Ryft at the SFC Capital Investor Summit 2026

Ryft CEO Sadra Hosseini spoke at the SFC Capital Investor Summit this month. He joined Ed Prior for a session on early-stage secondaries: how they work, why valuation at entry matters, and how seed investors can access liquidity before a full exit.

SFC Capital backed Ryft's £1.2 million seed round in 2023. Sadra has been through the early-stage journey as a founder, which made for a practical conversation rather than a theoretical one.

What the session covered

The central question was how early-stage secondaries generate returns without waiting for an IPO or acquisition. Sadra and Ed explored why getting in at low valuations creates the conditions for meaningful liquidity earlier in a company's life.

For seed investors, this is a real consideration. The gap between an initial investment and a full exit is often long, and secondaries offer a route to realise value in the meantime. The session also addressed how this plays out in fintech, where build cycles run long and the most common exit route is strategic acquisition rather than public markets.

What this means for founders

For marketplace and platform founders, the conversation raises a few points worth carrying back to their own businesses.

The investors you bring in at seed stage shape your options for years. Backers who understand secondary mechanisms give founders more flexibility when managing the cap table and supporting early employees or angels who want to exit before a liquidity event.

Valuation discipline at seed also has a long tail. A lower entry valuation for investors is not just a fundraising negotiation. It affects whether secondaries are viable, who can buy in at later stages, and what a return looks like for everyone on the cap table when exit eventually arrives.

For fintech businesses specifically, building on compliant infrastructure gives investors a cleaner risk profile at the compliance level. 

Ryft and SFC Capital

Ryft raised its seed round with SFC Capital in 2023 and its £7.3 million Series A with Edenbase in 2025. Speaking at an SFC summit reflects where Ryft sits in the UK fintech ecosystem: past the earliest risk stage, growing, and increasingly visible to investors.

If you are building a marketplace or platform and want to talk about payments, get in touch with the Ryft team.

‍