Better Tomorrow Ventures: Investor Profile

Thesis

Better Tomorrow Ventures (BTV) is a San Francisco-based venture firm making a deliberately narrow bet: everything is fintech. Founded in 2019, it takes a broad view of financial services, backing fintech companies from idea to IPO — and counting vertical SaaS and marketplace businesses within its purview wherever a financial-services layer can be added. The founding insight is that some of the largest technology companies quietly became financial services companies: payments, lending and card products now dominate the revenue of businesses that began as commerce software. BTV hunts for startups on the same fault line, where software can rewrite painfully manual financial workflows such as accounting, reconciliation and credit underwriting.

Sectors and stages

The firm's sweet spot is pre-seed and seed, where it leads rounds with checks of $500,000 to $4 million. It is global: roughly a third of the portfolio sits outside the US, including companies in India, Nigeria, Indonesia, Pakistan, Mexico and Brazil. Sectorally it covers banking infrastructure, payments, lending, insurance, capital markets and vertical SaaS with embedded finance, with growing interest in AI applications within financial services.

Fund size

BTV closed its Fund I at $75 million in September 2020. Its Fund II closed in 2022 at $225 million — triple the debut vehicle — comprising a $150 million core fund and a $75 million opportunity fund for follow-ons, as reported by TechCrunch. A third fund, reported in 2025 at around $140 million, was deliberately sized below the second, reflecting a post-ZIRP discipline favouring unit economics over hypergrowth.

Notable portfolio

Portfolio companies include Unit (banking-as-a-service, which raised a $100 million Series C valuing it at $1.2 billion), CloudTrucks, Salsa, Amitruck, Vitt, Creditbook and FarmRaise. The firm led 22 investments from its first fund and wrote non-lead cheques in others, backing founders across developed and emerging fintech ecosystems.

Partners

BTV was founded by Sheel Mohnot and Jake Gibson. Mohnot built and sold two fintech companies — FeeFighters, acquired by Groupon in 2012 (its technology became Groupon Payments), and Innovative Auctions — and started the 500 Fintech accelerator. Gibson co-founded NerdWallet (Nasdaq: NRDS) and served as its COO from 2010 to 2014. The firm describes every partner as a former founder or operator, and pitches itself as the investor founders call first through the hardest phases of building — for product sparring, customers, hiring help or as a sounding board.

Programmes run

BTV does not run a formal accelerator or fellowship; its platform is the operator-led, boots-on-the-ground support model — hiring help, fundraising support and customer introductions — that flows from having founders on both sides of the table. The partners are prolific public thinkers in fintech, which functions as a de facto sourcing and community engine.

Credits and perks

The firm does not publicly list startup credits or vendor discount programmes; this is not publicly disclosed.