The Restive Perspective

Meet Dominic Vitucci, the founder/CEO of Onshore. Onshore makes corporate tax credits faster, more affordable, and more accessible.

Restive backed Dominic in 2023, back when his pitch ("I'm going to use AI to do the work the Big Accounting firms charge millions for") was still controversial. Three years and three straight 4x revenue years later, Onshore is on pace for $100M this year with a team of 60.

Highlights include:

- Onshore turns R&D tax credit studies from 9–12 months to 2–4 weeks at a fraction of legacy fees. It doesn't get much cheaper and faster than that.

- Dominic doesn't think the Big 4 have a right to exist if they refuse to adopt AI. He's not subtle about it.

- On building: "Find people better than you at their domain, convince them to make an asymmetric bet on themselves and on you, and then convince them everything they're doing is critical." That's the founder job description in one sentence.

Check it out if you're thinking about AI × services, the future of legacy industries, or what it actually looks like to rebuild a company on top of foundation models.

About Onshore:

We built Onshore to fix a problem we saw everywhere: months of manual work, fragmented evidence, and reports that left incentives on the table or created risk when scrutiny arrived.

Our founder, Dominic Vitucci, started his career on Grant Thornton’s Tax Innovation team, where he saw how outdated, effort-based processes produced slow timelines and unclear ownership. In 2020, he left to rebuild the system around outcomes instead of hours.

Today, the Onshore team brings together tax experts, engineers, and product builders to deliver results that are structured, defensible, and owned from start to finish.

We are backed by FPV, Y Combinator, Vertex Ventures, Restive, and PruVen. More importantly, we are committed to helping companies claim what they are entitled to with clarity, accountability, and confidence.

www.onshore.com

About Restive:

Restive is a seed stage fintech venture capital fund. We are former founders and operators and we aim to be your most helpful investor. We help you bridge the seed to A with capital and key industry partners in financial services to give you what you need to grow.

About The Restive Perspective: The Restive Perspective is a series from Restive Ventures about our views on the market. We share founder interviews, commentary on the tech and VC industries, and other timely content to advance the discussion about the state of technology and fintech today.

To learn more about Restive and get in touch with us, please visit us at https://www.restive.com/.

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Learn more about The Restive Perspective and Restive Ventures at www.restive.com.

On this episode of The Restive Perspective, Ryan Falvey sits down with Jason Wilk, founder & CEO of Dave — the fintech that went public faster than almost anyone before it.

Jason shares how his personal challenges led directly to the company's origin, why people actually love overdraft (but hate the fees), and how the company turned overdraft protection into a technological breakthrough. He opens up about the highs and lows of going public, the clarity that losing 90% of the company’s value brought, and how the company's transformation into an AI leader is powering its meteoric growth.

We cover everything from raising capital when VCs said his customers were “too poor,” to building Dave into an AI-first fintech that serves millions, all while staying lean (albeit with ~300 employees).

Topics include:

-The pain point that led to founding Dave

-Raising capital when no one believed in neobanks

-The rollercoaster of going public, collapse, and comeback

-How AI transformed credit underwriting & customer growth

-Lessons in resilience, product velocity, and trust

This is a candid, insightful conversation about fintech disruption, resilience, and the future of AI in financial services.

👉 Don’t forget to subscribe for more conversations with leaders shaping the future of finance.

About Dave:

Dave is on a mission to build products that level the financial playing field. The app launched in 2017 to help Americans take control of their finances. Since then, Dave has brought its 13M members the products other banks won’t: ExtraCash™ up to $500, goal tracking, and simple ways to find Side Hustles when they’re behind on their budget.

About Restive:

Restive is a seed stage fintech venture capital fund. We are former founders and operators and we aim to be your most helpful investor. We help you bridge the seed to A with capital and key industry partners in financial services to give you what you need to grow.

About The Restive Perspective:

The Restive Perspective is a series from Restive Ventures about our views on the market. We share founder interviews, commentary on the tech and VC industries, and other timely content to advance the discussion about the state of technology and fintech today.

To learn more about Restive and get in touch with us, please visit us at https://www.restive.com/.

fintech, venture, investing, Ryan Falvey, Cameron Peake, Tyler Griffin, VC, podcast, story, personal, background, founder story, founder origins

Learn more about The Restive Perspective and Restive Ventures at www.restive.com.

