data six years from today looks different.

    Related: 3 Ways Women Owners of Early-Stage Companies Can Fight Adversity

    1. Find yourself a co-founder

    Take it from someone who’s been a solo founder herself: Your journey will always be smoother (and more enjoyable) with a trusty copilot. The research agrees with me on this one, finding that co-founders offer additional skills, support and even improved fundraising prospects. One analysis found that 85% of venture and angel investment dollars go to companies with two or more founders.

    It’s not always easy finding a co-founder you can trust, respect, and learn from, but it’s something I believe every entrepreneur should seek out. Here are a few methods identified in our report:

    • Join local coworking spaces and networking groups: Meet the movers and shakers in your local startup community, share lunch with someone new and spread the word about what you’re building. Even if you don’t meet your co-founder, you’ll make valuable connections that could pay off.
    • Use free co-founder matching platforms: Our report recommends several options, including YC Co-Founder Matching, CoFounders Lab, DigitalWell Ventures and StartHawk
    • Attend conferences and industry events: These events are great places to meet individuals with technical backgrounds or deep experience in your field.

    Related: 6 Steps to Finding the Right Investors for Your Business

    2. Take advantage of every financial wellness and fundraising education resource you can

    Once the novelty of starting your business wears off, you quickly learn that there is quite a learning curve when it comes to running your business. Not to mention the immense cost that it takes to keep it afloat, especially in those early proof-of-concept days. Systemic barriers make it more difficult for women and other underrepresented groups to access the capital we need, too, so it’s vital to know your stuff to impress bankers and potential investors.

    Step one is making sure your business financials are in good shape. You don’t need a business degree, but there are some lessons every entrepreneur needs to learn to avoid expensive mistakes. Here are some good places to learn best practices:

    For those further down the road and looking to fundraise, our report offers another batch of resources. The following tools can help you grasp common fundraising topics and prepare for conversations with VCs and angels:

    Related: 3 Reasons Entrepreneurs Fail to Secure Funding

    3. Approach opportunities through the lens of cost-benefit analysis

    If women tech founders absorb nothing else from this report, I hope they listen to one simple yet powerful reminder: It’s OK to do less.

    Entrepreneurs have extreme demands on their time as we’re overrun with opportunities and choices to make. When it comes to funding, there’s always another grant program to apply for, another investor to email, or a new credit opportunity to size up.

    View every choice through the lens of cost-benefit analysis by asking yourself whether the time, energy, and willpower align with the potential outcome for the business. Be honest! If yes, move forward. But if not, be kind to yourself and move on.

    Funding might be the lifeblood of a business, but you’re the beating heart keeping the dream alive. Take care of yourself, and the rest has a way of taking care of itself.

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    Carolyn Rodz

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  • 4 Crucial Indicators When Raising Venture Capital Funding

    4 Crucial Indicators When Raising Venture Capital Funding

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    In this day and age of shrinking VC funding for startups, you might think your business is the exception. You might think your business model is so ripe for growth with a little cash infusion that VCs should compete to see who can be your primary investor.

    Besides the fact that startup founders are rarely objective about their business prospects, it’s always good to get outside perspectives before heading down the potentially long, winding and soul-bruising road of VC pitches.

    Do you know who you might want to check with as a first step before you sink a bunch of time and energy into your pitch deck? Your marketing agency. (If you don’t have an agency, make a friend with an agency exec pronto.)

    If an agency isn’t your first choice as a sounding board — hear me out. I’ve worked with dozens and dozens of intelligent, ambitious startups since founding Playbook Media. Throughout those relationships, I’ve recognized a few significant indicators of whether your business is positioned to sprout unicorn wings with some extra resources — or whether you have some fundamental issues to address before you take your pitch to your version of Sand Hill Road.

    Related: The 10 Most Reliable Ways to Fund a Startup

    1. Burn threshold

    Also known as “burn multiple,” this metric takes a broad view of your business to calculate how much revenue you bring in for every dollar you spend. Divide your net burn by net new revenue for a given period, and you’ve got your number. (Anything over 2 these days, and you’ll have difficulty getting funding because your operational efficiency needs work.)

    Your agency partners won’t have all that data on hand to calculate your burn threshold, but there are plenty of ways they can help you improve it. They can reduce costs by lowering your average CAC (the cost of acquiring a customer). They can improve your customers’ average LTV (lifetime value) using lifecycle marketing, referral programs, upsell campaigns, etc. They can also run frequent forecasting models to ensure your strategic decisions are informed by current data and market conditions — which have been evolving rapidly.

