This year, Fintech Sandbox Demo Day will take place on April 28. The presentations will be virtual and the event, as always, is free. Demo Days are exciting because we get to showcase startups that are on the very cutting edge of innovation and you get to see what they’re up to before they’re discovered.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll highlight this year’s presenting entrepreneurs. Today, we’re talking to Helge Jørgensen, Co-founder and CEO of Norwegian fintech 7Analytics. 7Analytics develops highly precise predictive models for flood risk for insurers and asset owners.
Helge Joergensen, Co-Founder & CEO of 7Analytics
Helge, tell us a bit about 7Analytics. What problems are you solving?
Floods are frequent and expensive. And this keeps growing. Without much better data people cannot insure their homes and businesses keep their operations going. We provide that data at a much greater granularity.
Why is granularity in flood prediction important and how do you achieve it?
Insurers need to understand flood risk in-depth – property by property. Water moves along the landscape and even a few inches of height difference here or a green spot there makes a huge difference for flood risk. Only the best data tells you the difference in risk from one side of the street to the other.
What is your company’s origin story?
Our founder team built their skills in the offshore oil and gas sector which remains one of the most knowledge intensive industries in one of the toughest environments on Earth. From here a drive to learn and apply the best possible data tool to produce the best possible solutions has led us to flood risk and to breaking away from traditional approaches.
Can you describe what it’s been like to be part of the Fintech Sandbox community?
7Analytics has moved in two dimensions recently and Fintech Sandbox has been an important partner in both consolidating our services to the financial industry and establishing our US organization.
Why is data access important to your startup?
Data is all we do. Much geodata is open source, but we have only made it this far by building partnerships with leading industry players around data access.
What milestones has 7Analytics achieved so far?
Being live on four continents is a major thing that I am super proud of – this includes my own relocation from Europe to Boston and setting up shop here.
What trends in fintech are you most excited about?
Climate innovation has for a long time been very focused on getting emissions down. For good reasons. Now, adaptation is growing in importance and this basically is a matter of risk. Climate risk. And here fintechs play a key part in getting the banks and insurers up to speed.
How does 7Analytics think about leveraging AI in a differentiated way?
AI and Machine Learning is driving a paradigm shift in water risk modelling. The focus is going in a direction of high-quality, rich input data and really understanding patterns and building predictive power. But: many – also insurers – remain anchored in traditional models.
What’s next for 7Analytics?
Kicking in doors to more insurance companies that are realizing that they need much better data to handle the increasing flood risk.
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To hear more about 7Analytics and 4 other exciting fintech startups, be sure to register for Fintech Sandbox Demo Day 11!
This year, Fintech Sandbox Demo Day will take place on April 28. The presentations will be virtual and the event, as always, is free. Demo Days are exciting because we get to showcase startups that are on the very cutting edge of innovation and you get to see what they’re up to before they’re discovered.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be highlighting this year’s presenting entrepreneurs. Today, we’re talking to Eric Zager, co-Founder of Miami-based Calculum, which is offering an AI-powered supply chain analytics platform that helps companies unlock working capital, improve supplier intelligence, and generate free cash flow.
Eric, tell us a bit about Calculum. What problems are you solving?
Calculum is a negotiation intelligence tool that enables corporates to gain a competitive advantage by using advanced analytics and AI to improve payment terms and gather more insights into suppliers. The platform optimizes payment terms with both suppliers and customers – unlocking working capital. The tool also assess suppliers’ ESG, estimated financing costs, credit ratings, negotiation leverage, price vs terms calculator, along with many other tools that benefit corporate treasury & procurement operations.
What is ADA, and how did it get its name?
ADA is the payment terms platform Calculum has built. It gets its name from Ada Lovelace who is considered the world’s first computer programmer.
Can you describe what it’s been like to be part of the Fintech Sandbox community?
It’s been great to have the support of the Fintech Sandbox and have access to test data from many great companies and sources
Why is data access important to your startup?
Data can be expensive and Calculum requires corporate data in order to provide accurate suggestions to our clients.
What is your company’s origin story?
Calculum was founded in 2020 as a way to benchmark payment terms with suppliers and ensure our client’s suppliers are being offered the correct payment term and to help companies not indirectly finance their competition.
Working Capital Innovation Award – Working Capital Forum (Amsterdam – 2022)
Procurecon EU Dragons Den Winner – Procurecon (Barcelona – 2024)
MassChallenge Finalist – (Boston 2024)
Finalist Treasury Innovation Award – TMANY Cash Exchange (New York City – 2024)
Supply Chain Finance Innovation Award – Supply Chain Finance Community (Zurich – 2024)
What trends in fintech are you most excited about?
