Debbie

Showcasing Finovate Alums in Celebration of Financial Literacy Month

Showcasing Finovate Alums in Celebration of Financial Literacy Month
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni profile, Cashy, Debbie, Doshi App, HappyNest, Horizn, Plinqit, Zeed

April is Financial Literacy Month. And while we are all getting an intensive course in trade policy these days, a few hours spent shoring up financial literacy (including how to handle market downturns!) is always time well spent.

With this in mind, today we showcase Finovate alums in recent years that have made financial literacy a key part of their mission when it comes to building new fintech solutions.

Cashy

  • Founded in 2021
  • Headquartered in Tampa, Florida
  • Mart Vainu is CEO
  • Last demoed at FinovateFall 2023
  • Offers an interactive financial game with personalized rewards from financial institutions

Debbie

  • Founded in 2021
  • Headquartered in Miami, Florida
  • Frida Leibowitz is CEO
  • Last demoed at FinovateFall 2023
  • Two-time Best of Show winner
  • The Noom for debt payoff, Debbie’s solution leverages behavioral psychology and positive reinforcement to incentivize borrowers to pay down debt

Doshi App

  • Founded in 2021
  • Headquartered in London, England
  • Daniel Rose is CEO
  • Last demoed at FinovateEurope 2025
  • Offers a plug-and-play solution that enables banks to integrate embedded financial learning into their apps and platforms

HappyNest

Horizn

  • Headquartered in Toronto, Canada
  • Founded in 2012
  • Last demoed at FinovateSpring 2023
  • Five-time Best of Show winner
  • Offers self-learning and interactive gamified digital experiences for financial services customers and frontline workers
  • Acquired by US conversational AI firm Inbenta in 2023

Plinqit

Zeed

To learn more about Finovate alums innovating in the area of financial literacy before 2023, check out our previous Financial Literacy content, including Best of Show winners that are innovating in this space!

Photo by Pixabay

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More Than $113 Million Raised by Nine Alums in Q1 2024

More Than $113 Million Raised by Nine Alums in Q1 2024
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Allied Payment Network, Altro, Amplify Life Insurance, Argyle, David's column, Debbie, Digital Onboarding, Funding, Fundings, NayaOne, Quarterly Funding, Stratyfy, Trust & Will

Nine Finovate alums raised more than $113 million in Q1 of 2024. The relatively low fundraising results for the first three months of the year do reflect larger trends in fintech funding. But the fact that nearly half of the alums that raised funds in Q1 did not disclose the amounts raised tells us that the quarterly funding haul for Finovate alums was higher than the $113 million we have been able to confirm.

Previous quarterly comparisons

  • Q1 2023: $453 million raised by 13 alums
  • Q1 2022: $365 million raised by 11 alums
  • Q1 2021: $3.3 billion raised by 26 alums
  • Q1 2020: $1.3 billion raised by 14 alums

The biggest fundraising month of Q1 was likely January, which featured the $58 million investment secured by Digital Onboarding. Again, the high number of “amount undisclosed” investments makes comparison difficult.

Top Equity Investments from Q1 2024

  • Digital Onboarding: $58 million
  • Argyle: $30 million
  • Amplify Life Insurance: $16.3 million
  • Altro: $4 million

As noted above, Digital Onboarding pulled in the biggest investment of any Finovate alum in the first three months of the year. Also noteworthy was the $30 million raised by Argyle, a real-time income data platform that made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring in 2022.

Here is our detail alum funding report for Q1 2024.

January: More than $58 million raised by three alums

February: More than $21 million raised by three alums

March: More than $34 million raised by three alums

If you are a Finovate alum that raised money in the first quarter of 2024 and do not see your company listed, please drop us a note at research@finovate.com. We would love to share the good news! Funding received prior to becoming an alum not included.

Photo by Matthias Groeneveld

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Greg Palmer, the Finovate Podcast, and the Best of Show Winners from FinovateFall

Greg Palmer, the Finovate Podcast, and the Best of Show Winners from FinovateFall
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Chimney, Debbie, FinovateFall 2023, Podcasting, Wysh

Join Finovate VP and host of the Finovate Podcast Greg Palmer as he talks with the entrepreneurs whose innovative companies took home top honors at FinovateFall 2023 in New York this year.

From new tools for credit unions members to embedded micro life insurance solutions to strategies to help FIs better engage mortgage-holders, the Finovate Podcast is a great way to keep up with the trends driving fintech today.

