Case Study: Linking Underserved Communities with Financial Products
Fintech Startup Lifesaver Earns Invitation to Barclays Techstars Accelerator via digitalundivided’s START
Executive Summary
Lifesaver is a fintech platform connecting individuals and financial products within their neighborhood and beyond.
Founded by Karen Rios and Corey Bebee in Harlem, New York, the tool was created with the goal to ensure communities that were underserved by traditional financial structures weren’t left behind as the digital banking world grows. What began as an exploratory mission at START, a weekend program hosted by Techstars in partnership with digitalundivided (DID), lead to Rios receiving an invitation to apply to the Barclays Techstars Accelerator on the first day of events. Rios completed the accelerator in late 2019.
Who Is Lifesaver?
Rios is the former Chief Compliance Officer for the billion-dollar hedge fund Seminole Management Company. In her role, she supervised the implementation of Dodd-Frank regulations circa 2012. While legislation was wide-sweeping, she noticed that it disproportionately affected minorities because it disallowed homes to be considered assets for investments. As the daughter of Latino immigrants, the challenges of building assets struck a chord for Rios and fueled a passion for financial access and inclusion.
The earliest iteration of Lifesaver was an Excel macro, an automated input sequence that mimicked repetitive keystrokes and mouse actions. Rios created the tool after becoming frustrated with the cumbersome process of managing her personal finances. She shared it with Bebee, a friend from college who would eventually become her co-founder and CTO. The self-taught programmer realized he could build an app on the premise of the tool, and the pair got to work. In 2016, Rios left Seminole to bootstrap her startup while Bebee worked on Lifesaver outside of his day job. After Lifesaver raised its seed investment, Bebee was able to join the company full-time in late 2017.
The DID Experience
Rios had spent a lot of time researching startup accelerators when she discovered START, a digitalundivided weekend program that leads into the longer BIG incubator program, in early 2018. She was moved to be in an environment full of women who, much like herself, were trying to leverage their education and professional experience to solve practical (and complex) problems. Even while listening to other pitches, she learned more about herself as a consumer than she’d imagined. During the first day of events, Rios met the program manager for the Barclays Techstars Accelerator, and she was invited to apply for their program.
She credits her DID network for preparing her for the Barclays Techstars experience as her moral support, sounding board, and source for honest, unapologetic feedback. Rios urges fellow woman-of-color entrepreneurs to ask for help. Black and Latina women often act in supporting roles for many other people and institutions, but they may be apprehensive to seek help for themselves. Rios’ DID cohort created a safe space for others to meet the founders with kindness and understanding, which Rios needed to be able to withstand the rigors of entrepreneurship.
