Commerce Ventures

Exciting news! We’re thrilled to announce the closing of Fund V, with more than $150M in committed capital. We couldn’t have done this without our esteemed LPs, dedicated partners, and our incredible founders, whose collective efforts have paved the way for our continued investment in the Commerce Continuum. In addition, we’re excited to announce that long-time advisor Daniel Eckert will expand his involvement and serve as a Venture Partner with the new fund. Daniel collaborated with the firm informally for many years, while running financial services and digital acceleration for Walmart during its omni-channel transformation and has been a Senior Advisor to Commerce Ventures for the past three years. With this fresh capital, we’re excited to continue backing the next generation of founders building platforms for retail and financial services. We invite like-minded founders, executives and collaborators to join us in this next wave of innovation that will reshape our industry! Press release: https://lnkd.in/g8ASsqcU Article in Fortune: https://lnkd.in/g9WJdqPU

Time is running out to apply for the CV Access Fellowship! Here's what some of our alumni, Claire Jacobs, Kendall Camp, Theophilus Johnson and Dylan Fitzpatrick had to say about their experiences. https://lnkd.in/gwPzCpa

Excited to share our latest podcast with my good friend Melissa Stevens! She has some great (and candid) thoughts on the past, present and future of consumer banking — especially how to be more customer-centric and reimagine the digital experience!

In the latest episode of Commerce Conversations, Ysbrant Marcelis sat down with former colleague and long time friend Melissa Stevens, EVP and Chief Marketing Officer of Fifth Third Bank. Melissa shared insights into her career journey, from her upbringing in the Mid West to her transition from Citi, where she led significant tech initiatives like launching a banking app on the first-generation Apple Watch, to Fifth Third, drawn to the company by its customer-centric focus and transformation goals. Tune in and subscribe below! https://lnkd.in/gbri4_hg

Existing accounting and finance software is not well suited to solve the challenges of online retailers and brands. These retailers take in hundreds (or thousands) of orders per day and face a difficult choice — do they place every order inside of their general ledgers, or batch them to create their financial statements? Neither option works well — leaving retailers and brands with issues that are still not resolved if they “upgrade” to an enterprise-level ERP/accounting system like Netsuite. Our partner, Matthew Nichols, faced this specific challenge as the CFO of a fast-growing ecommerce business (along with Elizabeth Lessis, CPA — our Controller at Commerce Ventures who was Matt’s controller at this startup). He nearly signed a $250K+ contract to upgrade from Quickbooks to Netsuite before realizing that the costs and 6–12 month implementation cycle would be both painful, and unlikely to solve the core issues they were facing as a finance team. This challenge has been at the core of our investment thesis, and it is why we are so excited about our investment in Finaloop. https://lnkd.in/gWiyziE5

In the latest episode of our podcast, Commerce Conversations, Dan Rosen spoke with Sharda Caro Del Castillo. Sharda has an incredible background, with leadership positions at Silicon Valley Bank, PayPal, Square, Airbnb, Affirm and more. Tune in to hear more about her fascinating career thus far, and what advice she has for others that are looking to break through in FinTech. There's not many people that get calls from individuals like Max Levchin and Jack Dorsey asking them to come work for them. https://lnkd.in/gXMGbuTK

Investing in startups is so much about relationships. In the case of Finaloop, we were introduced by our friends at Lightspeed, who focus on FinTech investments. Specifically, our partner Dan Rosen has known Justin Overdorff for over a decade, tracing back to his days in business development at Yelp and through his time leading investments at Stripe - Justin even attended some of our very first Commerce Summits. Collaborating with smart investors and operators is at the core of how we have built Commerce Ventures, so we were so honored when Justin and Tal Morgenstern invited us to learn about the Finaloop and the round they were leading…especially given our very recent thesis work in exactly this space. Thrilled to be a part of this journey!

How threatened are banks and existing at scale FinTech providers as a function of it becoming easier to switch between financial accounts? We dove into this and more in our podcast recap of our Annual Summit last month. https://lnkd.in/gAG-7trY

In a couple of weeks, Dan Rosen will join Anthony Sharett, President at Pathward; Sunil Sachdev, Head of Embedded Finance at Fiserv; and Matthew F., Head of Product Dash Solutions, to talk about navigating the complexity of embedded finance. Embedded finance is often a critical element of success in today’s payments space. Many fintechs and brands are either offering or looking to offer a solution in the near term. However, most underestimate the complexity and report they are overwhelmed on where to start. Sign up at the link below and join us on Wednesday, July 10th from 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM Central. https://lnkd.in/d6c5jCv6