Forward’s network of financial sponsors referring portfolio companies has grown to $145B in AUM. Every dollar we have goes into the outcomes of our partners, not marketing. What we have instead of a marketing budget is distribution. And chief among our distribution channels is our partnership with financial sponsors: private equity and venture capital firms.
Every software investor in 2026 knows payments can be monetized. The best portfolios generate up to 50% of their investment’s revenue from payments. What very few sponsors have is a rinse-and-repeat playbook to actually surface that value.
Forward’s entry with the sponsor community started the way it always does: with credibility earned the hard way.
We built vertical SaaS and payments businesses for 20+ years as founders, CEOs, CTOs, investors, and PE-backed board members. We exited successfully multiple times, selling our most recent company to Fiserv in 2020. Forward exists because we wanted to build the platform that would have eliminated every mistake we made along the way. We decided to pay it forward.
- A seven-figure investment to make Canadian embedded payments work as seamlessly as the U.S.
- AI-driven investments in risk and operations that translate into faster onboarding and faster payouts.
- A service model that is expensive by design because we believe software platforms don’t just need to take payments, they need to build their own payments business.
Early on, we worked with sponsors we already knew. But the sponsor community is small, and word traveled fast. Inbounds started arriving, with sponsors asking us to evaluate Portfolio Company X, or take a look at an anticipated investment Y. As projections turned into actuals and payments revenue began outpacing budget targets, sponsors sent us more of their portfolio companies.
Today, our sponsor network represents $145B in AUM: a significant pool of capital sourcing and financially backing some of the best software platforms being built. We’re often involved before a deal closes. Shortly after, we get to work building a payments and embedded finance business inside the portfolio company.
We’re in the early innings. But the model is proving out: shorter hold periods for sponsors, a competitive edge for portfolios leveraging Forward, and tangible payments value created at the operating company level.
That’s what a real distribution partnership looks like.
