Exponent Founders Capital, led by Plaid and Robinhood alums, raises $75M to invest in early-stage startups

Charley Ma and Mahdi Raza co-founded Exponent Founders Capital after meeting while Ma was leading fintech growth at Plaid and Raza was leading growth and payments at Robinhood .

The pair invested separately as angels before teaming up to start their own venture firm.

Exponent has invested in about 40 startups out of its first fund, including Apollo.io and Chronosphere .

“Everyone we talked to gave us the advice that this was the worst time to fundraise in the last decade , but we were starting to get pulled into a few institutional LP conversations, so we decided to kick off our fundraise in earnest in April ,” Ma said. “We were deliberately targeting long term, nonprofit institutional investors for fund 2 with a target of $60 million and a hard cap of $75 million .” Want more fintech news in your inbox? Sign up for The Interchange here..