archie, the fintech acceleration partner led by global scaler Steve Brennen and chaired by serial entrepreneur Anthony Thomson, has today announced its first two portfolio companies: fast-growing, SME champion and cross-border payments provider, wamo, and exciting, sustainability-focussed scale-up, ekko.
Shortening the odds of success
Fintechs are a force of good – for years they’ve disrupted the financial services industry, providing better products, services and experiences for customers.
But too many fail, with only one in four VC-backed fintechs making the cut.
archie is here to fix that and shorten those odds – finding and selecting the fintech disruptors with high potential to invest its deep intellectual capital to create standout winners.
The world’s leading Venture Capital investors have been quick to recognise the potential of archie, supporting the journey by sourcing many of the businesses archie has assessed in its over 200 business selection process, meeting some of the most exciting and high potential fintechs and founders across the globe.
With a busy pipeline in the works, archie has selected wamo and ekko as its first two investments. The two UK-based fintechs demonstrate high potential for growth and are in a great position to succeed with archie’s support and expertise, having clear market fit, recently raised capital and exciting opportunities ahead:
- wamo: SME champion, wamo, specialises in powering SME growth across Europe, making it easy to access business accounts with human-led support to make managing finance easy. Headquartered in London and Malta, wamo has particular specialism in cross-border payments for SMEs which otherwise fall between the cracks of incumbent banks. wamo has significant expansion plans, having recently raised $5m and obtained an EMI licence.
- ekko: On a mission to fight climate change and nature loss, ekko provides integrated sustainability solutions for businesses. The UK-based scale-up, which operates internationally, offers seamless integrations with financial service providers, offering tools such as carbon tracking and compensating, amongst a wider product set. ekko is ramping up its team across sales and tech to capitalise on the rapidly growing sustainability market, with global opportunities.
Investing intellectual capital to supercharge growth
The senior archie team will work side-by-side with businesses, deploying its team of scale-up experts to help supercharge growth, de-risking go-to-market strategies and maximising chances of success with senior, on-the-ground operational support. archie provides the levers needed to propel these growth businesses into hyper-growth.
While the specifics of the deals are not disclosed, archie operates an equity model, exchanging its operational support, networks, expertise and proven playbooks as services for equity. archie’s ethos is that “venture capital alone is not enough”, with it instead investing its “intellectual capital” for equity, ensuring skin in the game and aligned interests with founders and investors alike. With this, archie’s Chair and co-founder, Anthony Thomson, recently joined ekko’s Board, while co-founder and banking heavyweight Paul Pester, also joins wamo’s Board to help guide the scale-ups through their next phases of growth.
Speaking about the announcement, archie CEO, Steve Brennen, said: “As we know, capital alone isn’t enough to help fintechs successfully scale. And sadly, scale-up mode is where many great ideas and businesses fail. archie’s here to fix that.
“After analysing over 200 of the most exciting fintechs, I’m delighted we’ve made our first two investments in wamo and ekko – two super-high potential businesses. We have huge faith in their respective propositions and teams and, combined with our unique fintech experience and skill set, are already seeing success in the partnerships.
“While funding can be more difficult to secure, the fintech market remains strong – full of opportunity, great ideas, great founders and areas ripe for disruption. With our help, I know we can push more fintechs to success, to become category leaders and offer real disruption and better outcomes for consumers. I am always excited to meet more promising fintechs as we continue to search for other fintechs which archie can support.”
Yanki Onen, CEO, wamo, commented: “I’m thrilled we’ve been able to get archie on board. We have an exciting proposition to serve SMEs right across Europe and I’m confident that having archie, the team’s wealth of unique experience and their deep understanding of our business, will support our ambitions and increase the chances of us building the business we set out to create.”
Oli Cook, Co-Founder and CEO, ekko, said: “We’re hugely excited to partner with archie. The team has already provided immense value in the short time we’ve been working together – to me, our board, and on our Go to Market strategy.
“And having a heavyweight such as Anthony join our board is simply immeasurable – his expertise alone is worth its weight in gold, let alone the rest of the archie roster. Our
stellar team is now supercharged and ready to achieve even greater success.”
Chaired by one of fintech’s best-known serial entrepreneurs, Anthony Thomson (co-founder and former chair of UK banks Metro and atom, and Australian digital bank 86 400) and led by global tech and fintech leader Steve Brennen as founder-CEO (Uber, PayPal, eBay & Zip), archie brings together one of fintech’s strongest scale-up teams with deep expertise in delivering hyper-growth.
Its other co-founders are fintech, banking and VC heavyweights, including Paul Pester (Chair of Tandem Bank, former CEO of TSB and Virgin Money globally, and founder of Loop), Fawaz Zu’bi (founder and CEO of global venture capital firm Silicon Badia), and Tommy Mermelshtayn (global scaler and director of strategy of Zip and Equifax).
This elite team of industry experts – ranging from successful founders, investors and proven go-to-market specialists – has helped scale brands like PayPal, Uber, eBay, and Zip into the giants they are today.
