Visible Banking @ FinovateStartup: I will start to live blog on NetBanker.com in 3h

Jim Bruene invited me to live blog at the most exciting online finance conference of the year, his FinovateStartup in San Francisco.

The conference will start in 3 hours, and it is an only start for me (4:30am local time). One may say that I should be fully of energy as 1) it is already 12:30pm in England, 2) I arrived on Saturday. Fact is that even though my body is still dealing with the jetlag, I am so pleased/excited/proud/motivated that I can't wait to leave my room and head to SoMa and the conference center!

I will do my best to publish interesting, passionate and valuable posts on all the companies presenting at the event. As planned, I contacted most of their Founders and CEOs before the conference (I found all of them on Linkedin), and I blogged about over 50% of them. The last few weeks at work have been hectic, and it was a real challenge to prepare my trip to San Francisco at the same time.

Visit of the Wesabe and the Yodlee offices
I didn't sleep much in the last couple of weeks, but it was worth it. Yesterday, I shot a video interview with Marc Hedlund, Wesabe's Chief Product Officer, and I had lunch with Allese and Gabe , who will both be attending FinovateStartup today. Jason Knight, Wesabe's CEO, had an excellent reason to cancel our meeting: his wife is excpecting a baby, and I believe he had to go to the hospital urgently. I am sorry but I can't tell you Jason's baby's name. I love Wesabe, and to me it is one of the most innovate startups 2.0 out there.

In the afternoon, I took a train to Redwood City to catch up with Melanie Flanagan, VP Marketing at Yodlee, and shoot another video interview with the excellent Peter Hazlehurst, SVP Products at Yodlee. I met Peter at the first Finovate in NYC in October 07 (please check my first interview with him). I was keen to catch up with Peter who kindly found some time in his busy schedule.

Yesterday evening, Jim Bruene and Eric Mattson invited me to have dinner with the Finovate crew. I had a lovely time with the team. I almost felt part of the family! It is a private joke, only Jim and Eric will understand.

I have one more personal message to Peter: "aligato" for yesterday, and a private joke to Marc "may the force be with you"! ;)

It is 5:10am local time and I would better finalize my preparation now. Stay tuned on NetBanker and Visible Banking today!

Comments

[Debbie Pfeifer]

August Lee Knight
Born last night at 8:47 p.m.
Mom and baby are fine, Dad couldn't be prouder!

Thanks so much, Christophe, for coming by Wesabe yesterday. Wish I could have been there, and I'm looking forward to your updates from Finovate.