AWI Ventures, a venture capital company specialising in financial services technology, has announced four new investments, including an online household budgeting service, a crowd funding business and a portfolio construction service.AWI Ventures is investing A$100,000 in each of the companies and will take a ten per cent stake in each.AWI's chief executive Ben Heap said the idea was to make further investments as the start-ups developed, but there were no promises.He said AWI had put a development program in place for each of its investee companies. The heads of the companies make regular presentations and get feedback.AWI Ventures was launched by Australian Wealth Investments (an ASX-listed wealth management company) earlier this year. Its funding is all on-balance sheet at the moment but it might be opened up to co-investment in future.Heap said: "We were conscious that there was an innovation gap in wealth and financial services and a lack of financial services innovation coming through venture capital."Our focus is on businesses that offer technology-driven services to self-directed investors and savers."Most VC funds find it hard to understand the wealth management industry."The banks have made some good innovations, but their size and structure imposes restrictions. The rest of the market is not taking up the opportunity. That is what we aim to do."AWI's four start-up investments are: Debt to 10k. An online service offering a financial plan aimed at reducing debt, through a tailored repayment program, and building savings. Equitise. The business provides a platform for private investors to invest in early stage companies. It promotes itself as equity crowd funding. MacroVue. An online service giving investors a range of tools for developing an investment strategy, testing their outlook and putting together a portfolio. Simply Wall St. An online service that makes use of the latest data visualisation techniques to present investment data and securities analysis.