Streamly Snapshot: Startup Success, Financial Management, and the Innovation Ecosystem

Streamly Snapshot: Startup Success, Financial Management, and the Innovation Ecosystem

This week’s Streamly Snapshot features our final interview from FinovateSpring 2025 in San Diego, California.

What does it take for a startup to be successful? In today’s innovation ecosystem, one increasingly important skill is not just building innovative solutions, but also managing the finances—the investment capital, the debt financing, the cash flow—that support a growing enterprise. In this interview, Christopher Hollins, Global Head of Product Sales and Design at Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), a Division of First Citizens Bank, talks about the challenges that startups face when it comes to optimizing financial operations, scaling businesses, and managing cash flow. Hollins also shares his insights on the digital tools and platforms that are available to startups to help them grow and scale their businesses.

“Even in this environment, which is short on IPO exits, the innovation is not showing that it’s short of anything other than tremendous creativity, driving for positive results, and actually managing through all of the change that is happening in the macro economy and within the innovation ecosystem, itself.”

In his role at SVB, Hollins has been instrumental in transforming the platform’s solution delivery model to ensure that SVB’s Commercial Bank innovation economy clients can access the best partners and solutions to solve their challenges as they grow. Hollins joined SVB in May 2021, bringing more than 20 years of international marketing, sales, and strategy experience in financial services, mobile telecom, and technology to the firm.

Headquartered in Santa Clara, California, SVB was founded in 1983. Acquired by First Citizens Bank in 2023, the firm today is the bank of choice for many of the world’s most innovative technology companies and investors. SVB provides commercial and private banking services to individuals and companies in technology, life sciences, healthcare, private equity, venture capital, and premium wine industries. The institution reports $99 billion in total client funds and counts 40% of the Forbes 2025 AI list among its customers.


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Streamly Snapshot: Faster Closings and Smarter Decisions—AI-powered Lending Delivered by Tavant

Streamly Snapshot: Faster Closings and Smarter Decisions—AI-powered Lending Delivered by Tavant

How can enabling technologies like traditional and generative AI, as well as automation, help solve major pain points in the mortgage industry? Can challenges like high costs and lengthy processing times be alleviated by technological innovation?

Mohammad Rashid is Senior Vice President and Head of Innovation at Tavant. In this week’s Streamly interview, we talk with him about how AI and automation can streamline the mortgage application process by eliminating manual tasks and reducing the overall amount of human involvement. Rashid also discusses some of the challenges that financial institutions encounter when adopting new technologies like AI, and the integrated, unified platforms for lenders that Tavant creates.

“This industry has two of the biggest problems plaguing any industry: armies of people that address rivers of paper. Whenever you have a mortgage application you have hundreds of digital (documents) that (are) flowing through the application process. And you have hundreds of people behind the scenes who are looking at that paper, extracting data from that paper, and trying to decision as fast as possible for that loan. That has a lot of side effects.”

Founded in 2000 and headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Tavant provides AI-powered fintech solutions that help businesses become more agile, optimize costs, and benefit from continuous innovation. The company’s AI-powered agents, predictive intelligence, and scalable machine learning models help firms move beyond conventional automation to intelligent, adaptive, and outcome-driven processes. Businesses working with Tavant have reported a 54% increase in speed to market, a 45% reduction in costs, and a 33% improvement in productivity. Tavant’s AI solutions power one in three mortgage loans in the US, with 3.5 million lending applications and 33 million lending transactions enabled.

Rashid has been a part of Tavant for more than two decades. Starting as VP of Lending and Capital Markets in 2003, Rashid was honored with the Housing Wire Vanguard Award in 2017. The Award recognizes leaders in fintech whose work is helping transform the lending business for the better.


Photo by Andrea Piacquadio

Streamly Snapshot: From Data to Dollars—Cash Management and Liquidity Insights

Streamly Snapshot: From Data to Dollars—Cash Management and Liquidity Insights

High-growth companies like those involved in cutting-edge technologies face a wide range of challenges. Effective cash management is one of them. From the appearance of cash flow gaps between cash collection and realizing revenues to the necessity of making significant initial capital outlays for operations, infrastructure, and talent before revenues catch up, high-growth companies often have banking needs that many financial institutions struggle to respond to.

This week, our Streamly Series interview features Christopher Hollins, Global Head of Product Sales and Design at Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), a division of First Citizens Bank. Hollins outlines some of the tactics high-growth companies can rely on in order to better manage cash and make the most of technologies like automation. Hollins also explains how solutions like SVB Go offer these businesses essential insights and streamline cash forecasting and management.