Follow Greg on X at @GregPalmer47.

Podcast host Greg Palmer catches up with Rachel Lauren of Debbie (demo video) to talk about consumer debt reduction and the credit union ecosystem. EP 193.

Greg Palmer chats with Alex Matjanec of Wysh (demo video) about micro life insurance, customer retention, and financial inclusion. EP 192.

Greg Palmer sits down with Chase Neinken of Chimney (demo video) to discuss strategies for productively engaging your mortgage-holding customers. EP 190.

Photo by Blaz Erzetic

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FinovateFall 2023 Best of Show Winners Announced!

FinovateFall 2023 Best of Show Winners Announced!
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Best of Show, Chimney, Debbie, eSelf.AI, FinovateFall 2023, Mahalo Banking, Trust & Will, Wysh

They are cheering in Times Square tonight as the winners of Best of Show at FinovateFall 2023 are crowned. After two days of live fintech demos from more than 60+ innovative fintechs, our delegates have decided. Here are the winners of Best of Show for FinovateFall 2023.

Chimney for its Chimney Home solution that gives homeowners actionable advice about their home value, equity, borrowing power, and pre-qualified offers. Video.

Debbie for its rewards app for debt payout and its new credit card refinance marketplace for credit unions. Video.

eSelf.ai for its technology that delivers the next generation of client-financial institution interaction, enabling human-like conversations and efficient personalization. Video.

Mahalo Banking for its intuitive and neurodiverse-inclusive online and mobile banking solutions for credit unions with tight core integrations. Video.

Trust & Will for its technology that simplifies estate planning and settlement with attorney-approved, legally valid documents. Video.

Wysh for its innovative deposit solution called Life Benefit that provides micro-life insurance coverage up to 10% of an accountholders’s balance onto an existing deposit account. Video.

We want to thank our demoing companies, our partners, our sponsors, and – last but not least – our valued attendees whose engagement continues to make Finovate a must-attend event on the fintech conference calendar. We look forward to seeing you again next year in The City That Never Sleeps for FinovateFall 2024!

Notes on methodology:
1. Only audience members NOT associated with demoing companies were eligible to vote. Finovate employees did not vote.
2. Attendees were encouraged to note their favorites during each day. At the end of the last demo, they chose their six favorites.
3. The exact written instructions given to attendees: “Please rate (the companies) on the basis of demo quality and potential impact of the innovation demoed.”
4. The six companies appearing on the highest percentage of submitted ballots were named “Best of Show.”
5. Go here for a list of previous Best of Show winners through 2014. Best of Show winners from our 2015 through 2023 conferences are below:
FinovateEurope 2015
FinovateSpring 2015
FinovateFall 2015
FinovateEurope 2016
FinovateSpring 2016
FinovateFall 2016
FinovateAsia 2016
FinovateEurope 2017
FinovateSpring 2017
FinovateFall 2017
FinovateAsia 2017
FinovateMiddleEast 2018
FinovateEurope 2018
FinovateSpring 2018
FinovateFall 2018
FinovateAsia 2018
FinovateAfrica 2018
FinovateEurope 2019
FinovateSpring 2019
FinovateFall 2019
FinovateAsia 2019
FinovateMiddleEast 2019
FinovateEurope 2020
FinovateFall 2020
FinovateWest 2020
FinovateEurope 2021
FinovateSpring 2021
FinovateFall 2021
FinovateEurope 2022
FinovateSpring 2022
FinovateFall 2022
FinovateEurope 2023
FinovateSpring 2023

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FinovateFall Best of Show Winners: Fundraising, Acquisitions, New Partnerships, and More!

FinovateFall Best of Show Winners: Fundraising, Acquisitions, New Partnerships, and More!
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Debbie, FinovateFall 2023, Horizn, LemonadeLXP, Quilo, Stratifyd, Themis

The only thing more exciting than being chosen to demo your latest innovation at a Finovate conference is winning the accolades our attendees and taking home a Best of Show award. With FinovateFall right around the corner, we wanted to take a look at the companies that won Best of Show at last year’s event and give you the latest on what they’ve been up to in the year since.

Remember that early bird savings for FinovateFall – September 11 through 13 – end this weekend! Visit our FinovateFall registration hub and save your spot today!

