The Mint, started by Better Tomorrow Ventures, wants to be the accelerator fintech needs

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Better Tomorrow Ventures’ Sheel Mohnot made some of his biggest gains before ever starting a venture firm. The investor previously worked as a partner at 500, formerly known as 500 Startups, where he raised and ran a dedicated fintech fund as well as helped build an accelerator.

There he met his eventual founding partner in BTV – Jake Gibson – and backed a cadre of fintech startups, including Chipper and Albert, each valued at $2.5 million. Today, Chipper is valued at over $1 billion, and Albert has raised over $175 million.

And while the firm has certainly cashed in on its early track record — raising a $225 million secondary fund last year — the duo behind it think it’s time to initiate a nod to their roots. Better Tomorrow Ventures tells TechCrunch that it is launching a fintech accelerator, this time under its own roof, called The Mint.

The Mint will be a three-month accelerator, based out of San Francisco, that cuts $500,000 checks in exchange for 10% equity in between six to 10 startups. The first cohort, which starts this coming August, already accepted one company, and sent out another acceptance letter today.

“It’s something we’ve done successfully before. Our returns were crazy, crazy good from the first fintech cohort, so I think if we can get close to that again, our LPs will be happy,” Mohnot said.

The accelerator offers some standard support: a speaker lineup that includes founders from Mercury, Flexport, and NerdWallet, office hours with experts, wellness resources, hiring support, and desk space. Unlike some Zoom accelerator programs, The Mint is long San Francisco: two team members are moving to the city to help with logistics, and Better Tomorrow is leasing a new office space, outside Mission HQ, dedicated to the accelerator.

Better Tomorrow looks to step in where it believes Y Combinator is lacking. “YC is built for scale. The advice is a lot like one size fits all,” Mohnot said. “We felt that with fintech, there are so many things that are unique about building that it makes sense to have something distinct.”

Among some early-stage investors, YC’s new standard agreement have been met with varying degrees of fatigue. Last year, YC announced it would still offer its original deal — a $125,000 check in exchange for 7/% equity — as well as a $375,000 check on an uncapped SAFE note with a most-favoured-nation (MFN) clause . The latter has sparked some controversy: an MFN means that YC will get to invest $375,000 on the same terms as the investor with the best terms in the next round. Now, YC companies are less incentivized to raise a small amount of money from angels, and more incentivized to optimize for higher valuations after Demo Day, so the dilution is limited when they accept that $375,000 check.

“We believe the MFN clause [that YC currently offers] can do businesses a disservice. Because they end up almost having to raise to a very high value…you see that bites them in the ass a little bit. Because if they don’t hit the targets, the next round is even more challenging,” said Mohnot. While BTV’s 10% ownership is higher than other VC-spun programs—take NextView’s $200,000 in exchange for 8% stake for example—it’s less than what BTV typically targets for first checks, which is between 15% and 20% ownership .

Mohnot says that BTV will continue to invest outside the accelerator, but the main focus for the rest of the year in terms of net new investments will be within the programme.

“I think there’s a TechCrunch article right now about fintech” pessimism, Mohnot said. “We’re still very excited about the future of fintech and we liked fintech before it was cool.. At a basic level, financial services are 20% of GDP and they’re inherently digital, so the numbers make sense.”