20M by building a consortium of its target customers, including 40+ banks. This strategy allowed them to validate demand, secure distribution, and align the ecosystem around their success before finalizing a product. It's a powerful model for complex B2B markets but requires careful management of stakeholder interests.
Most founders pitch VCs. R3 co-founder Todd McDonald pitched an entire industry. And in one of the smartest strategic moves in modern fintech, he convinced that industry to fund his company.
20 million not from traditional Sand Hill Road VCs, but from a consortium of over 40 global banks and institutions—the very companies they intended to sell to. This wasn't just a funding round; it was a masterclass in go-to-market strategy, de-risking, and building an ecosystem before a single product was shipped.
The core insight: for certain types of businesses, fundraising and customer development aren’t separate activities. They are the same motion. While many founders burn capital trying to find product-market fit, R3 locked in its key customers and partners by putting them on the cap table.
The R3 Playbook: Make the Market Your Co-Founder
Coming from Wall Street, Todd McDonald and his team understood a critical truth about financial infrastructure: no single bank could solve an industry-wide problem alone. The challenge wasn’t a better product, but a better system. This required consensus, not just code.
This is the playbook they used—and how you can adapt it.
Step 1: Identify an Ecosystem-Level Problem
R3 didn't build a tool for one bank’s back office. They tackled distributed ledger technology (DLT) to create a new operating system for all financial services. This was a problem that could only be solved at the network level.
Your tactical takeaway: Stop thinking about your user and start thinking about your user's entire world. Who do they transact with? Who sets their regulations? Who are their vendors? If your product creates exponential value when multiple parties adopt it, you may have an ecosystem-level opportunity.
Step 2: Build a Coalition, Not a Pitch Deck
Instead of perfecting a slide deck in isolation, R3 socialized an idea. They prioritized conversations and alignment with their future customers *before* building a product. The fundraising process *was* the customer discovery process.
They brought competitors into a room and got them to agree on a shared problem and a shared solution. The
