Marcos Fernandez’s Post

Community is everything. We're only as good as the founders, operators, investors and experts in our network. I feel so fortunate to have some of the best! A BIG shoutout to Adrian Hunter for putting together one of the best events we've had last week as part of our Fiat Advisors and Fiat Ventures happy hour with 70+ attendees in the room. Thank you our sponsors including Josh Dorsey from Stifel Bank, David Galvan from Mastercard, Brandon Shelton from First Law, and of course Stephen Cisarik and William Mallen for sharing their beautiful space at Newmark. Hope to connect with more folks at future events across the US in the coming months.

Community is everything, and Recast Capital has one of the best! So grateful to spend a few days with so many incredibly talented GPs and LPs this week as part of the Recast Capital summit in Sonoma. I'm always inspired by my peers, and enjoyed having some time to step back and soak in knowledge from so many incredible investors. Too many people to acknowledge, but so much appreciation for Courtney Russell McCrea, Sara Zulkosky, Caroline Fernandez, Ava Alemazkoor, Lissa Villani and the Recast team. Appreciate everything you do for emerging managers and the venture community as a whole.

Since 2021 funding to Black-founded startups has dropped by 86%. This is a late stage problem as well. In 2023, there was only one round over $100m that funded a Black-founded company and just three rounds at $30m or more. The root of the problem isn't direct bias toward underrepresented founder, but the lack of representation on the investment committees. ~2% of investment decision making positions are held by individuals who are Hispanic or Black backgrounds. ~15% of investment decision making positions are held by female investors. This post IS NOT an attack to current VCs, but rather to call out that more needs to be done to create a more balanced playing field. Grateful to organizations like VC Unleashed which are working to create a more equitable future for founders and investors. Want to be a part of that change? Want to learn how you can break into the industry? Here's how... Shift VC 2024 is a 2-day experience that will equip attendees with the skills, know-how, and support to succeed within venture capital. We will be joined by top investors, founders, operators, and community builders who are committed to changing the face of venture capital. Thank you to Tanvi Lal, Michelle Dhansinghani and Vanessa Gutierrez who are taking actions to create a solution for these challenging issues. Grateful to be able to help such an impactful organization, and excited to meet with so many like minded individuals here in a couple weeks! RSVP via the link below. SHIFTVC.rsvpify.com

Couldn’t have said it any better myself. Our job as a VC is to support our founders, and to manage our investors capital as efficiently as possible. Not all companies are rocket ships. It takes time, patience and persistence to bring these visions to life. Grateful to be able to build Fiat Ventures alongside such like minded founders like Alex Harris, Drew Glover and Caitlin Keep. Also alongside our incredible team at Fiat Growth. The best is yet to come!

Fiat Ventures talks to 2000+ founders per year. Founder DNA is everything. It takes a unique set of skills, experience and sheet grit to be successful. Lamine Zarrad of StellarFi 🚀 has all three. Lamine is a 3-time fintech founder. A refugee from the Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan to the US. Ex US Marine and Army Elite Unit. And One of the best Fintech Operators in the business. After leaving ZenBusiness where he sold his previous company Joust - we were one of Lamine's first calls. Over a two hour meeting in Austin Lamine told me about his new company and his vision to re-imagine consumer credit. His vision was clear: I want to build a credit builder platform that will improve the credit of the 100M+ Americans with subprime scores, are credit invisible and completely unscorable. That was 2 years ago. What have we learned thus far? Our instincts were right 🙏 And, founder DNA is everything 🚀 Today our Fiat Ventures and Fiat Growth teams are proud to highlight Stellarfi and it’s amazing progress. StellarFi is a consumer app that helps build consumer credit with every bill you pay. By connecting your bills, Stellar pays on your behalf which reports these positive attributes to all major credit bureaus. This raises credit profile by 50+ points on average. Take a read and feel free to reach out to Lamine directly if you’re interested in partnering and/or learning more. https://lnkd.in/gSMNMYRt

Are you an LP interested in connecting with the next wave of great fund managers? There's no better event than Recast Capital's Summit taking place this summer in the Sonoma, CA area 🍷 You can use the link below to apply and learn more about the upcoming event. The team will reach out from there. Thank you to the Recast team for all you do for emerging managers and LPs Sara Zulkosky Courtney Russell McCrea Ava Alemazkoor Caroline Fernandez Ethan Finkelstein 🙏

America is also in the middle of a credit revolution 💳 Here are some of the stats: ⛔ 57 Million Americans (17.2%) have subprime credit scores 👁️🗨️ 28 million Americans (8.5%) are “credit invisible” - lacking a mainstream credit profile 🚫 21 Million Americans (6.3%) are considered completely unscorable Revolution’s tend to inspire radical innovation. The good news is that some of best founders in the fintech space are working to solve Americas credit challenges. At Fiat Ventures and Fiat Growth we're grateful to work alongside and back some of the companies leading the way. These include: 🚀 StellarFi 🚀 who are allowing consumers to build credit with each bill 💰 Upside who let their customers build wealth with every loan payment 💵 Possible who provides competitive micro loans to sub-prime consumers 📊 Grain Technology (YC W20) that allows businesses to embed better underwriting and loan origination tools 💲 Sawa that enables individuals the ability to save and build credit as a community The list goes on and on, but the results are the same... more transparent and cost competitive products for the 100 Million + Americans that live without access to basic financial tools. You can read more about the work these incredible teams are doing via the link below 👇 A special thank you to those that are on the forefront of these positive changes including... Drew Glover Alex Harris Kristin Manoogian Victor Colombo Caitlin Keep Lamine Zarrad Vicki Apodaca, MBA Tony Huang Kevin Platshon Christian-Robert Joseph Andrew Henry Charles Phillips Kamran Hameed Adam Falls https://lnkd.in/gzps2R4y

Looking forward to the Institutional Allocator Summit in SF on June 13th hosted by Joel Palathinkal, Ph.D and the team at Sutton Capital! It'll be a fun event with fund managers, LPs and operators across the venture space. Want to join? Request an invite here https://lnkd.in/gf39PPpv