NYC in fall was the perfect backdrop for our annual Fintech Demo Day, which we hosted at Jazz @ Lincoln Center with our friends at Nyca Partners and QED Investors in mid-October. After several years of virtual events, we decided to lean in this year and leverage this incredible venue with our largest-ever audience and roster of presenting companies. With 500+ attendees, representing leading financial institutions and VCs, 29 presenting companies, and over 250 one-on-one meetings, it was an extremely productive and busy day for all involved.
Some key themes from the day:
Easier Onramps: Large incumbent financial firms are realizing that to partner with fintechs effectively, they need to create organizational structures and processes that emerging companies can efficiently navigate. The “death grip” of an interminable enterprise sales cycle needs to be replaced by, as one exec from a $30B+ market cap bank put it, a “white glove POC experience.”
Embedded Everything: We have written quite a bit about embedded fintech at BCV. At Demo Day, we saw that embedded fintech is expanding beyond its roots in payments and lending to include tax filing, insurance, debt management, and more. Increasingly, complex financial transactions and experiences will be embedded in software applications where the customer already is, versus existing as standalone apps.
Practicing Safe, Responsible Fintech: Whether it was ZeroHash discussing their regulatory work to enable global crypto brokerage services, or Rightfoot describing how their technology integrates reliably with legacy loan servicers, modern fintech companies know that compliance, fraud, security, and reliability are huge assets in selling into large financial services companies.
All in all, Fintech Demo Day was a phenomenal success and we are already thinking about how to make it even stronger next year. Read on for more information about the BCV portfolio companies that presented.
Highlights from the BCV Portfolio
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We’re at the scary part of “the hero’s journey” in fintech, with a bottom for funding and a BaaS crisis, but we’re about to enter a new, exciting stage.