The growing popularity of supply chain finance (Reverse-factoring).
What is the Miami fintech scene like?
Miami’s fintech scene and the overall startup community have grown tremendously since the COVID-19 lockdowns. Many startups began during this period or moved from states like California and New York to the Miami area due to fewer restrictions and a more business-friendly environment.
What’s next for Calculum?
We will be growing our partnerships as well as further developing our solution, in 2025 we will be flipping the model of the tool to also support companies on their receivables side with customers as well.
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To hear more about Calculum and 4 other exciting fintech startups, be sure to register for Fintech Sandbox Demo Day 11!
This year, Fintech Sandbox Demo Day will take place on April 28. The presentations will be virtual and the event, as always, is free. Demo Days are exciting because we get to showcase startups that are on the very cutting edge of innovation and you get to see what they’re up to before they’re discovered.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll highlight this year’s presenting entrepreneurs. Today, we’re talking to Savannah Price, Co-founder and CEO of London-headquartered fintech Serene. Serene is transforming customer care in financial services by helping banks and financial organizations proactively identify, predict, and support customers in vulnerable circumstances.
Savannah, tell us a bit about Serene. What problems are you solving?
Serene is an AI-driven platform tackling one of the biggest blind spots in financial services — how to identify and support vulnerable customers before they fall into financial distress. The need for this has never been greater. Two-thirds of UK adults show characteristics of vulnerability, whether due to life events, emotional distress, or financial hardship. These customers are 7 times more likely to experience problem debt, scams, and financial exclusion, yet fewer than 10% are detected by firms today. Right now, most institutions rely on reactive methods, stepping in only after a missed payment or a collections call. But by then, it’s often too late.
We use AI-driven behavioural analysis to detect early signals of vulnerability — whether it’s due to a life event, emotional distress, or financial instability. This allows firms to act proactively with tailored interventions, reducing bad debt, improving retention, and ensuring regulatory compliance.
For businesses, vulnerability management isn’t just a compliance requirement — it’s a commercial opportunity. Done right, it leads to stronger customer relationships, reduced losses, and better financial outcomes for everyone.
How does Serene leverage behavioral science?
Financial vulnerability doesn’t appear out of nowhere — it builds up over time, often reflected in subtle changes in behaviour. At Serene, we apply behavioural science principles to transactional data to detect these shifts before they escalate into financial distress.
For example, a customer going through a bereavement, mental health struggles, or job loss might not immediately default on payments, but their transaction patterns, spending habits, or engagement with financial services may change. By analysing real-world behavioural data, we can detect these early warning signs and provide actionable insights for institutions to intervene in a way that’s both personalised and ethical.
Our approach ensures that support isn’t just available — it’s timely, relevant, and effective.
What is your company’s origin story?
My journey to founding Serene was deeply personal. Growing up, I saw how my siblings’ struggles with poor mental health showed up in their financial behaviour — missed payments, erratic spending, sudden withdrawals. These were subtle signals that something was wrong, but no one was connecting the dots.
That was my aha moment. Vulnerability isn’t just about financial hardship — it’s about life events, emotional distress, and health challenges that impact financial well-being. Yet, businesses were still using outdated, reactive methods to support customers — leaving millions of potentially vulnerable customers both unidentified and underserved.
I founded Serene to change that. By combining AI, behavioural science, and transactional data analysis we help institutions identify vulnerability early, so they can act before customers reach crisis point — protecting both people and businesses.
Can you describe what it’s been like to be part of the Fintech Sandbox community?
Being part of the Fintech Sandbox community has been an absolute game-changer for Serene. One of the biggest barriers to innovation in financial services is access to high-quality data, and the Fintech Sandbox has helped us overcome that challenge.
It’s also been invaluable to be surrounded by like-minded innovators solving complex financial problems. The ecosystem provides not just data access but also mentorship, networking, and industry collaboration — all of which have helped us accelerate our growth and refine our product offering.
Why is data access important to your startup?
For AI-driven fintech solutions, data is everything. Without access to real-world financial data, it’s impossible to build models that accurately detect early signals of vulnerability.
Traditional financial data — like credit scores — only tells part of the story. To truly understand vulnerability, we need transactional behaviour, spending patterns, and interaction metrics. But many startups struggle to get access to this kind of data.
That’s why initiatives like Fintech Sandbox are so important. By providing access to high-quality datasets, they help companies like Serene train, test, and refine AI models in a way that ensures accuracy, fairness, and real-world applicability.
What milestones has Serene achieved so far?
We’ve moved fast — validating our product, securing major customers, and building a strong pipeline. In just a few months, we’ve gone from regulatory validation to commercial traction, with a clear path to scaling across the industry.
