Today, fintech investment firm Shapers announces the successful launch of $75 million fund I.
The news coincides with a milestone for one of its portfolio companies, Finary, which has just closed a €25 million Series B. I have to say it’s rare that an investor shares the limelight in this way, and it says a lot about the founders of Shapers and the community focus they have in the startup ecosystem.
Philippe Teixeira da Mota is the co-founder of Shapers and an investor focused on fintech, insurtech, and high-growth technology companies across Europe and beyond. I spoke to him to learn more.
From the growth grind to independence
da Mota began his career in investment banking at J.P. Morgan before moving into venture capital, building a track record of backing category-defining companies. He was previously the first employee at Hedosophia where he spent 9 years investing in fintech, opening offices around the world and experiencing heavy success.
However, da Mota admits that the more the company grew, the less fun he was having. He explained:
“My role became more managerial than pure investing, which is what I really like. At one point, I was on the board of 21 companies — which, looking back, was way too much. That’s one of the problems in this industry.”
This was a big motivation for da Mota to start his own firm:
“I’d learned the craft, enjoyed it, but I wanted something smaller, nimbler, and more focused rather than a bigger, fast-scaling firm. I felt I had the experience, the network, and that it was the right time, both for me and for the ecosystem,” he shared.
The other motivation was personal — his co-founder is his brother Thomas, who spent the majority of his career at Bain. They’ve already worked together on different companies and investments, but both felt it was the right time in their lives to work side by side.
“So that’s how it came together — we wanted to build a startup, except in this case, the “startup” is a fund where we get to work with other incredible entrepreneurs on a daily basis.”
Finary’s founder thought like a media operator
But back to Finary. Da Mota revealed that he first backed Mounir Laggoune — CEO of Finary — as an angel investor in 2020, when all he had was an MVP, “and today I’m doubling down again as he raises a €25 million Series B.”
Da Mota was immediately drawn to Finary “because of his energy and vision to democratise access to a private-banking-like experience.”
“Mounir also understood better than anyone that to succeed, he needed not only to build a fintech company, but also a media company and a differentiated, scalable customer acquisition strategy.
I wrote an angel cheque after that first meeting and later led the Series A while at Hedosophia.”
According to da Mota, he remains a huge believer in Mounir’s vision, and AI now “makes it clearer than ever that the Finary team will succeed.
“And the results speak for themselves: Finary is now one of Europe’s fastest growing fintechs with 600k users, 3x YoY revenue growth and a unique media-led growth playbook.”
Shapers: do one thing, do it well
Shapers is a hyper-focused and concentrated fund.
“We do one thing only, and we hope to do it really well: early-stage fintech investing in Europe, shared da Mota.“That’s my bread and butter. It’s where I have the strongest network and where we see a huge opportunity."
"We’re relatively more bullish on B2B than B2C — a lot of B2C has already been built in Europe. But our definition of FinTech is broad, so we can look at both, and we don’t shy away from less trendy sectors.
We can invest from pre-seed through Series B, but our sweet spot is seed and Series A.”
Shapers’ check sizes typically range from $500,000 up to $4–5 million. da Mota admits, “with a $75 million fund, we’re relatively small compared to many of our peers, so we’re very collaborative — we like to co-invest and bring something additional to the table.”
In terms of sourcing, Shapers has two main approaches. One is thematic, in-house work:
“We’re a team of three, and one of us, who joined from a consulting background, leads a lot of that. We look at exciting spaces, then within those, identify promising teams and actively pursue them."
The other is more opportunistic — following great founders via personal connections.
The “Shapers Club” advantage
da Mota sees its LP base as one of the unique things about Shapers — over 60 fintech founders and operators are investors in the fund, including from the likes of Qonto, Wise, N26, Bitpanda or Affirm, some large global banks and “GPs of some of the VC funds we respect the most,” like Creandum, Hedosophia, Local Globe, Motive Partners or Valar Ventures, alongside more traditional and institutional limited partners.
Da Mota likes to call his network the Shapers Club.
“It's one of the things we invest the most in, as it brings so much value to our portfolio. Out of the eight deals we’ve closed so far, three came directly from them. So, we work extremely closely with that network, as well as with other VCs.”
So far, the UK and France have been Shapers' most active market, but the firm has also completed deals in Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands. And, because Shapers is a specialised fund, it often partners with generalist or US funds that tap into local knowledge.
Funding the next decade’s giants
According to da Mota, Shapers is looking for “the best founders who can build the giants of the next decade.” In the last 18 months Shapers has made 8 investments:
Deblock, Diligent, Chift, Ember (already acquired by Starling), Ferovinum, Finary, and Klearly – plus one still unannounced. The firm is always on the lookout for exceptional talent across the fintech ecosystem and is particularly interested in:
- Wealth management,
- Payments,
- Regtech — “particularly with the rise of AI,”
- Crypto and stablecoins.
— The firm has already invested in all three of the first categories, and is actively spending time in crypto and stablecoins. When it comes to stablecoins, da Mota asserts that few people saw how fast it would move:
“With regulatory shifts in the US and big moves like Stripe’s acquisition of Bridge, the space has been validated in a big way, drawing in lots of great talent and capital.”
While he concedes that some dismiss it as regulatory arbitrage, “there’s real value in the speed and cost savings, especially if you stay on-chain."
"On-ramps and off-ramps are still expensive, but companies in this space are growing phenomenally quickly. At Shapers, we backed Deblock in the crypto space, and stablecoins are a big part of the thesis there.”
Beyond equal strength in teams
But ultimately, when it comes to portfolio companies, according to da Mota, it’s about backing phenomenal talent. In larger founding teams of three or four, there’s usually one or two exceptional individuals.
“We don’t stress if not everyone is equally strong. What matters is whether the CEO or key founder has what it takes. We spend a lot of time trying to understand what drives them — is it vision, a chip on the shoulder, money, fame, power? That’s critical.”
Further, the industry they’re tackling needs to be “directionally correct — big enough to create one giant, or so large it can support multiple large winners, and the team must be capable of attracting the right talent, because these companies succeed or fail based on who they can bring in."
Shapers’ launch comes at a moment when Europe’s fintech ecosystem is maturing, but still hungry for specialist backers who combine deep networks with founder-first conviction.
da Mota’s journey — from helping scale Hedosophia to starting a leaner, more focused fund with his brother — mirrors the kind of founder story he now looks to invest in: driven, nimble, and ambitious.
Lead image: Shapers, together with its portfolio companies, LPs, and extended network.
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