Phil Bronner

Managing Partner @ Ardent Venture Partners; OneMain Financial, Method Financial, Crux, GiveButter, Verituity

📍 United States🔄 Updated September 2026💼 11 investments📅 11 years investing🗓 Last invested May 2023
VC🌍 United States
11
Total investments
3
Early stage
3
Mid stage
2
Late stage
11y
Years active

Portfolio

10 investments · sorted by recency
All investments
Early stage
Mid stage
Late stage
Investor
May 2023
Incentivio is where restaurants can build and cultivate memorable experiences with their guests, digitally! Since 2017 we have helped hundreds of restaurant brands with over 3,000 restaurant locations across North America increase retention, maximize revenue, and enhance the guest experience for both first-time visitors and loyalists. Our goal is to create memorable dining experiences that leave a lasting impression between the brand and their guests for ALL restaurants. We achieve this by helping restaurants engage with guests through our platform powered by AI and ML that combines branded online ordering and white-label restaurant apps with customizable loyalty, a data-driven marketing suite, CDP analytics, gift cards, machine learning upsells, and guest journey management. Our powerful. all-in-one restaurant engagement platform allows restaurants to build relationships with their guests–– all while seamlessly integrating with top POS providers, payment processors, and delivery services. After all, that’s what customers truly crave–memorable experiences from the restaurants they visit! Reach out to us and learn how we can help increase retention and revenue for your restaurant! https://www.incentivio.com/schedule-demo?hsLang=en
Investor
Apr 2023
Crux is the capital platform for the clean economy. Our expert team, leading market intelligence, and AI-powered software are changing the way clean energy developers, manufacturers, and investors raise and deploy the capital needed to power a more prosperous, clean, and secure energy future. Crux facilitates transactions across the full stack, including transferable tax credits, debt capital, and tax and preferred equity. Securities are only offered through Crux Capital Securities, LLC, a member of FINRA and SIPC. Crux Capital Securities, LLC is a broker-dealer registered with the SEC and various states.
Investor
Oct 2022
Pickleheads is the #1 website and app for pickleball players! Find nearby courts, games and groups. Organize your own games and connect with other players in your area. Now the Official Court and Game Finder of USA Pickleball!
Investor
Sep 2022
Lendflow provides embedded credit infrastructure for fintechs, lenders and software companies to build, embed and launch credit products. Combining a powerful credit decisioning engine, contextual product placements and a robust marketplace of specialized lenders, Lendflow enables every company to build, embed and launch financial products within their ecosystems. With Lendflow, fintechs can launch credit products in minutes, SaaS companies can increase customer engagement and retention with embedded credit, lenders can expand their reach to qualified SMBs and SMBs can quickly access capital to power their growth.
Investor
Apr 2022
Rainforest is a Payments-as-a-Service (PaaS) provider. We help software companies build and optimize embedded financial services so that they can provide a best-in-class payments experience for their end merchants without the risk, compliance, and operational burdens of registering as a payments facilitator with the card networks. Analysts estimate that by 2030, 75% of all payments globally will be processed via software versus traditional banking channels. Rainforest helps software platforms navigate this massive evolution, by enabling them to drive significant new revenue and improve customer retention by enabling their customers (“merchants”) to accept and send payments. Rainforest is the only payments provider built from the ground up to specifically support the unique needs of vertical software platforms. We provide highly-customizable, low-code, white-label integration technology, fully embedded payments and reporting, and a platform-specific merchant underwriting model. Our PaaS approach is unique because clients don’t have to make tradeoffs between a lightweight referral partnership and building payments infrastructure in-house. Instead, they get the benefits of both worlds: strong unit economics with no upfront costs, plus full ownership and portability of their customer data. Rainforest is led by industry experts, former vertical-SaaS executives, and payments consultants who have spent decades in the payments buyer’s seat. We built Rainforest to be the payments provider we always wanted.
Investor
Apr 2022
LEO1 pioneers Edu-Fintech sector with its Financial SAAS offerings, effectively addressing longstanding cash flow challenges for educational institutions. By incentivizing timely fee payments from students and parents, LEO1 encourages financial alignment between institutes and families while cultivating responsible financial habits among the next generation. Beyond this core function, LEO1 also provides access to education loans, enticing rewards, and a robust financial literacy module, enriching its comprehensive suite of offerings.
Investor
Mar 2022
Givebutter is the most-loved nonprofit fundraising platform, empowering millions of changemakers to raise more, pay less, and give better. Nonprofits use Givebutter to replace multiple categories of tools, including donation forms, fundraising campaigns, events, auctions, donor management (CRM), email, texting, and more—all for free, thanks to a 100% transparent tip-or-fee model. As the #1 rated nonprofit software company on G2 across multiple categories, Givebutter is on a mission to power the next billion changemakers. Givebutter: Raise more. Pay less. Give better. 💛
late stageFundraising
Investor
Jul 2021
Method Financial empowers real-time data and payment access for consumer liabilities. Using consumer’s consent, Method can securely connect all of a user’s liabilities, retrieve comprehensive data, and enable payment access. Method’s industry-backed network allows lenders, fintechs, and financial institutions to build personalized lending and financial management experiences supported by comprehensive real-time credit data, evergreen connections and integrated payment rails. Through a single integration, Method powers access to liabilities held at over 15,000+ FIs in the US, covering 95% of all outstanding consumer liabilities.
Board Member
Apr 2021
