From Challenge to Triumph: A Case Study on Motive Partners

Motive Partners is a specialist private equity platform that employs a repeatable model of Investing, Operating, and Innovating to build, back, and buy the technology companies enabling the financial economy. Founded in 2015, the firm invests across stages in technology-enabled financial and business services in North America and Europe, with over 160 professionals operating from New York, London, and Berlin.

Motive has raised $6.4 billion across two investment programmes: Motive Ventures (early stage, pre-seed through Series A) and Motive Capital (growth and buyout). The Motive Ventures arm, featured in this case study, has invested in 24 category-leading fintech companies, backed by globally recognised tech entrepreneurs, industry veterans, and leading institutions.

With four decades of expertise across the financial technology landscape, Motive Partners operates on the proprietary thesis that the financial technology sector represents a $9.6 trillion market opportunity by 2030 (source: proprietary, Motive).

As Motive scaled its cross-border investment programs, the limitations of operational setup, became an increasing barrier to velocity and scale. The legacy workflows of traditional fund administration created bottlenecks; limited ability to act independently without waiting for external responses, no consolidated operational system, a fragmented investor experience, and reliance on static documents and manual updates.

For a multi-jurisdiction, multi-vehicle early-stage firm, this approach was unsustainable. Motive needed modern, transparent, always-on infrastructure to support the increasing complexity of two funds, portfolio growth, and a globally distributed LP base.

Motive first migrated its main fund to bunch using a digitised, checklist-driven workflow and a secure data room for historical records. All legacy fund data (structures, LPs, capital calls, and reports) was rebuilt inside the bunch platform.

After experiencing the operational uplift, Motive migrated its second fund, consolidating €207M+ AUM and 77+ international LPs into one unified dashboard. LPs invested across multiple vehicles now access all information through a single login, with aligned reporting, documents, tasks, and KPIs.

Motive selected bunch for three core reasons:

1. A fully digital, end-to-end system. bunch offers one platform covering onboarding, data room, capital calls, reporting, and treasury therefore eliminating fragmented workflows and manual administration. Migration was intentionally seamless, with data ingestion, bank access, and managed directly by the bunch team.

2. Scalable infrastructure backed by specialist service. bunch’s combination of productised automation and expert fund support ensured accuracy, control, and regulatory compliance across jurisdictions — particularly German filings (BaFin, Bundesbank, FATCA/CRS). With bunch as a single source of truth, Motive can operate lean, confident, and with real-time visibility.

3. A modern system of record to back the brand. For a firm dedicated to digital excellence, maintaining a “legacy” back office was incompatible with their vision. Motive requires institutional-grade, always-on infrastructure to manage the increasing complexity of their multi-vehicle strategy and cater to the needs of their globally distributed LP base.

By deploying bunch’s core suite, Motive has shifted from administrator-dependent processes to autonomous, data-driven operations:

• Investor Portal: Orchestrates the entire LP lifecycle. Capital calls are calculated and dispatched with high precision, while historical performance data is accessible via secure data rooms.
  
• Compliance Hub: Centralises structured data to proactively manage European regulatory obligations, ensuring institutional-grade reporting standards.
  
• Treasury: Seamlessly facilitates high-velocity transaction categorisation and cash management across the platform, improving treasury transparency.
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Together, these capabilities created a fully digitised, transparent, and scalable operating environment — shifting Motive from manual, administrator-dependent processes to institutionalised, data-driven infrastructure.

Motive now operates with a clear, digital, and scalable infrastructure powering every stage of the fund lifecycle. With team entities and carry structures fully consolidated, the platform is engineered to support future portfolio expansion and new investment strategies without increasing operational overhead.

As private markets converge toward transparency and real-time data, Motive Partners stands at the forefront; equipped with a modern operational backbone built for the next generation of financial technology.