Marc Helwani

Marc Helwani is the Founder and Chief Investment Officer of i80 Group, a New York–based specialty finance firm that provides credit to venture-backed fintech and proptech companies. He began his career as an investment banking analyst at Goldman Sachs (2002–2003), then moved to York Capital Management (2003–2014), where he rose to Senior Portfolio Manager and served on the firm's Executive Committee, with a stint as a Senior Investment Professional at Magnetar Capital (2005–2007) along the way. He earned his Bachelor of Commerce in Finance from Concordia University in Montreal, Canada.

In 2014–2015 Helwani began investing in early-stage New York fintech companies through his own vehicle, Avenue A Ventures LLC, where he was Chief Investment Officer from 2014 to 2016. That experience led him to identify a gap in the market: high-growth startups that lend money or buy assets needed credit, not dilutive equity, to fund those operations. He founded i80 Group in 2016 to fill that gap.

Under Helwani, i80 Group has scaled substantially. Early reporting (2021) described roughly $1 billion committed across 15+ companies; more recent firm communications put assets under management at approximately $2 billion and total capital committed since founding at over $3 billion, with offices in New York and London after a 2023 expansion into Europe. The firm has been named to the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing U.S. companies for multiple consecutive years (ranked #47 overall and a top-5 financial services company in a 2024 post by Helwani).

Separately from i80 Group, Helwani is listed as a Director at AdNode, Inc., a NYC-based boutique advertising agency, and maintains a personal track record as an angel investor.

• Credit, not equity, for capital-intensive startups. i80 Group's core thesis is that companies which lend money, purchase homes, or otherwise deploy capital operationally shouldn't fund those activities with expensive equity — they should use credit so they can "scale very efficiently and in a non-dilutive manner."
• Reframing venture funding. Helwani has summarized his worldview as: *"In a perfect world, venture capital would be called venture equity"* — i.e., equity and debt should be distinct tools for distinct needs.
• Transparent, low-fee structure. Rather than traditional venture debt, i80 emphasizes minimizing fees and using transparent interest-rate structures.
• Sector concentration: venture-backed fintech and proptech, plus financing/lending platforms; the firm also buys asset pools (e.g., re-performing auto loans).
• Sourcing: the team blends operators and investors and runs regular VC calls to source deals from the venture ecosystem.
• Personal angel investing: as an individual angel, his disclosed early bets sit in consumer/publishing and application-software categories (small number of deals).