Focal FinTech: Presented by Primary and Rise, created by Barclays.

It’s no surprise that one of our city’s most exciting growth areas in the past year has undoubtedly been FinTech. The pandemic forced more transactions online; legacy players are reaching a critical tipping point in adopting new tech; more dollars than ever on the venture side have flooded into the space; and despite hardships, soaring stock market and housing prices have made the average American household almost 20% wealthier in the last year alone. And we’ve seen plenty of FinTech unicorns recently, from MoneyLion to Stash to Fireblocks.

So we’ve been closely watching New York City’s most dynamic FinTech leaders—some of them in our portfolio, some of them friends, some recommended by folks in the ecosystem, and some simply notable builders we’re admiring from afar. Today, we share a list of those we see as need-to-knows in the city.

Below, you’ll find profiles of 40 people or teams exemplifying some of our favorite themes: infrastructure creators offering tools to help others build better; agents of democratization bringing top insights and tech to the masses; social challengers, whether they’re pursuing social justice or social connectivity; crypto pioneers that leaned in when the market was not nearly as frothy, and community leaders bringing together all these innovators. It’s a small slice of people we love in this space—we focused on founders and operators, rather than investors, and curated with a lens of who’s had a notable year and is very involved in the local community. (And we also published some deeper dive conversations with Stash's Brandon Krieg, a16z’s David Haber, and Brian Luciani of Rise, created by Barclays.)

This is a celebration of our local ecosystem, a moment of appreciation for how much it’s grown in just the past year, a guide for newcomers getting a lay of the land, plus an invitation to get in touch if you’re building a FinTech business in NYC!

Infrastructure

Tommy Nicholas, Laura Spiekerman, and Charles Hearn, Cofounders of Alloy

Since 2015, this team has been paving the way to fairer finance through smarter, faster identity decisions. Alloy started out catering to fellow FinTechs, soon expanded to major banks, and overall has significantly advanced what’s possible in this space by transforming identity and decisioning with data, intelligent decision tools, and simple APIs.

“The Alloy team saw an opportunity to bring to financial institutions identity solutions that reduce risk while improving marketing performance,” says Primary Partner Brad Svrluga. “That’s a pretty unheard of holy grail, and it’s worked!”

Stephany Kirkpatrick, Founder and CEO of Orum

As a CFP, Stephany Kirkpatrick saw firsthand the deep cracks in America’s financial infrastructure and how the slow speed of money movement hurt American wallets. As the former GM of LearnVest, she saw the transformational power of bringing tech to decades-old financial systems and optimizing liquidity.

In 2019, she launched Orum to offer smart, real-time, fully-automated money movement, revolutionizing how consumers and businesses send, receive, and access money through its platform of API-based, embeddable infrastructure products. Orum announced a $56 million Series B this summer, bringing its total funding to $82 million. Primary Partner Brad Svrluga says, “Stephany recognized that the way money moves through our financial system is fundamentally broken, and is out to fix it. This is one of the biggest prizes in FinTech, and she’s built a team capable of pulling it off.”

Kurt Lin, Curtis Lee, and Anish Basu, Cofounders of Pinwheel

Pinwheel is one of those companies that originated out of a clear need. Kurt, Curtis, and Anish originally set out to create an automated HSA (health savings account), but they soon realized there was no easy way to connect to the many payroll providers they needed to power their product. So they created an API to make it easy for fellow FinTechs to access and update payroll data. Customers include neobanks like Current and super apps like Square Cash, who use Pinwheel to update direct deposits, verify income and employment, enable earned wage access, support paycheck-linked lending, and more. The company raised a $20 million Series A earlier this summer. Primary Partner Brad Svrluga says, “The Pinwheel team recognized early that tapping into payroll systems offered a powerful unlock to driving consumer adoption and activity across the world of FinTech businesses. From there, they are building against a broader vision of a fairer financial system for all.”

