Money was still flowing from investors back in March when the principals at Fintop Capital, a Nashville-based venture capital firm with a St. Louis office, announced they had raised a $200 million round.
Now we know the full scope: In details shared first with the Nashville Business Journal, Fintop Capital disclosed Wednesday a final tally of $220 million, which is 10% above the firm's target. It's the third, and by far the largest, round that Fintop's founders have raised since creating their investment firm six years ago.
Fintop, which spun out of St. Louis-based venture capital firm Cultivation Capital, counts among its general partners St. Louis investor Rick Holton Jr. and local entrepreneur Jim McKelvey, co-founder of payments company Square. One of Fintop's portfolio companies is Denim Social, a St. Louis startup that provides social media management tools for financial services firms.
On Wednesday, Fintop also announced four new investments from its third fund:
- Freight Science, a St. Louis-based data science platform for the trucking industry;
- Compliance.ai, a Silicon Valley-based automated regulatory and compliance platform for the financial services industry;
- Amaryllis Payment Solutions, a payment platform company based in West Palm Beach, Florida;
- Xelix, a London-based platform focused on accounts payable
The first company to net funding from the new round was Michigan-based Plinqit, a personal savings app.
The final $220 million figure reaffirms that this is one of the larger raises for a Nashville-based investor in recent years — all the more notable because Fintop's main focus is not the region's legacy health care sector. Fintop gears itself toward finance technology software startups whose customers are other businesses, not the general public.
Fintop continues to evaluate potential investments.
"As operators, we understand the unique challenges entrepreneurs are facing in light of the economic downturn, as we’ve been through this cycle ourselves multiple times," said Joe Maxwell, a Fintop co-founder and its managing partner. "However, we know that the modernization of finance continues to be a strong tailwind of the economy, and we are well-positioned to use these changing times as an opportunity to source strong deals and support budding companies…"
Fintop also announced two promotions to the partner level: Jared Winegrad, who is a founding employee of the firm, as well as Chris Haley, who joins Fintop after high-ranking stints at several companies and brings his own experience in the fintech space, according to a Fintop press release.
