Trinity Ventures is an early stage venture capital firm dedicated to partnering with passionate entrepreneurs to transform revolutionary ideas into reality. With over $1 billion under management, Trinity Ventures believes in personal engagement, mutual respect and goal alignment with the entrepreneurs. Trinity focuses on early stage and seed technology investments with particular emphasis on social commerce and entertainment, digital media, Saas, and cloud and infrastructure.    Trinity Ventures has invested in such leading companies as Aruba Networks, 21Vianet, Blue Nile, LoopNet, Photobucket, SciQuest, Starbucks, BeachMint, Infoblox, Trion Worlds and Zulily.

Trinity Ventures

Comcast Ventures is the venture capital affiliate of Comcast Corporation and partners with extraordinary entrepreneurs building transformative consumer and enterprise companies.

Comcast Ventures

Village Global is an early stage venture capital firm backed by some of the world's most successful entrepreneurs.

Village Global

The Financial Solutions Lab was established in 2014 to cultivate, support, and scale innovative ideas that help improve financial health. We focus on solutions addressing acute and persistent financial health challenges faced by low- to moderate-income (LMI) individuals, Black and Latinx communities, and other underserved consumers. The Financial Health Network manages the Financial Solutions Lab in collaboration with founding partner JPMorgan Chase and with support from Prudential Financial.

Financial Solutions Lab

Andreessen Horowitz is a venture capital firm specializing in investing in seed, start-ups, early, mid-stage, growth, and late-stage. It prefers to invest in the social media business and technology sector with a focus on software, back-end infrastructure, the infrastructure of the Internet, cloud computing, enterprise software and services, consumer, business Internet, mobile-Internet, consumer Internet, cloud computing, data storage, social network browsers data-storage, consumer electronics, networking functions, software related biology, biotech, and medicine companies at the intersection of computer science and life sciences with a focus on digital therapeutics, cloud technology in biology, and computational medicine.

Andreessen Horowitz

Bullpen is a venture capital fund that invests in post-seed capital into early-stage companies. Bullpen Capital launched 10 years ago, the goal was to back overlooked entrepreneurs left behind by the latest Silicon Valley fads. The firm's portfolio spans all categories from fantasy sports to data center equipment to restaurant SaaS. Bullpen was founded in 2010 by Paul Martino and is based in San Francisco, California, United States.

Bullpen Capital

MBX Capital is a venture capital partnership investing in early-stage healthcare, life sciences, and environmental health companies

MBX Capital

Obvious Ventures is a venture capital firm that invests in the early and growth stages. The firm was founded in 2014 and is based in San Francisco, California.

Obvious Ventures

Clocktower Technology Ventures invests in the insurance, payments, personal finance, lending, credit, and asset management sectors. The firm’s expertise investing across financial services and its related ecosystem of global institutional allocators, policymakers, and hedge fund managers have created a community that offers a distinct value-add to portfolio companies. Since launching, Clocktower Technology Ventures has invested in 96 fintech companies in North America, Europe, and Latin America. It was founded in 2015 and headquartered in Santa Monica, California.

Clocktower Technology Ventures

Alumni Ventures Group provides high-quality, diversified venture portfolios to individual investors who previously haven't had access to VC. It helps accredited alums from top entrepreneurial schools invest together in the ventures of fellow alums. The firm backs companies with an alumni connection and an institutional lead investor with expertise in the space. AVG also offers focused funds that allow any accredited investor access to a venture portfolio, diversified by type, sector, stage, and geography. Beth Obermiller, Michael Madden, and Mike Collins co-founded the firm in Manchester, New Hampshire in 2013.

Alumni Ventures

Green D Ventures is a community of accredited Dartmouth alums who pool money into a VC fund to invest in Dartmouth-connected companies. Simply put, they believe they can invest better together than they can alone. They create a diverse portfolio for their investors, co-investing with leading VC funds across industry, stage, and geography. Their goal is to raise a new fund each year that benefits entrepreneurs, the school's ecosystem, and their investors.

Green D Ventures

Chestnut Street Ventures is an investment firm.

Chestnut Street Ventures

Brightside

Brightside is inventing a new category of financial health company -- Financial Care.  Brightside provides employers with a complete platform of financial solutions, focused on the 2/3 of workers who are living paycheck to paycheck and driving the cost of poor financial health (turnover, healthcare costs, productivity, DEI, and safety) for companies with front-line workers.  Brightside combines these solutions with tech-powered financial assistants and an app that ties it all together and helps influence employees and their families to better financial health.

