# Mercedes Bent

> Mercedes Bent is a seed investor at Lightspeed Venture Partners backing FinTech. See 19 investments, check sizes, portfolio and contact details. Updated Aug…

- Type: Angel Investor
- Fund: [Lightspeed Venture Partners](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/lightspeed-venture-partners)
- Location: San Francisco, United States
- Total investments: 19
- Last investment: Jul 2025
- Lead investor: 47%
- Last updated: Aug 2026
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mercedesbent/
- X (Twitter): https://twitter.com/mercebent
- Website: https://lsvp.com/

Mercedes Bent is a Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, a venture capital firm based in the Bay Area. Previously she served as an executive at a VR startup and a General Manager at General Assembly (acquired, 2018) where she oversaw a multi-million dollar business line. She has an MBA and a Masters in Education from Stanford University andan AB from Harvard University. She serves as a board member for the non-profit Birthright AFRICA and in her free time she enjoys off-roading in her Jeep. She is an African American of Bermudian, Grenadian, and Colombian heritage and was named a 40 under 40 for Tech Diversity.

## Contacts

5 contacts available for Mercedes Bent: work email, personal email, work phone, personal phone and socials. Sign up free to unlock them: https://app.shizune.co/sign-up/investor-profiles/find-email/mercedes-bent?utm_source=investor_profile

## Round sizes

| Stage | Round size |
| --- | --- |
| Seed | $3M–$12M |
| Series A | $8M–$40M |
| Series B | $25M–$130M |

## Investment focus

### Industry

| Industry | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| FinTech | 4 | 21% |
| Software | 3 | 16% |
| Financial Services | 3 | 16% |
| Apps | 2 | 11% |
| Banking | 2 | 11% |

43 industries tracked in total.

### Stage

| Stage | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Seed | 6 | 32% |
| Series A | 6 | 32% |
| Series B | 4 | 21% |
| Series C | 1 | 5% |
| Venture - Series Unknown | 1 | 5% |

### Country

| Country | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| United States | 8 | 42% |
| Mexico | 3 | 16% |
| Brazil | 1 | 5% |
| Costa Rica | 1 | 5% |

## Investments

| Company | Description | Amount | Stage | Date | Website |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Willow Voice | Willow Voice is a technology company that develops voice input solutions using artificial intelligence. Its primary product is a dictation tool that converts spoken language into text in real time. The platform is designed to support everyday digital tasks by reducing reliance on manual typing. | $4.2M | Seed | Jul 15, 2025 | https://x.com/WillowVoiceAI |
| Sitch | Sitch provides a platform for IT service providers to streamline field operations, automate workflows, and manage customer requests. | $5M | Seed | Jun 25, 2025 | https://x.com/joinsitch |
| Stori | Stori Card is a digital financial platform provider focused on serving the underserved customers The company focused on promoting financial inclusion in Mexico by providing middle- and emerging middle-class customers with access to a credit card as well as other financial products | $105M | Venture - Series Unknown | Aug 06, 2024 | https://www.storicard.com/ |
| Cumbuca | Provider of a regulatory proxy platform for Brazil's Open Finance and Pix ecosystem. The company enables fintech firms, including international companies entering the Brazilian market and domestic players scaling beyond traditional Banking-as-a-Service arrangements, to access the Brazilian Central Bank's payment initiation and datasharing infrastructure without obtaining their own license. The platform functions as a thin intermediary layer between client infrastructure and the regulated environment, allowing customers to develop using official Open Finance and Central Bank API specifications rather than proprietary abstractions. Services include payment initiation across multiple modalities, transactional and credit data access, and SCR integration, with clients retaining full control over their infrastructure, operational data, and risk policies. The company holds a Payment Institution license as a Payment Initiation Service Provider (PISP) issued by the Central Bank of Brazil. | $3M | Seed | Aug 24, 2023 | https://www.cumbuca.com |
| Beek | Beek is building the top audio platform in Latin America. 10/10 people you see on the streets with headphones, will be listening on Beek to the best audiobooks, podcasts, meditations, and any audio content that they like. There will be a Netflix for Spoken word audio for the 480M+ native Spanish Speakers, and Beek is the team building it. | $13M | Series A | Feb 02, 2023 | https://www.beek.io/ |
| fidu | Fidu aims to develop a new operating system specifically for LatAm schools enabling institutions to digitally handle everything from finances to school-wide announcements | $5M | Seed | Oct 11, 2022 | https://fidu.la/ |
| Magic Eden | Magic Eden is a community-centric company. We work hard to be responsive, close to the ground, and in service to the best interests of our collections. To prove our commitment to the community, we airdropped Magic Ticket, our own collection, to over 30,000 users. Holding a Magic Ticket gives holders access to our discord-based DAO, MagicDAO, wherewe deliver interconnectivity via social programs and rewards to the community. | $130M | Series B | Jun 21, 2022 | https://www.magiceden.io/ |
| Trading.TV | Trading.TV is a content-driven financial services company for the next generation of investors. Our mission is to empower anyone to achieve financial freedom by merging entertainment and fintech into a simple, but powerful social experience. The platform enables creators to produce fun, interactive and informative content that investors can easilyconsume, take part in and act on by trading mentioned assets, from stocks and crypto to NFTs and collectibles – all in one place. | $8M | Series A | Jan 14, 2022 | http://www.trading.tv |
| Fan Controlled Football | Fan Controlled Football is the first fan-run professional sports league. From selecting the team logos, colors and head coaches to calling plays, the fans are calling the shots. | $40M | Series A | Jan 12, 2022 | https://www.fcf.io/ |
| Stori | Stori Card is a digital financial platform provider focused on serving the underserved customers The company focused on promoting financial inclusion in Mexico by providing middle- and emerging middle-class customers with access to a credit card as well as other financial products | $125M | Series C | Nov 11, 2021 | https://www.storicard.com/ |

