Sweater Accelerates to B2B Platform Model
April 29, 2024, Boulder, Colorado
Sweater has launched the B2B evolution of its financial technology platform that has been the basis of its pilot Cashmere fund, launched in the Spring of 2022. As part of that evolution, the company has opened up an equity crowdfunding round on StartEngine to allow anyone to own part of the B2B fintech startup. Sweater is headquartered in Boulder, Colorado. It has an office in Salt Lake City.
By creating the Cashmere fund, Sweater invented an entirely new category within venture capital. By allowing anyone to invest as much as they want ($500 was the minimum investment), when they want. $500 was the minimum investment, and many members invested a small amount on a regular basis. Over 5,500 investors participated in this experiment to "democratize venture capital," as stated by Sweater's founder, Jesse Randall.
To date, the Cashmere fund has deployed capital into 33 startups, and now they're taking that technology and opening it up for qualified partners to launch their own funds with Sweater's help.
See our Investor Mindset Series TechBuzz article from November 2022 for more details about the origin and idea behind the Cashmere fund to compare how the business has evolved.
Last year Sweater deployed a new strategy to evolve from B2C to B2B with a focus on qualified partners who would "launch Cashmere fund clones to their own audiences and with their own unique thesis," according to its founder, Jesse Randall. Sweater takes care of the back-office fund management, due diligence, legal, compliance, portfolio valuation, and other aspects of running a fund so the partner can focus on fundraising and capital deployment.
"We're basically making clones of the Cashmere fund and white labeling them to the audiences of partners," said Randall. "We're closing on our first few partners as we speak and we expect to have dozens of funds on our platform five years from now," Randall shared with TechBuzz.
Sweater has closed its first contracts with qualified partners, including a contract for a $500 million fund VC secondaries. Sweater has signed engagement letters with five other potential partners as well, and has a qualified pipeline valued at over $4.6 billion in AUM.
To learn more about Sweater Inc and its B2B strategy, visit the StartEngine page where Sweater has already raised over $300K from 274 individual investors.