Aaron Schumm, Founder and CEO of Vestwell

Vestwell isn’t taking on the $33 trillion retirement savings market alone; its tech fuels solutions for new upstarts and traditional players alike. And it raised a $70 million Series C this summer with backing from a number of strategic partners. All told, it’s a new kind of digital workplace savings platform making quality, low-cost, flexible programs like 401(k)s more accessible to the small plan market. Aaron is a repeat founder—his wealth management platform FolioDynamix powers $800 billion in assets for 100,000+ advisors. Aaron has “a rich history of leading FinTech in NYC, including acting as an advisor to other companies,” says Primary Operating Partner Cassie Young. A few particularly notable ones: Quovo (acquired by Plaid), Vestorly, OfColor, and Chalice Financial Network. Primary Partner Brad Svrluga says, “Aaron is that best sort of founder—someone with years of experience successfully building in an industry as a lieutenant who is now flexing all that experience for the first time as CEO. And it’s working—Vestwell has built the infrastructure that will take the retirement industry into the decades ahead.”

Peter Lord, Cofounder and CEO of Codat

Codat, HQed in London but with a significant presence in New York, powers SMB accounting, banking, and commerce integrations with a simple API, and is linking more than 20,000 companies a month. “Codat is the leader in their space of building back-office infrastructure,” says Pinwheel Cofounder and CEO Kurt Lin. “Pete has been a great member of the NYC FinTech community, hosting events for others in the space and being a great ambassador for everyone.”

Austin Ogilvie, Eva Pittas, and Sam Li, Cofounders of Laika

NYC FinTech founders have a long history of partnering with incumbents, a trend only set to accelerate as large financial institutions become more comfortable with and excited about startups. Laika is speeding the rate of adoption by helping startups navigate compliance and due diligence. It helps companies get certified faster, close enterprise deals, and build scalable security practices that stand the test of any audit. The company was founded in 2019, raised a $10 million Series A led by Canapi Ventures last fall, and has helped companies pass over 1,000 audits. “Laika has become a household name in NY FinTech,” says Dash Fund investor Tom Seo.

Olga Chin, Founder and CEO of InterPrice Technologies

Just over a year ago, Olga Chin founded InterPrice, a corporate treasury capital markets data platform, automatically aggregating hedging, bond, commercial paper, and loan indications into intuitive dashboards. InterPrice helps corporates achieve cost savings and make informed decisions. Olga, says Dash Fund investor Tom Seo, “Epitomizes the NY FinTech founder. True domain expert in capital markets and using that to build a scalable FinTech product.”

Bo Jiang, Jason Kruse, and David Nichols, Cofounders of Lithic

The team behind Lithic originally launched in 2014 as Privacy.com, a service that generated temporary, unbreachable credit card information for online shopping. It turned out businesses were even more excited about the tools. So in 2020 it launched a Card Issuing API that gave corporate customers the ability to create payment cards for their customers, optimize back-office operations, simplify disbursements, and monitor transactions. The fast traction spurred a rebrand this past spring. The company announced a $60 million Series C led by Stripes a few months later, pushing its valuation up to $800 million.

Itai Damti and Doron Somech, Cofounders of Unit

Unit, officially launched earlier this month, is setting out to help all kinds of companies adapt to the widespread trend of product FinTechization—with 90% less time and effort, the company estimates. It allows easy integration of features like accounts, cards, payments, and lending; early clients have been able to build end-to-end banking experiences in as little as four weeks. Cofounders Itai Damti and Doron Somech are repeat entrepreneurs—their online broker technology company Leverate processes more than $100 billion in monthly trading volume. A FinTech leader who prefers to remain anonymous calls CEO Itai, “not only an experienced entrepreneur but one of the most knowledgeable people in the FinTech ecosystem.”

Sam Bobley and Victoria Meakin, Cofounders of Ocrolus

Despite the seismic changes FinTech has brought to banking, there is still a lot of paperwork involved. Ocrolus uses AI and crowdsourcing to turn e-statements, scans, and cell phone images—files of any type and quality—into accurate digital data, modernizing financial assessments for lending and other industries. The company works with clients like BlueVine, Brex, and PayPal and processed the majority of PPP loan applications. Just last week, Fin VC led an $80 million Series C that valued the company “north of $500 million.” Fin VC Managing Partner and Founder Logan Allin says: “Ocrolus has been able to attract the leading FinTechs and banks, as well as other picks-and-shovels partners like Plaid, principally through their product maturity and human-in-the-loop support to driving unmatched accuracy….The team has a tremendous product-led and service-oriented culture—led by Sam Bobley and Vikas Dua, who set the tone with deep humility and a roll-up-the sleeves leadership style.”

