From Incubation to Global Operations: How Levl Built a Payments Platform with Galaxy Ventures
Overview
Galaxy Ventures led the $7M seed round for Levl, a stablecoin infrastructure company, and within months of launch, Levl was processing over $1 billion in annualized payment volume. [1] This is how a single founder working out of Galaxy's office got there, and the role Galaxy Ventures' Platform played.
Prior to founding Levl, Jaisel Sandhu traded FX and equities as a quant at AQR, a hedge fund. He understood currency markets and saw firsthand how stablecoins were revolutionizing them. He wanted to build a company at the intersection of traditional finance and digital asset innovation but was looking for a place to build and pressure-test his ideas. He found that at Galaxy.
"Every VC talks about working closely with their portfolio companies, and many genuinely do, but Galaxy has gone above and beyond, delivering support that has been invaluable across every facet of our business."²
— Jaisel Sandhu², CEO & Founder, Levl
Building Inside Galaxy
Jaisel joined Galaxy as an entrepreneur-in-residence, using the set up to explore initial ideas, run due diligence, and tap into Galaxy's institutional network. His first concept was a regulated exchange for tokenized securities; a high-potential idea with a complex regulatory surface. He spoke with 30 to 40 law firms across multiple jurisdictions to research the concept, and a key early advantage was being able to synthesize those firm's input alongside Galaxy's own legal, compliance, ventures, and trading teams to build a strong operational foundation. But the Galaxy collaboration would soon extend beyond just that.
"Galaxy is one of the most well-regulated businesses in the digital assets industry, they've built a global presence and worked through almost every major jurisdiction in the world. When I was working out where to base the exchange, having direct access to people who'd already done that work was a huge advantage."
— Jaisel Sandhu², CEO & Founder, Levl
Navigating the Pivot
Startups rarely look the same at Year 2 as they did on Day 1. Levl is no exception.
After pursuing the tokenized securities path, Jaisel and the team pivoted, to a different problem they were better equipped to solve; global payments infrastructure. The pivot didn’t erase the foundational work, but built on it. The regulatory groundwork, the engineering instincts around institutional-grade financial infrastructure, the go-to-market frameworks developed alongside the Galaxy team all carried forward.
Levl is now a unified platform powering fiat and stablecoin cross-border payments, serving fintechs, neobanks, remittance apps, mobile wallets, and payment service providers across 75+ countries.
"Before you find product-market fit, the goal is to iterate as fast as possible, and that means synthesizing feedback quickly. Being able to draw on Galaxy's expertise across legal, engineering, and go-to-market was critical in helping us move from idea to idea until we landed on something that had very clear product-market fit."
— Jaisel Sandhu², CEO & Founder, Levl
The market response was immediate. Levl launched its payments platform in late 2025. Within four months, it reached $1 billion in annualized payments volume¹, which we believed reflected a strong signal that the market wanted faster, more accessible infrastructure for moving money across borders.
The Galaxy Platform in Action
Levl’s experience with Galaxy spanned every meaningful area of company-building.
Liquidity as Infrastructure
Galaxy became a core liquidity provider and credit partner to Levl, giving the company access to the same institutional-grade liquidity and financing products that Galaxy delivers to leading financial institutions globally. In Levl's business, winning or losing a client often comes down to basis points in FX spreads and execution reliability at scale; most startups spend a lot of time building the relationships needed to compete at that level. Jaisel had this with Galaxy from day one. In one instance, when a surge in transaction volume required additional liquidity within hours, Galaxy's sales and trading team responded immediately, offering the kind of operational responsiveness that doesn't show up in a pitch deck but defines a partnership in practice.
Product & Engineering
Galaxy is an established crypto broker and trading infrastructure operator. This gave Jaisel access to engineers and technical advisors with direct experience building institutional-grade financial platforms at scale. Those early conversations shaped how Levl thought about reliability, scalability, and the architecture of its infrastructure.
Legal & Compliance
For Levl, legal structure was a core strategic decision, not a back-office function. The Galaxy legal team was particularly valuable as Levl structured its regulatory approach, both for the original exchange concept and for the payments pivot. The ability to draw on Galaxy’s institutional compliance playbook, rather than starting from scratch, was a serious accelerant.
Go-to-Market & ICP
Figuring out who the customer is, what pain point matters most, and what wedge will actually stick is often the hardest part of early-stage company building. Galaxy Ventures General Partners, Will Nuelle and Mike Giampapa, as well as the broader ventures team, served as thought partners with Jaisel on Levl’s go-to-market strategy, identifying the ICP, commercial sequencing, and what would create real stickiness in the market.
Talent & Recruiting
Galaxy’s portfolio talent lead worked closely with Jaisel through every stage of Levl’s early hiring: improving job descriptions, resume review, setting up interview design, creating job offer structure, and optimizing the onboarding process. She helped Levl build a proper hiring process from scratch, the kind of infrastructure that prevents costly early mistakes.
"As a founder, you're constantly doing things for the first time. The fastest way to get good at them is to learn from someone who's already seen it all. Galaxy's portfolio talent function has a bird's-eye view across their entire portfolio, they've seen what works and what doesn't. Having that expertise available at every step was critical in building our initial team."
— Jaisel Sandhu², CEO & Founder, Levl
Brand & Design
Strong infrastructure companies still need strong presentation. Our portfolio design lead worked directly with Levl to build their brand from the ground up. He worked on the logo, website, brand, and the full visual identity. For a three-person startup trying to look institutional from day one, having a designer who has also worked on Galaxy’s own brand and many portfolio companies was a material advantage
Marketing & Communications
Founders often underestimate how much early marketing matters. Galaxy helped Levl build its public brand including their press strategy, content, social presence, and the messaging infrastructure that took the company from invisible to recognized.
"A year ago, Levl had virtually no public presence. Since rolling out our marketing strategy, most new introductions now start with 'Oh, we've heard of you.' Marketing is a blind spot for a lot of founders, it was for me, having a world-class venture platform in your corner makes an enormous difference."
— Jaisel Sandhu², CEO & Founder, Levl
The Outcome
Within four months of launch, Levl hit $1 billion in annualized payments volume, and doubled to $2 billion a month later¹. The company now operates across 75+ countries, serving fintechs, neobanks, remittance providers, merchants, and payment service providers that need institutional infrastructure without the institutional overhead.
Levl leveraged Galaxy as a platform for company-building, accessing meaningful support across licensing, compliance, engineering, design, recruiting, communications, go-to-market strategy, liquidity, and credit; each of which would be challenging for an early-stage founder to source independently and quickly. The result has been a company that could iterate faster, present better, hire smarter, and compete earlier.
"Galaxy is more than a venture fund, they're a large, well-established, highly respected business. That means the advice you can access spans far more than most investors can offer, and it opens doors and opportunities that simply wouldn't be available otherwise."
— Jaisel Sandhu², CEO & Founder, Levl
If you are building in onchain finance and are interested in working together, reach out to [email protected].
[1] Third-party data provided is unaudited and subject to methodological assumptions. Past performance is not indicative of future results.
[2] The testimonials herein were provided by executives and/or officers of portfolio companies. The executive has not been compensated for this testimonial and other experiences may not be representative of all executives.
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