Newtek Ventures

Newtek Ventures

Barry Sloane founded Newtek Business Services in 1998, steering it through the dot-com era and the 2008 financial crisis before repositioning the entity as NewtekOne, a publicly traded bank holding company, in 2023. The venture division, Newtek Ventures, emerged from this operating ecosystem, investing off the parent company's balance sheet into financial-technology and business-software companies that align with NewtekOne's core lending, payments, and insurance lines. The firm targets Series A and Series B rounds where NewtekOne can serve as a distribution partner, not just a capital provider. Newtek Ventures commits across fintech infrastructure, regtech, and vertical enterprise SaaS, with a preference for companies that serve the same small and mid-sized business segment NewtekOne's bank subsidiary lends to. Confirmed portfolio companies include建立了 a portfolio spanning payment-adjacent startups and compliance-automation platforms, though the firm does not publicly disclose its full roster. Deployment size per check typically ranges from $1 million to $3 million, with follow-on capacity structured through NewtekOne's corporate treasury rather than a blind-pool fund. Geographic focus centers on the United States, with selective exposure to Israeli enterprise-software startups — a corridor Sloane has cultivated through NewtekOne's longstanding technology partnerships. The venture team operates from NewtekOne's New York headquarters, drawing on the parent company's roughly 600 employees for due-diligence and post-investment support. In 2023, NewtekOne completed its conversion to a financial holding company and acquired National Bank of New York City, a structural shift that broadened the venture arm's capacity to offer banking-as-a-service relationships to portfolio companies. Sloane remains the public face and deal-approval authority for the venture division, which reports through NewtekOne's corporate-development function rather than as a standalone limited-partner fund. Newtek Ventures' structural differentiator is its identity as a permanent-capital vehicle embedded inside a regulated bank. Unlike venture firms that must return capital to limited partners on a 10-year clock, Newtek Ventures can hold equity positions indefinitely through the parent company's balance sheet, aligning incentives with long-duration operating relationships. This architecture also lets portfolio companies access NewtekOne's national lending platform and government-guaranteed loan programs — a non-dilutive financing channel most early-stage startups cannot reach on their own.