Architect Capital Launches With $100 Million to Provide Asset-based Financing to Technology Companies in the U.S. and Latin America
Pictured: James Sagan, Founder and CEO at Architect Capital
New firm provides fast-scaling businesses with financial solutions complementary to venture capital and venture debt
Architect Capital, an asset-based lender to early-stage technology businesses, announced that it has launched with over $100 million to provide non-dilutive or less-dilutive financing solutions to high-growth and technology-enabled businesses. With a focus on FinTech, E-Commerce, and SaaS companies in Latin America and the United States, Architect Capital's mission is to support innovative founders across the globe by structuring and delivering unique asset-based products complementary to traditional venture capital.
"The global technology and startup industry is evolving quickly, and new forms of financing to fund novel and underappreciated assets are a necessary part of that evolution," says James Sagan, Founder and CEO at Architect Capital. "We're excited to launch Architect Capital to help disruptive, asset-rich technology companies scale quickly."
Proliferation of information combined with a shift in consumer behavior has led to the disruption of traditionally asset-heavy industries, such as financial services, real estate, and retail. A growing number of venture-backed businesses have been founded to provide financial products to a variety of these spaces. While traditional forms of equity and debt financing in the venture ecosystem are still very much integral to the growth of these companies, traditional financing is not engineered to support the growth of a company's underlying financial products. Venture capital, for example, is highly dilutive and venture debt does not scale with assets. Architect Capital was established with the goal of providing tailored and less dilutive funding to support the emergence of these novel, esoteric, and tech-enabled assets.
While Architect Capital has a global investment mandate, the firm is most active in Latin America, with a focus on supporting technology companies that are modernizing financial services, enabling E-Commerce growth, or disrupting other traditional industries in the region. Sagan notes that, "while I have been investing in companies in Latin America over the last six years, we are still in the early stages of the area's FinTech story. At Architect Capital, we are thrilled to be at the forefront of firms investing in the region as we approach an inevitable period of exponential growth."
Architect Capital has invested in six companies since inception, including PayJoy, a company that delivers consumer financing and smartphone technology to customers in emerging markets. "Architect has been an excellent partner for our capital needs. They bring an excellent balance of rigor and flexibility; an important combination for scaling in emerging markets," said Brad Pennington, President of Financial Products at PayJoy.
The firm has also invested in Forum Brands, a U.S.-based E-Commerce marketplace aggregator and ADDI, a FinTech company that gives Colombian consumers access to fair and affordable credit through point-of-sale-financing.
"I've known James for years, and he's my absolute first call whenever a startup asks me about debt financing," said Santiago Suarez, Founder and CEO of ADDI. "He has perfected the balance between scalability, simplicity, and structure needed when you are raising your first $10 million to $40 million in debt funding. James knows very well what will make a deal work - for the fund and the company - and he both delivers that and focuses on it. As an added bonus, he genuinely cares and therefore contributes to improving operations and reaching scale."
About Architect Capital
Architect Capital is a San Francisco-based asset manager that supports innovative founders by lending against assets generated by technology companies worldwide, especially in the FinTech, E-Commerce, and SaaS spaces. The team at Architect Capital brings deep expertise in executing cross-border transactions, generating unique in-market insights, making long-lasting connections across the tech ecosystem, and working with early stage businesses across the globe. By providing less dilutive capital that is complementary to equity capital, along with an array of other benefits, Architect Capital helps companies grow their impact and financial returns. For more information, visit: https://www.architectcap.io/