Tech-Focused Architect Capital To Provide Asset-Based Financing

A new San Francisco-area asset-based lender called Architect Capital has launched with more than $100 million to lend to mostly technology companies in the U.S. and Latin America, according to a press release.

“The global technology and startup industry is evolving quickly, and new forms of financing to fund novel and underappreciated assets are a necessary part of that evolution,” said Architect Capital Founder and CEO James Sagan in the release. “We’re excited to launch Architect Capital to help disruptive, asset-rich technology companies scale quickly.”

FinTech startups and young companies will be among those upon which Architect Capital focuses as it seeks to build the business, according to the release. The company’s pitch is that providers of financial services have yet to catch up with innovations in the tech sector, with venture capital taking too big a piece of young firms’ equity and traditional lenders offering inadequate support for clients that are scaling.

The release stated, in part: “While traditional forms of equity and debt financing in the venture ecosystem are still very much integral to the growth of these companies, traditional financing is not engineered to support the growth of a company’s underlying financial products.”

The company has invested in six companies to date, including PayJoy, which the release described as “a company that delivers consumer financing and smartphone technology to customers in emerging markets.”

“Architect has been an excellent partner for our capital needs,” said PayJoy President of Financial Products Brad Pennington in the release. “They bring an excellent balance of rigor and flexibility; an important combination for scaling in emerging markets.”

Sagan said in the release: “While I have been investing in companies in Latin America over the last six years, we are still in the early stages of the area’s FinTech story. At Architect Capital, we are thrilled to be at the forefront of firms investing in the region as we approach an inevitable period of exponential growth.”