MEOW

Brandon Arvanaghi came out of security, not banking. He was a consultant at Mandiant, then an early security engineer at the crypto exchange Gemini, where he worked on custody and helped build the Gemini dollar stablecoin.

In 2021 he co-founded Meow with a crypto-flavoured pitch: give corporate treasuries a compliant, cash-based way to earn crypto market yields. When crypto lending blew up in 2022 and interest rates spiked at the same time, the pitch shifted.

Meow became a way for companies to move idle cash into Treasury bills and money market funds, and later a full business banking platform with checking, cards, invoicing and bill pay.

Business banking with fee and interest revenue. Meow earns from spreads and fees on the cash and Treasury balances customers hold through it, plus card interchange and other banking services.

Revenue scales with the money on the platform. The company says it has been profitable since 2024.

Business checking accounts. Treasury management (automated purchases of US Treasury bills).

Virtual and physical corporate cards. Invoicing and bill pay.

USDC payments on Solana, added in February 2025.

Timing the rate cycle. Meow pivoted from crypto yield to Treasury bills just as interest rates rose from near zero to 4-5%, making cash management suddenly relevant to every startup CFO.

It sold directly to founders and finance teams through Twitter, LinkedIn and fintech communities. The value proposition is mathematical.

If you have $10M in cash earning 0.01% and Meow helps you earn 4.5%, the value is obvious. It then widened into full business banking so customers could keep all their money in one place, and in 2025 added the ability to send and receive USDC on Solana from a normal cash balance.

Interest rate sensitivity. Meow's core pitch is tied to rates.

If rates drop back toward zero, earning yield on idle cash becomes much less compelling. It also competes with much bigger startup banks such as Mercury and Brex, and with traditional banks adding the same features.

And a fintech that runs through partner banks carries the same partner-bank risk that hurt the sector after the Synapse collapse in 2024.

Meow raised a $5 million seed round in November 2021 from Coinbase Ventures, the Gemini Frontier Fund and Lux Capital, with Jump Capital, Slow Ventures, Castle Island Ventures and others joining. In July 2022 Tiger Global led a $22 million Series A, with QED Investors participating.

That is about $27 million in total. In July 2024 Arvanaghi said Meow was profitable and planned never to raise from VCs again.