Rise of the Boston FinTech Ecosystem
Local/ National/ Global
We started Vestigo Ventures as the first firm in Boston serving early-stage FinTech entrepreneurs. When we set up the fund and thought about the best way to get returns for our LPs, we needed to match our data advantage to where we seek the best FinTech startups.
One of the most critical debates in any business is where can you have an impact? After much discussion, this question led us to focus on the US and Canadian markets, where we focus on cities like Montreal, Toronto, Boston, NYC, Denver, Seattle, Austin, and San Francisco.
Some of the key ways we can have an impact are to support student organizations, state events, and non-profits in the FinTech space. As an example, we are excited to have Mark on the advisory board of the Mass FinTech Hub, a non-profit that will promote the creation of an ecosystem to support incumbents, startups, investors, universities, and students. In addition, this group will take the lead on Boston FinTech Week.
We are also part of a new grant program from Massachusetts that supports for-profit entities. The first grant will be made soon to create an environment to help innovative startups in the blockchain ecosystem. It will be interesting to see how this promotes the commonwealth as a FinTech leader.
Further, our team spends time with MIT and Harvard Business School to support students at the graduate and undergraduate levels. We know these schools have had many successes in creating FinTech unicorns and want to be there to support this happening.
We are duplicating this support at McGill in Montreal and NYC’s FinTech ecosystem. There are many places we can have an impact. The key for us is to find where we can get the best yield for our investors.
— Mark & Dave
MIT FinTech Conference
Tools for Financial Inclusion in Emerging Markets
Harvard Blockchain Conference
Supporting and engaging with the broader Boston Fintech and entrepreneurial community remains a core tenant here at Vestigo. I had the pleasure of attending Harvard’s first Blockchain conference, held March 26th - March 27th in downtown Boston. The conference brought together 1,000+ students, investors, founders, and other members of the web3/Blockchain community. I hadn’t expected to see such an outpouring of interest from all over - I met students representing universities like Columbia, Yale, Cornell, and many others around the US and also met attendees who’d flown in from LA, Miami, and SF. There was even an attendee who’d flown in from West Africa!
Here at Vestigo we’ve been hearing more and more around talent has been moving to web3. It was interesting to see the excitement of so many incredibly smart students around web3 and their interest in founding or joining companies within the blockchain ecosystem. Other relevant insights to Vestigo centered around how other VCs manage tokens, win deals, and work with web2 portfolio companies around potential web3 collaborations or incorporating some of the technologies.
While we remain exceedingly bullish on the Fintech opportunities still present in web2, it was great to learn more about web3 and to see the potential for Boston to be a center of web3 innovation. We are in the first innings of web3 and I’m personally excited to see more of what’s to come. If interested in engaging further with the web3 Boston ecosystem, MIT will be holding the MIT Bitcoin Expo in early May.
- Kelly Shaw
Engaging with the Boston FinTech Ecosystem
One of the best parts about working in venture capital is supporting and interacting with the entrepreneurial ecosystem and, more specifically, in Vestigo’s case, the FinTech ecosystem. Over the past month, I have had the opportunity to attend two events in the Boston FinTech ecosystem, one held by the Mass FinTech Hub and the other held by Northeastern’s Disrupt, which is their FinTech initiative.
The FinTech forum hosted by the Mass FinTech Hub was a great experience to see some more developed startups within the Boston ecosystem. There was a great turnout, with many executives coming from large financial incumbents like Liberty Mutual and State Street, to name a few. In addition, it was promising to see so many of the companies incubated in the Mass FinTech Hub go on to raise subsequent rounds with success.
Northeastern’s Finnovate group held the second event under the Disruptumbrella. I was a judge for several ideas stage startups launched by Northeastern students. I was impressed by the students' amount of work and thoughtfulness when launching a new company/idea. In addition, quite a few students have gone above and beyond to develop an MVP, which was incredible given the amount of school work they all have to balance.
As we hope to see more events begin to be held in person, Vestigo is committed to remaining engaged and supportive of the FinTech community.
- Nick Kim
New Portfolio Company
We are extremely excited to announce our newest investment in Knowbl! They are reducing consumer frictions and increasing engagement for large institutions through the use of a headless UI concept.
Portfolio Updates
Combating the Great Resignation
Great article to display how companies can use Roots Automation to fill positions opened up due to the "Great Resignation."
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Acorn Finance Accepted Into Moderne Ventures Passport Class
It is great to see Acorn Finance continue to succeed and gain traction. Moderne Ventures is a strategic VC that invests and supports companies solving the hardest problems within PropTech.
Moderne Ventures
Interesting Reads
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