Nex Cubed, an investor that creates and accelerates frontier tech companies, has named Mike Ma as Managing Director of its FinTech Accelerator and has announced seven companies selected to participate in its Spring 2020 FinTech Program.
Over the last three years, Nex Cubed has established itself as a leader in early-stage innovation and acceleration, creating a global ecosystem of strategic investors, with 140 mentors, 50 advisors, 3 industry-specific Centers of Excellence, 20 corporate and government partners, and investments in over 70 startups.
In 2020, Nex Cubed is building on its success by scaling existing programming, including the launch of its FinTech Accelerator in New York City.
Nex Cubed’s FinTech Accelerator is a bespoke, semi-remote, sixteen-week program focused on pairing technically and operationally talented founders with fintech advisors and subject matter experts. These experts work with teams daily, preparing the startups for investment and enterprise readiness.
“With innovation in fintech addressing issues throughout the global economy, we are extremely proud to introduce this select group of founders pioneering transformative fintech solutions,” said Marlon Evans, CEO at Nex Cubed.
The FinTech Accelerator is part of Nex Cubed’s startup acceleration platform that also includes the Nex Cubed Frontier Tech Accelerator in San Francisco and the Nex Cubed Digital Health Accelerator in San Diego. Nex Cubed’s platform supports angel to seed stage startups and helps them to drive commercial adoption of their solutions and prepares founding teams for their next round of financing.
Nex Cubed has hired Mike Ma to serve as the Managing Director of the FinTech Accelerator. Mike has an extended track record of success in technology, advertising, marketing, and sales in organizations ranging from founding and advising startups to running product strategy and advertising campaigns for multi-billion dollar companies.
“We’re thrilled to have Mike join us at a time of exceptional growth and opportunity for Nex Cubed,” said Nex Cubed Co-Founder and Chief Growth Officer, Kelsey Morgan Pasqualichio. “Mike’s experience working with companies at all stages and his in-depth knowledge of the financial industry uniquely positions him to help us build on existing momentum and provide strong leadership as we accelerate the world’s most innovative fintech companies.”
Nex Cubed has assembled a distinguished 17-member Advisory Team that is embedded with the accelerator companies and works with founders on a daily basis. The team includes change agents who have served at organizations like JPMorgan, 3iGroup, Credit Suisse, Fortress, Route 66 Ventures, Nasdaq, Blockchain at UCLA, Tradeshift, Box, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Bank of America, Visa, Wells Fargo, TangoTrade, GE Capital, New York Angels, SoFi, PayPal, UBS, Sway Ventures, Harvard Business School, and Goldman Sachs.
The seven companies selected for the Spring FinTech program are A.I. Capital Research, DeFiner, Destiny, Earn.re, InnoDT, Sixpence, and Vestalyze. The Spring program launched on March 2nd with a 2-day kickoff event held at the Franklin Templeton Investment offices in New York, and will culminate in June with a formal Showcase and Demo Night in New York.
A.I. Capital Research
A.I. Capital Research pioneers Deep Reinforcement Learning (RL)’s application in the world of finance and business. As AI achieves more and more unthinkable milestones such as beating humans in board games like Go (AlphaGo) and video games like Dota (OpenAI Five), the Deep RL algorithm behind these achievements becomes more and more known to the public. Instead of applying such cutting-edge technology to more games, our team specializes in Deep RL’s direct applications into real problems the industry is facing. We started by solving quantitative trading in the FX market and launching the first Deep RL managed hedge fund with A.I. Capital Management, and are now launching A.I. Capital Research to apply our expertise and ambition into solving more problems outside of trading, including business optimization, economics forecasting, and personal finance management to benefit financial institutions and the general public.
DeFiner
DeFiner is a non-custodian financial institution for digital asset investments, loans, savings, and payments without the middleman. DeFiner’s globally available, decentralized lending marketplace is designed to securely borrow and lend digital assets through smart-contracts on the blockchain. The company’s mission is to advance financial trust, growth, and simplicity. Users can access DeFiner anytime, anywhere in the world, within a fully transparent, secure, and open network.
Destiny
Destiny is a hybrid Personal Financial Management and customer retention platform aimed at helping financial institutions bridge the technology gap to the most crucial demographic in banking; their young and digital-first customers. Most financial institutions today do not provide services that meet the needs of debt-laden Millennials. By partnering with Destiny, their cutting edge debt management tool is delivered in an API to the institution’s mobile app and eliminates the customer’s debt as fast as possible. Simultaneously, Destiny’s Banker tool leverages the data gathered to help the institution increase customer retention, loyalty, and ultimately uncover unforeseen loan opportunities in a way that hasn’t existed in the market until now.
Earn.re
Earn RE, Inc. has developed a first to market blockchain-based platform facilitating SEC compliant funding of commercial real estate projects in the United States (currently a $9 trillion market). The platform will significantly enhance investor liquidity and reduce sponsor development costs by leveraging the power of the blockchain. Earn’s team is comprised of experienced real estate developers, securities attorneys, licensed securities professionals, and renowned blockchain developers.
InnoDT
We now live in a blockchain world filled with a never-ending growing number of transactions and crypto products. In the last 10 years, this market has grown from $1B to a $200B total cryptocurrency market, and the majority of this space is still filled with speculation and a lack of laws around the world. InnoDT’s customers recognize it as the solution that is visual, fast and reliable. InnoDT is a data platform designed for big data and machine learning by providing visibility and traceability into blockchain transactions for analytics and identity associations that identify good and bad activities across the market. The company is supported by Draper University and accelerated by UCLA Anderson Venture Accelerator.
Sixpence
Today, there are plenty of apps and platforms to facilitate quick one-time transactions between people. But what exists for people to gather funds together for shared goals over time? Think group savings meets crowdfunding, meets roundups (as popularized by Acorns), and you have Sixpence. Anyone can create a “Sixpence Jar” and then gather funds through one-time contributions or roundups, enabling people to steadily contribute to shared goals. PTO raising funds for a field trip or coach raising funds for a youth sports team? Create a jar and get parents rounding up. College roommates wanting to save together for a ski trip? Create a jar and contribute steadily together with your own daily purchases. Family who wants to save together for an annual vacation? There can be a jar for that too. This isn’t P2P fintech, it’s group fintech, and it’s the best way for us to achieve financial goals together.
Vestalyze
Vestalyze helps professional money managers and retail traders manage investment portfolios more effectively by providing a SaaS cloud-based platform that automatically tracks securities transactions, provides clarity into risk and performance metrics, offers real-time trade analytics, customizable reports, and extends messaging around user-established action triggers. Vestalyze helps clients increase income potential, save time to generate complex reporting, mitigate portfolio management risk, and provides a complete suite of investment analytics that can be tailored to each specific client and stored in the cloud for on-demand future reference.
Applications for the Fall 2020 FinTech Accelerator will open in June 2020. To learn more about the program and to apply, please visit the Nex Cubed FinTech website.
