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The 2016 Fintech Finance 35: Maria Gotsch

No. 12

12. Maria Gotsch
President and Chief Executive Officer
Partnership Fund for New York City
Last year: 11

The Partnership Fund for New York City teamed up with consulting firm Accenture in 2010 to create the FinTech Innovation Lab. That early catalyst for the financial technology start-up boom — an ecosystem bringing entrepreneurs together with major financial institutions and venture capital investors — is today a microcosm of the growing wave of fintech investment, which last year amounted to $22.3 billion globally, according to Accenture data. Thirty-one graduates of what Partnership Fund president and CEO Maria Gotsch calls “the premier program enabling the next generation of successful financial technology entrepreneurs in New York City” have gone on to raise more than $300 million in financing. A member of the Class of 2015, distributed ledger company Digital Asset Holdings, raised $60 million this year. That may bode well for two blockchain companies in the 2016 lab: AlphaPoint, a provider of technology to digital asset exchanges, and Cambridge Blockchain, a developer of identity and know-your-customer applications. Four of the eight companies in this year’s class are in artificial intelligence and machine learning, including Quarule (risk controls and compliance certification) and untapt (talent recruiting). “What rose to the top were companies getting to the core functions and activities within financial institutions,” says Gotsch, 50, a Harvard Business School MBA who worked at investment bank BT Wolfensohn before joining the Partnership Fund in 1999. She notes that untapt changed course as a result of FinTech Innovation Lab mentoring to focus on recruiting technologists from within, rather than just outside, large financial institutions. “The problem was different from what the start-up thought they had — now there is an entirely new use case and potential market,” Gotsch says. She shares credit for founding the lab with Robert Gach, global capital markets lead at Accenture, which has replicated the model in Dublin, Hong Kong, and London. The last is home to numerous other incubators and accelerators, as well as the Innovate Finance hub (see Lawrence Wintermeyer, No. 28). “I see it as a very helpful contribution,” Gotsch says. “Our markets are different enough and far enough apart that, just as there are two financial capitals, there is certainly room for each of us to be fintech capitals, too.”


The 2016 Fintech Finance 35

1. Jonathan Korngold
General Atlantic
2. Matthew Harris
Bain Capital Ventures
3. Jane Gladstone
Evercore Partners
4. James Robinson III & James
Robinson IV
RRE Ventures
5. Steven McLaughlin
Financial Technology Partners
6. Amy Nauiokas & Sean Park
Anthemis Group
7. Richard Garman &
Brad Bernstein
FTV Capital
8. Gerard
von Dohlen
Broadhaven Capital Partners
9. Darren Cohen
Goldman Sachs Group
10. Hans Morris
Nyca Partners
11. Meyer (Micky) Malka
Ribbit Capital
12. Maria Gotsch
Partnership Fund for New York City
13. Barry Silbert
Digital Currency Group
14. Jay Reinemann
Propel Venture Partners
15. Mariano Belinky
Santander InnoVentures
16. Justin Brownhill & Neil DeSena
SenaHill Partners
17. François Robinet
AXA Strategic Ventures
18. Vanessa Colella
Citi Ventures
19. Michael Schlein
Accion International
20. Kenneth Marlin
Marlin & Associates
21. Rumi Morales
CME Ventures
22. Alastair (Alex) Rampell
Andreessen Horowitz
23. Steve Gibson
Euclid Opportunities
24. Fabian Vandenreydt
SWIFT
25. Vladislav Solodkiy
Life.SREDA
26. Gardiner Garrard III
TTV Capital
27. Nektarios Liolios
Startupbootcamp Fintech
28. Lawrence Wintermeyer
Innovate Finance
29. Bina Kalola
Bank of America Merrill Lynch
30. Hyder Jaffrey
Fintech Innovation
31. Calvin Choi
AMTD Group
32. Janos Barberis
FinTech
Hong Kong
33. Jalak Jobanputra
Future Perfect Ventures
34. Sopnendu Mohanty
Monetary Authority of Singapore
35. Oskar Mielczarek
de la Miel
Rakuten
FinTech Fund

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