Supplement: FinovateSpring 2019
Click on the image to read the FinovateSpring Supplement
Greetings, and welcome to FinovateSpring!
It’s always exciting when we get to come to the West Coast of the US, and this year we’re delighted to be returning to downtown San Francisco after spending a couple of years further south in San Jose. Fintech innovation continues to spring up all over America (and beyond), but the Bay Area is still America’s technology hub, and San Francisco is truly unique as an intersection between finance and technology.
You’ll get a sense of this vibrant fintech ecosystem as you take in the demos over the next few days. And as you watch them, pay attention to how young this group of presenters is. 60% of the companies you’ll see are seed-stage/early-stage, which makes our FinovateSpring cohort the youngest group of presenters we’ll see all year. Just under two thirds of our demoing companies are completely new to Finovate, and the companies who have been on one of our stages before all have new technology to show you.
This start-up mentality and the focus on early-stage companies have always made FinovateSpring one of my favourite shows of the year, and it’s great to see this trend continuing even as fintech as a whole is undergoing a period of consolidation. As a greater percentage of VC funding is going to a smaller number of companies in the hope of zeroing in on the next unicorn, it’s vital that the industry maintains an environment that’s open to new ideas, new companies, and new individual talent.
Cutting-edge innovations from driven entrepreneurs force the industry as a whole to continuously improve. While the process is not always a comfortable one for incumbents, it’s vital to the long-term interests of the only major fintech stakeholders that you won’t find in the room here today: the average banking customers who we all depend on for our livelihoods.
I genuinely hope you enjoy the next few days, and I hope you walk away inspired by the energy, mentality, and technical capabilities on display. And even more so, I hope you find something new.
Sincerely,
Greg Palmer,
VP, Finovate
Click here to read the FinovateSpring 2019 Supplement online – it is free and no registration required. Just click and read!
Or pick up a complimentary print copy at the FinovateSpring conference (7-10 May 2019, Hilton San Francisco Union Square, San Francisco).