A major milestone was securing FCA Sandbox approval, allowing us to test our technology in a real-world, regulated environment — a huge credibility boost when working with financial institutions. We’ve also been selected for key industry innovation labs like FinTech Innovation Lab London and TSB Labs, which has accelerated adoption and opened doors to new partnerships.
The market response has been incredible. We’ve built a £45M pipeline, with 70% of leads coming inbound, proving the strength of demand. We’ve secured 2x commercial deals and we’ve secured investment from a tier 1 UK bank, further validating the urgent need for our solutions.
Beyond direct sales, we’re unlocking growth through strategic partnerships, which now give us direct access to 85+ financial institutions. We’ll be announcing more details soon, but this marks a significant step toward embedding Serene into the broader financial ecosystem.
What trends in fintech are you most excited about?
There are a few major shifts happening in fintech that I find really exciting:
The rise of AI-native financial services. AI is no longer just a tool — it’s becoming central to decision-making across lending, risk management, and customer support.
Embedded finance & proactive financial wellness. Financial institutions are shifting from being transactional to becoming proactive partners in customer well-being.
Regulatory innovation. With regulations like the FCA’s Consumer Duty, firms are now being held accountable for delivering better customer outcomes — and fintech is playing a huge role in enabling that.
All of these trends reinforce the need for smarter, more ethical AI-driven solutions — which is exactly where Serene fits in.
How does Serene think about leveraging AI in a differentiated way?
Serene is AI-native, meaning AI is embedded in both our product suite and internal operations, allowing us to continuously refine our models and improve customer outcomes. Unlike traditional approaches which rely on static vulnerability indicators of vulnerability or manual self-disclosures, which are often backward-looking, our approach is designed to predict vulnerability before financial distress escalates.
We use a combination of supervised and unsupervised learning to detect both known patterns of vulnerability and emerging risks that traditional models miss. Our machine learning-powered behavioural insights go beyond static affordability checks, analysing real-time transactional and behavioural data to flag early warning signs. We also leverage conversational AI to enhance — not replace — human decision-making, equipping agents with real-time insights so they can provide personalised, proactive support at scale.
Beyond our product, AI plays a critical role in how we develop, test, and optimise our models. We use automation to continuously refine our algorithms, ensuring they remain accurate, ethical, and aligned with evolving regulations. For us, AI isn’t just about automation — it’s about fundamentally transforming how businesses identify and support vulnerable customers in a scalable, responsible way.
What’s next for Serene?
We’re laser-focused on scaling our impact. Some of our next big moves include:
Expanding our partnerships with financial institutions, insurers, and telcos.
Enhancing our AI models with additional behavioural datasets.
Launching new self-service integrations to make adoption frictionless.
Expanding into international markets, starting with Europe.
Our mission is to make proactive, ethical vulnerability management the industry standard — and we’re just getting started.
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To hear more about Serene and 4 other exciting fintech startups, be sure to register for Fintech Sandbox Demo Day 11!
This year, Fintech Sandbox Demo Day will take place on April 28. The presentations will be virtual and the event, as always, is free. Demo Days are exciting because we get to showcase startups that are on the very cutting edge of innovation and you get to see what they’re up to before they’re discovered.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll highlight this year’s presenting entrepreneurs. Today, we’re talking to Andrew Grevett, Co-founder and CEO of London-based Level2, a fully visual, no-code, systematic trading strategy creation platform built for active traders.
Andrew, tell us a bit about Level2. What problems are you solving and what makes your solution unique?
By making systematic trading simple and accessible, we’re helping traders take advantage of automation without the steep learning curve. What sets Level2 apart is that it’s the only fully visual solution out there. We’ve transformed traditional technical analysis and automated trading into something intuitive, so anyone—regardless of coding expertise or technical experience—can confidently use it to enhance their trading.
What is your company’s origin story?
Level2 started from a personal realisation that there was a significant gap in the tools available to retail traders. After years of experience as a trader and also working with technology, I noticed a clear divide between the sophisticated tools used by institutional traders and what was available to everyday retail traders. The goal behind Level2 was to bridge the gap between analysis and execution, making these same powerful tools intuitive, accessible, and empowering for everyone. I wanted to create a platform that would help people feel confident using automation, fundamentally changing how people trade financial markets in future.
How significant is the active trader market?
In recent years, the retail trading market has experienced substantial growth. A big driver behind this surge has been the rise of online broker platforms that have made trading more accessible to a younger, tech-savvy generation. With the growing popularity of these platforms and increased community-driven social trading, the active trader market is only expected to expand further.
Can you describe what it’s been like to be part of the Fintech Sandbox community?