Benjamin Conant, Nathaniel Harley, and Raj Patel, Cofounders of MANTL

MANTL is tackling the biggest challenge limiting the modernization of the U.S. banking system: legacy infrastructure. MANTL’s software transforms the cost structures of banks and credit unions—empowering growth that they say is up to 78% faster and 4x more efficient. Its white-labeled account opening platform enables people to open accounts on any device in roughly 2 minutes and 37 seconds. As a result, MANTL helps community institutions raise billions of dollars in core deposits each year and is up to 10x more cost-effective than building a brick-and-mortar branch. MANTL doubled both revenue and headcount in 2020 and announced a $40 million Series B funding round in April 2021. The round was led by Alphabet's independent growth fund CapitalG and MANTL joins Stripe, Robinhood, Credit Karma, LendingClub, and more in their FinTech portfolio.

Democratization

Lilac Bar David, Lili

Lili is a banking solution created around the specific needs of freelancers—a demographic that makes more than $1.2 trillion in annual earnings. With Lili, they can track expenses, navigate taxes, get financial insights, and save time and money. Primary Partner Jason Shuman says, “The former Founder and CEO of Israeli challenger bank Pepper took her talents to NYC to launch Lili, the #1 challenger bank for freelancers. Since announcing their seed in only June 2020, the company has gone on to raise $80 million to help democratize access to powerful business tools for freelancers.”

Eric Glyman, Karim Atiyeh, and Gene Lee, Cofounders of Ramp

Ramp’s corporate credit card and expense management platform are designed to help companies spend less. Instead of points, it gives customers streamlined software, insights, cashback, and flags on wasteful spending. It helps the average customer save about $100,000 a year. It launched in just 2020, but is already processing about $1 billion in transactions for more than 1,000 clients. Its $300 million Series C last month brought its valuation to $3.9 billion. “Eric Glyman, a 2x founder, is an OG in the NY FinTech ecosystem, having founded Paribus in 2014, which exited to Capital One in 2019,” Primary Partner Jason Shuman says.

Brandon Krieg and Ed Robinson, Cofounders of Stash

Stash has helped more than 6 million customers invest in themselves and set aside upwards of $3 billion total. In 2015, CEO Brandon Krieg and President Ed Robinson set out to make wealth building easier and more accessible, and they have since expanded the Stash investing and banking platform to include “DIY” fractional share investing, themed ETFs, robo-style Smart Portfolios, Roth and traditional IRAs, custodial accounts, the Stock-Back® Card, immersive educational tools, and more. $125 million in funding earlier this year put its latest valuation at $1.4 billion and sparked rumors that there might be a public listing on the way.

R. Tyler End, Ian Yamey, and Brian Ramirez, Cofounders of Retirable

Retirable offers a smart retirement management platform and always-on access to fiduciary retirement advisors. The team raised $4.7 million in seed funding late last year and currently reaches more than 50,000 retirees. Cofounder and CTO Ian Yamey, also the creator of Donational.org, previously served as CTO at Quadpay and PolicyGenius. “Pretty much everything he has touched turned into gold,” Primary Partner Jason Shuman points out.

Stuart Sopp, Founder and CEO of Current

Current was founded in 2015, but really took off over the course of the pandemic. Originally launched as a service for teens in 2017, it opened to adults in 2019, reached a million users last year, and reached 3 million this spring. In April 2021, Current raised a $220 million Series D round led by Andreessen Horowitz and tripled its valuation to $2.2 billion in just five months. Current is the first bank account for many of its users, who are attracted to features like early access to direct deposited paychecks, overdraft coverage without fees, and budgeting tools.

Joe Percoco, Max Bernardy, Clayton Gardner, Cofounders of Titan

Titan is an investment-management app with an automated investing function that lets retail investors trade like hedge funds and managed portfolios. Since its 2017 launch, the company has raised $75 million from a star-studded cast of investors: Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, Ashton Kutcher’s Sound Ventures, Odell Beckham Jr., Kevin Durant, Jared Leto, and Will Smith. The platform grew more than 500% over the course of the pandemic; it now has more than 30,000 users and expects to reach a billion in assets under management later this year.

Dee Choubey, Cofounder and CEO of MoneyLion

This one’s hot off the press. While MoneyLion has been growing an award-winning platform for consolidated consumer banking, paycheck advances, credit building, and investing since 2013, serving more than 8.5 million Americans along the way, it was just late last week that the company closed its business combination with Fusion and began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker ML.

