In the startup world, the path to success doesn’t always look the way you planned. For Verivend co-founders Rodney Reisdorf and Jonathan Ebel, it took a seed round, a strategic pivot, and a serendipitous introduction to become one of Upstate New York’s most exciting fintech stories in recent memory.
In 2025, Verivend was acquired by iAltA, owned by investment firm WestCap, marking the third consecutive year that a Launch NY portfolio company achieved a successful exit.
The Original Idea
Verivend launched in 2019 with a straightforward observation: businesses were still running their finances with paper invoices and physical checks. In an era when sending money to a friend took seconds on a smartphone, the back-office financial experience for businesses hadn’t kept pace.
Reisdorf and Ebel set out to build what they describe as the “Venmo for businesses.” They entered the market in May 2020, targeting historically underserved industries like manufacturing, trucking, logistics, and waste management, and began gaining traction.
But traction in every direction, it turned out, wasn’t the same as momentum in the right one. “We were a mile wide and an inch deep,” Reisdorf recalls. “We really weren’t making meaningful progress in any one direction.”
The Pivot That Changed Everything
The turning point came in the fall of 2021. As Verivend was closing its seed round, Reisdorf had an idea to use their own platform to collect investment funds from their incoming investors. It was a practical, seemingly insignificant decision. But what happened next surprised them.
After funding, several of their investors came back with a different kind of feedback. The experience of transacting on Verivend’s platform had been so smooth that they wanted to use it for their own private investment operations.
By early 2022, the majority of Verivend’s transactions and revenue were coming from a segment that represented a small percentage of their customer base: private investment firms. “We could put private capital on the end of all the other industries we were targeting,” Reisdorf says, “or we could say, this is our calling.”
They chose focus. Verivend wound down its work in other verticals and went all-in on becoming the payments infrastructure for private markets. It was, by Reisdorf’s own admission, a hard decision. But it was the right one.
Where Launch NY Came In
Launch NY supported Verivend from the very beginning. Before the seed round. Before the company became a 43North winner. Before the transformational pivot.
In 2020, Launch NY became the first institutional investor to back Verivend, deploying capital from two of its funds at a stage when most investors were still on the sidelines. For first-time founders navigating the early chaos of building a company, that vote of confidence mattered.
The relationship went beyond the check. Through Launch NY’s Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EIR) program, Reisdorf and Ebel gained access to hands-on mentorship. “As first-time founders, the EIR program was really helpful in formulating what it means to begin the startup journey,” Reisdorf says. “How you think about your business, your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.”
The founders also plugged into Launch NY’s broader ecosystem by attending networking events, founder-investor breakfasts, and programming. “Launch NY really helped us make connections to people we otherwise may not have known,” Reisdorf added.
When Verivend returned to raise a subsequent round in 2023, Launch NY invested another $50,000 from its nonprofit Seed Fund. The company also raised $125,000 through the Launch NY Investor Network. In total, Launch NY made $275,000 in direct investments into the company across multiple rounds.
“It’s one thing to secure investment dollars once,” Reisdorf reflects. “But to have one of your very first investors continue to stand behind you and support what you’re doing—that meant a lot.”
The Acquisition
Verivend wasn’t looking to be acquired. The introduction to iAltA came through a mutual contact who thought the two teams might find common ground. After an initial conversation and an in-person meeting in New York City, it became clear there was something worth exploring.
“Sometimes if you look too hard for something, you’re never going to find it,” Reisdorf says. “You just have to take opportunities as they’re presented.”
What followed was nearly a year of thoughtful conversations about what a partnership could look like. By that point, Verivend had crossed 100 customers with a 100% renewal rate and surpassed $2 billion in total transaction volume—milestones that made the company an attractive acquisition target.
The deal closed in 2025. Verivend was paired with another iAltA acquisition, Betterfront, to build a comprehensive platform for private market investors to raise, deploy, and track capital. Reisdorf and Ebel remained with the company, based in Buffalo.
Part of a Bigger Story
For Reisdorf, the acquisition carries meaning beyond Verivend. “It really proves that Upstate New York is a place where businesses can be built, scaled, and be successful, he says. “You don’t have to go to New York City or San Francisco to be an entrepreneur.”
The Verivend exit marked the third consecutive year that a Launch NY portfolio company was acquired, following Patient Pattern’s sale to PointClickCare in 2023 and Dimien’s acquisition by Pure Lithium in 2024. Each exit generates returns for Launch NY’s investors and, in the case of the nonprofit Seed Fund, recycles capital back into the next generation of Upstate New York startups.
“Those investment dollars came from Upstate New York, were invested in a business based in Upstate New York, and upon a successful exit, were given back to those same people,” Reisdorf says. “It just keeps powering the ecosystem.”
That flywheel effect is at the heart of how Launch NY is helping the Upstate startup ecosystem reach new heights.