Rally Cap is a founder-first, first-check fund built for fintech’s next cycle.

As core financial infra matures, a generational app-centric fintech vintage is emerging. Stablecoins, real-time payments, and AI-native workflows now enable small, high-agency teams to build category-defining products with global reach.

We back exceptional founders with unfair advantages—early, with conviction, and with ownership.

• Proven fintech infrastructure alpha, applied to this cycle’s application-layer upside
• Products built on stablecoins, real-time payments, and AI-native workflows
• Global-first investing with deep emerging-market fluency

Overview

Rally Cap VC is raising RC Global Fund II, a ~$12.5M pre-seed venture fund backing global fintech founders at day zero—founders with unfair advantages rooted in deep domain expertise, proprietary access, and lived experience operating at the intersection of developed and emerging financial systems.

RC Global Fund II invests globally and full-stack, building on Rally Cap’s history of backing foundational infrastructure while increasingly focusing on the application layer unlocked by stablecoins, real-time payments, and AI-native finance. As these rails mature, small, high-agency teams can build products that scale regionally or globally from day one—often with early adoption emerging outside traditional U.S. tech hubs and expanding outward.

Fund II refines Rally Cap’s core approach: early ownership, founder-first underwriting, and conviction at inception. We are sector-focused but not thesis-constrained, geography-agnostic but not geography-blind. Our edge lies in identifying where new financial rails are reaching real-world adoption fastest—and backing the founders best positioned to translate that adoption into durable, breakout trajectories.

We believe 2026 represents a defining vintage for fintech. Regulatory clarity, maturing payment infrastructure, accelerating stablecoin adoption, and AI-driven execution are converging to create a uniquely fertile moment for new category-defining businesses. This environment directly favors Rally Cap’s strengths: seeing founders early, underwriting with conviction, and helping companies scale globally before they look obvious to broader capital.

Why RC Global Fund II, Why Now

Fintech is at an inflection point, entering its next cycle with a fundamentally different backdrop than the last—and RC Global Fund II is purpose-built for this moment.

After a multi-year contraction, liquidity is returning. The Circle (NYSE: CRCL) IPO in mid-2025 reset public-market expectations for regulated, infrastructure-adjacent fintech businesses. Entering 2026, we see a growing backlog of strategic M&A as scaled incumbents—such as Stripe, Visa, and Mastercard—use recovered valuations to acquire capital-efficient, application-layer companies that extend their reach across new rails and geographies. This environment favors early investors in lean businesses built for global distribution.

At the same time, the economics of early-stage fintech have reset. The Series A bar now requires meaningful revenue—often $4–5M in ARR—paired with disciplined capital efficiency, with burn multiples increasingly expected below 1.5x. This shift structurally advantages AI-native teams that can reach scale with far less capital by redesigning core functions—sales, support, compliance, and operations—around automation rather than headcount.

Layered onto this is a material improvement in regulatory clarity. The GENIUS Act (July 2025) established a federal framework for payment stablecoins and removed key legal uncertainty by treating them as non-securities. By late 2025, global stablecoin supply exceeded $300B, with annual transaction volumes approaching $27T, rivaling legacy card networks. More importantly, these rails are now being adopted by regulated financial institutions, creating a durable foundation for compliant, globally scalable fintech applications.

Together, these forces mark a clear transition in fintech. The foundational rails are no longer the constraint. Value is shifting decisively toward the application layer, where differentiated products, distribution insight, and execution speed matter most.

This transition is playing out first outside the U.S. In markets shaped by inflation, fragmented banking access, and cross-border economic activity, adoption is immediate rather than theoretical. Founders operating in these environments are often forced to build resilient, globally extensible products from inception—many of which expand U.S.-outbound and globally as capital and distribution catch up.

RC Global Fund II reflects how fintech companies are now built, scaled, and exited. Our early-stage ownership model, global sourcing advantage, and operator-driven diligence allow us to identify and back exceptional founders before these dynamics are fully priced in—capturing meaningful ownership in companies built for the next phase of global fintech. This edge is amplified by our collective of fintech operators and strategic angels, which drives a compounding flywheel across sourcing, diligence, and hands-on support.

Our Investment Thesis

RC Global Fund II is not an emerging markets fund. It is a global fintech fund with deep emerging market fluency. Our exposure comes through top-tier founders who are already building companies designed to scale across borders, attract global talent, and engage institutional partners—often well before they are labeled “global.”

Rally Cap backs global-first fintech founders at the idea and pre-seed stage, where we can underwrite conviction early and secure meaningful ownership.