“The challenge is that innovators, entrepreneurs want to do what makes them passionate. And for most people, just like in high school and college, accounting, cash management, managing finances … not exactly the oversubscribed classes. In all seriousness, what companies need to do as they are growing very fast, they’re very focused on revenue-generation, satisfying clients, etc. But in doing that, two other things are happening: cash is moving in and out, and some of that cash could be better used in a number of different circumstances, maybe it could be invested in a different way. There is a lot of ‘lack of discipline,’ but I wouldn’t say that’s because people are purposely trying to do that. They are focused on running their businesses.”

Silicon Valley Bank brings more than 40 years of experience as a financial partner for the innovation economy. The company serves innovation economy companies and investors with business banking, liquidity management, global business solutions, and fund banking. With deep sector expertise in enterprise software, frontier tech, cleantech and sustainability, as well as fintech, SVB counts 60% of all fintechs on the 2025 Forbes fintech list and 40% of the Forbes 2025 AI list among its clients.

Head of Global Product Sales and Delivery at Silicon Valley Bank, a division of First Citizens Bank, Christopher Hollins has played a key role in transforming the platform’s solution delivery model to ensure that SVB’s Commercial Bank Innovation economy clients have access to the best partners and solutions to solve business challenges and have optimal banking relationships along their journey. Hollins has been a part of SVB since 2021.


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Streamly Snapshot: Revolutionizing Audit Processes with AI

Streamly Snapshot: Revolutionizing Audit Processes with AI

Artificial intelligence is reshaping every corner of the financial services world, and auditing is no exception. As firms look for smarter ways to manage repetitive, manual processes, AI-powered tools are stepping in to reduce risk, save time, and improve accuracy.

Filmed at FinovateSpring earlier this year, this Streamly video features Aman Kaur, Sales Director at DataSnipper, discussing how DataSnipper transforms how auditors work. Kaur shares how the company is helping audit teams evolve their workflows through embedded automation. By eliminating repetitive tasks like copying data, matching documents, and performing manual verifications, DataSnipper frees up auditors to focus on higher-value analysis, which results in a smarter, faster audit process.

“We’re seeing that finance and audit professionals are spending too much of their valuable time on very repetitive, very menial tasks,” said Kaur. “So our mission at DataSnipper is to resolve that with automation, and we want to meet them where they’re spending that time, which is in Excel. So we’re working in building tools that are going to help eliminate a lot of the repetitive work and give them time back to focus on more strategic work.”

Founded in 2017, DataSnipper is a smart automation platform built directly into Excel that helps auditors, finance teams, and consultants work more efficiently. The company’s AI-powered tools automatically match and extract data from supporting documents such as invoices, contracts, and bank statements to save time and reduce human error. Today, DataSnipper is used by over 500,000 professionals in 125+ countries, including the Big Four and top-tier audit firms around the world.

Aman Kaur brings experience in enterprise SaaS sales, working across industries to introduce transformative technologies. At DataSnipper, she focuses on helping audit and finance teams embrace automation and rethink what their workflows can look like.


Photo by Kindel Media

Streamly Snapshot: Modernizing KYB—Transforming Compliance into Opportunity

Streamly Snapshot: Modernizing KYB—Transforming Compliance into Opportunity

How does the shifting regulatory landscape impact the ability of financial institutions to securely engage new customers and members, protect themselves and their partners from fraud, and remain compliant? What technologies and processes are available to help them ensure that they are meeting their regulatory obligations in the most efficient and comprehensive way possible?

In this Streamly Series interview conducted at FinovateSpring in San Diego, Middesk Head of Marketing and Business Development Jackie Wylie talks about the importance of sound KYB (Know Your Business) processes and the potential advantages for firms that embrace dynamic onboarding flows. Wylie also talks about Middesk’s advances in fraud prevention, its acquisition of specialized data sets, and its work in forging key partnerships.

“Middesk is a business identity platform. We create business identities by aggregating, analyzing, and then surfacing insights about a business. We do that by collecting data from a number of sources like government organizations such as Secretary of State data. We scrape a company’s online presence and gather data from their website and we obtain information about the industry they are operating in, etc. We build this really robust profile about the business and then we bring that profile to our customers—financial services institutions, banks, fintechs, payments companies … and we help them use that data to make onboarding decisions so they can bring on as many of the best customers as possible, as quickly as possible.”

