Investing in the technologies of tomorrow, solving the problems of today.
“We had terrific interest in our latest financing round from leading investors around the globe,” said Mike Cagney, co-founder and CEO, Figure Technologies, which is one of Tessera’s portfolio companies. “Tessera stands out for their deep knowledge of blockchain, AI, and big data. We are fortunate to have them with us on this journey.”
Mike Cagney, Co-Founder and CEO, Figure Technologies
Philosophy
Tessera invests in technologies that unleash the power of data.
With a management team full of investment and entrepreneurial experience, we know what it takes to nurture and exit our positions. We specialize in big data and have over 30 years of experience with over $10 Billion in acquisitions. Tessera is also a champion for diversity and inclusion and we believe that in order to continue finding the next breakthrough companies, opportunity must be given to all. It is for this reason that a significant portion of our portfolio is composed of firms started by either a female or founder of color.
Portfolio
AMINO
A payments company comprising a team of co-founders from Integral Ad Science. Amino uses blockchain technology to provide transparency into the media supply chain to eliminates discrepancies & inefficiencies using a digital ledger. Amino leverages this technology to create accurate reporting and offer a solution for payment processing.
BASKET
Basket is a platform enables shoppers the ability to own their purchase data and monetize it for themselves to advertisers and marketers. This gives users a unique ability to own and manage their data at their discretion.
BLOCKDAEMON
Blockdaemon is the leading independent blockchain node infrastructure to stake, scale, and deploy nodes with institutional-grade security and monitoring. Supporting 40+ cutting edge blockchain networks in the cloud and on-premise, Blockdaemon is used by exchanges, custodians, crypto platforms, financial institutions and developers to connect commercial stakeholders to blockchains.
BOLT
Bolt is a eCommerce company simplifying the checkout process for merchants selling their goods online. By providing tools like 1-click checkout, fraud detection, payments and more, Bolt makes buying goods online as simple as Amazon helping boost customer sales.
CARTA
Carta is the market leader for equity management and fund administration, providing portfolio analytics, including deal IRRs and cash management. They also help PE & VC’s distribute their quarterly investor reports by integrating with third-party tax and payroll providers. However, with a network of companies and investors all on one platform and the ability to transfer securities, Carta also aims to build liquidity. Their goal is to become the first real “private stock market for companies.”
DREAMPAYMENTS
A powerful cloud based platform that enables merchants to sell everywhere using mobile devices as well as digital insurance claim processing and payment. Dream’s cloud based payment platform combined with its mobile point of sale device allows merchants to accept credit and debit cards, access rich analytics and reports, and provide digital receipts to customers. Dream has even scaled its offering as a reseller of its core technology to power services by large banks, insurance and credit card companies creating global scale.
GEMINI
Gemini is a leading regulated cryptocurrency exchange that allows customers to buy, sell, store, and earn cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, ether, and DeFi tokens. Gemini also maintains a leading NFT (Non-fungible token) platform, Nifty Gateway, which enables the buying, trading and minting of NFT’s.
FIGURE
Figure is a financial technology company leveraging blockchain, AI and analytics to deliver home equity lending, reverse mortgages and other financial products. Built by the founder of SoFi, Figure sits on a home grown blockchain protocol, Provenance, which is building a marketplace for the digitization of many financial assets like titles and other financial records while also enhancing the origination, custody, trading and securitization of assets for institutions.
HEX TRUST
Hex Trust, a leading digital asset custodian and infrastructure platform for the banking sector. Their platform, Hex Safe, provides compliance-focused custody, flexible deployment options, and seamless integration with third-party service providers in both the DeFi and CeFi ecosystems such as exchanges, brokers, lending, staking and borrowing platforms. Headquartered in Asia, Hex Trust is fully licenced and has a presence in Hong Kong and Singapore.
IMPROBABLE
Improbable is a British technology company, creating the critical infrastructure to power the coming of age of virtual worlds and the metaverse. Improbable partners with developers in video games, entertainment, and with defense and academic institutions to enable powerful, virtual worlds of unprecedented size and usefulness.
