Headline Goes Here Two Lines If Needed
“We want small business owners to spend more time on growth, products and employees rather than sorting out bills, expenses and unpaid invoices.”
Small businesses keep getting ‘hand-me-down’ financial service solutions from banks that weren’t built for small business.
Bento has a simple, yet impactful spend and expense management solution designed for small and medium sized businesses. By freeing leaders from administrative burden of running a company, our mission is to enable small and mid-size business owners to focus more on their business, save money, and spend more time building their dream.
Leadership
Before co-founding Bento for Business, Farhan was a Managing Director at Barclays and prior to that the Global Head of Emerging Payments and Prepaid for Discover Financial Services. He has also held significant leadership roles at JPMorgan Chase, Bank One, and FirstUSA. As an entrepreneur, he has built 2 successful businesses: Chase HealthAdvance, an independent healthcare business within JPMorgan Chase, and Aceva Technologies, the first company in the U.S. to offer real time promotional financing products to online retailers. Farhan holds a Bachelors degree in economics from the University of Pennsylvania and currently lives with his family in Chicago.
Sean brought to Bento his experience working with companies large and small to build complex eco-systems in payments, financial technology, transit, and healthcare. Most recently, as Senior Director of Emerging Products at Blackhawk Network, he built and launched their open API platform, launched an offers platform, and developed a prepaid processing platform that generated over 7MM cards in the first 6 months. Sean holds Bachelors degrees in physics and economics from Stanford University and a Masters in computer science from Wright State University. He and his family live in Oakland, CA.
Paula brings to Bento her extensive experience in driving value-generating strategies, processes, systems and pivotal transactions with investors and commercial partners. She has advised and led technology, manufacturing and service businesses through funding to strategic sale in partnership with private equity and venture capital firms. Prior to Bento, Paula served as Chief Financial Officer at Networked Insights, a data analytics SaaS business backed by Goldman Sachs and acquired by American Family Insurance in December 2017. Paula lives in the Chicago suburbs with her husband, two children and retired greyhound. She enjoys active vacations with her family, relishes a good book and avidly supports music education.
Tracy brings to Bento a proven track record in launching transformational brand strategies and driving rapid growth in marketing services revenue for B2B businesses. A leading-edge student of “disruptive innovation,” Tracy has led marketing teams at global Fortune 500 companies while championing ideas that stretch boundaries, mobilize teams, drive change and deliver revenue. She most recently served as Chief Marketing Officer at Renaissance Learning, an education software company that sold to Francisco Partners in May 2018. Tracy lives in the midwest and, when not baking cakes, is making her way through all the U.S. National Parks.
Jeff has spent the better part of the last two decades building innovative commerce and financial services products as an executive and as a founder. Prior to Bento, he was V.P. of Product Development for Blackhawk Network, where he led day-to-day product development. Jeff has a history of bringing great innovations to market, including the first of its kind virtual Visa payment method in 2000, and in 2015, a patent for his unique fraud prevention techniques, along with recognition by the US Senate Special Committee on Aging for his work. When Jeff is not living in Bento’s San Francisco office, he is spending time with his family.
Jonathan has spent the past decade building enterprise-class cloud services and distributed systems at companies ranging from start ups to some of the world’s largest. He has a history of building market-leading products from the ground up as well as architecting complex systems at companies such as Cisco and Citigroup. Most recently, he was the Vice President of Engineering at Cloudwords, as well as the co-founder and CTO of LeadLedger. At Bento, he is focused on creating beautifully simple and useful financial services that are specifically designed for small and medium-sized businesses. Jonathan lives in San Francisco.
Advisors
Recognized globally as one of the most influential leaders in financial services, Deanna is an acclaimed turnaround strategist known for her ability to transform entrenched institutions into customer-centric champions. She is currently the CEO of CameoWorks LLC, a non-executive director for Tesco PLC, Tesco Bank, NCR Corporation, the AXA Group, and a senior advisor to Bain and Company. Prior to CameoWorks, Deanna served as Vice Chair, Global Retail Banking and CEO of the UK and Western Europe retail banking divisions at Barclays.
Co-founder and Managing Director of ClearPath Partners, Raymond is an experienced business leader with broad capabilities encompassing strategy, corporate development, marketing, leadership, operations and execution in companies ranging from early stage to Fortune 500. His specialty is mentoring/coaching CEOs. His successful career spans leadership positions at Yahoo! (SVP), Intuit (CMO), and Boston Consulting Group (Partner).
Mr. Kingsborough has been recognized for his many outstanding career achievements, including Venture Magazine’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award, the prepaid industry’s Executive of the Year and the Outstanding Contribution Award for the Private Sector from President Ronald Reagan. His marketing achievements have been chronicled in the Harvard Business Review and numerous business publications. He was the founder and CEO of Blackhawk Network, as well as a former V.P. and G.M. at PayPal.
Founding General Partner of Opus Capital, an early stage venture capital fund. Previously, Isaac was a Partner and Managing Director for Israel at Lightspeed Venture Partners. Prior to Lightspeed, Isaac was the founder and CEO of Concorde Solutions Inc. (CSI), which he sold to Bank of America becoming SVP at BofA with responsibility for running the bank’s E-ventures group and an advisor to the strategic investments group.
Investors
Comcast Ventures
By combining the best characteristics of traditional venture funds with the technical insight, scale and experience of a strategic investor, Comcast Ventures offers a best-in-class value proposition for entrepreneurs, portfolio companies, partnering investors, and the Comcast family of companies.
Edison Partners
For more than 30 years, Edison Partners has been helping CEOs and their executive teams navigate the entrepreneurial journey to build successful companies. Through the unique combination of growth capital and the Edison Edge platform, consisting of operating leverage, the Edison Director Network, and executive education, Edison employs a holistic approach to accelerating growth and creating value for businesses. Edison targets companies with $5 to $20 million in revenue in the financial technology, healthcare IT, and enterprise technology sectors.
Anthemis Group
Anthemis Group is the leading digital financial services investment and advisory firm focused on re-inventing financial services through technology for the 21st century. They advise, transform and invest in businesses that are building better ways to design, consume and distribute financial services in the Information Economy.
Blumberg Capital
Blumberg Capital is an early-stage venture capital firm that partners with passionate entrepreneurs to innovate and build successful technology companies. The firm specializes in leading Seed and Series A rounds collaborating with angel investors, other venture capital firms and strategic partners. The Blumberg Capital team are active investors and board members – operating as an extension of the entrepreneurs’ network. Blumberg Capital is headquartered in San Francisco with team members in Tel Aviv and New York.
Mission OG
MissionOG partners with high-growth businesses that have proven models in segments where its team has had success as operators and investors, including financial services and payments, data platforms, and software. The team applies its experience and capabilities to a group of highly skilled and passionate entrepreneurs whose businesses are on the cusp of exponential growth. Headquartered in Philadelphia, MissionOG is managed by operators who have effectively built early to growth stage businesses and guided them through successful acquisitions.
LionBird
LionBird invests in promising startups that utilize technology to meaningfully improve offline processes in healthcare, commerce, and enterprise. The LionBird management team combines the experience of Fortune 100 senior executives with that of veteran entrepreneurs to provide its portfolio companies with the guidance and support required to scale early-stage startups into leading global corporations.
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