We are particularly excited by application-layer businesses enabled by:

• Stablecoins, as programmable money and interoperable global rails
• Real-time payments, enabling instant, always-on financial experiences
• AI, fundamentally reshaping the cost structure and scalability of fintech

AI is especially critical in fintech markets where outcomes have historically been constrained by fraud, credit risk, and operational complexity. We are seeing AI meaningfully reduce fraud and lending losses, automate onboarding and compliance, and enable agentic workflows across areas such as cross-border trade, treasury management, customer support, and underwriting. These capabilities materially improve CAC:LTV dynamics, allowing new fintech businesses to reach venture-scale economics with smaller teams and less capital—unlocking categories that were previously uneconomic.

That said, we do not invest by checklist. A company does not need to sit perfectly at the intersection of stablecoins, RTP, and AI. These are tailwinds, not requirements.

Our primary underwriting lens is:

• Founder–market fit: true unfair advantage in a vertical we are bullish on, paired with the ability to attract talent, capital, and customers
• Founder–Rally Cap fit: global fintech fails when companies rely on copy-paste expansion or founder hubris; we anchor on curiosity, humility, resilience, and grit

This is where Rally Cap’s model works best—backing founders who understand their markets deeply, build with capital efficiency from day one, and are equipped to scale globally as adoption and distribution compound.

Why Rally Cap

Our advantage is not simply capital — it is collaborative access, to the networks and know-how that capitalize outlier success.

• Longstanding relationships in high-adoption markets including Africa and Latin America
• A curated network of 240+ fintech operators and builders who actively support sourcing, diligence, and early validation

This operator collective creates a compounding flywheel: better signal, faster conviction, and higher ownership in competitive rounds. It enables Rally Cap to underwrite founders earlier, support them more meaningfully, and secure allocations others cannot.

Across 100+ fintech investments, Rally Cap has demonstrated the ability to identify breakout founders early and build concentrated exposure to the companies they create. RC Global Fund II is the next iteration of that model—deployed into a market moment that strongly favors early ownership, global perspective, and disciplined conviction.

About the GP

Hayden Simmons is the Founder and General Partner of Rally Cap, which he launched in 2020 to back global fintech founders at inception.

Prior to founding Rally Cap, Hayden spent over a decade operating at the forefront of emerging-market and cross-border fintech, with deep experience across payments, credit, and financial infrastructure. He held senior strategy and business development roles at Facebook’s Novi/Diem project, where he worked on global go-to-market strategy for a blockchain-based payments ecosystem, as well as at Juvo and Migo, where he helped scale inclusive financial products across Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia. Earlier in his career, Hayden focused on remittances and payment transparency across the U.S.–Mexico and U.S.–Philippines corridors.

In addition to operating roles, Hayden has been deeply embedded in the venture ecosystem. He served as a Venture Partner at Lateral Capital, a pan-African fund, and advised IDEO’s Last Mile Money initiative, giving him sustained exposure to early-stage underwriting, founder support, and fintech adoption in high-growth markets.

Hayden’s investing perspective is grounded in lived experience. He studied Latin American Economic Development at Colorado College, where he wrote his thesis on collectivized remittances in Mexico, and is fluent in Spanish. This combination of operating depth, global market fluency, and early-stage investing experience underpins Rally Cap’s ability to identify non-obvious founders, underwrite conviction early, and build meaningful ownership in globally scalable fintech companies.

Fund Construction & Strategy

Fund Size: ~$12.5m

Stage: Pre-seed / first institutional check

Initial Checks: $250k–$500k

Target Ownership: 5%+ at entry

Average Entry Valuation: ~$7.5m post

Portfolio: ~20–25 core investments (flexible up to ~30)

Capital Allocation

• 85–90% allocated to initial investments
• 10–15% reserved for selective follow-on investments

Follow-On Strategy

Follow-on capital is deployed only after clear signal, primarily at Seed and early Series A. We selectively double down on the top 20–30% of companies to:

• Preserve ownership through early dilution
• Increase exposure to breakout outcomes
• Improve fund-level DPI and TVPI

We do not promise full pro-rata across the portfolio. Capital is concentrated where conviction is earned, not assumed.

Ownership, Rights, and Access

• Target 5%+ ownership at initial investment
• Seek information rights via standard side letters
• Seek super pro-rata rights opportunistically in top-performing companies
• Side letters may be extended to LPs to enable:
• Co-investment access
• Enhanced visibility into portfolio companies

Return Profile

Fund economics are driven by early ownership, not capital intensity.

With ~5% initial ownership and selective follow-ons, fund success does not require unicorn density. Expected success scenarios include:

• One $500–750m outcome, or
• Two to three $300–400m outcomes

Portfolio construction and ownership targets are designed to deliver ~3.0x+ net returns to LPs.