⏱️ YouTube Chapters

00:00 – Why people actually love overdraft

00:36 – Ryan welcomes Jason Wilk (CEO of Dave)

01:23 – Dave’s founding story

03:00 – Fighting overdraft fees: “Dave vs. Goliath”

04:20 – Launching “Extra Cash” — no-fee advances

06:00 – How Dave grew faster than other neobanks

07:45 – Consumers knowingly using overdraft as credit

09:10 – Early validation & ultra-low acquisition costs

12:25 – Struggles raising capital: 120 investor meetings

15:40 – Investors didn’t understand the customer base

17:00 – Going public early & capitalizing the company

19:00 – Stock collapse and rebound story

21:30 – Market cap swings: $4B to $59M to $3B

24:30 – Why being public helped long-term strategy

27:25 – Becoming an AI-first company

29:05 – AI underwriting: lowering losses to ~1%

32:00 – Competition: Big banks vs. neobanks

33:30 – Expanding credit, longer durations & new products

35:00 – Building a small but elite team (300 employees)

36:08 – Jason’s five- to ten-year vision for Dave

37:36 – CEOs Jason models himself after (Coinbase, Robinhood)

40:00 – Trust, brand, and customer adoption

43:00 – Lessons from the rise, fall, and comeback

44:23 – Closing reflections

Scaling an enterprise fintech from 0–1 might look easy from the outside—but sustaining growth and building a market leader is another story. In this Go Restive panel, Alloy’s Laura Spiekerman, Ascend’s Andrew Wynn, and Sardine’s Soups Ranjan share exactly how they’ve done it: from founder-led selling and the first sales hire, to dinner series that convert and swag that sparks conversations. Moderated by Restive Ventures Partner Cameron Peake, this is a myth-busting, detail-rich look at the strategies, habits, and mindset that turn ambitious startups into enduring enterprise companies.

B2B sales is always one of the top 3 topics that founders ask us about at Restive Ventures. Well, we heard you loud and clear! Earlier this year we held a panel at our Go Restive event with Andrew Wynn of Ascend, Laura Spiekerman of Alloy, and Soups Ranjan of Sardine about their experiences with sales and growing that part of the org. We got super granular, and it shows that you never stop learning how to sell- even the panelists were swapping techniques!

Some tidbits:

- Founders should stay in the lead sales role until at least $1M ARR - define your repeatable processes

- Avoid “short-term greed” - don’t try to introduce a second product into a sales cycle just because primary sales process is going well

- All of our panelists started with an SMB product before going to enterprise- this helped to refine the product and have cash to navigate the long sales cycle.

All of our panelists said they wished they could have heard this conversation as they were starting their companies. Give it a listen!

This is an audio session that was recorded as part of a Go Restive event in February 2025. As a lead up to the session, Cameron and Ryan discuss the conversation and their takeaways and highlights.

About Restive:

Restive is a seed stage fintech venture capital fund. We are former founders and operators and we aim to be your most helpful investor. We help you bridge the seed to A with capital and key industry partners in financial services to give you what you need to grow.

About The Restive Perspective:

The Restive Perspective is a series from Restive Ventures about our views on the market. We share founder interviews, commentary on the tech and VC industries, and other timely content to advance the discussion about the state of technology and fintech today.

To learn more about Restive and get in touch with us, please visit us at https://www.restive.com/.

fintech, venture, investing, Ryan Falvey, Cameron Peake, Tyler Griffin, VC, podcast, story, personal, background, founder story, founder origins

Ethan Bloch is the founder of Digit, one of the leading fintech companies of the past decade which sold to Oportun in 2021. In this conversation, Ethan reflect on his leadership journey, what he learned from his first company, and where he sees opportunity as he looks to build Digit’s second act. 

This is an audio session that was recorded as part of a Go Restive event in February 2025. As a lead up to the session, Cameron and Ryan discuss the conversation and their takeaways and highlights. 

About Restive:

Restive is a seed stage fintech venture capital fund. We are former founders and operators and we aim to be your most helpful investor. We help you bridge the seed to A with capital and key industry partners in financial services to give you what you need to grow.

About The Restive Perspective:

The Restive Perspective is a series from Restive Ventures about our views on the market. We share founder interviews, commentary on the tech and VC industries, and other timely content to advance the discussion about the state of technology and fintech today. 

