First Ever FinTech Startup Weekend to be Held in NYC December 7 – 9

Nov. 19, 2012 - PRLog -- New York City Startup Weekend (http://nyc.startupweekend.org/), today announced it is hosting the first ever FinTech Startup Weekend (http://nyc.startupweekend.org/events/nycfintech/) in New York City from Friday, December 7 until Sunday, December 9, 2012.  

The event is sponsored by Andera, Box and E*Trade, and will be hosted at Alley NYC, 500 Seventh Avenue, 17th Floor, New York. It is also supported by API and platform providers such as Bloomberg, Dwolla, Estimize, E*TRADE, Microsoft BizSpark, OpenFin and Stocktwits, and has been organized in cooperation with the Enterprise Tech Innovation Meetup, FinTech Innovation Lab and the NY FinTech Startups Meetup.

“Innovation is created from friction, and FinTech Startup Weekend is going to be an incredible model to harness just that. It will bring together the best and brightest from the finance world and some of the nation’s best engineers and entrepreneurs, to not just talk about problems and possibilities, but to actually do something about them,” said Marc Nager, CEO of Startup Weekend.

Scott Ignall the CTO at Lightspeed Financial will open the event as the keynote speaker on Friday at 7pm. From there developers, marketers, designers, product managers and startup enthusiasts attending will have 60 seconds each to pitch their concept to an audience of their peers.

Those with diverse skills and similar interests will then form teams, and spend the rest of the weekend focusing on customer development, validating ideas, practicing Lean startup methodologies and building an early version of their product. The weekend culminates in a demonstration of prototypes on Sunday evening, after which participants receive feedback from the panel of expert judges including Maria Gotsch, President and CEO at the Partnership for New York City Fund, Phil Pearlman, Executive Editor, Investor at StockTwits, Mazy Dar, CEO of OpenFin and Omar Qari, Payments Partnerships & Mobile Distribution at foursquare.

“We are excited about the prospects of the growing financial technology sector because of programs like the FinTech Innovation Lab and the brand new FinTech Startup Weekend,” said Partnership for New York City Fund President and CEO Maria Gotsch. “Hopefully the ideas generated here will be the first steps to building new companies that will ultimately create jobs in New York City and strengthen our position as the financial capital of the world.”

Coaches and mentors with extensive experience in the launch and management of FinTech companies will also be available throughout the weekend to work with teams. Coaches come from companies such as Andera, On Deck Capital, Roboinvest, SecondMarket, Wallaby Financial and Waspit.

“The weekend features a phenomenal lineup of talented individuals with inspirational success stories who are volunteering their time to help the next generation of innovators. For anyone seeking to launch a financial technology enterprise, there will never be a better chance to make it happen than at FinTech Startup Weekend,” said Nick Gavronsky, co-organizer for FinTech Startup Weekend, and Head of Product at OpenFin.

What: FinTech Startup Weekend

When: 7pm Friday, December 7 until 6:30pm Sunday, December 9, 2012

Where: The Alley NYC, 500 Seventh Avenue, 17th Floor, New York, NY  

How: If you are a member of the media interested in attending, please contact Sally Lyden, Articulate Communications to acquire a free ticket – (e) slyden@articulatecomms.com, (p) 212.255.0080 ext. 11

About Startup Weekend:

Startup Weekends are weekend-long, hands-on experiences where entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs can find out if startup ideas are viable.  On average, half of Startup Weekend’s attendees have technical or design backgrounds, the other half have business backgrounds.