Debbie

  • HQ: Miami, Florida, U.S.
  • Founded: 2021
  • CEO: Frida Leibowitz
Left to right: Frida Leibowitz, CEO | Rachel Lauren, COO

Demoed its technology that leverages behavioral psychology and rewards to help users pay off debt faster. Demo video.

Latest update

  • Secured seed funding from Geek Ventures.

Horizn

  • HQ: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
  • Founded: 2012
  • CEO: Janice Diner
Left to right: Horizn’s Colm Bermingham, Sr. Director Sales | Steve Frook, CRO

Demoed its platform that helps financial institutions maximize their investments in digital technology. Demo video.

Latest update

  • Acquired by conversational AI company Inbenta.

LemonadeLXP

  • HQ: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
  • Founded: 2021
  • CEO: John Findlay
 Lemonade CEO John Findlay

Demoed its digital growth platform that helps financial institutions and fintechs turn staff into digital customer service experts. Demo video.

Latest update

  • Partnered with Newburyport Bank to facilitate staff and customer transition to digital banking.

Quilo

  • HQ: New York City, New York, U.S.
  • Founded: 2020
  • CEO: Boris Fuzayloff
Left to right: Don Shafer, Co-founder & Chief Evangelist | Boris Fuzayloff, Co-founder & CEO

Demoed its technology that empowers lenders to syndicate individual personal loans at the time of underwriting. Demo video.

Latest update

Stratyfy

  • HQ: New York City, New York, U.S.
  • Founded: 2017
  • CEO: Laura Kornhauser
Left to right: Dmitry Lesnik, Chief Data Scientist | Laura Kornhauser, CEO and Co-Founder

Demoed its technology that helps FIs leverage AI-based decision making to boost access to financial services. Demo video.

Latest update

  • Teamed up with Beneficial State Foundation to help combat racial disparities in lending.

Themis

  • HQ: New York City, New York, U.S.
  • Founded: 2021
  • CEO: Neepa Patel
Themis’ Founder and CEO Neepa Patel

Demoed its collaboration platform to help support and encourage partnerships between banks and fintechs. Demo video.

Latest update

  • Named a finalist in multiple categories including “Startup of the Year” by the U.S. Fintech Awards.

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FinovateFall 2023 Sneak Peek: Debbie

FinovateFall 2023 Sneak Peek: Debbie
By Madeline Clines Posted on
Categories: Debbie, FinovateFall 2023, FinovateFall 2023 Sneak Peek

A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall in New York on September 11 and 12. Register today and save your spot.

Debbie is the rewards platform for debt payoff, using behavioral psychology to help incentivize debt payoff and savings. The organization is launching Rate Crusher, their credit card refinance marketplace for credit unions and other financial institutions.

Features

  • Connect with highly motivated and young borrowers
  • Further incentivize deposits
  • Boost engagement and reduce debt

Why it’s great

Debbie’s solution targets the underlying root cause of negative financial behavior and incentivizes good habits. Their users are primed to succeed.

Presenters

Rachel Lauren, COO & Co-Founder
Lauren has built up the Debbie userbase to over 20k people. She was previously a venture capital investor at BDMI and equity research associate at Credit Suisse.
LinkedIn

Frida Leibowitz, CEO & Co-Founder
Leibowitz is responsible for the product vision and execution at Debbie. She previously worked in credit risk at Marcus by Goldman Sachs.
LinkedIn

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Scholars and Innovators: Showcasing Female Founded Fintech Achievement

Scholars and Innovators: Showcasing Female Founded Fintech Achievement
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Debbie, Diversity in Fintech, Pave, Quoroom, Women in Fintech

In 2022, Finovate launched its Demo Scholarship Program. The goal of the program is to highlight fintech founders from underrepresented communities, as well as fintech startups that are tackling issues of climate change, diversity, and financial inclusion. At each event, starting with FinovateFall in 2022, Finovate grants five scholarships in the categories of Environment, Social, Governance, Person of Color Founded/Owned, and Female Founded/Owned.

With Women’s History Month drawing to a close this week, we wanted to take a moment to highlight the scholarship winners in our Female Founded/Owned category since our scholarship program was launched last year.

Pave

FinovateSpring 2023 Scholarship Winner – Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, Pave enables credit risk teams to identify healthy borrowers, optimize credit limits, and improve collections outcomes. Pave’s technology provides access to a unified view of end customers’ cash flow and financial profile to help power a range of use cases including cash advances, credit building, overdraft protection, and more.