San Francisco, California-based Middesk offers solutions that help businesses access financial products, hire new talent, and transact with other businesses. The company offers an identity product that provides financial institutions with the accurate data they need to efficiently onboard new customers, and an agent product that supports employer filings with state and federal agencies. Founded in 2019, Middesk includes Affirm, Plaid, and Gusto among its customers. Kyle Mack (CEO) and Kurt Ruppel (CTO) are co-founders.

Head of Marketing and Business Development for Middesk, Jackie Wylie joined the company in the spring of 2024. Wylie has 15+ years of experience in driving pipeline and revenue growth via strategic marketing initiatives with technology firms such as Textio, Amino, and Smartsheet. She is also Seattle Chapter Co-Head and Executive Member of Pavilion, a 10,000-member private community for go-to-market leaders in B2B technology.


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Streamly Snapshot: Navigating Embedded Banking—Challenges and Breakthroughs

Streamly Snapshot: Navigating Embedded Banking—Challenges and Breakthroughs

This week’s Streamly Snapshot features an interview with Rob Thacher, Founder and CEO of BankShift, on the way embedded banking helps community banks, credit unions, and other financial institutions offer more services to their customers and initiate new revenue streams.

In this interview, recorded at FinovateSpring 2025 in San Diego, Thacher talks about the latest trends in the embedded banking space, current challenges and barriers faced by community banks and credit unions, and how technologies are emerging to help these institutions better serve their customers and members while competing effectively against their larger rivals.

The new demographic, we call them the Gen Zers, 28 years old and below, they are in a different space from where financial institutions are. Traditionally, with financial institution apps, you have to go there and do everything. But unfortunately, these large financial institutions and these neobanks are really impeding those Gen Zers from wanting to participate with the financial institution any more. Why? Because they don’t have a seamless interface; it’s not embedded where they are already at … They are not in the financial institutions that are $5 billion and below; they’re not looking for those apps.

The metrics show that you lose those folks when they come along with their family member to become a part of a credit union or community bank. And that’s how you (get) these users. And so, what’s happening? They’re losing them and they’re not coming back.

Founded in 2020 and headquartered in Portland, Oregon, BankShift offers an embedded banking loyalty platform that helps financial institutions partner with trusted brands in order to unlock new sources of revenue and enhance engagement with customers. BankShift provides banking and loyalty services via both direct embeds into brand-owned apps, portals, and digital ecosystems, as well as by a standalone option hosted by the financial institution and co-branded with the partner. BankShift made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2024 in New York and returned to the Finovate stage the following year for FinovateSpring 2025 in San Diego.

Rob Thacher is Founder and CEO of BankShift. He is a veteran technology executive with 25 years of experience, including co-developing CreditWise and leading innovative fintech initiatives. Thacher thrives on building large-scale products and platforms that solve real consumer challenges through cutting-edge technology.


Photo by Tabitha Mort

Streamly Snapshot: What the Great Wealth Transfer Means for Banks and Fintechs

Streamly Snapshot: What the Great Wealth Transfer Means for Banks and Fintechs

For decades, the idea of generational wealth transfer has been more of a long-term planning theme than a present-day priority. But that priority is beginning to change. With trillions of dollars moving from Baby Boomers to Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z over the next two decades, banks and fintechs are staring down a pivotal question: how will they capture the attention and loyalty of younger, digitally native inheritors?

In a recent Streamly interview, Tapp Engine CEO Will Dolan spoke about this massive economic shift and the opportunities it presents for financial institutions. He explained that the winners in this space will be those who not only meet younger generations on the digital platforms they use every day, but also those who understand the emotional context of wealth and inheritance in modern families.

“Technology has become such an important parat of everybody’s day-to-day lives… people have a lot more information at their disposal now that they’ve every had…. How do you engage with people out there that you want to draw into the opportunities that your company possesses? If you’re not digital, if you’re not thinking AI, if you’re not thinking mobile, you really need to re-think your strategy because that’s the way that most people are looking to utilize solutions, consume information, and companies really need to respond to that.”

Founded in 2019, Tapp Engine is a digital experience platform that helps financial institutions thrive in the digital age by modernizing customer engagement through embedded tools and adaptive experiences. Instead of offering static interfaces or one-size-fits-all financial products, Tapp Engine enables banks and fintechs to build modular, white-labeled experiences tailored to users’ life stages and financial goals. With features like real-time personalization, guided decision flows, and behavioral insights, Tapp Engine helps turn generic banking apps into trusted, go-to financial companions.

As President of Tapp Engine, Dolan brings a human-centered lens to a category that often defaults to technology-first thinking. His insights reflect years of experience working at the intersection of product design, user experience, and fintech innovation.


