Backing fintech founders who need more than venture capital.
Commenda Partners invests principally in fintech businesses whose growth requires both venture equity and asset-backed credit financing, to finance their own balance sheets or to otherwise fund the loans and assets they originate.
Commenda Partners is a venture capital firm based in Vienna, Austria, with New York as its principal U.S. hub. Our experience spans fintech venture investing, asset-backed finance, and capital markets.
Beyond equity investment, we engage as partners with founders on credit funding pathways such as forward flow arrangements, warehouse facilities, and securitizations. We also help navigate the bank and institutional investor relationships behind them.
Areas of Focus
SPECIALTY LENDING & EMBEDDED CREDIT
Non-bank lenders and fintech platforms with a material credit component, from specialty consumer and SMB lenders to payments and software platforms with embedded financing.
MORTGAGE & REAL ESTATE FINANCE
Companies modernizing mortgage origination, home equity, real estate investor lending, and the capital markets pathways that fund housing-related assets.
INFRASTRUCTURE FOR ASSET-BACKED FINANCE
Technology platforms supporting warehouse finance, forward flow, securitization, and servicing.
The Commenda tradition
The name Commenda refers to a medieval investment contract used by Venetian and other Mediterranean merchants to finance overseas trading voyages. One partner provided capital; another undertook the voyage. Profits were shared, risk was defined, and entrepreneurial ideas came to life through partnership.
Commenda contracts combined elements of what we would today call venture equity and asset-backed finance. They were equity-like in their risk participation and profit-sharing, but credit-like in the way capital was advanced against specific goods and their proceeds.
Commenda Partners draws inspiration from that tradition, backing visionary entrepreneurs building at the intersection of venture equity and asset-backed finance.
Meet the Founder
Patrick J. Brett
FOUNDER AND MANAGING PARTNER
Patrick Brett launched Commenda Partners in 2026 to back fintech founders whose businesses require both venture equity and asset-backed credit to scale.
Before launching Commenda, Patrick spent 23 years in Citi’s Fixed Income business, most recently as Global Head of SPRINT Investments, Citi’s strategic venture investing platform focused on fintech, specialty lending, private credit, and real estate finance. Under his leadership, SPRINT built a portfolio of more than 20 fintech companies globally and formed a strategic partnership with Carlyle in 2025. He also served as a director or board observer for nine portfolio companies, working closely with founders on strategy, partnerships, credit funding, and capital formation.
Earlier in his Citi career, Patrick served on the global leadership team for the firm’s Cross-Asset Financing & Securitization business and led its Municipal Debt Capital Markets and Capital Solutions businesses. He helped build Citi’s international municipal finance platform, raising tens of billions of dollars from sovereign funds, central banks, insurance companies, and asset managers across more than 30 countries for U.S. infrastructure and public-sector issuers. He also co-founded Citi’s U.S. Municipal Structured Products Sales desk in 2002, helping build what Greenwich Associates consistently ranked as the top municipal structured products business on Wall Street for more than a decade.
Patrick also served as Chairman of the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board, the congressionally established regulator of the $4 trillion U.S. municipal securities market.
Patrick holds three degrees from the University of Pennsylvania: a BS in Finance from the Wharton School, a BA in Anthropology and Spanish, and an MS in South American Archaeology. He is a founding board member of TJ Angels, supporting alumni founders from Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Virginia.
Patrick is based in Vienna, Austria, and works globally, with New York as Commenda’s principal U.S. hub.
Let’s work together
Whether you're a founder seeking investment, an LP with an inquiry, or looking to discuss strategic partnerships and media opportunities, we’d love to hear from you.