It’s given us access to a network of like-minded innovators and industry experts, all focused on pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in fintech. The data resources and support provided through Fintech Sandbox have been invaluable in helping us refine the MVP, get product market fit and scale.
Why is data access important to your startup?
Accurate and timely data is the foundation of any trading strategy, and so it’s essential for us to deliver this to our users so they can take full advantage of our platform’s capabilities. With high-quality, real-time data, we ensure that traders can make informed decisions quickly and confidently.
What milestones has Level2 achieved so far?
The initial version of our trading application is live, and we’ve already signed contracts and started work on prototype testing with our first three partners in the USA and APAC.
What trends in fintech are you most excited about?
The rise of the active trader is a major trend reshaping the retail trading landscape, and it’s one we’re particularly excited about. As more traders move towards short-term, data-driven trading, the demand for advanced tools and automation grows. This trend will have a significant impact on the way brokers engage with their audience and it will create huge opportunities for innovation and growth in the retail trading space.
How does Level2 think about latency?
Our infrastructure is designed to optimise speed, ensuring that traders can act quickly on market opportunities, automating their trades and managing their risks in almost real-time. By focusing on low-latency solutions, we help traders stay ahead in a competitive and fast paced environment.
You’ve participated in both Y Combinator and Techstars. Can you compare and contrast?
Both programs contributed to our growth but in different ways—YC education taught us to scale quickly, while Techstars helped us focus on the details and build a solid foundation, with practical, day-to-day guidance that helped us refine our operations and strategy.
What’s next for Level2?
The next step for Level2 is to continue innovating and refining our platform to meet the growing demand for intuitive, automated trading solutions. I think as today’s traders become much more tech-savvy and community-driven, Level2 is perfectly positioned to empower a new emerging generation. We’re focused on delivering even more advanced automation features centered around our visual theme, enhancing the end-to-end user experience, and building deeper connections within trading communities to support smarter, more efficient technical trading.
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To hear more about Level2 and 4 other exciting fintech startups, be sure to register for Fintech Sandbox Demo Day 11!
This year, Fintech Sandbox Demo Day will take place on April 28. The presentations will be virtual and the event, as always, is free. Demo Days are exciting because we get to showcase startups that are on the very cutting edge of innovation and you get to see what they’re up to before they’re discovered.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll highlight this year’s presenting entrepreneurs. Today, we’re talking to Ray Denis, Founder & CEO of New York-based Sandbox Wealth, a financial technology startup with a turnkey platform that allows independent advisors and family offices to offer sophisticated cash management and credit products to their clients.
Ray, tell us a bit about your Sandbox Wealth. What problems are you solving?
Sandbox Wealth is an open finance platform for wealth managers. Through our network of banking partners, we provide independent advisory firms, including RIAs, Family Offices, Trust Companies, and Insurance Carriers, with sophisticated cash management and credit solutions for their clients.
We solve for a broad array of issues. For example, rather than selling assets to make tax payments or moving assets to lenders to support reduced mortgage rates, we build the rails that connect client data from custodians and end clients themselves to streamline the process of accessing these solutions while helping advisors build deeper relationships.
Many people will think that high-net-worth individuals don’t need help managing liquidity since, by definition, they have a lot of money. How are they using the liquidity they can access through your platform?
First, we should highlight the difference between assets and liquidity. I’ve worked with thousands of clients over my career, and every balance sheet is different because every client has made their wealth differently. Many clients are entrepreneurs who have substantial wealth in a closely held business or have invested heavily in private equity. Generally speaking, these assets aren’t liquid and can’t be used to make opportunistic investments or to purchase real estate.
This is where access to liquidity becomes critical. Using our platform to compile balance sheet and cash flow data, we can dramatically reduce the timeline for accessing credit because lenders rely on having clean and deep information on borrowers and collateral. Further, clients can remain invested and maintain a strategic view of how they manage their portfolios.
Can you describe what it’s been like to be part of the Fintech Sandbox community?
Being part of the Fintech Sandbox community has far exceeded my expectations. As part of the Data Access Residency, we’ve been able to work with teams like Morningstar, Plaid, SQX, and others to source critical data for our platform, but the community has contributed far more than just data. We’ve been able to connect with other founders to trade notes on prospective investors, accelerator programs, and recruiting. I definitely underestimated the value of being part of a network of founders building solutions in adjacent verticals.
Why is data access important to your startup?
Our mission is to enable the free flow of data and capital. By building a standardized workflow for sharing complex data sets between financial institutions and clients, we eliminate data asymmetries between parties while reducing friction in providing (and accessing) liquidity.
What is your company’s origin story?