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Talking Fintech: A Preview of Interviews, Q&As and Conversations from FinovateSpring

Talking Fintech: A Preview of Interviews, Q&As and Conversations from FinovateSpring

Over the three days of FinovateSpring earlier this month, Finovate analysts and their partners hosted a number of off-stage interviews with CEOs of demoing companies, keynote speakers, event sponsors, and more. Over the course of the next few weeks, we’ll begin rolling out these conversations here on the Finovate blog as part of our Streamly Speaker Series interviews.

For now, here’s a quick preview of what we’ve got in store for you:


Senior Research Analyst Julie Muhn in conversation with:

John Iannarelli, The Voice of Cyber & Security, FBI John

Rob Thatcher, Founder and CEO, BankShift

Yamini Sagar, CEO and Founder, Instarails

Javier Pérez García, Global Director, VASS Financial Services


Research Analyst David Penn in conversation with:

Bhoomika Ghosh, Senior Tech Product Lead, Amazon Prime

Jim McCarthy, Founder and Chairman, McCarthy Hatch

Jackie Wylie, Head of Marketing, Middesk

Brandon Min, Founder and CEO, Herd Security

Will Dolan, President, TAPP Engine

Aman Kaur, Corporate Sales Manager, Americas, DataSniper

Mohammad Rashid, SVP, Head of Fintech Innovation, Tavant


William Mills, CEO and Creative Director, William Mills Agency, in conversation with:

Adrian Nazari, CEO, Sesame

Christy Wong and Michael Larson, VP of Business Development and COO, covet.life

Sharon Gai, Author, Culture Fluid


Steven Ramirez, CEO of Beyond the Arc, in conversation with:

Christopher Hollins, Global Head of Product Sales and Design, SVB, a division of First Citizens Bank

Alisa Rusanoff, Head of Credit / Trade Finance, Crescendo Asset Management

Streamly Snapshot: Why “Data Is the New Blood” in the Future of Finance

Streamly Snapshot: Why “Data Is the New Blood” in the Future of Finance

The phrase “data is the new oil” has echoed across boardrooms and strategy decks for more than a decade. But Tracey Follows, CEO of Futuremade, offers a more visceral, and perhaps more accurate, analogy: data is the new blood. In my conversation with her at FinovateEurope 2025, Follows challenged financial services leaders to rethink how data flows, regenerates, and sustains our increasingly digital and AI-driven economy.

In a world where digital identity, embedded finance, and AI are converging at unprecedented speed, Follows argues that understanding the lifeblood of these systems– data– is critical to building trust, ensuring relevance, and preparing for what comes next. Her insights are a wake-up call for financial institutions that are still operating with a fragmented or overly transactional view of data.

“We hear that data is the new oil. We’ve been hearing that for 20 years. No. No. Data is the new blood. That’s the way I want people to think about it. That’s the metaphor that really does justice to the vital, intimate, personal nature of the kind of data that’s now going to be flowing into AI, and particularly agentic AI, to help it make decisions that encompasses our neurological functions, cognitive functions, physiological functions, alongside our financial decision-making.”

Tracey Follows is a globally recognized futurist, speaker, and author. She is the former Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer at The Future Laboratory and has advised major brands such as Google, Telefonica, and Diageo. Her book The Future of You explores the intersection of digital identity, privacy, and personalization. Follows is a regular commentator in the media and was named one of the top 50 female futurists in the world by Forbes.

Follows is also the founder and CEO of Futuremade, a strategic foresight and futures consultancy that helps organizations anticipate long-term change and build future-ready strategies. With expertise in scenario planning, horizon scanning, and trend analysis, Futuremade supports global clients in sectors ranging from finance to media and technology. The firm’s work emphasizes ethical innovation, societal shifts, and the human implications of emerging technologies.

Streamly Snapshot: Recognizing the Signs of a Financial Crash

Streamly Snapshot: Recognizing the Signs of a Financial Crash

If financial crashes are inevitable, then is there any way to anticipate them and mitigate their negative impacts—to say nothing of preventing them from happening in the first place?

Answering this question is Linda Yueh, Fellow in Economics at Oxford University and author of The Great Crashes: Lessons from Global Meltdowns and How to Prevent Them. In this interview, conducted earlier this year at FinovateEurope, Yueh provides a three-step framework for identifying and mitigating financial crises. She also discusses the relationship between Big Tech, decentralized finance, and traditional finance, and how competition between these forces will foster innovation and economic growth.

