Finovate’s own Heather Stowell talks about IMPACT Funders and Founders Forum - a new initiative coming from Finovate this fall in New York.

Finnovate showcases cutting-edge banking and financial technology through a global conference series featuring short-form demos and thought leadership. Now, the conversation continues on the Finnovate podcast. Hey, everybody. Greg Palmer welcoming you to the Finnovate podcast.

We have recently wrapped up our Best of Show Winners series from Finnovate Spring. I would encourage you to go back over the last couple of weeks and check out all of those episodes again. Now we turn our attention towards Finnovate Fall, which is coming up this September, September 9th through the 11th. And a part of that event is actually something new that we're going to be launching called Impact Funders and Founders.

And joining me to talk about that, we have Heather Stowell, my longtime colleague at Finnovate. Heather, how are you doing today? I'm doing really well. I'm excited to join you today.

So a lot of people probably don't know, but Heather is really instrumental behind the scenes at getting all of our demoing companies ready to go and helping to select who we actually put up on stage. Heather, can you give our listeners a little bit of a background on yourself and your role at Finnovate? Sure, I'd be happy to. So I'm a senior director at Informa.

I have been working on Finnovate events now for over a decade. Originally, it started out with the demoing companies, you know, getting them to apply, screening them, getting the best demos up on stage. And it has since evolved into working with startups and scale-ups. Yeah, and that last piece is really critical.

So that's what we're going to be talking about. The program, as I mentioned, is Impact Funders and Founders. It's kind of a continuation of a program that we've been running at Finnovate over the last couple of years, but now it's getting a little bit more dedicated airtime. Can you give our listeners a little bit of background, an overview of what that Impact Session is all about?

The Impact Funders and Founders Forum will actually run alongside Finnovate Fall on September 11th. The core of this forum, this new event, is to connect startups and scale-ups with investors. Obviously, a lot of these startups and scale-ups will be raising funding, but the other side of things is we also want to foster an exchange of information. So in addition to raising funding, a lot of these conversations will also revolve around investor insights that they can share with startups, startups building and fostering connections with investors early on that hopefully are useful down the road.

So it's all about just combining these two communities and creating a real synergy between them. Yeah, absolutely. And this is something which is definitely an evolution of where we've seen from the startup community at our Finnovate events. How is impact different from the typical Finnovate events that people are probably used to seeing from us?

Finnovate events have always been focused on connecting fintech companies with new innovations with financial institution, decision makers, or buyers. While the event is focused on those companies, investors have always been a large part of our audience. They are at the event scouting, demoing companies, startups in the audience, looking for those new investment opportunities. So what we're doing with impact is actually enhancing their involvement with the event and streamlining the ways that they can connect with these startups and scale ups and get the information that they need Yeah and it certainly a critical element of the value that we been providing for a long time bringing these startups helping them to become more visible And this is, as I mentioned earlier, kind of the result of a little bit of work over the last couple of years of really targeting this community and trying to support the early stage founders, of course, these companies who will potentially end up going on to be on the main stage at Finnovate later on.

Can you talk a little bit about how Impact has evolved, where it started into now kind becoming its own entity? Yeah, that's a great question. So Impact, we've kind of put our toe in the water at several events over the last few years. We have done investor meetings between startups.

We've done startup pitches where we hand select companies. We've even expanded into content. While this has been a part of Finnovate, it has gotten really excellent feedback and so much traction that now it's actually ready to become its own event and its own forum that will run alongside it. Are there any names or success stories that you want to highlight from some of those early iterations to kind of whet people's appetites a little bit?

Sure. We've had really excellent investor organizations. They were interested early on and that interest has continued. So from across our Finnovate Europe event, all the way to our Finnovate Spring and Innovate Fall events, organizations have been like Experian Ventures, Fidelity Investments, Summit Partners.

They have routinely expressed interest and met with these startup organizations. The unique thing about the startups is some of the companies are brand new to us. They come looking for funding and some of the conversations are very successful. They're able to move them out of the event into the real world.

Some of the companies we also know, they are companies who have demoed and are coming back to us for this impact program to actually raise their next round, whether it's a seed round or a series A round. So seeing new companies, seeing older friends, it's really working out well because it's serving a different niche than Finnovate is. That's been one of the things that's been really surprising to me is just kind of the variety of companies that we've been able to bring into the impact program in its earlier iterations.

Because as you say, you sort of expect it to be companies for maybe too early to demo in some cases, but we have seen some alumni who kind of have that initial idea. They get up on stage, they do a good job up there and then realize, hold on, I need to talk to a different audience. I need to be looking at investors specifically because that's my critical need right now. And so, you know, this is an area where I think we can do a lot of good work to support that early stage ecosystem while also helping companies who maybe have already been up on stage.

So I guess my next question is around timing. Why is now the right time to kind of separate impact into its own event and launch it as its own entity? As mentioned, we are seeing, we have seen really great traction for it. Finnovate Fall is our largest event.

