Fintech Collective’s Brooks Gibbins & Gareth Jones — Partnering with Persistent Visionaries
Miguel Armaza is joined by two great guests, Brooks Gibbins and Gareth Jones — Managing Partners and Co-Founders of Fintech Collective, a global early-stage venture capital firm focused on technology startups with the potential to reimagine financial services.
We discuss:
- Their entrepreneurial background and why they eventually decided to switch from operators to investors
- Challenges of launching a Fintech focused fund in 2012
- Their decision to invest beyond the US and why they are excited about fintech in Latin America and other emerging markets
- Why they are particularly proud of their weekly newsletter
- Investment strategy and what gets them excited to invest in a startup
- And a nice story of how they helped our very own Wharton Fintech Club just as we were getting started almost seven years ago!
Full interview → Spotify | Soundcloud | Apple
Brooks Gibbins
Brooks is a co-founder and Managing Partner of FinTech Collective. Prior to becoming a venture capitalist, Brooks had a successful career as an entrepreneur and global operating executive in capital markets, payments, and enterprise tech. He was a key executive and officer at New York-based Multex, which successfully IPO’d and exited to Reuters; London-based Serverside, which successfully exited to Gemalto; and Oslo-based FAST, which successfully exited to Microsoft for over $1b. Brooks began his career as an enterprise software developer.
Brooks completed Harvard Business School’s program for Management Development and graduated from Williams College with distinction.
Gareth Jones
Gareth is co-founder and Managing Partner of FinTech Collective. Prior to becoming a venture capitalist, Gareth was a successful entrepreneur and business leader, who helped build and sell three category-leading fintech companies. These included Multex, which IPO’d and then successfully sold to Reuters; Serverside, which successfully sold to Gemalto, a European digital security company; and CardLab, which was successfully acquired by Blackhawk Networks, a global leader in prepaid gift, reward and incentive technologies and solutions. Prior to starting his career in fintech, Gareth spent three years ‘double handing’ a 36ft sailing boat 33,000 nautical miles from the UK to the Antarctic circle.
Gareth has completed Columbia Business School’s Senior Executive Program and graduated from the University of the West of England with a BSc. Honours Degree.
About Fintech Collective
FinTech Collective is a global early stage venture capital firm focused on technology startups with the potential to reimagine financial services. The firm, founded in 2012, has deep experience investing across capital markets, wealth management, banking, lending, payments, insurance, and crypto/blockchain. The managing partners of FinTech Collective met in their mid 20’s and then helped build, scale and sell four fintech businesses generating over $1.5 billion of shareholder value.
Backed primarily by institutional investors and a small handful of tier-one financial institutions from around the world, FinTech Collective has invested in 43 portfolio companies and is currently investing out of its third fund, a $150m+ early-stage fund. Some notable investments include Anyfin (Stockholm), Axoni (NYC), Flutterwave (Africa), IMMO Capital (London), Minka (Latin America), MoneyLion (NYC), NYDIG (NYC), Ocrolus (NYC), Quovo (NYC, acquired by Plaid) and Vestwell (NYC).
Previous Episodes You May Enjoy:
Creating an African Fintech Giant — Olugbenga Agboola, Co-Founder & CEO of Flutterwave
Sam Bobley, Co-Founder and CEO of Ocrolus — Transforming Documents into Data Analytics
Future of Wealth Management and Investment Panel — Future of Banking Week
Jackie Reses — Leadership Lessons, Fintech Innovation, & Helping Small Businesses
Y Combinator’s Michael Seibel & Dalton Caldwell — Lessons from 5000 Entrepreneurs
Redesigning the Asset Management Experience — Brian Barnes, Founder & CEO of M1 Finance
Noah Kerner, CEO of Acorns — Leveling the Investment Playing Field
Miguel Armaza is Co-Host of the Wharton Fintech Podcast and Co-Founder of Gilgamesh Ventures, a seed-stage investment fund focused on fintech in the Americas.
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Miguel Armaza