Brightside provides a financial care platform for employers that combines human advice with technology that leverages behavioral science. The platform connects employees with Brightside’s financial advisors to obtain one-on-one financial coaching and help employees devise a personalized financial plan. The advisors also provide advice in relation to managing one’s spending, setting savings goals to meet financial emergencies and obtaining cost efficient alternatives for financial products such as insurance or cheaper refinancing for existing high-interest personal debt (such as student loans and credit cards).

Helping employers provide personalized, high-touch, and holistic financial wellness tools to their entire workforce.

Financial Wellness Tools

BrightSide

Brightside Selects Helix by Q2 to Migrate BaaS Program

Brightside provides a financial care platform for employers that combines human advice with technology that leverages behavioral science. The platform connects employees with Brightside’s financial advisors to obtain one-on-one financial coaching and help employees devise a personalized financial plan. The advisors also provide advice in relation to managing one’s spending, setting savings goals to meet financial emergencies and obtaining cost efficient alternatives for financial products such as insurance or cheaper refinancing for existing high-interest personal debt (such as student loans and credit cards).Telecommunications giant Comcast is the anchor client of Brightside. The company was founded by Comcast executives (Callum King and Shawn Leavitt) in 2017, in a bid to deploy an effective financial wellness platform across its own employees. Comcast also led the company’s seed round in 2018.Brightside reported total revenue growth of 800% for 2021 and expects to achieve revenue growth of 10x in 2022. As of November 2022, the company’s headcount has increased to over 175 employees. Brightside had plans to hire 200 more employees in 2023.Key customers and partnershipsBrightside served various organizations including notable companies such as Comcast and Unum, as of September 2024.

Based in the UK, Salary Finance offers a comprehensive suite of financial well-being benefits for employees. The company partners with employers to offer a platform that provides employees with access to a range of financial well-being products, including salary-backed loans, earned wage advances, savings accounts, and customized educational resources to help them build and automate savings as well as improve their overall financial well-being.In April 2024, the US operations of Salary Finance merged with the financial wellness benefit platform <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/609722">Finfit</a>. The combined entity now operates under the FinFit brand in the US.Key customers and partnershipsAs of February 2024, the platform was used by 600 employers across the UK, available to more than 4.5 million employees. These include more than a fifth of the companies in the FTSE-100 index. Its notable customers include the NHS, Dunelm, Virgin Active, and Simply Health.Salary Finance partnered with the American financial technology company Chime in July 2021, to launch Save—a new product to incentivize US employees to set up a salary-linked savings account with Chime, and become entitled to a USD 50 bonus and a variable Annual Percentage Yield (APY) of 0.50%.

Salary Finance

Payactiv offers a financial wellness solution, centered around "Earned-Wage Access," allowing employees to access their wages before payday. Employees can instantly access funds for hours worked, with options to transfer to their bank, load onto a Payactiv card, or withdraw cash at Walmart. Its app works as a digital wallet and includes additional features such as AI and machine-learning-based tools for budgeting, tracking savings, managing spending and bills, and obtaining personalized one-on-one financial coaching from trained professionals.The Payactiv app also features a free communication tool—Payactiv Connect—that enables employers and employees to connect for HR communications, company news, alerts, and shift scheduling.Key customers and partnershipsAs of November 2023, PayActiv’s platform was used by employees at over 4,000 businesses from industries such as retail and food services across the US, with some customers in Canada, Australia, the Philippines, and Brazil. Its clients include Walmart, Wayfair, Ibex Global and several others. It also entered into a partnership with US Bank in February 2022, where users of prepaid US Bank Focus Cards for payroll will be able to access their wages early.The company also has working partnerships with payment processors such as <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/23004">Fiserv</a> and <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/13061">Visa</a> to enable real-time transfer of earned wages to bank accounts of employees.