It's our flagship event. So it does make sense to, while we're breaking off impact, to also run it kind of alongside Finnovate Fall. So that way our impact audience gets what they're looking for in the form of investor and startup content, one-to-one prearranged meetings, startup pitches, but then they also get to overlap with Finnovate fall on that third day in the exhibition hall during networking sessions So they can have wider conversations with those FinTech buyers and decision makers that come to Finnovate while also having the impact experience So it just a great time to build it out because we have a schedule, we've experienced success, and aligning with Finnovate Fall is also going to be a really good thing for the program.

Yeah, absolutely. And plus the venue at Finnovate Fall is so, it just lends itself to this because you have that space just a couple floors away from the main conference part. So people who are attending Finnovate Fall can kind of easily come up to impact if they would like to. You mentioned something that I want to dive into just a little bit more deeply.

You talked about the one-on-one meetings and how we're going to be arranging those. Can you give us a little bit more information on the way that we're kind of structuring those and how we're going to make sure that they really bring a lot of value? Of course. The meetings will actually kick off the day, the impact day.

They'll happen in the Innovate Fall Exhibit Hall. So again, there's a little bit of crossover there. The meetings will be prearranged between founders, startups and scale ups and investors. And really, they will be customized to the investor focus so that we can make sure that it aligns with their portfolio remit and everyone gets the most out of those meetings as possible.

As mentioned before, a lot of these companies will be raising funding, but investors are also very interested in building long-term relationships with startups because you never know when they're going to be raising around. And startups also want to do the same thing. They also want feedback, insights into the process and what investors look for. So there are several ways that these meetings will benefit both of those communities.

Yeah, this is a common theme for people who listen to the podcast a lot. You will have heard us talk about the kind of personal relationships that exist and how critical those personal relationships are. And when you think about venture capital relationship to the startups that they fund, you know, there's obviously the financial aspect to it, but the really positive success stories always come back to this kind of partnership idea, this idea that people really are able to understand what each other's working on and support these ideas.

And so I think the more we can put a venture capitalist in the position of really understanding who they're connecting with and deepening those personal relationships, I think the more likely everybody is to have that successful outcome. So if somebody is listening to this and is kind of figuring out if they want to get involved or not, what types of people are you looking for at this point? Or maybe another way to put it is what opportunities are out there for people who want to kind of take the next step?

That's a great question. So right now we are obviously selling tickets to the event. They are for investors, whether that is a VC, could be an angel, a PE, any sort of investor is invited to the event. We're also selling tickets to startups.

So these could be startups raising funding, startups looking at raising funding down the road, startups who want insights. You know, we also have content stages that are focused on each area, investors and startups. So there are many different ways for delegates to get the most out of this event. If the startups do want to enhance their involvement, there are opportunities to apply to pitch to the investors, which rounds out the day, we'll hand select about eight companies.

There's an opportunity to book an impact zone stand within the exhibit hall that overlaps with Finnovate Fall So a couple of really great opportunities there And finally as we getting this event up and running I myself am looking for speakers for those content stages They could be FinTech entrepreneurs. They can be key employees at FinTech companies and investor speakers for those two stages. Yeah, I think this is one of those areas where we recognize that there's a lot of expertise that's out there that people can really benefit from.

So the meetings are critical. The pitch session is critical, but obviously so is the opportunity to learn from people who have experienced those success stories, especially if you're an early stage founder and you kind of need that guide rope to sort of somebody to tell you, hey, this is the best way to do this, or I wish I hadn't done it this way. I wish I would have done it this way instead. Those kinds of stories are so valuable.

So last question, what's your long-term vision for impact? Any big picture goals that you want to share? I mean, obviously, launching the event is a pretty significant step, but how far do you think you want to take it? There are a number of events out there for tech companies and investors, whether they are VCs, private equity or angels.

They focus widely on tech and they are not specific to fintech. So that is an area that we are really looking to fill. We have such a massive community of past demoing companies, of startups that we've worked with, of interested investors. And so we really do have the network to make something like this a success and to really provide a program that the industry is lacking right now.

I think down the road, what we would hope to do is beyond one-to-one meetings, content on stages, pitches, we'd hope to enhance the program with, you know, more mentorship, whether it's from investors about what pitch decks should look like, what they're missing, what startups should know, all the way to an entrepreneur mentorship. What are some of the pitfalls? How do you scale a company? How do you make sure that you are hiring the correct talent?

So I think what we will be focusing on is more of those one-to-one experiences too, and that exchange of information. So there are so many ways that we can grow, and it's just a really exciting thing to explore right now. Yeah, absolutely. And anytime you see a program kind of start from, you know, a small piece of an event to kind of growing through that event and now kind of getting its own event, it's always exciting for us.

It means you kind of hit something. There's a little bit of lightning there, which is always good. So for people who are interested in learning more, we've got the website link for you in the episode description down below. You'll have Heathers and my LinkedIn information there as well.

If you're interested in reaching out to find out how you could potentially get involved and hopefully we'll see a lot of you this fall in New York. In the meantime, Heather, thank you so much for joining me to talk us through everything. You're welcome. Thanks for having me.

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com for information on sponsoring, speaking, or demoing. Thanks for listening.