San Francisco fintech Sydecar raised $8.3 million in seed capital from a number of venture capital firms and high-profile angel investors as the platform seeks to streamline the venture capital process.
The investment round was led by Deciens Capital, with participation from Pipeline Capital Partners, Anthemis Group and Hustle Fund. Sydecar’s approach is to reduce the regulatory burden on individual investors, increase transparency and offer liquidity via a fintech approach.
The platform handles all the back-office operations for emerging venture investors. To date, Sydecar has helping thousands of investors close over $350 million in deals prior to its public launch.
Additional angel investors and strategic operators also participating in the round included Mike Vaughan, former COO at Venmo; Shai Goldman, XIR Lead at Brex; Nik Milanovic, general partner at The Fintech Fund; Rohini Pandhi, product lead at Square); Daniel Khan, open finance lead at Plaid; Samir Kaji. CEO & founder of Allocate; Karim Bhalwani, head of BD & Sales at Remitly; Anil D. Aggarwal, founder & CEO at Fintech Meetup; Winter Mead, CEO & managing partner at Coolwater Capital; Jonathan Weiner, founder of Money 2020; Maia Bittner, voice of the member at Chime; and Hayden Simmons, founder at Rally Cap Ventures.
Sydecar officials say by removing the friction from the deal-making process they have supported deals ranging from $25,000 to $100 million for more than one thousand investors.
“After launching a venture fund with my co-founder David (Meister) in 2018, I became aware of how painfully clunky and unnecessarily complex the fund formation process can be,” says Nik Talreja, co-founder & CEO of Sydecar. “There was an immense amount of friction between putting capital to work, establishing relationships, and backing founders.”
Meister and Talreja launched 18.ventures, which is a California-based venture capital fund investing in companies in the U.S. and Israel. According to a spokeswoman, the duo hasn’t been deploying capital into new companies since founding Sydecar in 2021, but the fund is still active and they have made some follow-on investments from it.
The Sydecar platform endeavors to be a useful tool for start-up VC shops in that it automates banking, compliance, contracts and reporting in order to remove the cost and complexity of traditional back-office operations.
“Our goal is to help anyone invest in the entrepreneurs they believe in, without needing a personal team of lawyers and accountants,” said Meister. The deals on the platform have been sourced both directly on the platform and through partnerships with companies like Stonks and Allocate.
The round of funding will be used to hire multiple new team members, according to Sydecar, across product and engineering, customer experience, marketing, and operations. The team’s growth will aid in the expansion of Sydecar’s product offerings, including an upcoming enterprise integration.
“At Deciens, we believe in building the next generation of financial services,” says Daniel Kimerling, founder & managing partner at Deciens Capital. “Sydecar sits at the intersection of financial, legal, and technological innovation. With their product-first approach comes the ability to push the boundaries of the possibility of private investment through thoughtfully architected investment structures. We’re excited to not only support them as investors but to see how their product changes how we operate and work ourselves as a VC.”
