AI and Cybersecurity in FinTech, FundGuard’s $100M Series C, portfolio companies are hiring

Friends and colleagues,

Welcome back to the Blumberg Capital Compass - the latest news and insights for navigating the startup journey.?

Portfolio Financing and Growth

Congratulations to the FundGuard team on raising $100M in Series C funding – another milestone in their journey to transform investment operations with AI. Blumberg Capital’s latest growth investment in FundGuard is the fourth consecutive round we’ve participated in, starting with leading the Seed in 2018.

AI has been core to FundGuard’s value proposition from inception. Over the past six years, the team has seen market validation for AI to help asset managers, asset owners, custodian banks and fund administrators move beyond legacy operating models and toward modern investment accounting operations and workflows.?

The company has raised more than $155M, earning the confidence of investors and leading financial institutions such as Citi and State Street.?

We remain bullish on the fintech sector, recently announcing investments in five additional fintech companies:

Led Seed rounds:

• Creednz – Raised $7M to help businesses battle payment fraud
• FlowFi – Raised $9M to modernize accounting and data-driven insights for entrepreneurs and high-growth businesses
• Connectifi – Raised $3.4M to bring the open-source FDC3 standard to the cloud

Follow-on growth investments:

• Pontera – Raised $60M to help millions of Americans retire better by enabling financial advisors to analyze, rebalance, and report on workplace retirement account assets?
• EasyKnock – Raised $28M to provide consumers alternative ways to buy and sell, finance new homes, and utilize their equity

Other recent portfolio company news:

• Prescient AI raises $10M in Series A funding to predict profitability and maximize revenue generated by advertising campaigns.
• Zone7 joins Svexa to offer an end-to-end AI suite of performance tools for sports teams and other industries whose success relies on healthy, high-performing individuals.
• Shabodi works with VMware to enable MNOs and bring innovation to 5G accessibility.?

Industry and Startup Growth Resources

A selection of industry insights with advice from founders and our team:

• How to Navigate Startup Board Appointments & Meetings: Board members can be a huge contributing factor to a startup’s growth. We spoke to Blumberg Capital advisors Debora Tomlin , a veteran CMO and go-to-market leader, and Juan Pujadas , former board member for Wells Fargo and UST Global, to learn more about how founders can maximize board appointments and meetings.?

• Israeli Economy Has Proven to Thrive Despite Crisis - Yahoo! Finance: David Blumberg joins Josh Lipton on Yahoo! Finance to discuss the future of Israel's tech ecosystem, following two weeks in Israel.
• The XZ Attack – A Software Supply Chain Earthquake: In early April, the XZ attack shook much of the open-source community, marking a significant shift in the landscape of security threats. The Myrror Security team unpacks the danger of malicious maintainer code injection, how the attacker went undetected for so long, and how to detect the XZ attack.?
• The Worst Personality Match-ups for Cofounder Partnerships: Co-founder disagreements account for 65% of company dissolutions in the early stages, according to Noam Wasserman , author of The Founder’s Dilemma. The Cofounder's Hub shares a list of potentially problematic personality match-ups.

Industry and Blumberg Capital Events

• AI was central to our recent event with GUTS - Harel Innovation Hub and Random Forest VC in Tel Aviv. Thank you to industry experts: Eilon Reshef , Gong co-founder and CPO, Adir Ron , CTO Team Lead, EMEA at Microsoft for Startups, Netta Shaked-Stadler , partner & head of Al practice at Gornitzky & Co, and Ori Luzia , corporate storyteller, for leading practical workshops for AI founders.

• Bank of America's 2024 Financial Services Conference in Miami explored the topic of AI in financial services. David Blumberg joined Dimitri Sirota , Ed Sim , Saqib E. Awan , and Rami Reyes for a discussion on the future of this growing trend.?
• Financial institutions are top targets of cyber attacks, with breaches in financial services among the most costly compared to other sectors. At CyberTech Tel Aviv, Yodfat Harel Buchris led a discussion on cybersecurity in financial institutions alongside Discount Bank ??? ???????’s Hadar Michaelis , Myrror Security CEO Yoad Fekete , and Richard Rugira of National Bank of Rwanda (NBR). Cyber investments in light of generative AI, geo-conflicts and current financial markets was another hot topic at CyberTech with David Blumberg joining Dadi David Gertler of the Israeli National Cyber Directorate and Discount Tech's Guy Navon, PhD on day 2 of the conference.?

• Our team had a great time with the next generation of VC and tech leaders at Harvard and Babson College. David Blumberg returned to his alma mater for the Harvard VCG Summit with Harvard Undergraduate Venture Capital Group and had the pleasure of speaking to Babson PEVC Group, Babson eTower, Babson Finance Association (BFA), and Babson Latin American Group about startup and VC trends. Head of Growth Steve Mock also returned to his alma mater the 密西根大学 as a guest speaker at #EVCCon.

• Thank you Reichman University VC Club for including Yodfat Harel Buchris and David Blumberg in a conversation on tech industry developments in 2023 and what to expect in 2024.?
• Thanks to the founders and investors who joined us at Miami Tech Week and to Bling Capital boldstart ventures Brex , RRE Ventures , and SaaS Ventures for co-hosting with us!

We hope to see you at these upcoming events:

• Milken Institute Global Conference, May 5-8, Los Angeles
• RSA Conference 2024, May 6-9, San Francisco - We are hosting a CISO breakfast with Myrror Security . Please let us know if there are AppSec and IT leaders that we should invite!?

Blumberg Capital Portfolio Companies Are Hiring

Portfolio companies including Trulioo , SupplyPike , Yotpo , Wunder Mobility , and WorkJam are hiring! There are 500+ openings posted on our careers page.