Money20/20 Europe wraps up final day with founders, funding and fintech innovation
Funding and founders took centre stage for the third and final day of Money20/20 Europe on Thursday, wrapping up an engaging showcase of cutting-edge fintech and the latest banking advancements.
Money20/20 Europe came to a close on Thursday with founders and funding capping off its agenda
Maintaining its “human by machine” theme, as well as the attention of delegates, the conference’s shifted agenda doubled down on its efforts to be “the place where money does business”.
With this, the 41 panel discussions, fireside chats, presentations and podcasts to swell at the seams of RAI Amsterdam sought to spotlight the dynamic synergies between banks, pioneering start-ups and forward-thinking investors, and chart a course intended to push the boundaries of the financial landscape.
Capital collaboration
Notable highlights from the agenda’s swan song included a dive into the changing tides of investor behaviour, as seen through the Where’s the Smart Money Flowing? panel attended by venture capitalists and consultants from Generation Investment Management, Bain Capital Ventures, FTS Group and Northzone.
The group of speakers addressed investors’ tactics for distinguishing the fintech flagbearers from the fintech fads, as well as the building appetite for more impactful investments beyond successful financial returns.
These ideas were further built upon by Regina Lau, CFO of Weavr, Elizabeth Kleinveld, head of acceleration at Startupbootcamp, Tingting Peng, chief capital, strategy and impact officer of Moove and Benjamin Fernandes, founder and CEO of African mobile payments platform NALA, who came together for the Funding Strategies in Uncertain Times session
At a similar angle to that of their precursors, the panel aimed to pinpoint the specific traits and qualities that enabled their businesses to attract capital and maintain steady growth even in the most uncertain funding environments.
This message of scarcity culminated in The Art of the Raise: What Investors Really Want, a session which brought together Neil Cunha-Gomes, head of EMEA fintech and digital assets for SoftBank Investment Advisors, and Hélène Falchier and Kaushalya Somasundaram, partners at Portage and FinTech Growth Fund respectively, with Micky Tesfaye, content manager Europe for Money20/20, serving as panel moderator.
While discussing the most favourable traits for funding-ready fintechs, Cunha-Gomes shared that SoftBank Vision Fund’s scope typically seeks fintechs secured by “competitive moats”, or limited but specialised propositions bolstered by clear identity massaging and refined resource applications.
“We absolutely don’t have any preferences or pre-set allocations as to any subset of fintech or insurtech digital assets,” Cunha-Gomes explained. “We’re very open-minded. We have to be logistic because you can’t really come into late-stage investing, particularly in fintech in Europe and say, we’re only really going to do this because that may not exist at that point in time.
“We have to be a little bit more optimistic and open-minded to saying, here’s what exists right now, do we have enough conviction in forming a thesis around this?”
This statement arrives against the dark shadow cast by the CB Insights report published last month, which suggested that funding into fintech sunk to a four-year low during this year’s first quarter, with a decrease in both the value and frequency of successfully closed rounds.
However, Cunha-Gomes was quick to refute this generally, stating: “Deals are getting done. I’m quite optimistic that things are going back quite nicely when more and more of the businesses that come across our table are incredibly high quality, incredibly focused.”
Adding to this, Somasundaram said the current direction of FinTech Growth Fund is focused on funding companies “that are doing simple things incredibly well”.
“There’s always a tendency to do too much I think, especially when you are trying to scale and grow. Keep it simple. Do it really, really well,” she advised. “If there’s a big enough return, then we’re going to make it a success.”
Horizon calling
As RAI Amsterdam slowly began to empty out towards the latter end of Thursday afternoon, FinTech Futures had a chance to catch up with Money20/20 chief strategy and growth officer Scarlett Sieber, to reflect on the execution of its packed agenda, subsequent revelations for the industry and its plans for the year ahead.
The conference first opened its doors on Tuesday to the tune of leading industry topics including AI and tokenisation, before channelling its view on blockchain technologies, individualisation in finance and the next generation of payment rails on Wednesday. Capping this course of discussion with a look into the most progressive initiatives for fintech founders specifically, Sieber stressed that Money20/20 Europe aimed to “make sure that we serve that the ecosystem in its entirety so we have something for everyone”.
“We do a process across all of our shows every year called call for content where we have submissions from the entire industry, and surprise surprise, a lot of them were AI, so if you actually look at the agenda across the floor this week, give or take almost 20% has AI in some component and that’s because that’s what people wanted to hear about.”
When questioned as to whether this line of discussion is expected to be sustained throughout Money20/20 conferences in the future, Sieber said that she thinks AI will return, bringing with it “even more specific use cases and examples of what’s actually happening”.
This promising prediction is bound to guide Money20/20’s resurfacing in October when it’s set to return to Las Vegas in the USA to execute its highly-anticipated North American leg.
