Coming May 2025
Get Early Access
aVenture is in Alpha: aVenture recently launched early public access to our research product. It's intended to illustrate capabilities and gather feedback from users. While in Alpha, you should expect the research data to be limited and may not yet meet our exacting standards. We've made the decision to temporarily present this information to showcase the product's potential, but you should not yet rely upon it for your investment decisions.
aVenture is in Alpha: aVenture recently launched early public access to our research product. It's intended to illustrate capabilities and gather feedback from users. While in Alpha, you should expect the research data to be limited and may not yet meet our exacting standards. We've made the decision to temporarily present this information to showcase the product's potential, but you should not yet rely upon it for your investment decisions.
© aVenture Investment Company, 2025. All rights reserved.
44 Tehama St, San Francisco, CA 94105
aVenture Investment Company ("aVenture") is an independent venture capital research platform providing detailed analysis and data on startups, venture capital investments, and key industry individuals.
While we strive to provide valuable insights with objectivity and professional diligence, we cannot guarantee the accuracy of the information provided on our platform. Before making any investment decisions, you should verify the accuracy of all pertinent details for your decision.
aVenture does not offer investment advisory services and is not registered as an investment adviser. The data provided by aVenture does not constitute recommendations or advice, whether by methodology or a statement written by a staff member of aVenture.
Links to external websites do not imply endorsement or affiliation with aVenture. References or links to providers offering the ability to invest in a primary or secondary transaction in a company are for convenience purposes only. They are not solicitations or offers to buy or sell an investment. Remember that past performance does not guarantee future results, and venture capital and private assets should be a contributory part of a diversified portfolio.
From TechCrunch
By Romain Dillet
July 11, 2024
Meet Adfin, a new UK-based fintech startup that wants to help companies get their invoices paid — whatever it takes. Founded by two fintech experts, the company is starting with a problem and building a product around it. The problem is that it’s still hard to get paid if you’re set up as a sole trader or even a small company that doesn’t have a person dedicated to administrative tasks.
The process of getting paid for work for small businesses and sole traders like lawyers, accountants, consultants, tradespeople and so on typically entails sending the customer an invoice with your bank information. But you also have to track incoming payments and reconcile them to make sure you’ve receive the money. Add to that, the experience isn’t that great for your customers.
For returning customers, you can try and set up a direct debit. But it may be hard for these sorts of businesses to convince their customers to let them withdraw money directly from their bank account. As for card payments, it often leads to high processing fees.
“The average consumer only makes 21 ecommerce purchases a year,” Adfin co-founder and CEO Tom Pope (pictured left) told TechCrunch. He previously worked for Tink, the open banking startup that was acquired by Visa. “All the buzz has been around ecommerce, but for your average legal practice or accountancy firm, their payments are stuck in the 90s — bank transfers, card payments taken over the phone, paying really high fees.”
Adfin argues sole traders and small businesses don’t necessarily want to think about the most appropriate payment method. Instead, they just want to get paid and move on. At its core, the startup is building an invoice management platform and a payment platform to simplify critical admin and make getting paid less of a headache.
After uploading invoices to Adfin, its customers can use the platform to send payment requests via email, WhatsApp or SMS.
Adfin then automatically decides the payment method to display depending on various factors, such as whether it’s a returning customer, a small invoice, etc. The company supports pay-by-bank using open banking, card payments including Apple Pay and Google Pay. If the customer doesn’t pay right away, Adfin automates sending reminders too.
“Our customers are not payment nerds. They don’t have to be payments nerds. And I think the fact that they are not payments nerds has probably led to them being a little bit taken advantage of, if I’m honest,” Pope said.
“With Adfin, we just offer you payments. We get you paid and we will handle the payment mix. And obviously, it’s in our interest to be trying to get your success rate as high as possible and your costs as low as possible,” he added.
As Adfin acts as a central repository for all your invoices, companies can check all pending invoices and see if they’ve been paid or not. Adfin currently charges 1% per payment. It doesn’t matter which payment method was used, it’s always going to be 1%.
“As a merchant, everybody wants to get paid as fast as possible, as cheap as possible and with less efforts from your side,” Adfin co-founder and CTO Ciprian Diaconasu (pictured right) told TechCrunch. He previously spent 12 years working for Mambu, a cloud-based banking platform. “So it’s a bunch of capabilities that we’re building that just maximize the timing when you get paid and minimizes the cost of that.”
The startup has already raised $4.9 million in seed funds, co-led by Index Ventures and Visionaries Club. Several business angels also participated in the round, including Thijn Lamers (Adyen founding team); Guillaume Pousaz (Checkout.com founder); Eugene Danilkis (Mambu co-founder); Ferdinand Meyer (Moss co-founder); David de Picciotto (Pledge co-founder); Maximilian Eber and Maik Wehmeyer (Taktile co-founders); and Josef Bovet (Tiller co-founder).
Lately’s new gamified app helps people arrive on time
A new app called Lately launched on the App Store a few weeks ago, targeting people with ADHD to help them arrive on time and rewarding them for doing so. The service is designed to help users manage their travel plans by notifying them when it’s time to leave for a trip, sending reminders 30 minutes, 10 minutes, and 5 minutes before departure. It also features Live Activities on iPhone and Apple Watch that display a countdown to leave. To encourage timely departures, Lately employs a point rew
Apr 26, 2025
The OpenAI mafia: 15 of the most notable startups founded by alumni
Move over, PayPal mafia: There’s a new tech mafia in Silicon Valley. As the startup behind ChatGPT, OpenAI is arguably the biggest AI player in town. Its meteoric rise to a $300 billion valuation has spurred many employees to leave the AI giant to create startups of their own. The hype around OpenAI is so high that some of these startups, like Ilya Sutskever’s Safe Superintelligence and Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab, have been able to raise billions of dollars without even launching a pro
Apr 26, 2025
Deel files countersuit against Rippling as rivalry escalates
In the latest development of an increasingly public dispute between HR and payroll services rivals, Deel has filed a countersuit against Rippling. To recap: Rippling publicly announced on March 17 that it was suing Deel over alleged corporate espionage, with accusations ranging from violation of the RICO racketeering act (typically used to prosecute organized crime) to misappropriation of trade secrets and unfair competition. Deel is now slamming that lawsuit as part of a “campaign to try to i
Apr 25, 2025