Risks & How We Underwrite Them

• Early-stage volatility: mitigated through high initial ownership and selective follow-ons
• EM macro / FX risk: mitigated by global-first, US-outbound company profiles
• Regulatory risk: mitigated by focus on compliant, institutional-grade operators
• Concentration risk: mitigated by fit-first underwriting of seasoned founders
• Follow-on access: mitigated by deep co-investor relationships and operator LP network

Closing

We believe the next generation of global fintech leaders is being built now — on mature infrastructure, with real adoption, by founders who understand both emerging and developed markets. Rally Cap is designed to back those founders first, with conviction, ownership, and long-term partnership.

FAQ — Rally Cap Global Fintech Fund II

Are you an emerging markets fund?

No. Rally Cap is a global fintech fund.

Emerging markets are a sourcing and adoption advantage, not a mandate or geographic constraint. Many of the most compelling fintech behaviors—alternative payment rails, cross-border financial flows, mobile-first usage—appear first in markets where legacy systems are weakest. We use that early signal to identify founders and products with global potential, not to limit where companies are built or where they ultimately scale.

Most portfolio companies are structured to be global-first (often Delaware or UK entities) and expand U.S.-outbound and cross-border as adoption and distribution mature. We follow founders and usage, not maps.

Do all investments need to involve stablecoins, RTP, and AI?

No. These are structural tailwinds, not hard requirements.

Stablecoins, real-time payments, and AI meaningfully expand what is possible in fintech today, and we are excited about companies that leverage these technologies to create better products or unlock new markets. That said, we do not invest by checklist or theme intersection.

Our primary underwriting lens is founder–market fit. If a founder has a differentiated insight into a real financial problem, and a credible path to adoption and scale, we will invest—even if the product does not explicitly touch all three of these areas. Technologies change; great founders with unfair advantages compound.

Why pre-seed?

Pre-seed is where Rally Cap’s model works best.

At this stage, we can secure meaningful ownership, build conviction before narratives harden, and partner closely with founders as the company takes shape. It is also where our global sourcing advantage and operator network create the most differentiation—helping founders validate products, recruit early talent, and refine distribution before capital becomes abundant.

Importantly, early ownership—not capital intensity—is the primary driver of returns. By entering early and concentrating capital selectively, the fund does not require unicorn density to succeed.

How concentrated is the portfolio?

Intentionally concentrated.

We target approximately 20–25 core investments, with flexibility up to ~30 depending on check size and conviction. Concentration allows us to spend time where it matters, maintain meaningful ownership, and deploy follow-on capital with discipline.

We prefer to know our companies deeply rather than maintain a broad, passive portfolio. This approach reflects how early-stage outcomes actually materialize: a small number of companies drive the majority of value.

How do follow-ons work?

We reserve 10–15% of the fund for selective follow-on investments, primarily at Seed and early Series A.

Follow-on capital is deployed only after clear signal—traction, product-market fit, or category leadership—not mechanically. We typically double down on the top 20–30% of the portfolio to preserve ownership, increase exposure to breakout outcomes, and improve fund-level DPI and TVPI.

We do not aim to be a “support every company” fund. Capital is concentrated where conviction is earned.

Do you maintain pro-rata?

No fixed obligation.

We view pro-rata as a tool, not a rule. Our goal is to deploy capital efficiently and increase exposure to known winners, rather than preserve percentage ownership across the entire portfolio by default.

This flexibility allows us to avoid over-capitalizing weaker companies while leaning in where outcomes justify additional risk.

How do exits happen for EM-linked companies?

Our companies are built for global acquirers and public markets, not local-only outcomes.

Many are structured as Delaware or UK entities and operate across multiple regions. Likely acquirers include global fintech and financial infrastructure leaders such as Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, Ripple, Coinbase, and large regional incumbents seeking modern platforms.

Emerging market exposure often strengthens exit optionality rather than limiting it: it provides early scale, defensibility, and data advantages that become increasingly valuable as companies expand into developed markets.

How is Fund II different from prior vehicles?

Fund II is Rally Cap’s dedicated fintech flagship.

It reflects a more focused strategy, clearer ownership targets, and lessons learned from prior funds around sourcing, concentration, and follow-on discipline. The fund is purpose-built around fintech at the pre-seed stage, with a refined view on where value creation is shifting and how early-stage companies scale globally today.

In short, Fund II represents a more repeatable, conviction-driven version of the model Rally Cap has already validated.

What kind of LPs is this fund best suited for?

RC Global Fund II is best suited for LPs who believe:

• Early ownership matters more than capital deployment pace
• Global-first fintech companies will outperform regional incumbents
• Emerging markets are an adoption engine, not a niche
• Concentrated early-stage small-fund portfolios can generate outsized returns

This fund is designed for LPs aligned with long-term value creation, disciplined risk-taking, and conviction-led investing.