Alumni News– July 29, 2014

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  • Concur partners with Uber to allow Concur users to link their accounts and automatically send Uber receipts to their expense reports.
  • The Financial Brand looks at opportunity for banks and credit unions in the Loop Visa partnership. 
  • Open Bank Project making its API available during hackathon in September.
  • TechCrunch explores Pellucid Analytics’ take on PowerPoint pitch books.
  • Seed Me! Thinknum raises $1 million in seed funding round.
  • Feature on robo-advisors highlights seven alums: Betterment, Financial Guard, FutureAdvisor, Jemstep, Personal Capital, SigFig, and Wealthfront.
  • Macwelt reviews banking app Numbrs.
  • Bank Systems & Technology points to Moven as a nontraditional financial service provider “gunning” for banks.
  • Xero partners with MarketInvoice to bring faster funding to UK businesses.
This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

Alumni News– July 28, 2014

  • Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Finovate-F-Logo.jpgPayPal announces partnership with MyOrder to enable PayPal payments at 1,500 locations in the Netherlands.
  • SecureKey launches new single-stack API integrations for card-present, card-not-present, and ACH transactions.
  • Concur adds gamification features to TripLink, the company’s spend management solution.
  • Expensify changes report submission and approval process for those using Expensify outside of an expense policy.
  • Concur partners with Airbnb to make it easier for business travelers to file expenses when booking on Airbnb.
  • RazorSocial takes a look at simplifying Google Analytics using Quill Engage from Narrative Science.
  • Financial Guard featured in Investment News’ review of “robo-advisors” and online investment managers.
  • Huffington Post: Pellucid Analytics turns data into content to make lives easier for investment bankers.
This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

Alumni News– June 6, 2014

  • Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Finovate-F-Logo.jpgEverybody into the algos! Quantopian launches open beta program; announces $100 million in trades guided by platform algorithms.
  • CRIF announces acquisition of majority stake in High Mark Credit Information Services.
  • Financeit closes $C35 million renewable purchase facility and a $C5 million warehouse line facility with Pacific & Western Bank of Canada.
  • Wealthfront reaches more than $1 billion assets under management.
This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

FinovateSpring: Behind the Scenes with Pellucid Analytics, Red Giant, and Zumigo

FinovateSpring: Behind the Scenes with Pellucid Analytics, Red Giant, and Zumigo

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Nearly half the companies at FinovateSpring this year were making their Finovate debuts. And our Behind the Scenes series is designed specifically to help you get to know these Finovate newbies better.

If you missed any one of our earlier episodes, check out our handy Behind the Scenes directory to the series below.

Today we take a closer look at another trio of Finovate newcomers: pitchbook specialist Pellucid Analytics, Red Giant with its lockable debit card, and mobile-authentication-meets-mobile-payments innovator, Zumigo.

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Pellucid Analytics

What they do
In short, Pellucid Analytics “fixes pitchbooks.”
Here’s why that’s a big deal. Pitchbooks are a key part of the investment banking business. They can essentially make the difference, expressed in data, as to whether a company is worthy of new investment, continued investment, or no investment at all.
The problem is that putting pitchbooks together is a very labor-intensive, time-consuming task. So much so that Pellucid Analystics CEO and co-founder Adrian Crockett says the junior investment bankers who build them often consider it among the least appealing aspects of their job.
Pellucid Analytics makes this process easier for all involved. The company’s iPad and browser-based technology takes the half of pitchbook formation that is relatively standard in the business, and automates much of it. Pellucid provides pre-rendered content, pre-designed charts, all pre-populated with the necessary corporate data. In addition to helping save time, this approach reduces the error rate as well.
The stats
  • Company founded in November 2011
  • Technology launched in April 2014
  • 39 team members
  • Pre-rendered content populates 40% of the typical pitchbook
The experience
“Review, select, tweak, tell” is the way co-founder and Chief Scientist Jamie Ballingall describes the process of building pitchbooks using Pellucid. The technology leverages a sizable variety of templates and drag and drop technology to make the initial composition process faster and easier. 
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Start in the library where the charts are kept. The way that data is presented in these charts can be customized so that investment bankers are looking at and presenting the data they way they believe it is best presented. Drag the charts down to the content drawer in order to select the charts to be used in the pitchbook.
Actually building the pitchbook is simply a matter of dragging the charts from the drawer back into the main field (the “Deck”) in the preferred order. Here again charts can be reconfigured, giving the pitchbook builder some flexibility in terms of design, such as multiple-exhibit layouts, or the ability to respond faster to requests for changes.
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Above: Zoomed out library, with the content drawer open and an exhibit in the process of being dragged into the drawer. 
And because pitchbooks themselves are sales instruments (“the physical representations of the ideas” financial institutions sell), how they look is paramount. To this end, in addition to being repopulated with up-to-date market data and information, Pellucid’s pitchbooks are custom formatted to match corporate brands. “It means I can use them immediately,” Jamie explains, “They’re ready to go.”
The small amounts of time-saving, the 20 minutes here, the 15 minutes, there, are where Pellucid shines. Rather than re-inventing pitchbooks, Pellucid simply takes advantage of the fact that many bankers are still operating on technology that is in some instances more than 20 years old. This allows bankers the ability to focus on the stories, the “tell” in Pellucid’s model, behind the opportunities they are trying to provide to their clients and customers.
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Above: Slide editor, with the drawer open and an exhibit being dragged into a placeholder.
 
