4 Years Later: The Class of 2015
By Jim Smith, Advocate, FinTech Sandbox and Josh Caplan, Associate, FinTech Sandbox
Since our founding in 2015, we have helped more than 180 FinTech startups from around the world by providing free access to quality financial data from 47 industry-leading providers. In the lead up to Boston FinTech Week 2019, we’re taking a look back at how we’ve catalyzed FinTech startup growth through our program. Ultimately, we’ve focused on the overall success of our entrepreneurs and the facilitation of critical partnerships within our ecosystem.
To kick things off, we thought it’d be interesting to take an aggregate look at the startups that participated in our program in 2015. Here’s how things turned out for the thirty-seven FinTech startups that we worked with in our very first year:
15% (6) were acquired. Most prominently, Kensho was bought by S&P Global for $550 million in March of 2018. 56% are still alive. A few examples of these success stories include: Elsen, Forward Lane, and Quantopian. That means 71% of 2015 participants have been acquired or are still alive today.
Most companies apply to FinTech Sandbox before raising any significant capital, so we think this survival rate is impressive. To what do we attribute it? Three things:
- First, free access to critical, high-quality data lengthens the runway and accelerates product development so they get to market sooner.
- Second, active participants in the Sandbox community receive informal advice and guidance from experienced executives, entrepreneurs, and each other, as well as opportunities to connect with potential investors, partners, and prospects. Check out our case study below for a specific example of how our resources and partner relationship made a significant impact on a PoC (Proof of Concept) participant.
- Third, our application process results in stronger startups entering the program. We vet startups heavily through our multi-part interview and product assessment process. Startups we accept have thought carefully about what they are doing, present a credible use case for the data they’re seeking, and have a team ready to hit the ground running.
Closer Look: Sandbox Alumni ForwardLane
“ForwardLane is a B2B FinTech startup that provides powerful, personalized insights for financial professionals. ForwardLane’s AI platform uses advanced NLP to synthesize unstructured and structured data, processing millions of data points to determine who to speak with, what to say and next best actions to take with their Client Signals API. Their Personalized Insights API surfaces news and research that provides contextual insight to clients from premium providers such as Thomson Reuters, Morningstar, MT Newswires, Fly-on-the-wall and Centsai.”
Before the Sandbox:
When ForwardLane first came to the Sandbox, they were a bootstrapped business with an ambitious goal to release their first prototype within 6 months. However, their product relies on costly financial data. In their application, ForwardLane explained that the data we could provide would “be used extensively in the next 6 months and will be pivotal to building, testing and releasing” of their first product. By providing free access to that crucial data, the Sandbox could cut their costs in half.
In their application, the ForwardLane team proved to us they saw the value we brought to the table. So, after two rounds of interviews, we decided to welcome them into the FinTech Sandbox community.
While in the Sandbox:
Cutting Costs & Product launch:
- ForwardLane cut their potential development costs in half and successfully brought their first product to market within 6 months.
Data Access → Funding:
- FinTech Sandbox was able to connect ForwardLane with our outstanding data partners at Xignite and Morningstar for 6 months of free data.
- ForwardLane partnered with Refinitiv (formerly Thomson Reuters) while in the Sandbox program and built a long-term data partnership including 2 rounds of seed investment.
Exposure:
- Featured by Morningstar at the Morningstar Investor Conference in 2018.
After the Sandbox:
More Fundraising:
- Forwardlane has now raised a total of $6.7 million and was a part of Masschallenge FinTech’s inaugural FinTech cohort.
Global Expansion:
- Started in New York originally, they also now have a dedicated team and office in London.
Partnerships & Clients:
- Forwardlane is proud to count Invesco as a key client, and Salesforce as a distribution partner in the wealth and asset management verticals.
- They have also gone on to forge partnerships with Morningstar, Microsoft, IBM and others.
Interview Series
The firm’s CEO, Nathan Stevenson, has a terrific fireside-chat series on AI in financial services called “Pathfinders” which has been released on Amazon Prime. He’s sat down with Co-President of Cowen and Company — Larry Wisenack, and Barclays Group Chief Innovation Officer — John Stecher amongst others. Watch the video on Amazon here. If you’re looking for a firmer grasp on the direction of AI and other FinTechs in the broader scope of financial services, we’d definitely recommend you check it out.
Boston FinTech Week 2019
For all aspiring FinTech entrepreneurs, enthusiasts, investors, or just generally curious individuals, we encourage you to join the Sandbox at Boston FinTech from September 9–12th. To learn more about this massive, city-wide event, check out the events here. It’s free and open to the public. It’s also one of the best ways to meet FinTech Sandbox alumni, and connect with institutional and data leaders.
Learn more about FinTech Sandbox’s Data Access Program, apply here.
