1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Doug Atkin of Communitas Capital Partners (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: You said you’ve invested in 10 companies from this vehicle. Could you talk about some examples? Specifically, talk about in what stage did you encounter them and what was it about what they had that called you to make the investment. I’m trying to understand how you evaluate investments.

Doug Atkin: Let me give you a couple of examples – one late stage and one very early stage. Because we’ve been in the business for so long, we’re inundated with deal flows.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Doug Atkin of Communitas Capital Partners (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: B2B need less money, I think.

Doug Atkin: It all depends. If you’re building a business like an analytics package which you’re selling to the big banks, you need a decent amount of money to build something of industrial quality. A lot of these things take a bit more money.

Sramana Mitra: The comment I would make is that customer acquisition in B2C is hard to do in a lean way, which is what has drawn so much capital to the B2C side of the business.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Doug Atkin of Communitas Capital Partners (Part 1)

Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Doug Atkin was recorded in July 2019.

Doug Atkin, Managing Partner at Communitas Capital Partners, has extensive experience in FinTech and this conversation explores the nuances of that sector.

Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: Infinicept CEO Todd Ablowitz (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: When you have a very competitive market, people figure out innovative ways to differentiate. What I was probing for is, have you figured anything out that offers that kind of differentiation?

Todd Ablowitz: There is some interesting stuff, but it gets pretty obtuse. You can take data about these merchants. When you have enough of that data, you may be able to get insight or analytics to help them make good business decisions.

Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: Infinicept CEO Todd Ablowitz (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: This industry is very crowded and competitive.

Todd Ablowitz: It’s interesting that you say that because what we see is, when you combine a vertically-focused offering with payments and value-added services, you have the least competition and the most margin.

Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: Infinicept CEO Todd Ablowitz (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: The lending trend is everywhere. I know that Square is offering small business financing. There are FinTech companies that are focused on giving loans.

Intuit, for instance, is offering both payment and financing. What other examples do you have of the small business financing being offered by payment processors?

Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: Infinicept CEO Todd Ablowitz (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: You provide Escrow-type of service?

Todd Ablowitz: We provide just SaaS tools. Our customers can send us the transaction information. We don’t process the transaction. We don’t get into the chain. We teach them how to do it. We enable it and make it better, but we don’t compete with our customers. We don’t get a percentage of the transaction.

Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: Infinicept CEO Todd Ablowitz (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s talk about some customers who have become payment facilitators on top of your platform. Focus on use cases and customers that are interesting. Talk about the before and the after.

Todd Ablowitz: One of the most interesting customers is FiveStars. FiveStars is a loyalty tablet that goes on the counter of your local nail salon or restaurant. You simply put your phone number in, and they provide offers to you via text.