LEDGER
Ledger is a global crypto wallet leader allowing users to easily and securely store their crypto on an encrypted device (HSM: Hardware Security Module). Launched In 2020, the Ledger-Live platform allows users to trade, swap, and lend all on one secure platform, making it one of the securest platforms for investors to begin their crypto journey.
PROVENANCE
Provenance is a blockchain protocol for the financial services industry. It is a permissioned, proof of stake protocol that acts as a global ledger, registry and exchange across assets and markets. Every day, loans are originated, financed, sold and soon securitized, on Provenance. Members include global financial institutions that act as stakeholders, originators, lenders and someday traders on the blockchain. While starting with loan origination and securitization, the use cases for Provenance are vast and it is currently powering Figure.
TRUGARD
Trugard is an early-stage digital asset cyber security security company. Using defense, threat intelligence-based
compliance and risk automation company, they seek to identify illicit crypto activities through digital asset exchanges, wallets, and marketplaces
We Focus On
FINANCE
Few industries combine the use of data , capital and global commerce better than financial services. Since the financial crisis, talent and business ideas have been converging from coast to coast to meet at the intersection of business and technology. Artificial intelligence now makes it possible to take big data and make it actionable. Blockchain developers have seized on opportunities to reduce fees and create transparency.
MEDIA
The digitization of media has been rapidly increasing over the past decade. The steady convergence between content creators and content distribution platforms has been aided by technology heavy weights like Google, Amazon and Netflix. However, the ability to process data efficiently and actionably is the real opportunity as large companies look to expand their tech stacks enriched by the many upstarts creating a collision course of future value.
HEALTHCARE
Three key areas: patient medical records (PMR), billing and medical reviews could see drastic movement in the next few years as regulations soften. As technology continues to develop, patients seeking more transparency, reduced fees and control over their personal information can finally expect some relief. Home care solutions are also a rapidly emerging area that offers new scale encompassing all three solutions in compliance with social distancing guidelines.
“Tessera has been instrumental in our company’s growth. They understand how to operate tech companies, which is invaluable to us. Their team is always available to help. Nights, weekends, or holidays it doesn’t matter,” said Brent Ho-Young, CEO, Dream Payments, which is one of Tessera’s portfolio companies. “We very quickly recognized their value and wanted Tessera on our board to have a voice in navigating our company. To truly achieve our goals, we need great people around us who not only understand the capital needs of our business, but, also, understand the operational hustle of building products, leading teams, and executing deals. Tessera embodies those qualities.”
Brent Ho-Young, CEO, Dream Payments
Team
Xavier Segura, Managing Partner | LinkedIn
Xavier Segura has over a decade’s worth of experience in product and business development spanning across Oracle, Verizon, and AppNexus. He has been a member of over $10 Billion worth of tech acquisitions by helping build and commercialize technology stacks using machine learning. He has led global cross-functional teams to regularly exceed product and sales targets while developing expertise in all things data. Xavier launched Tessera Venture Partners in 2018 with his co-founder to fund early-stage data, fintech, and blockchain companies by applying the secrets big tech looks for in successful acquisitions. After tremendous success with Tessera’s inaugural fund, Xavier is now raising Tessera's second fund to expand growth and early-stage investment opportunities. Xavier participated in the selective Stanford GSB business scaling program, holds an MBA from Columbia Business School, a BA from the University of Michigan and an executive education certificate in blockchain technologies from MIT.
Sachin Jaitly, Managing Partner | LinkedIn
Sachin is an entrepreneur, big data expert, and investor. Over the past 20 years, Sachin has spent much of his career building new technologies to address significant market demands. Sachin was co-founder of flexEngage, which is a patented digital receipt solution that is deployed across tens of thousands of retailers. After flexEngage, Sachin joined Datalogix, which was the largest big data platform in digital media. Sachin led the business development efforts with Datalogix and helped scale the company to an exit, when it was acquired by Oracle. Sachin understands the passion and challenges that come along with entrepreneurship. In 2018, Sachin launched Tessera Venture Partners to seed great entrepreneurs and help them through their journeys. Sachin graduated with an MBA in Finance and BA in International Business from Rollins College, holds an Executive Education Certificate from MIT in Blockchain Technologies, and is currently in pursuit of a Doctorate in economics.
