Where We Invest: Broadening Horizons While Staying True to Our Mission

At Canapi Ventures, we are driven by a mission to build a modern, inclusive financial ecosystem by empowering exceptional founders and innovative ideas with both capital and expertise. Our mission is strengthened by the support of over 70 strategic limited partners—U.S. financial institutions that are not only our capital providers but also active collaborators and potential customers for our portfolio companies. This unique alliance creates a powerful feedback loop, allowing companies we invest in to build solutions in close partnership with the very institutions they aim to serve.

After raising our second fund last year, this mission remains at the core of everything we do. Over the past year, we’ve added a new general partner and expanded our investment team. At the same time, the market has continued to evolve as companies reset valuation and growth expectations in a post-ZIRP environment and as new technologies uncover opportunities to drive efficiencies, reduce risk, and delight customers.

While our initial investments in Fund I focused exclusively on B2B fintech, the landscape has shifted, and so have we. Today, our approach embraces both vertical fintech innovation and horizontal software solutions that can enhance financial services and other industries. Our broadened strategy is accompanied by a balanced approach to investment stages, giving us the flexibility to support companies throughout their lifecycle. We actively pursue early-stage opportunities—partnering with visionary founders from Seed to Series A—while also backing growth-stage companies that are scaling rapidly and proving their ability to become market leaders.

This balance allows us to capitalize on emerging innovations at the earliest stages while continuing to support more mature companies as they execute their growth strategies. Together, these investments create a diversified portfolio that positions Canapi to thrive across market cycles and deliver meaningful value to our partners and portfolio companies alike.

Areas of Focus: Pairing Fintech Verticals with Horizontal Software Solutions

Since the launch of Fund I, we’ve maintained a steadfast focus on financial services and fintech—backing companies that are redefining the future of financial technology. We continue to actively pursue investments across key fintech verticals, seeking to support founders building technologies that will reshape how financial institutions operate and deliver value.

Our fintech investments continue to center around core areas such as lending, fraud and identity, payments, banking infrastructure, and wealth management, among others. These sectors remain essential to the financial ecosystem, and we are committed to backing companies that are setting new industry standards.

Thematic Areas of Focus: Fintech Verticals

However, as market dynamics shift and the needs of our LP network evolve, we’ve expanded our focus beyond fintech to include horizontal software solutions—technologies like GenAI and cybersecurity that play a pivotal role in modernizing financial services. These innovations not only align with the needs of our LPs but also offer scalability across industries, unlocking large, diversified addressable markets.‍

Thematic Areas of Focus: Horizontal Software

For Canapi, this broader investment focus enhances our ability to foster innovation and deliver value across a wider range of use cases.

Balancing Our Portfolio: Supporting Transformative Companies at Every Stage

Our expansion isn’t limited to sectors—we’ve also broadened the investment stages we engage in. While Fund I primarily focused on Series A and Series B opportunities, the past two years have seen significant shifts in the venture market, including the slowdown of IPO opportunities and reduced valuations across the software and fintech landscape. In response, we are balancing growth investments with early-stage bets, providing us with flexibility to ride out market cycles while supporting the next wave of innovation.

Early-Stage Investment: Seed to Series A

The surge of talented founders launching new ventures—driven by underwater stock options at later stage private companies, shifts in funding cycles, and the harnessing of GenAI—creates a fertile environment for early-stage investments. With Fund II, we are renewing our focus on early-stage by supporting bold entrepreneurs at the outset of their journeys.

We seek out:

• Visionary founders, who are experts in their field, tackling meaningful problems that we want to help solve over the next decade
• Ability to attract top-tier talent and build high-performing teams
• Solutions targeting overlooked niches or emerging markets within B2B/enterprise software
• Strong alignment with our LPs to create early design partnerships and product-market fit

This approach enables us to build deeper relationships between our LPs and portfolio companies, allowing financial institutions to co-develop solutions that directly meet their needs while giving startups a head start in achieving product-market fit and scale. Our target investment size for our early-stage strategy is $1-12 million.

Growth-Stage Investment: Series B to Pre-IPO

For growth-stage companies, our focus is on supporting established leaders who are already demonstrating strong traction in the market. We seek companies that are well-positioned to become category leaders and offer significant value to both investors and customers.

Our growth-stage investments emphasize:

• Top-line growth with trends toward profitability, typically 25%+ annual growth
• Proven enterprise contracts with demonstrated upsells and retention
• Strong leadership teams with a track record of execution and operational excellence
• Scalable unit economics that position companies for long-term success

This phase reflects our commitment to backing companies that can scale sustainably and make meaningful impacts across the sector(s) they serve. Our target investment size for our growth-stage strategy is $15-50 million.

Looking Ahead

Our broader investment strategy reflects our commitment to supporting founders at every stage—from the earliest seed rounds to pre-IPO scaling efforts. Whether backing the next fintech breakthrough or investing in foundational horizontal technologies, our goal remains the same: to identify, invest in, and support companies that are shaping the future of financial services and beyond.

We are excited to share this journey with our LPs, partners, and the entrepreneurial community. By working together, we will continue driving innovation and building a resilient, dynamic financial services economy. If you’re a founder working on innovative solutions in fintech or enterprise software that touches financial institutions, let’s connect and explore how we can partner to bring your vision to life.