Adrian Nazari

Latest from me and the team at Self Labs. We've closed $9M in funding from Greenfield Capital, SCVxSBI, Spearhead, Verda Ventures, Fireweed Ventures to expand our technical roadmap and grow our identity document support beyond biometric Passports, IDs, and Aadhar. Also announced today in our latest application v2.9 is Points a new way for our most active users to earn points for using their favorite apps: Aave Labs, Velodrome, ENS, Lemonade, Espresso, Karma, Talent Protocol, and soon Google Cloud Web3's Testnet faucets. https://lnkd.in/gtWRQguc

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I’ve known David Meister for years and backed him at Sydecar, so I’ve seen his ability to build through complexity. Axiom Trust is taking on one of the most outdated parts of wealth infrastructure, trust administration, by pairing a regulated trust company with AI-native workflows. We're proud to invest again and congrats to the team on the launch!

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Lending is getting smarter with real-time cash flow data, network-powered insights, and frictionless onboarding. In this session with Plaid Product Lead for Credit, Michelle (Boros) Young, see how lenders can use cash flow data alongside traditional credit data to make faster decisions, approve more borrowers, and manage risk. Plus, new partner integrations with Experian, FICO and more that make it easier than ever to get started ⬇️

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Fundraising Is a Sales Funnel Takeaway: Treat investors like prospects. Context: Too many founders pitch randomly. Fundraising works when you build structure. Advice: Create a lightweight investor CRM (Airtable, Notion, HubSpot). Track stage: intro, 1st call, due diligence, soft commit. Follow up weekly—investors invest in the founders who stay top of mind. Closing thought: Your investor funnel is just like your customer funnel—build it, track it, close it. At SKIN STUDIOS, we help founders cut through the noise, launch scrappy, and evolve fast. Because in the startup game, speed of learning is your greatest edge. → sitg.studio | dom@sitg.studio | DMs open #foundertips #fundraising #venturecapital #startupadvice #skinstudios

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Had a great time at DC Startup & Tech Week (Formerly DC Startup Week) moderating a panel with Scott Christensen (Chesapeake Bay Seed Capital Fund (CBSCF) , Faith Davis (Exelon) and Bill McNulty (NextEra Energy Investments), convened by the great C'pher Gresham. Here's a quick recap: 1) The panelists were phenomenal - a mixture of corporate, state and foundation-backed VC's all focusing on climate. They're actively funding companies across a range of sectors - e.g. nature-based solutions, energy + AI, water, etc. Point being, we were lucky to have experts with such broad purviews. 2) The current climate could be pushing at least some climate VC's to focus on software and move away from hardware, at least temporarily. This type of capital may indeed just be better suited for software companies at this juncture. It also reflects the fact that certain segments of the climate-tech market are just more mature than others - e.g. software performs best once the hardware and the business case around it are solid, then it becomes and optimization and efficiency game. 3) Founders need to target "must-solve" climate problems from the investor lens. In other words, yes there's a sea of climate challenges where startups can be additive. However, in this environment, few of these areas are attracting meaningful capital. There's nothing wrong with tackling problem areas that are under-invested, we need this in spades. However, for those trying to get capital in the door, realize the constraints that come with targeting problems that investors just aren't prioritizing. 4) Look to funders overseas. The EU, where so much climate finance, policy and general expertise has come from, could be playing a much more important role. I'd also argue that Gulf countries like KSA and UAE are going to be critical here too, not to mention China, of course. 5) We need mentoring and coaching to be at an all-time high. With so much uncertainty, networks/communities where both founders and investors can learn from/lean on each other have never been more important. The panel/audience was a nice microcosm of the types of support networks we need to be actively building. Big thanks again to C'pher, Faith, Scott and Bill, as well as the whole DC Startup + Tech Week team. Til next year!

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The hypocrisy I'm seeing from big fintechs lately is astounding. Ironically, these bigger players are furious about the proposed open banking scraps, yet they're the ones who have been holding community banks to ransom over their data for years. For community banks, data autonomy is imperative for digitalization. Without it, the tech gap will only grow bigger and bigger. ➡️ Fintechs and community banks can, and should, be working hand-in-hand. As I said in the Payment Expert piece below: 🗣️ "Empowering small banks to embrace technology on their own terms is the only way we can close the sector's tech gap." Many thanks to Kieran O'Connor and the team at Payment Expert for featuring my thoughts. You can read more here. ⬇️ https://lnkd.in/e6QJcr4h

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