I’ve been working with wealthy clients for nearly two decades to deliver custom liquidity solutions while serving at major financial institutions. Throughout my career, I’ve originated many billions of dollars of debt, and virtually every transaction required some degree of manual effort to parse out balance sheet and cash flow details from an unstructured data set, which can be as painful for clients as it is for lenders.
Using the latest tools available, including multimodal LLMs, open banking, and real-time payments, we suddenly had a product opportunity to eliminate several manual, time-consuming, and expensive processes. Ultimately, the solution was to effectively build a capital-efficient and open-architecture private banking platform that serves clients, advisors, and lenders. When paired with the market opportunity as more investment advisors started leaving private banks and wirehouses to join or form independent firms, I found myself with a compelling concept for a venture-scale business.
What milestones has Sandbox Wealth achieved thus far?
We’ve raised our pre-seed round led by NextGen Venture Partners, which included participation from Northwestern Mutual. We also have a really beautiful MVP that will serve as a rock-solid foundation for many of the exciting products we’re rolling out this year. These accomplishments have led to substantial business development opportunities, including lending relationships with Tier 1 lenders as well as design partnerships with enterprise firms like MassMutual and Halo Investing.
How does Sandbox Wealth view open banking?
People often view open banking as a way to aggregate data from financial institutions, which is true, but there’s far more to it than that. We look at open banking as a way to decouple banking software from banks, which enables more seamless access to data across financial institutions. This creates an ability to extract and share complex financial data securely, which, when paired with real-time payments, effectively means you can develop one fully operational banking platform that can plug into multiple banks and brokers.
Once you have unlocked this data, you no longer have to rely on manual processes to calculate cash flows, liquidity, net worth, or leverage, which will drive more efficient underwriting processes, spending decisions, and planning advice across lenders, clients, and advisors, respectively.
What trends in fintech are you most excited about?
It’s hard not to be excited about fintech’s trajectory when you look at the progress in open banking, real-time payments, and AI. Having access to one innovative and foundational technology to build a firm like ours would be abnormal at any point in history, but we now have access to three that are all on par with things like the magnetic strip and the ATM.
How does Sandbox Wealth think about leveraging AI in a differentiated way?
Agentic workflows that can sweep funds to cover shortfalls or optimize yield across your bank accounts can be initiated via text or voice inputs instead of complex manual processes.
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To hear more about Sandbox Wealth and 4 other exciting fintech startups, be sure to register for Fintech Sandbox Demo Day 11!
This year, FinTech Sandbox Demo Day[s] will take place across two days, April 9 & April 11. The presentations will be virtual and the event, as always, is free. Demo Days are exciting because we get to showcase startups that are on the very cutting edge of innovation and you get to see what they’re up to before they’re discovered.
Today, we’re talking to Maya Urman Bahar, Co-Founder & CEO of Tel Aviv based Proov.ai. Bridging the gap between data science and compliance teams, Proov.ai disrupts fintech regulation with automated model validation, revolutionizing Model Risk Management for banks. Proov.ai is presenting on Thursday, April 11.
Q. Maya, tell us a bit about Proov.ai. What problems are you solving?
A. All Models in financial institutions need to be governed to meet regulations. The approval process is lengthy, costly, manual and unorganized. FinTech Data Science teams are forced to constrain and compromise the accuracy of the models to meet regulatory review requirements.
Q. What is your company’s origin story?
A. Einat and I, having worked together at a fintech company, encountered the widespread challenge of a lengthy and costly model approval process, which not only compromised the accuracy of our models but also directly impacted the company’s bottom line. Recognizing the inefficiency and unsustainability of the current approach in the era of AI, we were inspired to set out on a mission to revolutionize Model Risk Management (MRM).
Q. Can you describe what it’s been like to be part of the Fintech Sandbox community?
A. It is amazing to be part of such a group of accomplished people!
Q. Why is data access important to your startup?
A. Data access is essential to our startup as it allows us to create synthetic data using Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN). We require access to diverse types of data, including bureau, transactional, and demographic data, to generate synthetic datasets that accurately represent real-world scenarios. Synthetic data is crucial for maintaining security, ensuring privacy, and simulating extreme conditions without risking sensitive information. This approach enables us to train our models effectively and develop robust solutions for model validation.
Q. What milestones has Proov.ai achieved so far?
A. We developed our first phase of the product. Are working on a POC with a BAAS provider.
Q. What trends in fintech are you most excited about?
A. Gen-AI and LLMs.
Q. How does Proov.ai think about leveraging AI in a differentiated way?
A. Our company takes a differentiated approach to leveraging AI by focusing on the core use of AI technology in our platform:
1. Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN): We utilize GANs to generate synthetic data, creating diverse datasets that closely represent real-world data. This synthetic data forms the foundation for testing against various protected features, ensuring the robustness and fairness of our models.
