The FinTech Report Podcast: Episode 25: Interview with Raaj Rayat, Investor, Airtree Ventures

Raaj Rayat is an early stage venture investor with Airtree Ventures. Prior to Airtree, Raaj launched Lendable in Nariobi (Kenya), London and Sydney. Lendable is a FinTech that uses data science to expand fair access to financial services in emerging markets. Raaj Helped scale Lendable from $0 to $200m+ invested across 10+ countries in 4 years

AirTree is a venture capital firm with a mission to back the most ambitious Australian and Kiwi founders, building the iconic technology companies of tomorrow. 

Airtree pride themselves on saying they are “right by a founder's side, right from the start, often investing pre-product and pre-revenue to support startups from the earliest stages of their journey” 

Airtree has a portfolio of 80+ companies, and has been an early investor in many breakout tech companies, including: Canva, Go1, A Cloud Guru, Pet Circle, Immutable, Employment Hero, and Linktree, and a number of other exciting fintechs

In this episode, Raaj and Glen discuss:

1. What got Raaj into VC
2. Airtree’s fintech investments
3. Raaj’s thesis on fintech
4. What excites you in fintech? (eg lending, proptech, insuretech, defi, digital assets etc)
5. We are in a funding ‘winter’ – what impact is this having? (Valuations etc) what do you say to your founders?
6. What do you like/want to invest in? (stage, size, sector etc) 
7. What do you look for? Founding team, idea, traction, customers, ability to scale etc
8. AirTree web3 investments
9. What’s your thesis on digital assets and digital currencies? (DeFi vs Trad Fi)
10. Future of fintech - Thoughts on DeFi and Blockchain (digital assets etc)

If you are an early stage FinTech (& web3, DeFi, wealth tech, PropTech etc) and want to contact Raaj, please use this email. Contact: Raaj Rayat: Email: [email protected]