NEW YORK — Early stage venture capital firm Exponent Founders Capital has launched in NYC and has raised $125 million to date, including a new $75 million Fund II vehicle that will be deployed across promising inception and early stage companies spanning enterprise software, fintech and payments, infrastructure, applied AI, and vertical SaaS throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe. The raise was oversubscribed primarily by nonprofit endowments and hospitals, with limited partners including Carnegie Mellon University, Cook Children’s Health Care System, LGT Capital Partners, Next Legacy Partners, and others.
Exponent Founders Capital founded in 2021 by Charley Ma and Mahdi Raza. Charley and Mahdi teamed up to scale their impact as generalist, thesis-driven, and long-term investors motivated to help startup teams cross the growth chasm from $0 to $100M+ and beyond in revenue, with early Fund I breakouts such as Apollo, Chronosphere, EvenUp, and more. In addition to extensive operating careers, both were also prolific angel investors prior to the fund as early believers in companies such as Built, Finch, Homebase, Lithic, Parafin, Persona, Stytch, Unit, and many more.
Charley brings fintech and B2B software expertise to his investing approach from years of experience as an operator. Charley was one of the first business hires at Plaid where he led the fintech and developer sales vertical in San Francisco and was instrumental in building out the company’s New York office. Later, he was one of the first business hires at Ramp and helped launch the fastest growing corporate card built for savings as head of growth. He was most recently the head of growth at Alloy, a leading identity and risk infrastructure platform for financial institutions, and started his career at JPMorgan in R&D and payments.
Mahdi comes from a background in growth, advising, and investing across various early-stage fintech and enterprise software companies. He became an operator after roles in fintech and technology investment banking at Evercore and investing at GIC. Mahdi then built across growth, payments, and scaling at Robinhood through rapid growth from early days into a public company before joining Stytch to lead early growth. He leverages years of experience honing growth and product fundamentals in his relationships with founders.
“It’s difficult to build an enduring company unless you’ve lived it,” said Charley Ma, cofounder of Exponent. “We have years of earned experience from the zero to one hundred journey at multiple high-growth companies, and we strive to be pound for pound the most high leverage investors for our founders.”
“Charley and I are eager to back non-consensus founders at the earliest stages and help them navigate the journey to be tomorrow’s category leaders,” said Mahdi Raza, cofounder of Exponent.
