Today, Monark Markets announced their $2.2M financing round which we were excited to participate in alongside Rishi Taparia from Garuda and Grit Capital Partners. This raise brings Monark's total funding to $3.6M, with previous investors including James Murphy from Forum Ventures. See the article from Lucinda Shen from Axios: https://lnkd.in/edKX-ksu I believe financial APIs will be responsible for creating a more collaborative and competitive financial ecosystem, driving trillions in transactions across Credit, Investments, Insurance, you name it. Open-banking and its influence has been the driving force behind the advent of financial APIs and with these new services every company (fintech or not) will be able to seamlessly offer financial services without building the infrastructure themselves. In the case of Monark, they are connecting the demand of alternative asset managers whether it's Blackstone or Masterworks to access retail capital efficiently and effectively, while allowing wealth managers, digital or traditional, to offer the entire world of alternatives all through an API. They are the plumbing to help drive the $1T/year in retail capital entering private markets (Bain & Co). Monark’s unique approach involves partnering b2b with incumbent distribution platforms (brokerages & RIAs) to embed an alternative investing experience akin to investing in public markets directly into their native user experience, while standardizing the fragmented and compliance heavy process of offering alts to individual investors. Ben Haber and Paul Davis are young, hungry, smart founders with an incredibly senior team (from Templum, Alto, Prime Trust, Securitize) and heavyweights for advisors like William Capuzzi (CEO of Apex Fintech Solutions, an industry leading custodian). While most NYU grads were graduating, Ben and Paul skipped their walk down the aisle to buy Lex Markets out of bankruptcy (a company which raised $27M+) for $325k to kickstart their internal trading system so they aren’t starting from scratch. We believe customers will demand a digital experience (even from the RIAs, wealth managers etc) which necessitates a model like Monark's to support on the back end. Current incumbents, iCapital or CAIS, or well funded startups like Templum, Opto, or Moonfare are still suffering from the same things: high minimum tickets, liquidity issues, legacy infrastructure and direct to investor distribution. Monark’s approach can solve all of these problems and facilitate the ramp of alternatives amongst retail/mass affluent portfolios. If you are looking to join a rocketship before takeoff or currently work at a brokerage or RIA and want to learn more about integrating with Monark, get in touch!
This is a super interesting, thanks for sharing. Not surprised that the future of Alts growth may be via APIs, the same way the future of public exchanges growth in the 00s was the internet.
Max Reiff
5mo
🙌🙌
Co-Founder at Monark
5moThrilled to be working with you! Ryan Bloomer