PayActiv

Based In the UK, Wagestream provides a financial wellness platform, offering a range of services including earned wage access, financial education, tools for savings, and pay and spend tracking. Wagestream’s tools are offered to employees through a mobile app, with an analytics platform for employers to monitor participation and financial resilience of staff.Employees can access their earned wages using the app by paying a flat fee of GBP 1.95 (USD 2.50) per withdrawal. The company’s platform has integrations with several payroll and timekeeping systems, enabling organizations to deploy Wagestream into their payroll process.Wagestream acquired 1) Australian earned-wage access startup Earnd in March 2021 to enter into the Australian market. 2) a credit card startup Keebos, in October 2023, to integrate Keebos credit score building platform (that uses open banking data) with Wagestream’s core offerings.Key customers and partnershipsAs of February 2024, Wagestream had a global user base of more than 3 million, which included more than 1,000 corporate customers in industries such as the retail, hospitality, and healthcare sectors. The company has offices in the US, UK, Spain, and Australia and some notable employers include Burger King, Pizza Hut, Crate &amp; Barrel, Bupa, University of Chicago, Popeyes, and National Health Service UK.The company also partnered with French Insuretch provider Wakam in August 2023, to introduce income protection coverage to its users.

Wagestream

Cleo offers tools for budgeting, and provides personalized spending and savings advice by connecting to a user's bank account and applying machine learning algorithms to analyze spending habits and transaction history. The app also provides access to an interactive chatbot which users can query to obtain on-demand suggestions (which has been supported by an in-house large language model since 2023).&nbsp;The platform also offers additional features such as a secured card to build credit score, direct debits, and salary advances.Cleo operates a subscription-based pricing on its budgeting and savings tools, with fee-based pricing on its cash advance offerings targeted at gig workers and workers with poor credit. The platform charges monthly subscription fees in the range of USD 1.99 - 5.99 on Cleo Plus offering and charges USD 10.99-14.99 on Cleo build offering.Cleo’s target market is the Gen-Z segment of the population and as of October 2023, the company had 7 million users, (up from 4 million in December 2020) and had USD 72.3 million annual recurring revenue (which was up 2.4x YoY)

Cleo

FinFit offers a financial wellness benefit platform for employers that uses predictive AI, and includes tools for employees to budget, track spending, set savings goals and obtain personalized financial assessments. The platform also provides access to certified financial counselors to obtain one-on-one financial advice. In addition to financial coaching, the company also offers services such as tools to manage student loan debt, get early access to earned wages, and obtain low-cost short-term loans backed by the employee’s salary. In April 2023, Fitfit merged with the US operations of UK-based financial wellness platform <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/342361">Salary Finance</a>. The two companies aim to launch a combined platform in the US under the Finfit brand.FinFit operates a subscription-based pricing model, and charges employers in the range of USD 0.30–1.00 per employee per month based on the size of the organizations and number of employees. The platform also generates revenue through interest income by charging users interest in the range of 7.9%–24.9% APR on its loans. It charges fixed interest on its lines of credit.As of March 2024, FinFit was reported to be serving more than 500,000 employees (up from 150,000 in 2020).Key customers and partnershipsIn September 2024, FinFit <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/33696">partnered with</a> <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/945256">Sunny Day Fund</a>, a financial support platform, to offer emergency savings accounts for employees through its SafetyNet platform. In August 2024, FinFit <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/32581">partnered with</a> <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/493140">isolved</a>, a human capital management platform, to expand product reach.

FinFit

Offers end-to-end financial wellness solutions ranging from educational resources to interactive platforms/tools for managing finances as well as access to registered investment advisors.

Provides a platform for employees, through their employers, to access earned wages or obtain emergency interest-free funds/loans, which are settled through their paycheck.

Provides a platform for employers to provide resources such as tools and advice to manage employee debt (with an increased focus on student loan debt).

Apps and platforms that allow consumers to obtain personalized financial advice, automate savings, create budgets, and track and manage spending.

Offers interactive platforms/tools for employers to provide personalized financial education resources and/or coaching to its employees.

Solutions that enable companies to offer and manage employee-sponsored emergency savings accounts through automated payroll deductions.

Platforms for employers to support employees with other debts such as mortgages, credit card debt, etc. through repayment assistance, refinancing options, and automated administrative processes.

Operates a B2B SaaS model to support employers with offering various fringe benefits to employees

PROMINENT_CATEGORY

<div>

Brightside, a financial coaching and debt management support platform for employees, has chosen Helix by Q2's banking-as-a-service solutions for its savings, checking, and business operations accounts.
The collaboration with Helix allows Brightside to expand its services beyond its previous vendor, and directly liaise with its banking partner, negating the requirement for FBO accounts or intermediary software.

</div>

BrightSide

About EDGE

Contact Us

Resources

Area of Focus

Technology Research Made Effortless