To learn more about Restive and get in touch with us, please visit us at https://www.restive.com/.

fintech, venture, investing, Ryan Falvey, Cameron Peake, Tyler Griffin, VC, podcast, story, personal, background, founder story, founder origins

Ken Lin is the founder of Credit Karma, and one of the pioneers of the modern era of fintech. In his first conversation since stepping back from Intuit late last year, he shares his reflections on the Credit Karma journey, what he learned by leaning into authenticity, and what's next.

This is an audio session that was recorded as part of a Go Restive event in February 2025. As a lead up to the session, Cameron and Ryan discuss the conversation and their takeaways and highlights.

About Restive:

Restive is a seed stage fintech venture capital fund. We are former founders and operators and we aim to be your most helpful investor. We help you bridge the seed to A with capital and key industry partners in financial services to give you what you need to grow.

About The Restive Perspective:

The Restive Perspective is a series from Restive Ventures about our views on the market. We share founder interviews, commentary on the tech and VC industries, and other timely content to advance the discussion about the state of technology and fintech today.

To learn more about Restive and get in touch with us, please visit us at https://www.restive.com/.

fintech, venture, investing, Ryan Falvey, Cameron Peake, Tyler Griffin, VC, podcast, story, personal, background, founder story, founder origins

Meet Rashmi Melgiri. After a successful run as the #2 at Coverwallet, Rashmi saw a problem she was uniquely fit to solve– and she was driven to do it from the CEO seat herself. In this episode we feature: 

• Her company Functional Finance
• Her leadership journey and what it took to establish her own, authentic voice
• How she stepped off the consultant trajectory and became a founder
• How she was uniquely positioned to identify and act on a problem she saw in the market
• Lessons from running a company for a second time around
• A surprise puppet
• And much more!

About Functional Finance:

Our mission is to empower insurance companies with innovative financial software. By making billing, payments, and reconciliation work together in one easy-to-use platform, our clients can focus on delivering exceptional service and growing their business.

https://www.functionalfi.com/

About Restive:

Restive is a seed stage fintech venture capital fund. We are former founders and operators and we aim to be your most helpful investor. We help you bridge the seed to A with capital and key industry partners in financial services to give you what you need to grow.

About The Restive Perspective

The Restive Perspective is a series from Restive Ventures about our views on the market. We share founder interviews, commentary on the tech and VC industries, and other timely content to advance the discussion about the state of technology and fintech today.

To learn more about Restive and get in touch with us, please visit us at https://www.restive.com/.

fintech, venture, investing, Ryan Falvey, Cameron Peake, Tyler Griffin, VC, podcast, story, personal, background, founder story, founder origins

Meet Ximena Aleman, the co-founder & CEO of Prometeo. After realizing the potential of open banking in Latin America, Ximena went on a journey of learning the importance of "market" fit in the "product market fit" equation. Hear that story and much more!  

In this episode, we discuss:

• Ximena's transition from journalism to tech, which was driven by her fascination with entrepreneurial stories.
• How it took multiple pivots to arrive at Prometeo.
• Going from No, no, no to yes, yes, yes: Her journey of product-market fit was more like market-product fit. 
• Building a strong network was crucial for securing funding and support.

About Prometeo: We are the leading fintech infrastructure company connecting global corporations with financial institutions in Latin America and the United States. We create innovative technological infrastructure, specializing in banking APIs.

About Restive:

Restive is a seed stage fintech venture capital fund. We are former founders and operators and we aim to be your most helpful investor. We help you bridge the seed to A with capital and key industry partners in financial services to give you what you need to grow.

About The Restive Perspective

The Restive Perspective is a series from Restive Ventures about our views on the market. We share founder interviews, commentary on the tech and VC industries, and other timely content to advance the discussion about the state of technology and fintech today.

To learn more about Restive and get in touch with us, please visit us at https://www.restive.com/.

fintech, venture, investing, Ryan Falvey, Cameron Peake, Tyler Griffin, VC, podcast, story, personal, background, founder story, founder origins

Learn more about The Restive Perspective and Restive Ventures at www.restive.com.

Meet Natasha Vernier, co-founder and CEO of Cable. A compliance leader within banking, she never harbored aspirations about being an entrepreneur- until she came across a glaringly obvious problem she couldn't turn away from. And from there Cable was born.

