Payments infrastructure company helping vertical SaaS companies, Finix has surpassed $100m in total funding.
The FinTech firm has allotted 10% of its recent funding round to Black and Latinx investors.
Commenting on the importance of inclusivity in the tech industry, Finix CEO and co-founder Richie Serna said, “People too often focus on one aspect of diversity, but it’s not just about diversifying your employees, leadership team, or cap table—it’s about all of them combined.”
Given how 80% of investment partners at VC firms are white and just 3% are Black and 3% are Hispanic or Latinx, according to research by NVCA-Deloitte Human Capital, it’s indeed essential for more companies to pump in money to encourage diversity.
Moving forward, Finix will be allocating 10% of each round to Black and Latinx investors, it said.
During its Series B round in August 2020 where it extended its funding to $75m, Finix launched a special purpose vehicle (SPV) to bring over 80 marginalised investors to its cap table with the aim to close the racial wealth gap and boost diversity in Silicon Valley.
Highlighting how the SPV initiative boosted entrepreneurs from all backgrounds, founder and executive director at The Human Utility and an SPV investor, Tiffani Ashley Bell said, “The Finix SPV allows talented, knowledgeable investors and operators from diverse backgrounds—especially Black and Latinx people—who have traditionally been excluded from investing early in rocketship startups to be able to do so.”
Furthermore, with an aim to match its financial growth, the company has hired three senior executives for its chief technology officer, chief operations officer and senior VP of revenue positions.
The new executives include COO Fiona Taylor, who worked as an officer in the Royal Australian Air Force and a decade in the UK managing investment services and credit ratings through Europe. CTO Ramana Satyavarapu, founding member of Microsoft Office 365 and head of engineering for Google Play Search, along with SVP of revenue Adam Boushie, who was the chief revenue officer for Gloo and helped grow Google Cloud to $8bn in revenue.
Finix, which made its mission is to make every software company a payments company — said it had seen its transaction volume quadruple from the second quarter of 2019 to the same period in 2020.
Copyright © 2021 FinTech Global
