A New Fund Targeting Early-Stage Fintech Opportunities _The Firm Expands Team with Acquisition of Willpower Ventures and Two Partner Promotions_

A New Chapter for Motivate Ventures

Motivate Ventures, a Chicago-based early-stage venture firm with more than $200 million in assets under management, today announced the launch of Motivate Fund III, a new fund targeting transformative startups across the financial technology landscape. The fund launched in February 2026 and builds on more than a decade of disciplined, operator-led investing.

Fund III arrives at a pivotal moment. Artificial intelligence is reshaping trillion-dollar industries at a pace that rewards early conviction and fintech and fintech stands as a primary beneficiary of this massive technological shift. For more than a decade, Motivate has backed category-defining founders before the crowd and Fund III positions the firm to do exactly that across the many fintech subsectors primed for disruption.

About Motivate Ventures Fund III

Fund Thesis
Motivate Ventures Fund III targets early-stage fintech – defined broadly, and intentionally so. Around the office you’ll often hear the team say “everything is fintech.” It started as a punchline, but soon became a motto of sorts.

Technology and regulation have continuously evolved to make it easier to build and access financial services. Through that evolution, fintech expanded far beyond payments and banking software to encompass any exchange of value, transfer of risk, and allocation of resources – workflows present in nearly every business in every industry.

Consider a manufacturing ERP that automates inventory purchasing decisions, or a consumer prayer app that helps churches accept donations. Both are fintech companies, enabled by the continuous evolution of financial infrastructure. Motivate has backed both.

That same early conviction in the expansive reach of fintech is what led Motivate’s partners to invest in Chime when it was a seed-stage company, TradingView at pre-seed before it became one of the world’s most widely used retail investing platforms, as well as Esusu, MeshPay, Attain, and Public at seed-stage, well before each reached unicorn valuations.

The banking, finance, investment, and insurance markets – contributing $6T to US GDP – have already produced some of the firm’s most significant outcomes, and Motivate believes the most consequential investments in this space are still ahead.

The next era of fintech will follow the same pattern, accelerated by three converging forces: intelligence, new rails, and regulatory tailwinds. What will not change is how fintech companies win — by establishing regulatory infrastructure, owning financial workflows, building proprietary data moats, and capitalizing on network effects. These are moats that cannot be replicated overnight and AI will make them stronger. Data advantages compound, risk underwriting improves, and distribution becomes more efficient, especially for those businesses that use data and automation to continuously improve how they make decisions.

Motivate has been investing from idea through Seed for more than a decade. Fund III is built to continue investing early, backing entrepreneurs before the rest of the market recognizes the opportunity that, indeed, “Everything is Fintech.”

Strategic Expansion: New Partners and a Key Promotion

Acquisition of Willpower Ventures // Andy Will Joins as Partner
Motivate is excited to announce the acquisition of Willpower Ventures and the addition of Andy Will as Partner. This strategic combination deepens Motivate’s early stage Fintech capabilities central to Fund III’s thesis.

Andy is a seasoned B2B SaaS investor who blends deep experience in traditional finance and banking with a passion for backing capital-efficient founders. Prior to joining Motivate, Andy was a founding team member at Zeal Partners, where he led more than 20 investments including Esusu ($1.2B valuation). He holds degrees from the University of Notre Dame and Chicago Booth.

At Motivate, Andy will lead investments in Fintech and Vertical AI while bringing his J.P. Morgan and Zeal Capital Partners network to bear on sourcing and supporting portfolio companies. His operating roots in traditional finance make him uniquely positioned to evaluate founders disrupting entrenched institutional markets.

Jackson Bubala Promoted to Partner
Motivate is also proud to announce the promotion of Jackson Bubala from Principal to Partner. Jackson is a deeply connected fintech investor with a strong product background and a genuine passion for supporting founders with chips on their shoulders.

Since joining Motivate, Jackson has focused on investments in Fintech, Industrial Software, and Vertical AI. Prior to Motivate, he designed and built software products for organizations including CME Group, KPMG, Chicago Bulls, and GFS. He is also the founder of Chicago Fintech Forum, a growing community of local fintech founders and executives. Jackson is a Dartmouth graduate where he played Division I baseball and was an Alpha Partners Rising Star ‘22-25.

Courtney Trunk Promoted to Head of Platform
Motivate is pleased to announce the promotion of Courtney Trunk from Senior Associate to Head of Platform. In her expanded role, Courtney will lead Motivate’s portfolio support function, working directly with founders across the firm’s portfolio companies to unlock capital, talent, and customer relationships.

Courtney brings ten years of venture capital and financial consulting experience, including roles in the financial consulting and valuation practice at Duff & Phelps. She maintains strong VC and advisor relationships that enable her to support portfolio companies at critical inflection points. Courtney holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Illinois and an MBA from Kellogg School of Management.

The Motivate Team

Andy, Jackson, and Courtney are part of a team of experienced investors and operators committed to backing the next generation of fintech founders.

David Wieland, Founder & General Partner, is a B2B SaaS entrepreneur with three successful exits and 15 years of seed-stage investing experience across 90+ early-stage VC funds and companies, including Chime, Public, Hallow, HomeChef, and NoRedInk. He co-founded IrishAngels, one of the largest angel groups in the US.

Lauren DeLuca, Founder & General Partner, is a multi-time fintech founder and prolific angel investor with 50 seed investments spanning Chime, TradingView, Maystreet, Gatsby, HomeChef, and Athena Bitcoin, among others. Lauren has founded, operated and exited three capital markets and financial data businesses over the past 15 years.

Bonnie Kearns, Chief Operating Officer, brings institutional-grade operational experience from Centana Growth Partners ($1B AUM) and FTV Capital ($10B AUM), overseeing all non-investing functions of the firm including reporting, LP relations, and fund operations.

Introducing Athena™ by Motivate

Motivate also announces the launch of Athena™, a proprietary intelligence platform designed to transform how the firm connects its portfolio companies with investors, advisors, and subject matter experts.

Built entirely in-house, Athena™ gives both Motivate’s investment team and its portfolio founders on-demand access to deep analysis by four distinct agents across nearly 20,000 profiles within Motivate’s network. By surfacing the highest-signal matches based on each startup’s specific stage, sector, and needs, Athena™ brings speed and precision to a process that has historically relied on institutional knowledge and manual effort.

As Motivate’s portfolio scales, Athena™ reflects the firm’s commitment to supporting founders with sustained operational support beyond just capital.

Why Work with Motivate

The Motivate team built and sold companies in financial services, hospitality technology, and web infrastructure before turning to investing full time. That operating background shapes how the firm evaluates founders, structures deals, and supports companies post-investment. Fund III doubles down on that same playbook: invest early, in sectors Motivate’s partners have travelled in for two decades, and commit relentlessly to building alongside founders long after the check is written.