TrueLayer before TrueLayer

From a Macchiato to Open Banking. How I invested in FinPort (now TrueLayer)

Today TrueLayer announced its strategic partnership and investment with Visa. This follows on from their $35m Series C round in June. It’s been a phenomenal year for the company and well-deserved recognition for the co-founders, Francesco (CEO) and Luca (CTO).

Francesco has already talked about today and tomorrow. I thought it was deserving to tell about Yesterday and where it began. In the spirit of sharing and learning I’m grateful to Francesco Simoneschi and Luca Martinetti for allowing me to share their first pitch deck in this short post.

It all began with macchiatos…

Three years ago, Francesco, Luca and I met for the first time at Réveille Coffee in San Francisco. We were introduced by the amazing Stefano Bernardi, a common friend and co-investor. We chatted for a few hours, getting to know each other and drinking several macchiatos (we’re all Italian!). They educated me about screen scraping, bank connectivity, Open Banking, PSD2, banking data and product use cases. It was clear to me that they could see the future of Fintech before it had happened.

Their plan: move back to Europe, set up a London HQ, raise seed capital, build the initial product and win early customers. Simple! The name for this new company was: FinPort — Bank-as-a-platform. A few weeks later Francesco and Luca came to London and pitched our partnership. This was the original pitch deck they presented…

This what we identified through our thesis:

• authentic product founders with relevant competencies, great ambitions and sense of urgency.
• obsessed with solving the hard problem of banks connectivity and banking data at scale.
• by building a product that removes friction from the financial lives of every consumer.
• creating a new entire market category with big potential

We were very excited to partner with Francesco and Luca and join their journey. We managed to lead their Seed round.

The impressive thing for me is how true they’ve stayed to their vision. Since that moment, Francesco and Luca have been relentlessly and consistently focused on executing their initial vision, block after block, layer after layer, hire after hire. Everything they have built and will be building was already crystal clear and thoroughly designed in their minds from day zero when I first met them.

After 36 months, 24 board meetings, 4 funding rounds and 1 name change, we still love catching up over good …TrueCoffee.

Onwards!