Miguel Fernandez Larrea, Cofounder and CEO of Capchase

Late last year Capchase debuted a solution for founders who’d rather not take the venture route. It allows startups with recurring revenue to access upfront, non dilutive capital immediately. The company has raised more than $700 million in debt and equity funding and made a comparable figure available to founders.

Michael Karnjanaprakorn, Founder and CEO of Otis

In 2019, Michael Karnjanaprakorn launched Otis, a marketplace that enables fractional ownership of cultural assets like art, comics, sneakers, and other collectibles. “Prior to the NFT craze, former Skillshare Founder and CEO Mike K founded Otis to help democratize access to alternative investments for the masses. Mike K has gone on to raise over $14M from funds including USV and Maveron,” says Primary Partner Jason Shuman.

Social Challengers

Rob Curtis, Billie Simmons, and Paul Barnes-Hoggett, Cofounders of Daylight

Late last year, this team soft-launched Daylight, a digital bank seeking to lead the conversation on LGBTQ+ financial considerations: It offers rewards for spending at queer-owned and LGBTQ+ allied businesses, guidance on big financial decisions like in-vitro fertilization or gender confirmation surgery, and the ability to use chosen names, rather than legal ones, on cards. Inspired by Billie’s own personal experiences as a trans woman, Daylight also launched the “Call Me By My Name” campaign to pressure the American Banking Association to be similarly inclusive of trans people. The business went through the Visa FinTech Fast Track program and is built on Marqeta’s global modern issuing platform.

Tobias Francis Heaslip, Trading.TV

With the rise of financial influencers and content creators, Trading.TV anticipates the tools they’ll need: livestreams, chats, ads, affiliate links, tips, ecommerce, subscriptions, and more. Founder Tobias Francis Heaslip has seen this trend unfolding from a vantage in more traditional corners of the financial services landscape—he previously served as Barclays’ Director of Technology, Media, & Telecom Trading—and raised $6.1 million last month, which will help bring the service from beta to a full release. Tobias will also try to attract financial influencers to the platform with a $1 million creator fund.

Doug Scott, Johny Mair, and Jay Lipman, Cofounders of Ethic

Since 2015, cofounders Jay Lipman, Doug Scott, and Johny Mair have been making it easier for investments to align with personal ethical priorities. The asset manager offers wealth managers and investors sustainability training and education, financial analysis, portfolio creation and management, and ongoing insights. In the wake of America’s racial justice reckoning and more frequent climate crises, this has only become a more appealing proposition, and this spring the company raised a $29 million Series B. Ethic has already transitioned $1 billion+ into sustainable strategies.

Jannick Malling and Leif Abraham, Cofounders and Co-CEOs of Public

Public is on a mission to make the public markets work for all people. It allows users to buy fractional shares of top stocks and ETFs, browse themes like “Women in Charge” or “Stay at Home,” and follow other investors or chat with experts to build financial literacy. Launched in 2019 with backing from investors like Accel, Greycroft, Will Smith's Dreamers VC, J.J. Watt, Scott Belsky, Casey Neistat, and Sophia Amoruso, it was well-positioned to capture pandemic-era interest in investment and also offer information and answers in the face of uncertainty. 

Roger Cawdette, Darian Bhathena, and Jack Phifer, Cofounders of Finary

Gen Z Harvard dropout Roger Cawdette cofounded Finary as a “Discord for investing,” an investing messaging platform where mostly young investors can discuss strategies and trends. It also takes a page from Patreon’s book, allowing investing creators to sell access to their communities and investing ideas via subscriptions. Though his cofounding team was recently distributed across the country, they've decided on New York as the place to be for a business like this. Tom Seo of Dash Fund, which has invested in Finary alongside YC and Upfront ventures, calls Roger “a serious rising star in the FinTech community—part of the next generation of rockstar FinTech founders.”

Rishi Kumar and Einat Steklov, Kashable

Einat Steklov and Rishi Kumar, both immigrants, have firsthand experience with the challenges of establishing credit in the U.S. Even if you have a stable paycheck, in America, a credit score is too often a prerequisite for getting a loan. In 2015, Einat and Rishi launched Kashable, a service that partners with companies to offer employees low-cost loans, helping them build credit and avoid siphoning funds from 401(k)s. “Since 2013, Rishi and Einat have focused on bringing financial wellness to employees by partnering with employers of all sizes to offer socially responsible credit and other financial wellness resources as an employee benefit,” says Primary Partner Jason Shuman. “Prior to Kashable, Rishi and Einat started the factoring company Coral Capital and have found success every step along the way, even while staying away from the media limelight.”

