Sydecar Raises $8.3M to Streamline and Standardize Venture Capital
Venture capital fintech company Sydecar announced Tuesday that it raised $8.3 million in seed funding led by Deciens Capital. The company’s platform helps streamline common VC financial processes like back-office operations, automatic banking, compliance, contracts and reporting.
Sydecar CEO Nik Talreja founded the company in part due to his own experience with venture capital both as an attorney working for firms and later as a venture fund founder himself.
While practicing law, Talreja realized that many of his billable hours weren’t efficient for VC investors, nor did they create alignment between a lawyer and their client.
“I realized that there had to be a better way for mediating relationships, especially when it comes to how best in class strategy can be delivered, how documentation is delivered and [how] transactions occur,” Talreja told Built In.
After starting his own fund called 18 Ventures, he and co-founder David Meister realized their experience in VC financing and legal practice could be put to use standardizing many VC processes which were, at the time, a headache to manage.
“We created Sydecar to be the product we wished we had when we were starting out,” Meister, Sydecar’s CBO, said in a statement. “Our goal is to help anyone invest in the entrepreneurs they believe in without needing a personal team of lawyers and accountants.”
Sydecar not only reduces the regulatory burden on individual investors but also saves investors time and money. Instead of paying a lawyer to spend days or weeks of billable hours on launching investment vehicles, Sydecar standardizes the process to take only a matter of minutes.
“We don’t want to replace legal counsel. Counsel plays a really important role. It exists to provide guidance and strategy and align perfectly with what you want to accomplish as a client,” Talreja said. “But at the same time, I think we can alleviate a lot of the pain [of launching vehicles] and let investors focus on negotiating things that actually matter.”
To date, the company has helped thousands of investors close over $350 million in deals both directly through the platform and through partnerships with companies like Stonks and Allocate.
With the fresh capital, Sydecar’s growing team plans to hire new talent across departments. Currently, the company is hiring multiple team members across product, engineering, customer experience, marketing and operations.
Most of the company is based in the Bay Area, which is where Talreja said they’re focusing on hiring. Sydecar also has team members distributed across offices in Seattle, Houston and Los Angeles.