Pave was co-founded by Ema Rouf in 2020. Previously, Rouf co-founded Adazza – a company that built integrations with telecoms and mobile money operators in emerging markets including Africa and Central Asia in order to collect and analyze data for analytics and machine learning applications.

Quoroom

FinovateEurope 2023 Scholarship Winner – Headquartered in London, U.K., and founded in 2018, Quoroom offers an end-to-end fundraising and cap table management software solution for private companies. The firm’s technology enables users to raise capital up to four times faster thanks for Quoroom’s investment workflows. Quoroom supports a range of functions including building an investor pipeline and conducting investor matchmaking and outreach, as well as legal completion and cap table management.

Ulyana Shtybel is co-founder and CEO. Shtybel was named to the Inspiring Fifty Europe’s roster of the Top Fifty Women in European Tech for 2022.

TAZI AI

FinovateEurope 2023 Scholarship Winner – Based in San Francisco, California and founded in 2017, TAZI AI is a machine learning platform that enables businesses and data scientists to develop ML models for agile decision-making. The company earned recognition from Gartner as a Cool Vendor in Core AI Technologies for its continuous learning, explainable AI, and human-in-the-loop technology. TAZI AI won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope this year.

Zehra Cataltepe is co-founder and CEO. A former professor of computer engineering for 17 years, Cataltepe is a member of the Forbes Technology Council, and an alum of the Alchemist Accelerator, Class 26.

Debbie

FinovateFall 2022 Scholarship Winner – Based in Miami, Florida and founded in 2021, Debbie is the Noom for debt loss. The company leverages behavioral psychology and rewards to help users pay off 3x more debt and enable lenders to recession-proof borrowers. Debbie won Best of Show at FinovateFall 2022 for its app that guides borrowers in a curriculum based on actionable financial assignments, offers rewards for successful goal achievement, and makes it easier for borrowers to connect and track all of their debt accounts.

Co-founder Frida Leibowitz is CEO. A member of the inaugural class of On Deck’s fellowship program in 2021, Leibowitz spent more than two and a half years working for Marcus by Goldman Sachs.

Photo by fauxels

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The Conversation Continues: Greg Palmer and the Finovate Podcast with Debbie, Stratyfy, Lemonade, and Deciens Capital

The Conversation Continues: Greg Palmer and the Finovate Podcast with Debbie, Stratyfy, Lemonade, and Deciens Capital
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Debbie, LemonadeLXP, Podcasting, Stratyfy

Interviews with Best of Show winners and an update from the venture capital world were the conversations Finovate VP Greg Palmer shared with listeners of the Finovate podcast during the month of October. Palmer interviewed CEOs from three FinovateFall’s Best of Show winners – Debbie, Stratyfy, and Lemonade LXP last month – and checked in with Decien Capital’s Dan Kimerling on the state of fintech funding.

Find the Finovate podcast at Soundcloud and follow Greg Palmer on Twitter for the latest in programming news and updates.

Frida Liebowitz, CEO and Co-Founder, Debbie

Finovate VP Greg Palmer talks with Debbie CEO Frida Liebowitz on the importance of offering a more effective, human-centric debt recovery solution. Episode 151.

Our mission with Debbie is to help people break the behavioral cycle of debt for good. We are building the first rewards platform for debt payoff that is entirely behavioral driven. We reward people for building up better habits, paying off debt, and eventually making their way to long term debt freedom.

Laura Kornhauser, CEO and Co-Founder, Stratyfy

Stratyfy CEO and co-founder Laura Kornhauser discusses the issue of bias-mitigation in lending with podcast host Greg Palmer. Episode 150.

What we do at Stratyfy is help credit and risk teams better assess risk through what we say is real transparency. We also have a real focus on driving greater financial inclusion, and doing that by helping financial institutions provide greater access to fairly priced financial products to a wider group of individuals than historically have had that access in the past.

John Findlay, CEO, Lemonade LXP

Greg Palmer catches up with Lemonade LXP CEO John Findlay to discuss boosting digital adoption through intelligent, front-line training. Episode 149.

Lemonade is a digital growth platform that helps financial institutions and fintechs maximize the ROI on their technology investments. There are two sides to our platform. One side is a learning experience platform that is designed to turn frontline staff into digital experts so they can promote and support your technology. And then the other side is a digital enablement or digital adoption platform.

Dan Kimerling, Founder and Managing Partner, Deciens Capital

Deciens Capital founder and managing partner Dan Kimerling provides a VC perspective on inclusion-based opportunity in conversation with podcast host Greg Palmer. Episode 148.