For Adrian, the argument in favor of Pellucid’s solution is as simple as math. Major investment banks spend half a billion dollars every year on pitchbook production. And as Pellucid learned when doing research on pitchbook development, the average 42-page pitchbook with an average price tag of $40,000 actually took more than 135 pages during the ideation process. Given this,  the opportunity became clear.
“Pellucid can automate 40% of the process, saving bankers hundreds of millions of dollars a year,” said Adrian.
With their Finovate debut and platform launch behind them, Pellucid Analytics is focused currently on the investment banking community. But the company sees itself looking at other verticals, such as high net worth individuals, as early as 2015.

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Red Giant

What they do
The virtue of Red Giant’s solution is in its simplicity: the company’s technology allows consumers to “lock” their debit card when it is not being used (i.e., most of the time). The card can be unlocked using Red Giant’s mobile app, and consumers can take and shop with their card anywhere regular credit and debit cards are accepted.
Asked about the customer experience, Red Giant CEO Robert Sears talks about how quickly the technology draws a crowd at the point of sale. “People have a visceral reaction,” he says. The task at hand now, he adds, is “to get the technology out to as many people as possible as fast as possible.”
The stats
  • Company founded in June 2008
  • Technology launched in April 2014
The experience
Red Giant’s solution consists of a MasterCard debit card and a mobile app that gives the cardholder the ability to completely control the payment card. Not only that, but consumers can use the app to see their account balance, compare spending versus savings targets, and read on-screen receipts.
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As Red Giant CEO Robert Sears explains, a locked card will be declined at the point of sale. When a consumer wants to unlock her card, all she has to do is touch the lock icon, which overlays the Red Giant logo. Once unlocked, the app shows the account balance and free-to-spend calculations for the month.
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Unlocking the card, says Robert, “puts a SecureZone around you.” As soon as the consumer leaves this zone, the card automatically locks.
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The app also provides an on-screen receipt for each purchase or transaction. Consumers can manage receipts by taking notes, categorizing them within a budget, as well as a few other management functions.
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For online purchases, the app can serve as a digital card. The digital card, Robert emphasizes, is a separate card: separate number, separate source of funds, etc. from your physical card. One advantage here is that if the consumer’s physical card is stolen, there is no need to change the card on file at the consumer’s online merchants where the completely separate digital card was used.
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Currently Red Giant’s app is iOS-ready and works with a MasterCard debit card. An Android app is considered among the company’s next steps – potentially as early as the second half of 2014 – as is the idea of bringing in additional cards that can be used with the app. 
Additional features could also be a part of Red Giant’s near-term future. Robert talks about providing tools to enhance day-to-day financial decision-making in the app, as well as budgeting assistance. Red Giant is available right now only by invitation, and those interested in drawing your own crowd around the old POS the next time you’re out shopping, are encouraged to give the technology a try.


