NYC: The Rest of the Story
It’s been a whirlwind. And the days have blown right on by. So, we missed giving the updates on NYC Days 3 & 4, but in the words of Luther Vandross — “Never Too Late” (bet you don’t hear about Luther on too many tech company blogs!).
Day 3
We demoed. We showed the crowd CentsCity!
The full day was Finovate. From 8:30 am until 6 pm, 32 companies gave 7-minute demos of their financial and banking innovations. It was one after another — some of our favorites being the folks from SmartyPig, TILE Financial, SimpliFi, and BrightScope. Also really digging Credit.com and Home Account.
Skill-Life wasn’t scheduled until the bottom half of the final group, so we took stage at around 3:15 pm. This was a new setting for us and CentsCity, so we spent a good portion of the day taking it in and making connections where we could. The morning and afternoon sessions of demos were followed by 2 hour networking sessions. Since we had not yet demoed, we spent the morning networking session meeting folks including contacts at FastCompany and Fidelity Investments.
The demo itself went wonderfully well. By the time we got on stage, we had rehearsed it a number of times. Both the pitching (Felix Lloyd) and the driving (Todd Waits) went as planned. We finished with 40 seconds to spare and even gave a moment for the CentsCity soundbed to groove for the audience.
And how did the audience respond? All signs were up! The product is so different in look and function than anything that’s out there. You could tell it caught everyone’s attention.
During the afternoon networking session, we had a table set up and got a constant flow of traffic. Without getting into great detail here, we had significant conversations with a few venture capitalist, two very likely pilot customers, and a number of potential strategic partners. Hopefully, more detail to come in future postings as these things take shape.
The “Best in Show” award somehow slipped us by, though the event organizers told us we lost out by hundredths of a point. Hats off to the guys from BancVue and FirstROI — they guaranteed victory and they delivered. Helluva demo from those guys with their Kasasa product.
And where did Wednesday leave us off? Well, the night ended at a bar by the hotel with a few of the other demoing company execs and the good folks from Atomic PR. More than that, it left us with lots to do in the days ahead and some important conversations to continue.
Day 4
Our final day in NYC was all about making the most of the time we still had in the city. We met with a few people from the William J. Clinton Foundation, having originally come into contact with them at a meeting on Financial Education & Games at the Casey Foundation in Baltimore. They had the opportunity to see CentsCity up close as we dug deep into the demo and our expected road ahead. We’re now working to partner with the Clinton Foundation to have youth in Harlem learn financial skills through CentsCity during the next Financial Literacy Month (April 2010).
Otherwise, I had a great lunch with a potential investor and advisor at the Core Club, before we rushed off to the airport.
From what we’ve been able to track, CentsCity has attracted some coverage from the Wall Street Journal , Spend on Life, PaymentsViews, Student Lending Analytics, and Keeping Nickels. We also had a recent interview with the Baltimore Sun, which has been looking closely at Financial Education and Video Games.
More to come.
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