    An agency can be beneficial in understanding your entire marketing picture and assessing where you can cut spending and suffer minimal revenue effects. Agencies proficient at MMM (media mix modeling, which I’ll touch on more in a bit) will be great partners in that endeavor.

    2. K Factor

    Your K Factor is your natural growth rate if you aren’t doing any marketing. It usually boils down to product-led growth and virality stemming from your existing customer base, site users, media outlets picking up on your momentum, etc. This isn’t specific to products, by the way; if you have a software service or platform, you can build tons of product-driven growth.

    Agencies can help you determine your K Factor if they’re proficient at understanding the impact of each of your advertising channels. Ideally, your agency is using media mix modeling to determine the incremental impact of each channel; when they analyze all of your channels and touchpoints and compare it to your overall growth, they’ll be able to isolate a baseline level of growth that isn’t explained by those channels. That’s your K Factor.

    The key to optimizing your K Factor is growth loops. Reforge defines growth loops as “closed systems where the inputs through some process generates more of an output that can be reinvested in the input.” This can go beyond organic loops, too — although K Factors are defined in the absence of ads, you can apply a little advertising budget to great effect if you’re working with growth loops. An example is taking a popular TikTok post from either your company’s or a relevant creator’s page and doing a Spark ad, which boosts the post and prompts more engagement that feeds the post’s organic momentum.

    Related: You Can’t Get VC Funding for Your Startup. Now, What?

    3. Channel reliance

    Despite recent setbacks (check out the last couple of quarterly earnings reports), Google and Facebook still dominate their competitors in gobbling advertising budgets, as we see time and time again with new clients coming to us to jump-start their growth.

    I think brands should almost never spend more than 50% of their budget on Google and Facebook (combined), which is easier said than done. There are several reasons for this, but the two most important are that Google and Facebook are getting increasingly expensive and that all companies should protect themselves against over-reliance on one channel that could get hit by, say, algorithm updates or outside influences like the iOS14 release.

    Beyond those reasons, there are clear warning signs that you should diversify your marketing channels ASAP:

    • Diminishing returns (CPAs keep climbing no matter what you try)
    • A lack of new users
    • Demographic trends shifting away from your core platforms (e.g., younger generations are now using TikTok instead of Google for their search engine of choice)
    • Business goals evolving out of alignment with your core channels

    If any of these sounds familiar, start carving out ideas and resources to reallocate the budget into new channels.

    Related: 9 Extremely Clever Startup Funding Stories

    4. Market penetration

    There are a few market-penetration scenarios that potential investors will hone in on right away (for better or for worse):

    • The market is small, and you’re dominating but might have a hard growth ceiling (example: Wild Earth)
    • The market is large but ripe for disruption, and you have one or more differentiators that will help you carve out market share (example: Dollar Shave Club)
    • The market is new, and you have the plan to build awareness for the market’s need and your solution (example: Fitbit, back in the early 2010s)

    Agencies can analyze and tell you what segment you might be in. For Wild Earth, an agency would help define the target market by segmenting data into silos (e.g., vegans, dog owners, owners who only feed their dogs dry food, owners who order online, and owners who will pay a premium for food and shipping). Cross-reference that relatively small audience that lives in the intersection of those segments with data like rising CACs and relatively high impression share. That company looks like a poor choice for investor funds unless you can leverage what you’re already doing well into other product categories.

    If things like search volume and available impression volume are curiously low, you may have a tremendous opportunity to build awareness for your product or service as the leader of a new market (or market segment). “Video rentals” probably had a ton of search volume when Netflix was in its early stages, but “online video rentals” or “video rentals by mail” were exponentially less popular queries that, when combined with the rising trends of online shopping and engagement, evidenced a market ripe for introduction. Brands like Peleton (spinning classes at home vs. spinning classes) and Rent the Runway (luxury fashion for rent vs. luxury fashion) represent similar scenarios that, when the story is told well, represent catnip for intelligent investors.

    The takeaway

    With startup funding relatively hard to come by, you should recognize that poor indicators in any of these areas put you out of position to leave a VC pitch with millions of dollars. But there’s hope yet. First, most issues in these areas are fixable. Second, fixing them now will mean you’ll be extraordinarily well-positioned to take full advantage of future VC investments when you have a better story.

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    Bryan Karas

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