What is INTRO?

Welcome to another glorious Thursday morning and INTRO to Finance. We’ve spent the last few months exploring questions we’ve received from you, but we’ve yet to answer the most frequently asked question of them all:

“What is INTRO?”

Is it a new investment firm? How does it work with Indie.vc? Who is this Jason guy and why does he use so many gifs?

INTRO has had some mystery around it; however, today is the day we reveal what we’ve been quietly building over the last couple of months. Before we do, we’re going to give a bit of background on why and how we started working on INTRO.

How INTRO Started

But first, a proper intro (bad pun intended). My name is Jason Garcia and I’m Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Indie.vc. Bryce and I first met for lunch when I entered the Venture Capital ecosystem years back. He had just started building Indie.vc, and I was at Silicon Valley Bank. Over the years, we’ve developed a friendship rooted in our passion for responsible funding for founders.

Like most EIR roles, the firm provides resources for new-product development to bring INTRO into this world. Having started my career in public accounting at KPMG, followed by investment banking for Goldman Sachs, I grew up in the heart of the financial industry. I’ve always had an interest in the startup world and was fortunate to join Silicon Valley Bank in 2016. While there, I had a hand in making $275M+ in capital commitments to high-growth businesses of all shapes and sizes.

From SVB, I found that I wanted to fully immerse myself in the startup experience. I joined as an executive at a Lightspeed Venture Partners-backed company that was acquired, and most recently as Head of BD for an NEA-backed Fintech company. Having seen the venture ecosystem from all-angles, I couldn’t shake the conversations Bryce and I had been having over the years. I jumped at the chance to start working to solve them.

What We’re Building

Entrepreneurs need a better way to discover and access modern financial products. INTRO takes the guesswork out of what your options are and who to talk to.

By creating an INTRO profile, we can prescribe capital options that may be a financial fit for your business. Our software presents you with a menu of financial products that you can explore and better understand before asking for an introduction to a financial partner.

The profile you create is based on the performance of your business. Emphasizing numbers over narrative removes the bias introduced by team profiles and pitch decks. Your business tells your story with the accounting you’re already doing.

Keeping your profile current by connecting to your QuickBooks online, or manually entering changes in your business, will constantly keep you up to date on the latest options available to your business.

After you direct us to make an INTRO, we provide anonymized data to relevant partners in our growing network of vetted, active financiers. The partners we connect you with will have already shared interest in your business, which makes for an accelerated funding conversation. No more endless phone calls investigating who might be a fit, or wondering if the firm really has an interest. To avoid unnecessary fundraising distractions, we provide space for you and the financier to decline the conversation before it starts.

Above and beyond the more efficient and equitable process of accessing funding, the INTRO financing options are anchored in non-dilutive growth capital that allows you to retain ownership. We’ve designed INTRO to support as wide a range of companies as possible – not just SaaS or DTC. We support all industries across the US and Canada. We’re actively adding new partners, and hope to have a larger geographic footprint over the next year.

Where We Are

We‘ve been in private beta over the last few months to build and test INTRO. Over that time, we’ve built out a network that includes 20+ financial partners offering dozens of modern financial products. So far, we’ve had tremendous success matching companies to funding partners. Of the companies in the closed beta who completed an INTRO profile, nearly 80% matched to one option in our network and over 50% matched to multiple options. Here’s what a few of them had to say about their early experience with INTRO:

“INTRO helped Cladwell match to non-dilutive financing options we didn’t know existed and had us funded within days. The best part was the feeling of a personal intro to each of these lenders that took any guesswork and awkwardness out of the process.”
— Colin Flynn of Cladwell

“Using INTRO was like opening the door to a world we didn’t know existed. It was completely frictionless and let us ramp our proven marketing channels up from 0-100 in a matter of days.”
— Sumi Ali of YESPLZ

We’re still at the beginning of this journey, and have a lot of work ahead to build the product and networks we feel that businesses deserve. But today, we’re announcing our public beta. You can start your INTRO profile and discover the range of non-dilutive funding options available to your business.

We’re answering questions on Product Hunt today! Join in.

We’ll be back to our regularly scheduled INTRO to Finance posts next week. Want it delivered to your inbox every Thursday?