Nearside, an online bank for SMBs, raises a $58M Series B led by Valar Ventures, after raising a $20M Series A in April 2021
Context & Ripple Effects
Valar Ventures is assembling an SMB-banking portfolio rather than making one-off bets: before backing Nearside's $58M Series B, the firm led Novo's $40.7M Series A in June and Point's $46.5M Series B in September, all within roughly six months of each other.
The raise lands mid-wave: Open pulled in a $100M Series C at a reported $500M valuation in October, and Zeller followed with a A$100M Series B at a A$1B+ valuation in March 2022 — SMB-focused neobanks on three continents raising growth rounds back-to-back.
First-order effects
- Nearside gets the balance sheet to scale beyond its April 2021 $20M Series A footing, while Valar now holds three SMB neobank positions (Nearside, Point, Novo) whose products will increasingly be compared side-by-side by the same customer base.
- SMB customers gain another well-funded entrant competing on account features and pricing, since none of these banks can yet differentiate on brand alone.
Second-order effects
- Rivals like Novo and Point — sharing both investor and target market with Nearside — face pressure to accelerate their own fundraising and product roadmaps rather than cede the SMB segment to better-capitalized peers.
- Adjacent SMB fintech suppliers feel the pull: SpotOn's $125M Series D at a $1.875B valuation shows payments players racing to bundle more of the small-business stack, pushing banks and payment providers toward overlapping offerings.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, SMB financial services consolidates around platform plays that combine banking, payments, and software tools — with a handful of heavily capitalized names per geography rather than many standalone neobanks.
- Later-stage entrants like Worth, which raised a $30M Series A to help financial firms onboard and underwrite SMBs, signal the infrastructure layer beneath these banks becoming its own funded category.
The trend: Venture capital is concentrating in SMB-focused neobanks across the US, Australia, and India, with repeat lead investors like Valar building multi-company portfolios in the same segment.