Verituity delivers verified digital B2B & B2C payouts for enterprises, banks and the public sector. As payment speeds accelerate and attack surfaces expand, errors, fraud, and misdirected payments can occur at any point in the disbursement lifecycle. One time checks and static, fragmented controls are no longer enough. Verituity was built to address this reality with continuous, multi layered and interlinking verification that operates across legacy systems, modern payment rails, and every payment type. Reducing improper payments and delivering payout precision Our fully automated platform continuously verifies payment files, payee eligibility, identities, relationships, payment accounts, and payment instructions—before and as funds move. Rather than asking whether a payee or account exists, Verituity helps organizations determine whether a payment should be made, to this payee, to this account, for this amount, at this moment—every time. Designed for complex, high volume environments, Verituity is legacy compatible by design and calibrated to each organization’s policies, compliance requirements, and risk tolerance. We serve enterprises, banks and government agencies where payout precision is mission critical and public trust, regulatory compliance, and financial stewardship matter. Continuous verification isn’t a feature. It’s a fiduciary obligation. Verituity sets the minimum acceptable standard for modern disbursements: paying the right amount, to the right payee and the right payment account - on time, every time. 🌐 verituity.com
Board Member
Mar 2015
As the pioneer and category leader in B2B online leadership development, ExecOnline has delivered meaningful impact for enterprises and career-enhancing programs to more than 120,000 global leaders since 2012. Through partnerships with elite business schools, such as UC Berkeley Executive Education, Columbia, UVA Darden School of Business, Tuck at Dartmouth, Duke CE, IMD, Ivey, MIT Sloan, Stanford GSB, Wharton and Yale, ExecOnline is creating a diverse pool of future-ready leaders. ExecOnline has been named to the Global Silicon Valley EdTech 150 and was recognized as a “Technology Company to Watch” by Forbes. In 2021, ExecOnline convened nearly 50 forward-thinking organizations to form a Development Equity Council (DEC). Together, the DEC has created an actionable blueprint to help organizations increase diversity at the leadership level by providing equitable access for underrepresented groups to career-enhancing development opportunities. Anchored in our core values: Be Bold, Lead with Purpose, Collaborate Inclusively, and Act with Integrity, our mission-driven team is committed to connecting all leaders to their future potential.
Experience · 14 entries
All (14)
Investments (11)
Founder (1)
Board (3)
2023
Investor
May 2023
Incentivio is where restaurants can build and cultivate memorable experiences with their guests, digitally! Since 2017 we have helped hundreds of restaurant brands with over 3,000 restaurant locations across North America increase retention, maximize revenue, and enhance the guest experience for both first-time visitors and loyalists. Our goal is to create memorable dining experiences that leave a lasting impression between the brand and their guests for ALL restaurants. We achieve this by helping restaurants engage with guests through our platform powered by AI and ML that combines branded online ordering and white-label restaurant apps with customizable loyalty, a data-driven marketing suite, CDP analytics, gift cards, machine learning upsells, and guest journey management. Our powerful. all-in-one restaurant engagement platform allows restaurants to build relationships with their guests–– all while seamlessly integrating with top POS providers, payment processors, and delivery services. After all, that’s what customers truly crave–memorable experiences from the restaurants they visit! Reach out to us and learn how we can help increase retention and revenue for your restaurant! https://www.incentivio.com/schedule-demo?hsLang=en
Investor
Apr 2023
Crux is the capital platform for the clean economy. Our expert team, leading market intelligence, and AI-powered software are changing the way clean energy developers, manufacturers, and investors raise and deploy the capital needed to power a more prosperous, clean, and secure energy future. Crux facilitates transactions across the full stack, including transferable tax credits, debt capital, and tax and preferred equity. Securities are only offered through Crux Capital Securities, LLC, a member of FINRA and SIPC. Crux Capital Securities, LLC is a broker-dealer registered with the SEC and various states.
2022
Investor
Oct 2022
Pickleheads is the #1 website and app for pickleball players! Find nearby courts, games and groups. Organize your own games and connect with other players in your area. Now the Official Court and Game Finder of USA Pickleball!
Investor
Sep 2022
Lendflow provides embedded credit infrastructure for fintechs, lenders and software companies to build, embed and launch credit products. Combining a powerful credit decisioning engine, contextual product placements and a robust marketplace of specialized lenders, Lendflow enables every company to build, embed and launch financial products within their ecosystems. With Lendflow, fintechs can launch credit products in minutes, SaaS companies can increase customer engagement and retention with embedded credit, lenders can expand their reach to qualified SMBs and SMBs can quickly access capital to power their growth.
Investor
Apr 2022
Rainforest is a Payments-as-a-Service (PaaS) provider. We help software companies build and optimize embedded financial services so that they can provide a best-in-class payments experience for their end merchants without the risk, compliance, and operational burdens of registering as a payments facilitator with the card networks. Analysts estimate that by 2030, 75% of all payments globally will be processed via software versus traditional banking channels. Rainforest helps software platforms navigate this massive evolution, by enabling them to drive significant new revenue and improve customer retention by enabling their customers (“merchants”) to accept and send payments. Rainforest is the only payments provider built from the ground up to specifically support the unique needs of vertical software platforms. We provide highly-customizable, low-code, white-label integration technology, fully embedded payments and reporting, and a platform-specific merchant underwriting model. Our PaaS approach is unique because clients don’t have to make tradeoffs between a lightweight referral partnership and building payments infrastructure in-house. Instead, they get the benefits of both worlds: strong unit economics with no upfront costs, plus full ownership and portability of their customer data. Rainforest is led by industry experts, former vertical-SaaS executives, and payments consultants who have spent decades in the payments buyer’s seat. We built Rainforest to be the payments provider we always wanted.
Show all 14 entries ↓
Investment activity
2015–2023 · 11 investments
20151202132022520232
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