During TechCrunch Live, Emmalyn Shaw, managing partner at Flourish Ventures, said, “I have never seen a document like it in my 20-plus years.” Unit CEO and co-founder Itai Damti had just detailed how the business’s long-running Culture and Values manifesto helped pitch the company as the show neared its conclusion. “Of course, I’d seen high-level principles in culture documents with bullet points and such — but nothing to this level of specificity or devotion.” Of course, it grew over time, but it gives you a good idea of how he plans to lead, especially across two distinct offices and how Unit scales. It’s quite stunning, in my opinion. For [Flourish Ventures], it’s critical.”
Damti went over the document with me (embedded below). “When we were just two people, we sat down and wrote a half-page on the type of environment we wanted to create before we even understood what we wanted to achieve.” We still use the same Google Doc we started back then, but it’s expanded to 11 pages. It touches on a lot of information that we’ve gathered throughout time.”
When COVID prohibited face-to-face interactions with investors, the Unit raised its Series A in 2020. “We wanted to give people a glimpse into how we work as a team, and this paper allowed them to spend almost an hour in the office without actually being in the office with us.” Sharing what was then a seven- or eight-page book on culture and values was the best way to achieve it.”
“Every company is a fintech,” as the saying goes. But that’s changing as a growing number of companies that aren’t even in the financial services industry try to incorporate a fintech component into their offering.
Those delivering banking as a service is one type of entrepreneurs that will gain from this transition. Unit, one of these startups, has raised $51 million in a Series B investment to further its objective of enabling enterprises and fintechs to create financial products “in minutes.” Accel, based in Silicon Valley, led the investment, increasing the Unit’s total funding to almost $70 million since its creation in 2019. Better Tomorrow Ventures, Aleph, Flourish Ventures, and TLV Partners, among others, joined in the newest round of funding.
