MassChallenge, a global network of zero-equity startup accelerators, announced on Monday the 21 startups that will join the 2019 MassChallenge FinTech inaugural program.
MassChallenge reported that the fintech accelerator program is supported by a public-private partnership that includes founding partners Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company (MassMutual), Putnam Investments, Fidelity Investments, Citizens Bank, John Hancock, and the Massachusetts Competitive Partnership (MACP), challenge partners Eastern Bank, AARP, Columbia Threadneedle Investments, Walmart, Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA), and community partners FinTech Sandbox, Wells Fargo Startup Accelerator, and Brandeis International Business School.
“MassChallenge FinTech’s diverse group of partners in asset management, insurance, retail and commercial banking, e-commerce, and transportation reflects the program’s vision to drive the future of financial services. Startups in this year’s cohort will work with these partners to solve challenges around important areas such as AI-powered research assistance, big data for small businesses, and student finances.”
Speaking about the class, Devon Sherman, Program Director of MassChallenge FinTech, stated:
“Our inaugural cohort represents trailblazing technologies that advance financial services, from AI-powered onboarding platforms to modern giving solutions. We look forward to structuring and driving meaningful, outcome-driven partnerships between startups and enterprises that tackle some of the industry’s biggest pain points and opportunities.”
MassChallenger also revealed that from January to June, startups will work 1:1 with one or more partners to tackle these challenges. Additionally, startups will leverage MassChallenge FinTech and FinTech Sandbox’s tailored enterprise-readiness program, as well as FinTech Sandbox’s data and resources. At the end of the program, MassChallenge FinTech will award a total of $250,000 in cash prizes, all at zero cost and for zero equity.
The 2019 Class are the following:
- AlphaSense (New York, New York): AlphaSense is an AI financial insights platform that accelerates and improves strategic decision-making.
- Cake (Boston, Massachusetts): Cake modernizes end-of-life planning by providing guidance and 24/7 access to wishes and documents in the cloud.
- Catapult HQ (Charlotte, North Carolina): Streamlining the procurement processes for Request for Proposal’s & Due Diligence Questionnaire’s through a collaborative web-based solution.
- Coalesce.ai (Boston, Massachusetts): Coalesce is an AI software company that automates tedious, mundane workflows for financial services firms.
- Datavore (New York, New York): An adaptive data analytics platform that enables any user to quickly and easily explore multiple datasets and ask meaningful questions.
- Diffeo (Boston, Massachusetts): Diffeo is an AI-powered research assistant that uncovers relationships in disparate data and recommends the best insights next to your work.
- Digital Onboarding (Boston, Massachusetts): A.I.-driven customer onboarding platform. We automate time-consuming marketing tasks and maximize customer engagement and profitability.
- Edmit (Boston, Massachusetts): Edmit’s software provides personalized, data-driven advice to help families understand the true cost and overall value of different colleges.
- eGiftify (New York, New York): eGiftify unifies data into a contextual engagement platform for businesses and banks to wow customers with meaningful and profitable actions.
- Elsen (Boston, Massachusetts): Elsen nPlatform is a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) for large financial institutions that enables financial professionals to effortlessly harness vast quantities of data to make better decisions and quickly solve complex problems.
- Fincura (Boston, Massachusetts): Fincura is automating middle-market commercial lending through process digitization and risk scoring.
- ForwardLane (New York, New York): ForwardLane augments the capabilities of financial professionals, empowering them to determine who to speak with, what to say and understand why.
- Gain Life (Boston, Massachusetts): Gain Life empowers individuals to achieve their best life.
- LifeSite (San Francisco Bay Area, California): LifeSite is a cloud-based digital safety deposit box for individuals, families & advisors to organize, secure and share all life information.
- Pinkaloo Technologies (Baltimore, Maryland): Pinkaloo’s Modern Giving enables Banks & Employers to build stronger relationships with customers and employees through philanthropy.
- Posh (Boston, Massachusetts): Posh is a conversational AI platform company out of MIT. Posh powers humanlike bots to automate routine enterprise communications tasks.
- SizeUp (San Francisco Bay Area, California): SizeUp is big data for small business. It’s a SaaS Fintech for financial service enterprises so they can better serve their SME customers.
- Surround Insurance (Cambridge, Massachusetts): Surround builds technology-powered insurance to protect modern consumers in an uncertain world.
- TellusLabs (Honorary Finalist – now part of Indigo Agriculture) (Boston, Massachusetts): TellusLabs is a Boston-based satellite imagery and machine learning company building a living map of the world’s food supply.
- WalletFi (Raleigh, North Carolina): WalletFi is a subscription management platform for financial institutions and their customers.
- Zylotech (Cambridge, Massachusetts): Zylotech continuously unifies/cleanses all available customer/account data, enriches it, and runs predictive analytics for maximum lift.