Luka Ivicevic

🚀 Stop chasing investors blindly. Here's the 5-step system that gets startups funded: Define financial needs (12-18 months) Research aligned investors Build a killer pitch deck Systematize outreach Prep due diligence docs Most founders skip steps 1 & 5. Don't be like most founders.

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Crypto growth has a measurement problem. Vanity metrics look great. They rarely scale. What actually works is conversion, attribution, and metrics you can run a business on. Spoke with CCN about how to measure what matters 👉 https://lnkd.in/eS-dEpUu

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Plaid is built to make it easier for businesses to build and scale financial products that people trust. That trust starts with knowing who you’re working with. As Plaid helps platforms onboard and support millions of businesses, verifying business identity accurately and efficiently is foundational. That’s why Plaid partners with Middesk to automate business verification during onboarding — confirming core business details, reducing manual review, and helping teams make confident risk decisions without slowing down the customer experience. Together, we help Plaid deliver faster onboarding, stronger compliance, and a more durable foundation for growth across the financial ecosystem they power. We’re proud to support Plaid as they help teams move fast while maintaining trust at scale. #KYB #KYC #AML #BEV #businessverification #financialservices #onboarding #compliance #smallbusiness #SMBs

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A messy cap table is a red flag 🚩 Investors should be your dream team, aligned with your vision. Common cap table issues VCs see in early-stage startups: alignment problems, confusing ownership, and too many stakeholders. Keep it clean for smoother funding!

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If your fintech program gets shut down it’s usually because: a) You had good intentions and lost control b) You had bad intentions and lost control or c) Your bank partner had no visibility and therefore no control In many cases, programs don’t get shut down because someone wanted to shut them down. They get shut down because fear fills the gaps where control should’ve been. La solución es simple: Return control to the bank. A confident bank doesn't need to overreact. It sees clearly, acts deliberately, and builds with conviction. #CommunityBanks #CreditUnions #FinTech #Payments

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Dealwire.TECH Deal of the Week — Mesh ($75M Series C, $1B valuation) https://www.meshpay.com/ Crypto’s next chapter isn’t about speculation — it’s about payments infrastructure. Mesh’s $75M Series C at a $1B valuation signals a clear shift in investor conviction: capital is rotating from trading and token-centric narratives into real-world transaction rails. Mesh is building what many in the industry have talked about, but few have executed: a global crypto payments network that connects exchanges, wallets, and payment providers into a single interoperable layer. Consumers can pay with any supported digital asset, while merchants settle instantly in stablecoins or local fiat — no volatility risk, no wallet management, no fragmented integrations. The company’s asset-agnostic SmartFunding technology abstracts away blockchain complexity, routing “any-to-any” payments across chains and liquidity pools. The result is a horizontal payments layer that targets embedded deposits, remittances, and high-value cross-border commerce — areas where legacy card rails struggle with FX leakage, chargebacks, and delayed settlement. Led by Dragonfly, with participation from Paradigm and Coinbase Ventures, the round reflects strong alignment around an infrastructure-first thesis. Mesh’s ambitions — $1B in revenue and $1T in transaction volume — place it firmly in the category of next-generation global payment networks, not fintech tooling. Bottom line: If crypto is going to reach mass adoption, it won’t look like exchanges — it will look like invisible, instant payments embedded everywhere. #DealOfTheWeek #DealWire #CryptoPayments #Fintech #PaymentsInfrastructure #Stablecoins #Web3 #DigitalAssets

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You can turn $100,000 into a $50 million business through acquisitions. This is closer to capital allocation than traditional entrepreneurship. Here's the deal structure. First, the capital stack. You buy a business the same way you buy a house. Equity in, bank covers the rest. With SBA loans: 90% loan, 10% equity. A million dollar business might require $100K to $200K down. Target companies with $1 to $3 million in earnings. Go to sellers that are NOT at market. Brokered deals are competitive and sellers want cash at close. This only works off-market. Here's what you propose: Seller keeps 20% equity in a new entity. Asset sale, their company moves into newco, they keep running it at fair market salary. You write them a check for 60% via bank loan. Remaining 20% is a seller's note: 10% straight note, 10% performance earnout. From the bank's perspective, you created 40% equity. The truth? It's really only 20%, and it's the seller's. Your money in? Approaching zero. But you own 80% of Enterprise Value. Why would a seller agree? Tell them: my goal is to make your 20% as valuable as the 80% we're giving you today. What are the odds you double the value on your own in 3 to 5 years? Now stack earnings. $2 million average per company. Buy 10 just like this. $20 million combined earnings under one entity. Centralize marketing, accounting, HR, governance at HQ. You bought each at 4 to 4.5x. A $20 million earnings business sells for 7 to 7.5x or more. That's multiple expansion, just by combining them. Close the first one. Negotiate the next $100K for the next business. Then newco sells to PE for 7, 8, 9x your $20 million in earnings. That's the path from $100K to $50 million. If you're considering buying a business in the next 12 to 24 months, we built Acquisition Lab for exactly this. walkerdeibel.com

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