2. Comprehensive Training Data: We train our models on comprehensive datasets, including bureau, transactional, and demographic data. This enables us to develop more accurate and reliable models.
3. Deep Learning: We employ deep learning techniques to conduct stress tests and fairness assessments at a very deep level. This allows us to evaluate the resilience and equity of our models under various scenarios, ensuring their reliability.
4. Large Language Models (LLMs): Our platform leverages LLMs to generate insightful documentation. This streamlines the communication and decision-making processes.
Q. What’s next for Proov.ai?
A. As our technology continues to evolve, with a current focus on Gen-AI-based documentation, our primary goal is to gain traction by broadening our reach and onboarding additional banks and fintech partners. We are also exploring new ways to enhance our platform’s capabilities and deliver even more value to our clients.
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To hear more about Proov.ai and 11 other exciting fintech startups, be sure to register for FinTech Sandbox Demo Day[s] 10!
This year, FinTech Sandbox Demo Day[s] will take place across two days, April 9 & April 11. The presentations will be virtual and the event, as always, is free. Demo Days are exciting because we get to showcase startups that are on the very cutting edge of innovation and you get to see what they’re up to before they’re discovered.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll highlight a few of this year’s presenting entrepreneurs. Today, we’re talking to Catherine Xu, Co-Founder of Brooklyn-based Starlight, which is unlocking the $140 billion in government benefits left unclaimed each year for households in need by using AI-powered coaching. Starlight is presenting on Tuesday, April 9.
Q. Cat, tell us a bit about Starlight. What problems are you solving?
A. Today, 41% of America is financially vulnerable. At the same time, there is over $140 billion unclaimed in government financial assistance programs that could provide households with a financial bridge in tough times. Starlight helps financial institutions connect their customers to government programs that give them the financial help they need. Our white-labeled technology platform proactively identifies and matches customers to relevant programs and provides personalized guidance through the application process.
Q. What is your company’s origin story?
A. My co-founder and I had left our jobs in big tech to focus on problems facing underserved communities. For six months, we were Fellows with the Robin Hood Foundation, doing on-the-ground research and running co-design sessions with different communities, e.g., gig/frontline workers, young parents. Starlight formed after we heard repeatedly from communities about the awareness and process challenges when it comes to government benefits.
Q. Can you describe what it’s been like to be part of the Fintech Sandbox community?
A. Being a part of Fintech Sandbox has allowed us to connect with like-minded financial innovation groups such as Commonwealth, a national nonprofit focused on financial security.
Q. Why is data access important to your startup?
A. Data access helps us to quickly test some of our key use cases, including the usability of data to proactively identify individuals who could qualify for benefits.
Q. What milestones has Starlight achieved so far?
A. Reaching 5000 workers, using financial data to match them to benefits they may be eligible for but not know about, and helping them save on average $1000/year. We also forged early pilot partnerships with fintechs and nonprofits like Steady and Neighborhood Trust Financial Partners.
Q. What trends in fintech are you most excited about?
A. Hyper-personalized digital experiences that effectively employ data and proactively meet the financial needs of each member/customer. New sources for non-interest revenue for financial institutions, in lieu of regulatory changes around fees, and more customer-centric products that address holistic financial health and recovery.
Q. How does Starlight think about leveraging AI in a differentiated way?
A. Using AI to more efficiently process unstructured data at scale, including inferring needs from user-permissioned financial data. Using AI to deliver hyper-personalized experiences, such as financial resources delivered at the right time and in the right format.
Q. What’s next for Starlight?
A. Expanding partnerships with credit unions and community banks, with Starlight providing an easy-to-integrate, value-added product that helps grow balances and reduce delinquencies.
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To hear more about Starlight and 11 other exciting fintech startups, be sure to register for FinTech Sandbox Demo Day[s] 10!
This year, FinTech Sandbox Demo Day[s] will take place across two days, April 9 & April 11. The presentations will be virtual and the event, as always, is free. Demo Days are exciting because we get to showcase startups that are on the very cutting edge of innovation and you get to see what they’re up to before they’re discovered.
This week and next we’ll continue highlighting this year’s presenting entrepreneurs. Today, we’re talking to Nicholas Yepes, Co-Founder & COO of Moffin, which is based in the city of Guadalajara, in the state of Jalisco in Mexico. Moffin is a data integration platform-as-a-service that helps companies digitize client screening in LatAm. Moffin is presenting on Tuesday, April 9.
