Clocktower Ventures is a venture capital firm that invests in early-stage fintech and real estate technology companies. The firm provides capital, mentorship, and strategic support to startups that are innovating within the financial services sector.

Clocktower Ventures

We partner with phenomenal entrepreneurs who have the vision and drive to innovate across our two domains: financial services and climate change. Clocktower Ventures invests from the earliest seeds of startup life to businesses scaling for growth. Our distinctive approach to venture capital is crafted around a curated network of global macroeconomic thinkers and investors.

Launched in 2015, Clocktower Ventures is the venture investing arm within Clocktower Group, a global macro investment firm. Clocktower Ventures based in Santa Monica, CA and invests worldwide.

The Clocktower team continues to expand! If you are passionate about technology and a geek for financial services, we want to talk to you. We are looking to hire two fintech investors who will support our team in sourcing, tracking, and executing on investments.

Interested in joining our small, intensely collaborative team? Click on the links below to apply!

https://lnkd.in/gRrfnb5e

https://lnkd.in/gBCUDyDV

The Clocktower Technology Ventures team recently returned from its annual pilgrimage to Money20/20 with a renewed sense of enthusiasm toward the fintech talent set and sheer size of the remaining opportunity in financial services innovation. Despite an arguably ambiguous market, our time in Vegas reinforced the directionality of many trend lines:

Certain thematics continue to dominate fintech mindshare:
🔹 Payment orchestration and multi-rail capabilities are top-of-mind for end-users and infrastructure providers alike
🔹 AI-powered KYC, KYB, and fraud detection are becoming ‘need-to-haves’ for fintechs but it’s not a given that point solution providers will reach venture-scale 
🔹 Verticalized software plays (e.g. construction software) still look compelling at early stages where prices look cheap enough relative to total addressable markets
🔹 Bank partners' increasing stringency around which fintechs they choose to sponsor will likely benefit better-capitalized fintechs, and more mature fintechs will look to establish back-up partner banks in case their primaries run into trouble
🔹 There are as many opportunities in today’s ‘less-loved’ categories, e.g. consumer and balance-sheet intensive business models as there are in 'currently-loved' categories, e.g. CFO-stack and wealth management

Capital markets dynamics continue to evolve:
🔹 Founders seem relatively adjusted to the new order and excited for what's to come; meanwhile, investors seem neither optimistic nor pessimistic
🔹 Comps are structurally lower than they were last year, and yet, breakout rounds are being priced as if no reset has occurred. VCs will revert to paying up unless signs of recession become evident
🔹 A significant portion of growth-stage companies may no longer fit in the core boxes of growth capital providers as YoY growth expectations rerate lower for most. Companies who didn’t attain certain absolute levels of pre-slowdown revenue now have a much steeper hill to climb
🔹 Without foresight into capital availability over the medium term, operators and investors alike will have trouble placing hard numbers on growth projections, and the potential band of growth scenarios will remain wide

Overall, we came away with even greater conviction in our tactical approach- to continue backing elite talent who make existing financial services primitives cheaper, better, and faster. 

Last week, Shaneez (Clocktower Technology Ventures’ climate investing lead) participated in NYC Climate Week. Amongst conversations with founders, policymakers, asset allocators, and other investors, five key takeaways stood out:
 
1. The lineup of programming throughout the week — both official and unofficial events totaling 600+! — embodied a sense of renewed urgency, particularly for vertical-specific solutions. Many of the events were highly specialized- from targeted panels on urban mobility to deep dives on ocean health, conversations on decarbonization pathways are becoming deeper and more nuanced.
 
2. Siloes are breaking down in the pursuit of a common goal. Stakeholders from different parts of the ecosystem are now sitting in the same rooms to discuss what collaboration could look like. Think: government funding for a first-of-a-kind plant matched dollar-for-dollar by project financiers, or engineered carbon removal solutions using nature-based inputs.
 
3. Capital availability for climate startups is expanding and maturing, with more companies attracting a broader array of potential funding sources beyond venture capital, such as with loans and/or project finance. The breadth of financing options becoming available for scaling companies will in turn expand the early-stage opportunity set for businesses previously subject to future financing risk.
 
4. Solutions for deep decarbonization are still front and center. While venture demand for software is insatiable, deeptech solutions to combat climate change are garnering an increasing amount of mindshare – and by extension, investment dollars. There remains tremendous appetite for hardware solutions in hard-to-abate sectors, such as industrials and manufacturing, complemented by software solutions, or what we call ‘green enablers.’
 
5. The ecosystem continues to grow. Young talent is flocking to climate opportunities as they look to make a real difference. And it’s not just them – seasoned founders and builders from other domains are now looking to build in climate.
 
The momentum and bias to action is energizing. As always, please reach out if you are building in the space or are interested in learning more. 

#climate #climateinvesting #venturecapital

Congratulations to Clocktower Technology Ventures portfolio companies Copper Banking, Federato, Mercury, Monarch Money, Vaya Technologies, and Wagmo on their inclusion in Insider's list of up-and-coming fintechs! 

And h/t to Bianca Chan, Michelle Abrego, Paige Hagy, and Julie Bort for curating a great list, check out the full article here:

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