Venture Capital Investor | Serial Entrepreneur | Studio Builder

Katie Palencsar is a seasoned investor, founder, and operator with a track record of launching businesses, building products, and backing exceptional entrepreneurs. She is the Founder of Material Ventures Group, a new-concept studio designed to advise, operate, and incubate both founder-led and concept-led companies.

Previously, Katie was a Partner at Anthemis Group, where she served as Head of Venture Studio and launched the Female Innovators Lab Fund — the first and largest fund dedicated to female founders in fintech. Under her leadership, the fund scaled globally with backing from Barclays, Aviva, Visa, and BMO, and invested across North America, the UK, and Europe.
A serial entrepreneur, Katie is also the co-founder of Generation Guest Group, a high-volume travel management company specializing in corporate and entertainment clients. Earlier in her career, she founded Unbound Concepts, a data SaaS company used by global publishers and over 40,000 educators. After its acquisition by Certica Solutions, she joined the executive team to lead product innovation, continuing through its subsequent acquisition by Instructure (formerly NYSE: INST).

Katie sits on boards across technology, venture capital, and education, and is recognized for guiding leadership teams through growth, innovation, and governance. She was named one of American Banker’s Most Influential Women in Fintech (2023) and is a recipient of the GE 99u Emerging Innovators Award, Drexel Educator of the Year, SmartCEO Voltage Award, and the Women in Fintech Powerlist. She also holds a U.S. patent in machine learning for text complexity analysis.
Katie’s work has been featured in Forbes, Fast Company, Bloomberg, Crunchbase, and The Wall Street Journal. She is based in New York City and is deeply immersed in arts and culture — always building something new.

Venture Capital Investor | Serial Entrepreneur | Studio Builder

Katie Palencsar is a seasoned investor, founder, and operator with a track record of launching businesses, building products, and backing exceptional entrepreneurs. She is the Founder of Material Ventures Group, a new-concept studio designed to advise, operate, and incubate both founder-led and concept-led companies.

Previously, Katie was a Partner at Anthemis Group, where she served as Head of Venture Studio and launched the Female Innovators Lab Fund — the first and largest fund dedicated to female founders in fintech. Under her leadership, the fund scaled globally with backing from Barclays, Aviva, Visa, and BMO, and invested across North America, the UK, and Europe.
A serial entrepreneur, Katie is also the co-founder of Generation Guest Group, a high-volume travel management company specializing in corporate and entertainment clients. Earlier in her career, she founded Unbound Concepts, a data SaaS company used by global publishers and over 40,000 educators. After its acquisition by Certica Solutions, she joined the executive team to lead product innovation, continuing through its subsequent acquisition by Instructure (formerly NYSE: INST).

Katie sits on boards across technology, venture capital, and education, and is recognized for guiding leadership teams through growth, innovation, and governance. She was named one of American Banker’s Most Influential Women in Fintech (2023) and is a recipient of the GE 99u Emerging Innovators Award, Drexel Educator of the Year, SmartCEO Voltage Award, and the Women in Fintech Powerlist. She also holds a U.S. patent in machine learning for text complexity analysis.
Katie’s work has been featured in Forbes, Fast Company, Bloomberg, Crunchbase, and The Wall Street Journal. She is based in New York City and is deeply immersed in arts and culture — always building something new.

Investor | Startup Operator | Venture Capital & Embedded Finance Expert

Dan Dall’Asta is an investor and startup operator with an 18-year track record in venture capital, company building, and capital markets.

Most recently, Dan served as SVP and Head of Revenue for Newline, the embedded payments division of Fifth Third Bank. He joined Fifth Third through its acquisition of the embedded finance platform Rize, where he had joined in 2020 to lead revenue, operations, and strategy. Dan played a key role in Rize’s successful exit and was quickly elevated to a leadership role post-acquisition in 2023. During his tenure, he oversaw 35%+ revenue growth and helped establish Newline as a strategic imperative for the bank.

Before Fifth Third and Rize, Dan was a founding team member of Route 66 Ventures, a venture capital fund focused on fintech and insurtech. From 2013–2020, he helped deploy over $160M across 27 portfolio companies in North America, Europe, and Southeast Asia. The fund is currently in its harvest phase and has already returned significant DPI, with fund-returning positions still in play — including companies like Ripple Labs and DriveWealth.

Earlier in his career, Dan worked in investment banking, most recently at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. He also spent time in full-time volunteer roles focused on civic engagement and youth education in New York and Washington, DC — notably through City Year, an AmeriCorps organization dedicated to improving literacy and math outcomes for at-risk youth.

Dan holds a Bachelor of Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an MBA from Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. He is based in Washington, DC.