Chris Emme, Advisor | LinkedIn
With over 20 years of experience across the media and ad tech landscape, Chris Emme is a leader in the industry with a proven track record of driving revenue growth, building and leading sales teams as well as investing and advising across the Start-Up ecosystem. Having started his career leading both Microsoft's US Hispanic advertising business as well as Yahoo! Hispanic Americas, he graduated to launching Start-Ups like RadiumOne and MediaIQ. He then spent two years helping orchestrate and completing the turnaround efforts of Rocketfuel. Chris went on to serve as the Managing Director, Americas of Eyeota, a Data Technology company. He is also a Board member, co-chair of Marketing, and Media & Advertising Sector Lead for the Harvard Business School Alumni Angels of New York, as well as a mentor for Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator. He is a Harvard Business School alumnus and received his B.S in Marketing and International Business from University of Colorado at Boulder.
William Gulya, Advisor | LinkedIn
Bill Gulya is a Managing Director and head of the Americas for SGX Group (Singapore Exchange). Based in SGX’s New York office, he is a key contributor to the strategic decision making and execution of SGX’s business strategy across North and South America.
He is responsible for growing SGX’s presence in the Americas as well as fostering relationships with key strategic partners, such as institutional investor clients, investment banks, financial intermediaries, and corporates. He leads a sales team across the region to support SGX’s clients with a full suite of products and services across asset classes.
Bill has over 25 years of experience in Asia/Emerging markets. Prior to joining SGX, Bill has held senior distribution roles at JPMorgan, Bank of America-Merrill Lynch and Credit Suisse. He was responsible for leading equity derivatives, prime services, equity financing and cash equity teams in the US covering Asia and global emerging markets products. He possesses extensive relationships with Hedge Funds of all strategies, Asset Managers, Foundations and Family Offices. Bill has also been Venture Capital investing for the past 20 years across the technology, blockchain, consumer, healthcare and real estate sectors.
Bill obtained a Bachelor of Science in Finance from Lehigh University and holds various Executive Education Certifications from the Wharton School of Business of the University of Pennsylvania.
Snejana Sevak, Advisor | LinkedIn
Snejana Sevak is the Co-founder and managing Director for Business Development at Solutions for Human Capital (S4HC), a US-based software development company which was one of the pioneers in an offshoring software development to Eastern Europe, where S4HC still maintains its development center. S4HC specializes in outsourced application development and systems integration. Snejana began her career at Morgan Stanley in 1997, before founding S4HC in 2001. She holds a BBA from Baruch College and an MBA from Fordham University Business School. Snejana is also an alumnus of the Wexner Heritage Program.
Nitin Mittal, Advisor | LinkedIn
Nitin Mittal has 15+ years of experience as a banker, hedge fund analyst, and CFO, and has deep operational and fundraising exposure in growth and turnaround situations. He has modeled and worked on complex equity and debt financing as well as M&A deals. He was the CFO of a VC-backed software company that grew from five employees to 200+. Nitin has a Bachelors degree from University of Michigan and a Masters Degree from Columbia University.
James Liao, Advisor
James has had an extensive expertise in product, business, and entrepreneurship. He spent 4 years working on server process design and product management at Intel Corporation, and in the meantime became passionate about startups. He has had experience in Investment Banking (Wells Fargo), Venture Capital (Bowery Capital & 37 Angels), and Operations (ofo, Mobike, Spin). He has more than 8 years of experience in coaching founders and startups. James spearheaded the Graduate Mentor Program at the Founder Institute in New York City, and was the resident pitch coach at the Coulter Program in the Columbia Medical School. Additionally, he has worked closely with startups in Techstars, Entrepreneur Roundtable Accelerator (ERA), and Columbia Venture Community. James holds a BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from University of California, Berkeley and an MBA from Columbia Business School.
Research
Download our whitepaper to learn more about blockchain
Contact Us
Whether you are a startup or wish to learn more about the exciting investment community surrounding Venture Capital, Blockchain, or AI, Tessera Venture Partners wants to hear from you.
101 W 24th Street
New York, NY 10011