Q. Nico, tell us a bit about Moffin. What problems are you solving?
A. We provide companies with access to data, technological infrastructure, and software tools to screen clients.
Q. What is your company’s origin story?
A. Moffin’s story begins when my two co-founders, Santiago and Victor, were working at a Mexican fintech that provided loans to refinance credit card debt. They spent most of their time developing from scratch the fintech’s core banking system, connections with data providers, client screening tools, and other pieces of technological infrastructure necessary prior to being able to provide digital credit products. They had a stronger interest in developing software and financial infrastructure than in operating a lending business.
They were offered a sponsorship to start Moffin by a Mexican non-bank financial institution (NBFI) to resolve similar data integration issues. That financial institution then entered into a sale process with the private equity firm I used to work for. I interviewed my co-founder, who was then the head of technology. Following the sale process, my co-founders lost their sponsorship at the NBFI, but they fortunately found their first angel investor that helped them get Moffin off the ground.
After working as an investor in financial institutions in LatAm for more than three years, I understood very well the need for what Santiago and Victor were building. I became an advisor to Moffin shortly afterwards and joined as their third co-founder in April 2023.
Q. Can you describe what it’s been like to be part of the Fintech Sandbox community?
A. I am relatively new to the Fintech Sandbox community, but I love its mission to aggregate financial data and make it available to fintech entrepreneurs to build applications and services. I am also excited for the opportunity to partake in Empire Startups’ New York Fintech Week this year with Fintech Sandbox.
Q. Why is data access important to your startup?
A. Data access is central to our product as we are a data integration platform as a service. We take care of the engineering work to connect with data providers, standardize the information, and create tooling to work with and analyze the data.
Q. What milestones has Moffin achieved so far?
A. Our first product was an API to access Mexico’s credit bureau data. Now we have 10 different data sources integrated via both API and our no-code platform and a suite of software tools to help work with and analyze the data. We’ve reached 73 active monthly corporate clients and sold more than 500,000 data reports in 2023.
Q. What trends in fintech are you most excited about?
A. We are excited about digital lending, buy-now-pay-later, embedded finance, biometrics, neobanking, and AI-based solutions. Moffin helps about 70 companies today access and power these types of solutions through its platform.
Q. How does Moffin think about leveraging AI in a differentiated way?
A. AI applications tend to require a lot of data and that data must be clean and easy to use. When our clients use Moffin, the data is available for consumption in multiple ways and is easy to integrate with AI applications.
Q. What’s next for Moffin?
A. We are consistently broadening our data offering and improving software tools to help our clients increase productivity. This year we are releasing tools for monitoring and fraud prevention.
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To hear more about Moffin and 11 other exciting fintech startups, be sure to register for FinTech Sandbox Demo Day[s] 10!
This year, FinTech Sandbox Demo Day[s] will take place across two days, April 9 and April 11. The presentations will be virtual and the event, as always, is free. Demo Days are exciting because we get to showcase startups that are on the very cutting edge of innovation and you get to see what they’re up to before they’re discovered.
This week and next we’ll continue highlighting this year’s presenting entrepreneurs. Today, we’re talking to Henry Magun, CEO of Hansa, which is based in New York. Hansa is helping small business owners ensure the data that financial service providers use to find, qualify, and underwrite their businesses is up-to-date, accurate, and consistent. Hansa is presenting on Tuesday, April 9.
Q. Henry, tell us a bit about Hansa. What problems are you solving?
A. Hansa facilitates efficient information exchange between SMBs and the financial service providers that want to serve them, before an SMB even submits an application for funding. Despite the fact that there are 30 million SMBs in the US and that the SMB financing market tops $1.4T, small business owners still struggle to get access to the financial products and services they need to thrive.
A leading cause of this is that financial institutions don’t have access to 1st-party, verified data about SMBs. Without it, they are forced to use out-of-date and frequently incorrect data to inefficiently market their products to wide bands of SMBs, and SMB owners are inundated with offers for products they don’t qualify for. Hansa is closing this data gap. We empower small business owners to participate in creating the data that is used to find them, helping them feel confident that they’ll be considered for services they qualify for, and won’t be bothered with those they aren’t.
Q. What is your company’s origin story?
A. My mother is a small business owner, and through her, I saw how much inefficiency exists in the way that financial products are marketed and sold to SMBs today. This hurts the SMBs the most, as the onus ultimately falls on them to do the work to determine what products they might qualify for. I saw how much time and effort it took for my mother to find the right products that fit her business, and knew that there could be a better way.
Q. Can you describe what it’s been like to be part of the Fintech Sandbox community?
A. The Fintech Sandbox community has been incredibly impactful for Hansa. We’ve had opportunities to meet other amazing startups in our space, as well as build deep relationships with the program’s partners. The members of the Fintech Sandbox management team have all been huge advocates for us, and have gone out of their way to give us as many opportunities as possible to spread the word about Hansa.