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Zumigo

What they do
Nowhere is the challenge of blending convenience and security more prominent than at the nexus of retail commerce and mobile payments.
While consumers often claim to want ever more secure transactions, merchants know that additional anti-fraud measures can cost them customers who find new or added security to be nuisance enough to abandon the site.
Zumigo’s Assure technology seeks to take on both the issues of convenience and security in the same solution. The company’s mobile-identity technology now both enables secure transactions for all mobile phone activities, as well as making commerce shopping that much more efficient for consumers.
The stats
  • Company founded in December 2009
  • Technology launched in April 2014
The experience
How does Zumigo’s Assure work? In the words of CEO and founder Chirag Bakshi, Assure almost turns an e-commerce website into an Amazon Prime-like operation, moving consumers quickly, efficiently, and securely through the shopping process.
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Below is a screenshot of the Express Checkout screen for a commerce site enabled with Zumigo’s Assure. Consumers shop as they would on any mobile device and, when they’re ready to pay, access the Express Checkout. 
Here, after entering the last four digits of the credit card and the CVV, the technology identifies the owner of the mobile device and gives the user the option of having the form completed based on that information. 
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While the information can still be entered manually, the autofill option for the consumer is faster and designed to reduce both error, fraud and, potentially, customer abandonment. 
Zumigo accomplishes this ID authentication through relationships with mobile carriers that allow their technology to dynamically identify the mobile device.
And speaking of relationships, it is the one with Equifax that has enabled Zumigo to make their most recent step: combining mobile identification with payment information. This further reduces the need for manual data-entry on the mobile device. No prior account or relationship with the merchant is necessary, nor does the technology need to access other apps or features like address books to retrieve data. Instead, Zumigo’s technology pulls it from the network itself. “Only your phone knows your data,” explains Chirag.
Below is an example of what Zumigo looks like from the point of view of the merchant. The consumer data that populates the form comes from a server-side analysis that Zumigo sends to the merchant. As the screenshot shows, the verification process includes matching names and addresses, as well as geolocation information.
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At root, Zumigo’s Assure approaches the issue of secure mobile payments and identification in a tripartite fashion: locating the consumer as being in the correct place to make the transaction; identifying the legitimacy of the device being used; and, last, authenticating the owner of the device.
“Even if the SIM card is swapped or the phone is stolen the account is still secure because of this triangulation,” said Chirag.  

Stay tuned for our next Behind the Scenes feature next week.

Pellucid Analytics Unveils its Pitchbook-Enhancing Technology for Financial Professionals

Pellucid Analytics Unveils its Pitchbook-Enhancing Technology for Financial Professionals
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This post is part of our live coverage of FinovateSpring 2014.

Coming to the stage now is the team from Pellucid Analytics

“Pellucid fixes pitch book creation. It is a tablet and browser-based product tailored to the needs of advisory professionals that compresses the time required to perform a broad range of pitch book-related activities from days to seconds. Rather than collecting data, running analytics, designing charts, and formatting slides, Pellucid users leverage a large gallery of print-ready charts populated with current data and formatted to firm-specific branding standards. Assembling such charts into a pitch book is a simple drag-and-drop exercise. As a result, users can focus on applying judgment to information and crafting a compelling message directly relevant to their clients.”
Presenting: Adrian Crockett (CEO & Co-Founder) and Jamie Ballingall (Chief Scientist & Co-Founder)

Product Launch: April 2014
Metrics: 39 team members
Product distribution strategy: Direct to Business (B2B), licensed
HQ: Boulder, Colorado
Founded: November 2011
Website: pellucid.com
Twitter: @pellucidapp

FinovateSpring 2014 Sneak Peek: Part 5

FinovateSpring 2014 Sneak Peek: Part 5

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Below, we’ve brought you another set of companies that will show off their newest technology at FinovateSpring on April 29 and 30 in San Jose. The six companies featured below will demo their fintech solutions that target problems ranging from marketing to security.

In case you missed them, check out the following posts in our series, each featuring 6 companies:


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Encap Security allows FIs to think outside the “authentication box,” providing the ideal solution for mobile and online banking, CNP transaction and call center authentication.

Features:
Encap Security’s in-app authentication solution:

    • increases security while improving customer experience
    • increases adoption, revenue while decreasing costs
    • satisfies regulatory requirements.

Why it’s great:
For the first time, you can forget that old trade-off between security and ease-of-use.  