In this episode we dive into:

• Natasha's early journey and what compelled her to start Cable
• How she started her fundraise, and why she pushed for a higher initial salary
• Compiling a diverse cap table
• Her role as an LGBTQ+ leader in tech
• Cable's operating system and how she managed to refine their principles

And much more!

About Cable: Cable is the all-in-one effectiveness testing platform that helps you comply with your financial crime requirements. Whether you add 1 control or add 1,000 accounts, Cable is your central hub for complete automated controls monitoring as your business scales — and you won’t need to add more headcount. Say goodbye to manual dip sampling; say yes to growth with confidence in your compliance. Learn more at cable.tech.

About Restive: Restive is a seed stage fintech venture capital fund organized around speed. We are former founders and operators and we aim to be your most helpful investor. We help you bridge the seed to A with capital and key industry partners in financial services to give you what you need to grow. To learn more about Restive and get in touch with us, please visit us at https://www.restive.com/.

About The Restive Perspective

The Restive Perspective is a series from Restive Ventures about our views on the market. We share founder interviews, commentary on the tech and VC industries, and other timely content to advance the discussion about the state of technology and fintech today.

Follow us on Twitter:  

 / restivevc  

Follow us on LinkedIn:  

 / restiveventures  

fintech, venture, investing, Ryan Falvey, Cameron Peake, Tyler Griffin, VC, podcast, story, personal, background, founder story, founder origins

Meet Stephany Kirkpatrick, the founder and CEO of Orum. After joining LearnVest as an early employee and helping grow the company through their acquisition, she decided to strike out on her own. Always curious about why the payments ecosystem hadn't innovated in fifty years, she decided to create Orum to make money movement faster and immediate. She's overcome the challenge of being a solo, non-technical founder to raising through her Series B to investors like Inspired, Bain Capital, and Accel.

About Orum: Orum is the simplest API for fast, reliable payments. Learn more at Orum.io

About Restive:

Restive is a seed stage fintech venture capital fund. We are former founders and operators and we aim to be your most helpful investor. We help you bridge the seed to A with capital and key industry partners in financial services to give you what you need to grow.

About The Restive Perspective

The Restive Perspective is a series from Restive Ventures about our views on the market. We share founder interviews, commentary on the tech and VC industries, and other timely content to advance the discussion about the state of technology and fintech today.

To learn more about Restive and get in touch with us, please visit us at https://www.restive.com/.

fintech, venture, investing, Ryan Falvey, Cameron Peake, Tyler Griffin, VC, podcast, story, personal, background, founder story, founder origins

Learn more about The Restive Perspective and Restive Ventures at www.restive.com.

Meet Nami Baral. Born into a conservative family in Nepal, she decided to leave for America- and eventually become a successful multi-time founder. Meet Nami Baral, the Founder/ CEO of Niural (and previously the Founder/ CEO of Harvest).

Here, we dive into Nami’s story, where she shares:

-How she has taken calculated bets all her life, which gave her the perspective and confidence to launch Harvest and then Niural.

-How she continued to iterate to find product market fit at Harvest, and that once she found her ‘aha’ moment she went all in.

-That for her second company, she decided to have multiple co-founders to have meaningful help while building.

-What she’s building at Niural and how she’s hoping to transform payroll.

Watch to learn more about Nami, and check out the other amazing interviews we’ve done with founders.

About Niural:

Niural's all-in-one payroll, team management and compliance platform helps you streamline your hiring process, manage global payroll, and keep tabs on compliance.

Learn more about Niural by visiting https://www.niural.com/.

About Restive:

Restive is a seed stage fintech venture capital fund organized around speed. We are former founders and operators and we aim to be your most helpful investor. We help you bridge the seed to A with capital and key industry partners in financial services to give you what you need to grow.

About The Restive Perspective

The Restive Perspective is a series from Restive Ventures about our views on the market. We share founder interviews, commentary on the tech and VC industries, and other timely content to advance the discussion about the state of technology and fintech today.

To learn more about Restive and get in touch with us, please visit us at https://www.restive.com/.

fintech, venture, investing, Ryan Falvey, Cameron Peake, Tyler Griffin, VC, podcast, story, personal, background, founder story, founder origins