TLDR:
- Exponent Founders Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm, has raised $75 million for its Fund II vehicle.
- The firm will use the funds to invest in inception and early-stage companies in various sectors, including enterprise software, FinTech, payments, artificial intelligence (AI), and software-as-a-service (SaaS).
- Exponent Founders Capital was founded by Charley Ma and Mahdi Raza, who have extensive experience in the tech industry.
Exponent Founders Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm, has announced that it has raised $75 million for its Fund II vehicle. The firm aims to invest in inception and early-stage companies in the fields of enterprise software, FinTech and payments, infrastructure, applied artificial intelligence (AI), and vertical software-as-a-service (SaaS) in the United States, Canada, and Europe.
The raise was oversubscribed primarily by nonprofit endowments and hospitals, according to the firm. Exponent Founders Capital is based in New York City and was co-founded in 2021 by Charley Ma and Mahdi Raza, both of whom have extensive operating careers and angel investing backgrounds.
Charley Ma has led the FinTech and developer sales vertical at Plaid, helped launch a corporate card built for savings at Ramp, and served as the head of growth at Alloy. Mahdi Raza has experience in FinTech and technology investment banking at Evercore, investing at GIC, growth, payments, and scaling at Robinhood, and leading early growth at Stytch.
The launch of Exponent Founders Capital’s new fund comes at a time when the value of venture investments has hit a four-year low. While there was significant investment in AI firms in 2023, other tech companies struggled. The amount invested by VCs in the US in 2023 was about 30% lower than the previous year, and globally, it was 35% lower than in 2022.
Exponent Founders Capital aims to support non-consensus founders at the earliest stages and help them become tomorrow’s category leaders. The firm believes that its founders’ extensive industry experience will make them high leverage investors for the companies they back.