Karen Rios and Corey Beebe, Cofounders of Lifesaver

Lifesaver is a mission-driven FinTech that empowers people with the data to understand the social and environmental impact of their spending, while integrating and automating philanthropy into everyday transactions. Cofounders Karen Rios and Corey Beebe are first- and second-generation immigrants from families whose livelihoods were small business, and point out that keeping money in local economies not only strengthens communities, but also typically reduces carbon footprints. Karen Rios was featured on NYC FinTech Women’s 2020 Inspiring FinTech Females list.

Crypto

Flori Marquez and Zac Prince, Cofounders of BlockFi

The west coast has Coinbase; NYC (or technically Jersey City, NJ) has BlockFi. This spring the crypto-lending platform raised a $350 million Series D at a $3 billion valuation, coming off a year of insane growth that included increasing on-platform assets from $1 billion to $15 billion, monthly revenue from $125,000 to $50 million, and growing the team from 100 to 850 with over 450,000 retail clients. Cofounder Zac Prince got his start in consumer lending and held leadership roles at successful tech companies such as Orchard Platform. Flori Marquez previously helped build, scale, and optimize a $125 million portfolio for Bond Street (the David Haber startup acquired by Goldman Sachs—we wrote about his journey through to a16z here).

Michael Gronager and Jonathan Levin, Cofounders of Chainalysis

Earlier this year, with backing from crypto-focused venture capital firm Paradigm as well as Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, Chainalysis reached a valuation of $2 billion—just four months after its breakthrough into unicorn status. Since 2014, the company has helped governments and companies grow safer, broader access to cryptocurrency. It does that through a data platform that powers investigation, compliance, and risk management tools, which have been used to solve some of the world’s highest-profile cyber crimes.

Michael Shaulov, CEO and Cofounder of Fireblocks

Serial cybersecurity entrepreneur and investor Michael Shaulov met Israel-based Cofounders Pavel Berengoltz and Idan Ofrat in 2017 when they served on a task force investigating the Lazarus Group theft of $200 million worth of bitcoin from South Korean exchanges. They created Fireblocks to offer an all-in-one platform for storing, transferring, and issuing digital assets. Since 2019, it’s transferred over one trillion dollars in digital assets. Its consumer base jumped from 150 in January to 500 in July, with ARR up 350% compared to 2020. This summer the team raised $310 million, tripling its valuation to $2.2 billion in just over five months. Stripes Investor Jahanvi Sardana says, “An explosive number of companies are handling digital assets today and they all need a secure way to handle this next generation of financial products. Fireblocks is the leading back-end infrastructure to secure and move digital assets.”

Charles Cascarilla, Cofounder and CEO of Paxos

If you’ve used PayPal or Venmo’s crypto brokerage services, you’ve touched Paxos technology. And this year it became the first crypto-native company to receive preliminary approval for a de novo national Trust Bank charter. It was also the first company, in 2015, to secure a New York State Department of Financial Services Trust Charter for Digital Assets. The goal is to become the first digital assets custodian regulated at both the state and federal levels. Toward that end, this spring the company raised $300 million and brought its valuation to $2.4 billion.

Cokie Hasiotis

Earlier this year, Cokie Hasiotis left her Chief of Staff role at The Block to “start something new.” That involved cofounding BaaS Lasagna Tech, advising financial startups like Ejara and Fintech Today, and then solo-founding Twali, a decentralized professional services platform interacting, operating, and servicing on-chain—a new definition of what consulting can be and something of a professional services DAO. “Cokie is one of the most passionate people in the fintech ecosystem and is always willing to help (even if she doesn't have time). She has a ton of knowledge across the entire Fintech landscape, and has taught me a ton,” a notable fintech leader who prefers to remain anonymous tells us.

