I had a great time last week at FinovateSpring live blogging for Money Summit. There were so many great technology demos presented and a lot of great networking was had by all. This was my fifth Finovate event and it was great to see many familiar denizens of FinTech and to meet many new innovators. According to the Finovate team, this event was the most attended ever with over 1,200 people fitting into the City Nation Civic in San Jose. Hopefully my co-blogger, Brad Leimer and I were able to provide insightful comments and perspective to what was presented during those two days. Please feel free to Tweet questions to Brad (@leimer) or to me (@ericdunstan) and we will do our best to respond as quickly as possible.
Congratulations to the FinovateSpring Best of Show winners
EyeVerify
Loop
Interactions
Motif Investing
Ondot
PrivatBank
SaveUp
Personally, I was most excited by what was presented in the mobile payments, virtual CRM, and digital banking technology verticals. Look for future posts for my perspective on presenting companies in each vertical.
As far as the Best of Show winners go, I was very impressed by what EyeVerify, Loop, Ondot and PrivatBank presented.
I will continue to contribute to the Money Summit blog. I will post links to content I produce. Or, better yet, add Money Summit to your “FinTech” news feed on Feedly or Flipboard.
I hope everyone had a safe and easy trip home and is having a productive week.
I have a strong background in theater arts that has always influenced how I deliver presentations or evaluate events that I attend. Some presentations and events have flash and sizzle (think CES)…while others are snooze festivals sponsored by Sleep Train. I can’t help think how a CEO’s presentation could be more impactful if someone played the “I am Mighty Mouse and I here to save the day!” theme before he or she walked on stage to deliver the new turn around strategy. He he.
Mostly these musings are simple forms of cerebral entertainment to keep me awake during long meetings. Face it, we all dread going to long presentations that we tune out after the first hour as we regularly login to check email on our laptops. It’s a delicate balance between getting the message across and creating a level of entertainment that engages the audience to receive the message.
The show gets started tomorrow for FinovateSpring in San Jose. Finovate is one of (if not THE) leading FinTech innovation shows in North America and Europe. Like many show attendees, I’ve been to several Finovate shows and love the excitement and energy the format creates and seeing innovators get up there and sell sell sell their innovation. Obviously there is a great deal of networking that goes on their too as innovators seek the right strategic partner to grow the business, technology and customer audience.
I wonder what would happen if the Finovate team started the next event in a slightly different manner. Instead of the standard welcoming remarks and sponsor thank yous, could Finovate be opened with a musical number to energize the crowd and alleviate the tension of the presenters?
I always enjoyed the opening song (or “number”) of The Muppet Show that introduced their host and kicked off a series of great skits. Could a similar song and musical number be done for Finovate? Would Statler and Waldorf like it? Would the audience boo and hisssss? I think it’s worth a shot. Afterall, we are together for two days and have a lot of ground to cover! Let’s have some fun!
The Finovate Show Theme Song
(Drum Roll)
It’s the FinovateSpring Show with our Very Special Host, Eric Mattson
It’s time to play the music
It’s time to light the lights
It’s time to meet the FinTech Innovators on the Finovate Show tonight.
It’s time to put on makeup
It’s time to dress up right
It’s time to raise the curtain on the Finovate Show tonight.
Why do we always come here?
I guess we’ll never know
It’s like a kind of torture
To have to watch the show
And now let’s get things started
Why don’t you get things started?
It’s time to get things started
On the most sensational innovational inspirational Finovational
This is what we call the Finovate Show!
I am very excited to attend the event tomorrow as a guest blogger for the newly launched Money Summit blog produced by MoneyDesktop. I will be providing commentary with fellow Fintechy, Bradley Leimer throughout the two day event. In keeping with the Muppets theme, Brad and I will be a MUCH kinder and more professional version of Statler and Waldorf of sorts. We are looking forward to a great event!
Last week Moven announced an expanded strategic partnership with MoneyDesktop. The two companies have been dancing together for a while. However, this recent move changes their dance from a waltz to a passionate tango. To refresh memories, Moven is a disruptive and leading innovator in the mobile banking space. MoneyDesktop is a cutting edge developer of personal finance management (PFM) tools and eye-popping UI. Together, Moven and MoneyDesktop bring unique and compatible assets that when combined will ignite the FinTech “dance floor.” Vavoom.
The recently announcedpartnership is focused less on providing a dazzling user interface and more on a back-end feature that will make the Moven value proposition even more relevant for consumers. Moven will use MoneyDesktop to aggregate financial information from external accounts. Conversely, MoneyDesktop will gain access to a growing consumer audience who is willing to leave their current bank for a financial institution that provides a better mobile banking experience.
MoneyDesktop continues to win awards at several FinTech conferences for their innovative solutions and clean functional user interface design. The primary buyer groups of their technology are online banking executives at mid and small tiered financial institutions. MoneyDesktop is boasting that over 400 financial institutions and 29 online banking, core and payment network providers use their technology. However, each of their clients is an “old school” FI striving to update their online and mobile banking experience to avoid losing customers. A relationship with Moven enables them to partner with an innovator who is proactive in acquiring new customers by building a strong mobile banking experience from the ground up. MoneyDesktop is well positioned to benefit from the mobile banking revolution.
Moven also continues to win awards and provide groundbreaking mobile banking technology and services. Moven’s solution is driven from the mobile device and offers features of major banks….without the fees. However, like the other mobile bank innovators, like GoBank, they face the hurdle of acquiring enough users to scale their business. Let’s face it, all of us have accounts with the major banks. Telling a customer to drop any current banking relationships they have to join a mobile driven bank is a tough sell. Moven’s partnership with MoneyDekstop helps address this hurdle.
MoneyDesktop’s aggregation technology is as much a product feature improvement as a customer acquisition tool for Moven. Consumers can now join Moven and use the solution to track their banking activity with all financial institutions. Moven becomes the financial hub. Well-planned cross-sell marketing from Moven will inform users of other great features and tools. Eventually, the consumer will start to fall in love with the Moven solution and will depend on it more as a primary banking tool. Well, at least that is the goal.
The key for this strategic partnership will be how well both parties can execute and take advantage of the open opportunities to deliver customer value. If they do it right, their tango will catch the attention of the millions of unsatisfied big bank customers. I hope Moven and MoneyDesktop have a big dance floor.
ummit blog produced by 
Eric Dunstan 