Every crisis starts with a bubble, and bubbles repeat themselves mostly because of FOMO, “fear of missing out” … (T)he real danger is if you pile in because of FOMO, and you do it with debt. Because then, when the bubble bursts, that’s the second phase, the resolution. And that’s really challenging because it depends on having credible policies and credible policymakers.

A fellow in Economics at the University of Oxford and an Adjunct Professor of Economics at the London Business School, Linda Yueh is an economist, writer, and broadcaster. Her latest book, The Great Crashes: Lessons from Global Meltdowns and How to Prevent Them, was named to the Financial Times’ “The Best New Books in Economics” roster. Her previous book, The Great Economists: How Their Ideas Can Help Us Today, was named one of The Times’s Best Business Books of the Year.


Photo by Alexandre Bringer

Streamly Snapshot: Digital Transformation Challenges Facing Banks

Streamly Snapshot: Digital Transformation Challenges Facing Banks

Legacy systems, fragmented data, and operational silos have long challenged financial institutions trying to modernize. In this Streamly interview, R34DY CEO Mark Hetényi shares his perspective on how banks and fintechs can overcome these barriers by building smarter, more connected digital ecosystems. Drawing from his deep experience in financial services and digital transformation, Hetényi unpacks how to drive real change– not just cosmetic upgrades– across the industry.

In the conversation, Hetényi explains how meaningful transformation requires both cultural and technological shifts. He stresses the need for integration, collaboration, and customer-first thinking in order to eliminate inefficiencies and unlock new growth opportunities. It’s a timely and practical look at what it really takes to move from outdated infrastructure to agile, future-ready operations.

“You have to focus on the customer. I know that’s an overused phrase, so I’m not saying anything new with that. But a lot of the banks they envision what is the best fit product for themselves to build the next best product, and the customer is already three stations ahead with their own fintech solution and you’re not going to grab attention that way. So you first focus on the customer, but then you need an internal champion. I’ve worked with a lot of banks, worked internally as a deputy CEO as well, and if you don’t have an internal champion—a real, internal reason to change—usually, the transformation process goes amuck there.”

Mark Hetényi brings decades of experience at the intersection of banking, innovation, and strategy. As the CEO of R34DY, he is focused on equipping financial institutions with the tools and guidance they need to not just digitize, but to evolve. His leadership bridges traditional finance with digital capabilities, helping banks take a data-driven, customer-focused, approach.

R34DY is a digital transformation partner for financial institutions, helping them move beyond legacy systems and fragmented workflows. The company offers a platform that enables banks to orchestrate and optimize customer journeys, data flows, and product delivery through seamless integration. By bridging the gap between siloed systems and modern customer expectations, R34DY empowers institutions to unlock new value and thrive in a fast-changing financial landscape.


Photo by luis gomes

Streamly Snapshot: Navigating Reputation Management in the Financial Sector

Streamly Snapshot: Navigating Reputation Management in the Financial Sector

Reputation is both an asset and a liability across every sector. This is especially true for financial institutions, as they rely heavily on consumer trust. However, in an era when the speed of information is accelerating, so is the risk of misinformation, public missteps, or brand erosion. In this Streamly interview, Valentina Kristensen, Corporate Affairs Director at OakNorth, joins us to share how banks and fintechs can strategically manage their reputations amid growing scrutiny from customers, media, and regulators.

During our conversation, which was recorded at FinovateEurope, Kristensen offers insight into how financial institutions can proactively build trust, respond to reputational threats, and create a culture of transparency, even in times of crisis. Her experience working across corporate affairs, media, and policy gives her a well-rounded perspective on the importance of reputation in shaping long-term business value.

“The first rule in a crisis is ‘don’t have a crisis,’ so effective planning is always crucial and as a regulated bank we have to do a lot of planning… So I think a lot of it is preparation and if you can avoid a crisis, then great. Obviously a lot of that comes from doing the right thing or making sure that your team are doing the right thing.”

Valentina Kristensen has been a leading voice in fintech communications and policy for nearly a decade. At OakNorth, she helps shape the bank’s narrative, build strategic relationships, and ensure that the company’s messaging reflects its values and mission. She frequently speaks on topics such as financial innovation, regulation, and the importance of building resilient, people-centric financial institutions.

OakNorth is a UK-based digital bank that serves growth-minded small and medium-sized businesses. Known for its tech-forward approach to credit decisioning, OakNorth combines machine learning with deep sector insights to deliver faster, more flexible lending. With a strong emphasis on responsible innovation and long-term partnerships, the company has become a standout in the challenger banking space, both for its performance and its reputation.


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