What I would say is we haven’t seen a slow down in the level of entrepreneurial behavior and activity. It seems, broadly speaking, like people are excited to start new businesses and, if you go back to at least the 1970s, there seems to be relatively little relationship between macroeconomic behavior and entrepreneurial dynamism.

Photo by Pixabay

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FinovateFall 2022 Best of Show Winners Announced

FinovateFall 2022 Best of Show Winners Announced
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Best of Show, Debbie, FinovateFall 2022, Horizn, LemonadeLXP, Quilo, Stratyfy, Themis

With hundreds of ballots officially cast and carefully counted – here are the winners of Best of Show for FinovateFall 2022!

Debbie for its technology that leverages behavioral psychology and rewards to help users pay off 3x more debt and help lenders recession-proof members. Demo.

Horizn for its platform that helps financial institutions maximize the impact of digital and accelerate returns on digital investments with customers and employees. Demo.

LemonadeLXP for its digital growth platform that helps financial institutions and fintechs turn staff into digital experts and support digital customers. Demo.

Quilo for its technology that empowers lenders to digitally syndicate an individual personal loan at the time of underwriting, enabling them to provide more loans to more people. Demo.

Stratyfy for its technology that increases access to financial services by bringing true transparency and less risk to critical financial decisions that impact millions. Demo.

Themis for its collaboration platform designed for risk and compliance requirements to help accelerate partnerships between banks and fintechs. Demo.

We are grateful to all of our demoing companies for being a part of our biggest FinovateFall to date. Thanks as well to our sponsors, our partners, and – last but not least – our awesome attendees who continue to make our conferences among the most anticipated events on the fintech calendar each and every year. We look forward to seeing you again next fall!

Notes on methodology:
1. Only audience members NOT associated with demoing companies were eligible to vote. Finovate employees did not vote.
2. Attendees were encouraged to note their favorites during each day. At the end of the last demo, they chose their six favorites.
3. The exact written instructions given to attendees: “Please rate (the companies) on the basis of demo quality and potential impact of the innovation demoed.”
4. The six companies appearing on the highest percentage of submitted ballots were named “Best of Show.”
5. Go here for a list of previous Best of Show winners through 2014. Best of Show winners from our 2015 through 2022 conferences are below:
FinovateEurope 2015
FinovateSpring 2015
FinovateFall 2015
FinovateEurope 2016
FinovateSpring 2016
FinovateFall 2016
FinovateAsia 2016
FinovateEurope 2017
FinovateSpring 2017
FinovateFall 2017
FinovateAsia 2017
FinovateMiddleEast 2018
FinovateEurope 2018
FinovateSpring 2018
FinovateFall 2018
FinovateAsia 2018
FinovateAfrica 2018
FinovateEurope 2019
FinovateSpring 2019
FinovateFall 2019
FinovateAsia 2019
FinovateMiddleEast 2019
FinovateEurope 2020
FinovateFall 2020
FinovateWest 2020
FinovateEurope 2021
FinovateSpring 2021
FinovateFall 2021
FinovateEurope 2022
FinovateSpring 2022

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FinovateFall 2022 Sneak Peek: Debbie

FinovateFall 2022 Sneak Peek: Debbie
By Madeline Clines Posted on
Categories: Debbie, FinovateFall 2022, FinovateFall 2022 Sneak Peek

A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall in New York on September 12 and 13. Register today and save your spot.

Debbie is the Noom for debt loss, utilizing behavioral psychology and rewards to motivate and incentivize people to crush their debt, for good.

Features

  • Utilizes behavioral psychology through a guided debt loss program to help users unwind habits
  • Provides time trended credit data to pre-qualify users for refi
  • Offers users micro-rewards for improved behavior

Why it’s great

Debbie users pay down on average $450/month of debt, while setting aside savings of $100/month consistently. For folks in $5k-$10k of debt who are making $50k/year, this is significant.

Presenters

Frida Leibowitz, CEO
Ex-Credit Risk at Marcus by Goldman. Immigrant, first-gen student from a single parent home. Passionate about financial security because she’s experienced crushing debt while attending NYU.
LinkedIn

Rachel Lauren, COO
Former VC at BDMI and software equity research analyst at Credit Suisse. Passionate about financial behavior after seeing her family struggle with money management and financial shame.
LinkedIn

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