Exponent Founders Capital

Exponent is a $125m early stage Software and Fintech focused fund.
We're based out of NYC and we've been among the first builders, advisors, and investors behind companies such as Plaid, Ramp, Robinhood, Alloy, Chronosphere, Stytch, Apollo, and many more.
We are proudly backed primarily by non-profit endowments and hospitals, as well as 50 public and private unicorn founders and operators.

What We Do: We invest $0.5 - 5 million at the early stages of company building
  • We strive to partner with opinionated, outlier founders with deep experience building for their customers in markets experiencing transformation.
  • We take a thematic market and customer driven approach towards investing and partnership - we care deeply about who we're building for and the magic it can create.
  • We invest across vertical AI, fintech and payments, infrastructure, security, app software, vertical software, and more to transform the experience for the end customer.
  • We invest across the US, Europe, and Canada.
Our Approach: We are maniacal about helping you win with your product, with your customers, and your market
  • We open up our entire network and ecosystem to support our founders with design customers, early hires, tactical advice, and much more.
  • We provide a sounding board for founders with strong opinions and approach problems together from a first principled basis.
  • We help our founders and their teams navigate through the highs and lows of building companies from the earliest stages all the way through IPO and beyond.

Team

Charley Ma profile

Charley Ma, Managing Partner

Charley Ma is the Co-Founder and Co-Managing Partner of Exponent Founders Capital. Prior to Exponent, Charley built and scaled multiple enterprise software startups - leading their GTM teams across sales, marketing, customer success, and more from $0 to $200m as the first revenue hire for companies such as Plaid, Ramp, and Alloy. Charley grew up in the Bay Area and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a B.A. in Economics and minor in Mathematics. He started his career at JP Morgan across teams covering payments strategy, blockchain (before it was cool!), and R&D.
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Mahdi Raza, Managing Partner

Mahdi Raza is the Co-Founder and Co-Managing Partner of Exponent Founders Capital. He’s particularly excited by the combination of software, payments, and AI to transform legacy industries driven by ambitious, outlier founders. Prior to Exponent, Mahdi built and scaled Fintech and Software startups - leading growth, payments, and scaling from early stages to IPO and beyond with Robinhood and Stytch. After graduating from NYU, he started his career at Evercore in M&A focused on Exchanges, Vertical Data, Payments, and Insurance in New York and later on was an investor at GIC in Fintech and Software.
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