Rex Salisbury, the solo Grand Prix behind Cambrian Venture, fondly recalls his time in love with FinTech.
The year was 2015. He recently quit his job as an investment banker to dabble in engineering at a San Francisco mortgage startup. “That’s when companies like Stripe, Plaid, Credit Karma and WealthFront started to expand,” he told TechCrunch. “The lending club just did an IPO and was trading really well.”
Investor excitement for FinTech grew exponentially over the next few years, reaching a fever pitch in 2021. But things subsided significantly a year later as interest rates rose.
Today, many believe Fintech has lost its luster, but Salisbury’s enthusiasm for the category remains as strong as 2015. “If you’re a specialist and you know where to look, you’ll find that only 1% of global financial services revenue is captured by FinTech,” he said.
In fact, Salisbury is busy investing in pre-seed and seed stage startups from the first $20 million Cambrian fund. Of the 33 companies he funded, Salisbury claims that about half have already secured Series A funding, significantly higher than the series from the seeds of 15.4% of the graduation rate tracked by Karta.
These companies include simple closures that help you maintain Canadian credit card and payment platforms with startups.
Salisbury believes the performance of the first fund is the ability to find strong founders “who are very good at opposing the vision they are laying out.”
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Its early success helped Salisbury secure a second fund. It was launched for $20 million with dedicated capital, just like the original fund.
This haul is an incredible feat for a small venture fund like the Cambrian. According to a Pitchbook report, funding from emerging venture managers (which define the companies operating the first three funds) is the lowest in the first half of 2025 in 10 years.
But Salisbury is more than just a fintech investor. Before launching Cambrian Venture, he was a founding member of Andreesen Horowitz (A16z) Fintech Practice. And for several years at a well-known company, he invested in a startup called Deal. This has become a giant in the field of pay and HR tools.
Before joining A16Z, Salisbury founded a fintech community that hosts monthly meetups for founders, builders and sector enthusiasts. He also launched a newsletter that has surged to around 20,000 subscribers and currently runs the Slack Group, which boasts more than 1,800 founders.
Thanks to his acclaimed network, Salisbury attracted founders of top fintech companies such as Nerdwallet, Plaid, Betterment and Melio as his first fund LPS. These individuals returned to investing in his second fund. This also saw the addition of supporters from several institutions, including banks and life insurance companies.
Salisbury explains that his strategy has not changed for the Cambrian Second Fund and is still focused on “finding great founders with new ideas for unique products.”
Of course, what’s different now is that startups can take advantage of all the advances in AI. “The biggest thing AI allows is building a multi-product company from day one,” he said.
“AI makes it easier to write code that does more,” he explained, pointing to an investment in everything. “They’re making banks, accounting, finances, corporate taxes, the Department of Finance, HR, HSA, FSA and a few other things all in one.”
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