Q. Why is data access important to your startup?
A. Hansa’s mission is to empower SMBs to use their data to their advantage, by helping them leverage it to get access to the financial projects they need. A necessary component of this is helping them access the data that already exists about their businesses. That’s where Hansa’s partnerships with data providers come in. We work with companies like Equifax (a Fintech Sandbox partner), to enable small business owners to access, understand, and monitor the data that financial services providers are using to make decisions about them every day.
Q. What milestones has Hansa achieved so far?
A. We have signed up hundreds of SMBs that proactively share information about their businesses with Hansa and have direct access to dozens of loan products from our partner lenders. We’ve built early partnerships with other SMB data companies to help our members understand their existing data presence. We’ve developed a data furnishment product to help SMBs build business credit history by paying off their existing loans.
Q. What trends in fintech are you most excited about?
A. Rapid growth of embedded lending. Use of AI to custom-tailor financial product experiences and content to match the needs of individual customers. Digitization of SMB finance and data management.
Q. How does Hansa think about leveraging AI in a differentiated way?
A. The capital needs and financial profiles of small businesses vary immensely, and AI enables Hansa to offer customized and hyper-specific funding and credit building experiences for business owners.
Q. What’s next for Hansa?
A. Expanding our partnerships with lenders, SMB data companies, and financial services providers to help SMBs get the products they need, when they need them. Launching our full SMB-facing application covering access to capital, credit building, cost saving and more.
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To hear more about Hansa and 11 other exciting fintech startups, be sure to register for FinTech Sandbox Demo Day[s] 10!
This year, FinTech Sandbox Demo Day[s] will take place across two days, April 9 & April 11. The presentations will be virtual and the event, as always, is free. Demo Days are exciting because we get to showcase startups that are on the very cutting edge of innovation and you get to see what they’re up to before they’re discovered.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll highlight a few of this year’s presenting entrepreneurs. Today, we’re talking to Shantanu Jha, CEO and co-founder of Cambridge-based Boston Quantum, which is building enterprise solutions leveraging the speed and scalability of quantum and quantum-inspired algorithms. Boston Quantum is presenting on Thursday, April 11.
Q. Shantanu, tell us a bit about Boston Quantum. What problems are you solving?
A. At Boston Quantum, we reimagine what computing can do. We build end-to-end enterprise solutions leveraging the speed and scalability of quantum and quantum-inspired algorithms for the financial industry, with an initial focus in reserve management including multi-currency arbitrage growth and currency exchange. Book a meeting with us at bostonquantum.io/workwithus to learn more.
Q. What is your company’s origin story?
A. BQ was founded by a group of 3 MIT PhD and 2 MIT MBA students who met in the StartMIT class in January of 2022. The team we have today is the team we had from day 1. Moreover, finding synergies across our diverse backgrounds in software engineering, quantum computing, finance, chemistry, entrepreneurship and more is our key strength.
Q. Can you describe what it’s been like to be part of the Fintech Sandbox community?
A. The Fintech Sandbox community bridges the gap between leading data providers and fintech startups, lowering an essential barrier to entry for novel ventures like ours. We’ve just joined this community and look forward to learning from, growing alongside and contributing to an ecosystem of disruptive innovation.
Q. Why is data access important to your startup?
A. Data access gives us a telescope to chart out new terrains before heavily investing in infrastructure to capture these opportunities. For a fast moving and early stage startup, this signal on what to prioritize is essential.
Q. What milestones has Boston Quantum achieved so far?
A. Six institutional clients. $500K+ deployed on our platform and growing rapidly. 24/7 production capabilities. Products for reserve growth and currency exchange. Participation in MIT delta v, Creative Destruction Lab Quantum Stream, RBPC, Nvidia Inception, and more.
Q. What trends in fintech are you most excited about?
A. Complex market inefficiencies. Increasing availability of data-driven market insights. Opportunities for massive computational power to create value from that data.
Q. How does Boston Quantum think about leveraging AI in a differentiated way?
A. We don’t leverage AI in our current solutions. We do, however, have experience in quantum machine learning and have researched various applications of this technology in the financial industry.
Q. What’s next for Boston Quantum?
A. Ramping up with the clients we have today. Onboarding more clients with liquidity across many currencies (hedge funds, banks, payment companies, multi-national corporations). Raising our first round. Leveraging the underlying physics of our universe to solve highly complex and meaningful problems.
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To hear more about Boston Quantum and 11 other exciting fintech startups, be sure to register for FinTech Sandbox Demo Day[s] 10!
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