Community

Nik Milanovic, Head of BD & Strategy at Google Pay

Nik Milanovic hosts one of the most popular FinTech-specific happy hours in New York and writes the This Week in Fintech newsletter, but his day job is Head of Business Development and Strategy for Google Pay and Google Finance. He formerly worked on consumer credit at Petal and small business lending at Funding Circle. He’s got a LOT of fans. Alex Gillette calls him, “the great connector in NY FinTech.” “Nik is an absolute STAR. He organizes global events, has a pulse on everything, and is very accessible and helpful. He's the NYC FinTech GOAT,” says Trista Kempa. Charley Ma says, “Nik has created an amazing ecosystem of events, newsletters, and networks all focused around FinTech, with NYC being the primary ecosystem. This Week in FinTech, FinTech happy hour, etc.” “He's a prolific angel investor and a talented operator with a ton of experience. He's also done a ton for the NYC FinTech community, bringing together people regularly with his fantastic monthly happy hours,” a notable FinTech leader who prefers to remain anonymous tells us.

Parker Jay-Pachirat, Chief of Staff at FinTech Today

FinTech Today started as a free newsletter and Slack for a small group of “FinTech nerds and friends.” Today, it's a media company for anyone and everyone looking to learn more about the space, whether that’s through community events or premium-access analysis of the trends defining the space. Cofounders Ian Kar and Julie VerHage-Greenberg both got their starts as journalists in NYC—he was at Quartz; she was at Bloomberg News. Though they now spend most of their time in LA and Austin, respectively, the publication remains hugely influential for NYC FinTechs, and Chief of Staff Parker Jay-Pachirat holds down the local fort. Alloy GM Charley Ma says the team is “building the go-to media brand for the next generation of FinTech.”

Michelle Tran and Sasha Pilch of NYC FinTech Women

NYC FinTech Women brings together more than 6,000 members across startups, traditional finance, and VCs to help promote and advance women’s careers in FinTech. The fully volunteer organization hosts monthly events with FinTechs and institutional enterprises alike, shares educational material, posts jobs, produces a podcast, and does regular spotlights of its members. "Alongside cofounder Sasha Pilch, Michelle has built one of the largest fintech communities in NYC, and with a mandate to connect, promote, and empower women in the industry," says Alloy COO Edwina Johnson.

Yasmin Moaven, VP of Marketing & Communications, Pipe

Pipe, HQed in Los Angeles & San Francisco, is rethinking how SaaS companies get funded and grow, starting with a subscription financing platform that allows software companies to finance their business without debt or dilution. Yasmin, based in New York, leads marketing, communications, and investor relations. “Yas is truly a force multiplier for any founder and company she works for,” says Anthemis Group investor Elizabeth Davis. “She is the type of person you want on your team and in your community. She brings a background in raising more than $2 billion in debt and venture to the NYC FinTech ecosystem.”

Veronica Pohls, Head of People at Mercury

Veronica Pohls joined Mercury in 2019 as employee number 13. She grew a strong People function from the start, earning the company a spot on Fortune’s 100 Best Small Workplaces list, and now has helped scale the team to 160+ employees. In 2020 she moved to New York City to help open a new office here. Mercury Cofounder and COO Jason Zhang says, “Roni has a remarkably rare mix of extreme competence and true heartfelt empathy, which makes her a natural fit for leading our People function. She's able to build systems and frameworks out of scratch, iterate on them with strong product thinking, and maintain genuine connection with each and every person at our company.”

Packy McCormick, Creator of Not Boring

Twice a week, Packy McCormick sends his Not Boring newsletter to share his latest takes on ascending companies. Some recent features include a deep dive on Lithic (featured on this list) and several analyses of the NFT space. At last count, his list was well over 75,000 strong, and, as he reports at the top of each transmission, it appears several hundred more join each week.

Brian Luciani, Head of Rise New York

Rise, Barclays’ global community for FinTech founders, mentors, and investors, has long bet on this spirit of collaborative creation. With anchor locations in New York City and London, the organization has created a vibrant presence and become known as a home to visionaries shaping the future of financial services. 760 employees from 80 companies count themselves as Rise members in office spaces in New York and London; countless others come in to engage through mentoring, networking, and thought leadership programs, and Rise is also the home of Barclays Accelerator, powered by Techstars, which 190 companies have gone through to date. Brian leads the program and works closely with founders every day. We profiled him in a deep-dive article here.

Ilana Fass, VP of FinTech Banking at Silicon Valley Bank

As a Relationship Manager on the FinTech Banking team at Silicon Valley Bank, Ilana Fass works with hundreds of clients in New York while also bridging into the vibrant FinTech ecosystem in Tel Aviv, where she worked for a number of years. That was where she started at Barclays’ Rise; she moved to New York to run the program as a VP.

Editor's note: a previous version of this list included one more founder team that we've since deleted.