Brightlane Labs has launched in Atlanta as a new venture studio focused on building and scaling B2B fintech startups. The studio is led by Chris Johnson, Barclay Keith, and Alex Han, all of whom have backgrounds in the local technology and enterprise sectors.
The founders bring experience from companies such as Momnt and Cox Communications. Chris Johnson previously served as an EVP at Momnt, while Barclay Keith was CEO of the same company from 2019 to 2024. Alex Han held the position of Director of Innovation & GM of New Ventures at Cox Communications.
Brightlane Labs aims to develop ventures that address industry challenges from the outset. The initial focus will be on fintech solutions related to compliance automation, risk oversight, and operational resilience for financial institutions.
In a statement about their approach, Alex Han explained: “We are targeting to spin out 3-5 ventures in our first year (distilled from hundreds of ideas and multiple validation tests prior to spin out), and we would look to grow that volume in future years if all goes according to plan.”
Han also discussed why the team is focusing on banks and credit unions with less than $10 billion in assets: “It’s a space that our team (Chris and Barclay) have deep domain expertise in, and have seen first-hand how hard it is to operate in. From a mission perspective, banks and credit unions validation -> launch. Ideation: we have a network of operators within our target market, and we tap directly into the problems they face and the inefficiencies they deal with. We are also in the process of leveraging this network to build up our Industry Design Partner community – this will effectively act as an engine to help us uncover ideas directly from our target market. We layer on top of this our own studio research (primary and secondary) to look forward and see what needs may come in the future that our market have to deal with. Validation: We are an AI-native studio, meaning we leverage the latest tools across just about everything we do. We are also hypothesis-driven. The combination of these allows us to quickly spin up working prototypes that solve for our value hypotheses. We then test these rigorously against our target market. We ask for initial feedback, iterate, release, and repeat until we’re comfortable we’ve gotten to a true MVP that delivers on a key value hypothesis. Launch: with the confidence that we have signs of product-market fit, we then leverage the industry partners to “hot-launch” our ventures into institutions that have already been using the solution in its early form. A great part about having a focused market, is that our channels and partnerships get stronger with each startup we spin out which also creates a value proposition for the Founders we bring in to take the startups forward.”
On funding plans moving forward Han said: “We have existing runway from our core team, but we are planning to issue a friends/family round to accelerate our operations and our venture building. We would also be looking for investors to have conversations with to further accelerate what we’re doing!”
Discussing branding strategy he added: “Brightlane has been with Chris for a number of years and has been a strong presence within the FinTech space (mostly on the consulting side helping to launch banks, solve operational challenges, etc.), but we are intending to have Brightlane Labs be the primary name and brand going forward. Brightlane represents a continuation of the strength and impact that Chris has had within the FinTech space, and also represents our mission of democratizing growth for these community banks and credit unions. Putting them on a fast track to a brighter future.”