10 of 19 investments shown.

## Co-investors
- [BAI capital](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/bertelsmann-asia-investments) — VC Fund, 4 deals together
- [Goodwater Capital](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/goodwater-capital) — VC Fund, 4 deals together
- [Greylock](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/greylock) — VC Fund, 4 deals together
- [Accel](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/accel) — VC Fund, 3 deals together
- [Alumni Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/alumni-ventures-group) — VC Fund, 3 deals together
- [Notable Capital](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/notable-capital-e2dd) — VC Fund, 3 deals together

## About Lightspeed Venture Partners

VC Fund · Menlo Park, United States

Lightspeed Venture Partners is a venture capital firm that engages in consumer, enterprise, technology, and cleantech markets. It focuses on seed, early-stage, later-stage, expansion-stage, start-ups, growth companies, and incubation, and specializes in debt financing for start-ups and growth companies.Lightspeed Venture Partners invests invarious sectors that include enterprise, consumer, big data, bitcoin, enterprise technology, cleantech, mobile, internet, financial technology, cloud solutions, e-commerce, storage, media, networking, energy, and software, software-as-a-service, information technology, biotechnology, and social.

5 contacts available at Lightspeed Venture Partners.

| Name | Title | Profile |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Arsham Memarzadeh | Partner | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/arsham-memarzadeh |
| Galym Imanbayev | Partner | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/galym-imanbayev-3ecc |
| James Ephrati | Partner | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/james-ephrati |
| Justin Overdorff | Partner | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/justin-overdorff |
| Michael Mignano | Partner | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/michael-mignano |

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## FAQ

### What does Mercedes Bent invest in?

Mercedes Bent invests primarily in FinTech, Software and Financial Services startups, most often at Seed and Series A stage. Most of the 19 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in United States. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.

### What is Mercedes Bent's check size?

Mercedes Bent typically joins rounds of $3M–$12M at Seed, $8M–$40M at Series A and $25M–$130M at Series B. These ranges are 10th–90th percentile round sizes calculated from confirmed public funding rounds, so they are a realistic guide to the rounds Mercedes Bent participates in.

### How do I contact Mercedes Bent?

Public channels for Mercedes Bent include LinkedIn, X (Twitter) and the website linked on this profile. For a verified work email and phone number, create a free Shizune account — contact data is searched across 20+ sources and validated before delivery, so your outreach lands in the right inbox.

### When did Mercedes Bent last invest?

The most recent investment recorded for Mercedes Bent closed in Jul 2025. Shizune tracks 19 investments in total for this profile, including round sizes, stages and portfolio companies, all sourced from confirmed public funding rounds and refreshed monthly.

### Is Shizune's investor data accurate?

Yes — every stat on this profile is calculated from confirmed public funding rounds monitored across hundreds of sources since 2020. This profile was last refreshed in Aug 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.

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