Presenters:

Adam Dolby,VP of Business Development
Dolby serves as Encap Security’s VP of Business Development, with a focus on the Americas. He brings over 20 years of experience in the development and delivery of e-banking products.
LinkedIn

David Nayes, Director of Sales
Nayes has a deep understanding of strategies for combating payment and mobile banking fraud.
LinkedIn


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Insuritas is the nation’s leading SaaS banking solution delivering on the high demand for Web based services from financial institutions that converts online banking sites into sales engines.

Features:
    • SmartCART delivers shop, compare, buy, single check-out and post-sale online account creation
    • Sales revenue annuitizes at 82% YOY
    • Contains products consumers purchase and repurchase every year
Why it’s great: 
Transforms bank web eco-systems for 69 million online banking customers from service sites into ecommerce platforms that generate value added, annuitizing, non-cyclical fee income.  
Presenters:

Jeffrey Chesky, Founder, President & CEO 
Chesky pioneers the design, installation, and outsourced management of insurance agencies for financial institutions nationally.
Matt Chesky, SVP
Chesky joined Insuritas in 2012, oversaw design and deployment of Insuritas SmartCART Technology and SaaS platform; Graduated Yale ’12 with a degree in Economics.
LinkedIn

PellucidAnalyticsLogo

Pellucid Analytics fixes pitchbook creation. It is a tablet and browser product that lets you browse print-ready charts and drag them into a pitchbook.

Features: 

    • Leverage a large gallery charts formatted to firm-specific branding standards 
    • Quickly assemble charts into a pitchbook 
    • Focus on applying judgment to information and crafting a compelling message 

Why it’s great:
Pellucid compresses the time required to perform a broad range of pitchbook-related activities from days to seconds.

Presenters:

Adrian Crockett, CEO and Cofounder
Crockett has over 14 years of investment banking experience, heading groups at Credit Suisse, Merrill Lynch, and Deutsche Bank.
LinkedIn

Jamie Ballingall, Chief Scientist and Cofounder
Ballingall oversees delivery of the product and was formerly an investment banking quant and adjunct associate professor at Columbia University.
LinkedIn


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Radius is the modern way to market to small businesses. Unlock your best SMB customer segments. Deploy targeted marketing campaigns and measure your success.

Features:

    • Gain insights on more than 27 million U.S. businesses
    • Discover your best customer segments and create look-alike lead lists
    • Deploy campaigns and measure success

Why it’s great:
Radius takes the guesswork out of lead generation. Identify your best market segments. Deploy amazing marketing campaigns. Learn. Repeat.  

Presenter:

Darian Shirazi, Founder & CEO
Shirazi was an early employee at Facebook and worked on the Sell Your Item team at eBay. He has founded, invested in, and advised many successful technology companies.
LinkedIn


TextPowerLogo

TextPower’s TextKey protects data, websites, and VPNs by having users send a simple text message which authenticates by verification of up to seven factors.

Features:

    • World’s first omni-factor authentication (checks every factor)
    • Virtually unhackable; authenticates via simple SMS
    • Affordable and easy to install for any size business

Why it’s great:
Simple, strong, secure protection for your data, website and company. TextKey’s patent-pending technology is virtually unhackable because users text the key from their cell phone.  

Presenter:

Scott Goldman, Co-founder/CEO
Technologist, successful entrepreneur, author, consultant, globally-recognized speaker, and “Wireless Wizard”. Mileage-mad cyclist. Favorite hobby: Making dark chocolate disappear.
LinkedIn


VenovateLogo

Venovate’s Marketplace is an online platform that makes investing in and fundraising for private securities faster and more efficient.

Features:

    • Verification of investors and fundraisers
    • Thorough due diligence on investment opportunities
    • Back office for efficient execution of transactions

Why it’s great:
Venovate is the smarter alternative for investing and fundraising.  

Presenters:

Michael Raneri Chairman & CEO
Raneri has over 20 years of experience in executive positions with four leading online brokerage firms. Uniquely qualified to lead the next generation of financial industry innovation.
LinkedIn

Thomas Foley, Co-founder
Foley has been successful at several startups and in investment banking. Recognized for outstanding entrepreneurship in BusinessWeek’s 30 Under 30.
LinkedIn


Be sure to check back on Thursday of this week, when we’ll post a sneak peek of another six companies.