qed-investors
(7)
april
april is a New York-based fintech that embeds tax filing, planning, and estimation directly into the apps people already use - banks, payroll providers, fintechs, and wealth platforms. Founded in 2021 by Ben Borodach, Daniel Marcous, and Raj Doshi, april built its own AI-powered tax engine and became the first company in over 15 years to earn national e-file coverage. Its white-label, mobile-first product turns tax from a once-a-year chore into a year-round layer of financial decision-making, and it raised a $38M Series B in July 2025 led by QED Investors, bringing total funding to $78M.
Eli Wachs
Eli Wachs is the co-founder and CEO of Footprint, a New York identity verification company building what he calls the identity layer for the internet. Footprint helps banks, real estate firms, auto dealers, and other businesses onboard customers by automating KYC and fraud checks while storing personal data inside secure enclaves. A Stanford economics and history graduate and former General Atlantic investor, Wachs started the company in 2022 with CTO Alex Grinman and has raised roughly $20 million to pursue a blunt goal: reduce digital identity theft toward zero while giving people more control over their own data.
Alex Bradford
Alex Bradford is the co-founder and CEO of Rain, a Santa Monica fintech that lets hourly and frontline workers tap wages they have already earned before payday instead of turning to payday loans or overdrafts. A former McKinsey, Goldman Sachs and SAC Capital analyst with a Stanford degree and a Harvard MBA, Bradford launched Rain in 2019 after spotting that payroll and timekeeping systems had finally opened their APIs. The company plugs into employers' payroll and HCM systems (including a native Workday integration), has connected millions of workers and distributed more than $2 billion in earned wages, and has raised capital from investors including QED, Invus and Prosus. Bradford's pitch is personal: he grew up with a single mother in the 1980s and built Rain to kill predatory lending and give workers control over their own money.
Rishabh Jain
Rishabh Jain is the co-founder and CEO of FERMÀT, a San Francisco AI-native commerce platform that builds personalized, content-native shopping experiences for direct-to-consumer and enterprise brands. A LiveRamp alum who saw Apple's privacy changes coming before most, he launched FERMÀT in late 2021 to rewire how brands sell when shoppers can no longer be tracked across the web. The company has raised roughly $86M across rounds, capped by a $45M Series B in June 2025, and counts Glossier, GNC, ILIA Beauty, BISSELL and Unilever's Olly among its customers.
Tikue Anazodo
Tikue Anazodo is the co-founder and CEO of Kudos, the AI-powered smart wallet that automatically picks the best credit card for every purchase and layers on extra rewards. Born in Lagos and trained at Columbia, he built consumer payment products at Google and Affirm before launching Kudos in 2021 with Ahmad Ismail. What started as a browser extension is now a 'self-driving wallet' with over 200,000 users, $200M+ in annualized checkout volume, and $17.2M raised from QED, Patron, SV Angel, Max Levchin, and The Points Guy founder Brian Kelly.
Paul Kromidas
Paul Kromidas is the founder and CEO of Summer, a New York short-term rental technology company behind SummerOS, which he pitches as the asset-intelligence platform for vacation-rental owners and operators. A former Airbnb product and strategy lead who helped build Airbnb Luxe, he started Summer in 2021 to make high-performance vacation-rental ownership accessible, then pivoted the business toward SaaS software that forecasts rental revenue and optimizes property performance.
Kai Stinchcombe
Kai Stinchcombe is the founder and CEO of True Link Financial, a San Francisco-based fintech company that builds financial tools for vulnerable populations - seniors with dementia, people with disabilities, and individuals in recovery. Inspired by his grandmother Ruth's experience being defrauded by telemarketers while living with Alzheimer's, Kai co-founded True Link in 2012 to give families and caregivers smart, customizable controls over spending. The company has helped over 250,000 families and raised $50M+ including a $35M Series B led by Khosla Ventures. Beyond True Link, Kai is known for his viral, contrarian essays dismantling blockchain hype, and for co-founding the Roosevelt Institution, a progressive student policy think tank that won a MacArthur Award.