After the Founding & Funding: Women Who Support Your Fintech's Growth
We often focus on women fintech founders & funders. After founding and funding comes building. Where are the women who can help your fintech get the next stage of growth? Right here.
Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash
Where are the women?
My friend Theo asked this question - and not for the first time - in her recent newsletter. She is an amazing advocate for and practitioner of inclusion and community creator. She has written and spoken many times about manels, inclusion and visibility of women in fintech and how to increase both. Her newsletter and the conversations about got me to thinking about women in fintech.
Women in Fintech
The first temptation to think about this question is to create another list of women in fintech. The thing is, I don’t have to. They - the women and the lists - are already here. You are probably connected to some - if not many - of them.
Flourish Ventures list of Women Making History in Fintech - which is not limited to the US and Europe and focuses on investing in fintechs that promote financial inclusion and fairness.
Fintech Magazine’s Top 10 Women to Watch in Fintech for 2023
Sure there are plenty of flaws with lists. Top 10 lists are sure to focus on the most visible and prominent women. Consequently, some names appear on multiple lists. And if you took a look at some of these lists and your name wasn’t on it, you might be feeling a bit of FOMO.
I’m 100% sure I left out many, many other lists of women in fintech. This is a superficial sample. Please comment on this newsletter with the ones I left out.
And, these lists are typically focused on fintechs in the US and Europe. There are far fewer women starting fintechs in Latin America but they do exist. Flourish Venture’s list describes those fintechs in Latin America, India and Indonesia.
Women Investors
Any discussion of women fintech founders anywhere inevitably leads to discussion about funding for women founders and about women investors/VC. As women become more common partners in traditional VC firms, women are also forming their own firms. A small sample of those:
Women in Latin America have formed Tarasa Collective, a group of founders, investors and operators, not focused on fintech, to be sure.
Digital Undivided is another organization investing in and supporting underrepresented women founders. While the focus is not fintech, they partner with financial institutions and universities to find and support students starting businesses.
Radiate Capital is an example of an all-woman venture team focusing on financial services and health. (Two industries where I think the boundaries will increasingly blur.)
Again, this is a taste of the funding ecosystem. It’s in no way a comprehensive list of women VC or venture teams focused on fintech or otherwise.
After Founding & Funding: Building Business
Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash
The ecosystem doesn’t stop there of course. But the discussion of it often does.
Once a fintech gets some funding or starts to acquire some customers, the next broad step is building the business. And here is where fintechs face the real and hard work of building sales pipelines, creating marketing and sales functions that will generate leads, demos and prospects and, eventually sales.
Where are the women who can help you build your fintech into a thriving business? Here are two women I know:
Hunter & Bard - Shira Abel founded and is CEO of Hunter & Bard, a full-service agency that focuses on the very area that many fintechs struggle with: account-based sales, branding, messaging and marketing. I’ve known Shira for over 10 years. She’s as passionate about the business she’s built as you are about yours.
The Key PR - founded by Martha Shaughnessey. I love the honest & direct tagline on their website “High Impact, Low Bull Shit.” I’ve known Martha since the early days of fintech; she’s the real deal. She walks the talk of diversity & inclusion and doing business differently.
(and, no, they didn’t ask me to plug their businesses or compensate me in any way.)
Where are the women? Right here.
Who writes PivotAssets?
I’m an independent analyst, strategic advisor & consultant (& a former Gartner analyst). I’ve worked in and covered the banking industry for over 2 decades. I write about digital banking in this newsletter - not to confirm what you know (and you are plenty smart!) but to give you a fresh perspective & analysis on the transformation that is —and isn’t happening - in the industry.
How can I help you?
To collaborate with me on a similar project or something else completely different whether an analysis of your GTM stragey, analyst briefing presentation, a webinar series, podcast, panel, please contact me at stessa@pivotassets.co or via LinkedIn.
I’m also available for inquiry and strategy sessions via Third Eye Advisory.
Me, Elsewhere
I’m an expert advisor at Third Eye Advisory.
I spoke with Theodora Lau and Barb Maclean on their podcast One Vision about smart banking & hidden tribes
I moderated a great panel of folks for a conversation on innovation. We cut through the hype and share practical advice for making your digital transformation efforts pay off. We definitely talked about the importance of small innovations.
How can banks be truly low friction? They must address friction everywhere. Otherwise innovation & digital transformation will elude them. In this report I identified the characteristic of a low friction bank and why legacy core banking and architectures don’t support it.
What can the Kardashians teach your financial institution about partnerships and innovation? How can working with empathic fintechs help you identify niche groups (aka hidden tribes) and innovate. All this and more in this this ebook that you can download at Praxent or Nymbus.
Adopt an Agile Digital Banking Platform: How bankers must have an agile digital banking platform to support both global and local trends and requirements to help them identify new niche markets that will drive innovation, create new value and increase profitability. In this report I identified a set of capabilities that a digital banking platform must have that will help take banks into a competitive future and urges banks to select a digital banking partner who shares their innovation, vision and support for new value creation.
Yes, I worked with clients on these ebooks and webinars. They may ask you for information before you can download or watch them.