Finovate 2008 Conference Demo Lineup - Comments & Expectations (part 2)

I hope you have already bought your ticket for Finovate 2008 in NYC on October 14th!

In the meantime, I invite you to check the conference demo lineup announced on NetBanker two days ago. It is another promising line up from Jim and Eric.

Most of the shortlisted companies already demoed some of their innovative services at Finovate 2007 and/or FinovateStartup2008.


* mShift <mshift.com>
MShift is the leading provider of Mobile Banking solutions in the US.

It is a competitor of Drew Sievers' mFoundry. mShift is active online too, they help a few Credit Unions to launch a Facebook application such as Keypoint Credit Union (November 2007), and SEFCU Credit Union (July 2008). I hope I will have the pleasure to interview their CEO, Awele Ndili.
Coverage on NetBanker


* Inner8 <inner8.com>
Discover the power of 8 - 15/09/2008?


* LendingClub <lendingclub.com>
LendingClub is one of the most popular social lending sites, with Prosper and Zopa. They did a big marketing coup when they launched the service exclusively on Facebook.

Management team: Renaud LaPlanche - Founder & CEO, Patrick Gannon - SVP Lending.
It is not everyday that a Frenchman creates one of the most innovative startups, especially in the booming Social Lending space. Well done Renaud!

Renaud was supposed to come and speak at FinovateStartup last April, but he had to pull out because of their recent initiative: Lending Club Adds Secondary Market to Updated S1.
Coverage on NetBanker


* Pertuity Direct <pertuitydirect.com>
Pertuity Direct is a financial services company which aims to bring the next generation of social lending to the web. They will launch in September 2008.

I invite you to check the video interview I shot with Kim Muhota, Founder & CEO, at Finovate 2007.
Coverage on NetBanker


* SmartHippo <smarthippo.com>
SmartHippo.com is a vertical search engine and comparison shopping service for financial products. We are the first-ever site that uses the power of community to help consumers find the best finance rates and save money.

I invite you to check my video interview with George Favvas, Smarthippo's Founder & CEO, at FinovateStartup.
 
 
* Sybase 365 <sybase.com/365>
Sybase 365 is the world leader in mobile messaging services, mCommerce, and mobile marketing & advertising.


* Vidoop <vidoop.com>
Vidoop provides enterprise-level, multi-factor authentication solutions to businesses.

I am not sure if they are coming, but I look forward to meet with the Senior Management of the company, people like Luke Sontag - Co-Founder & President or Mitchell Savage - EVP (Mitchell presented at FinovateStartup for Confident Technologies).

To find out more about Vidoop, I invite you to check their blog.


* Wesabe <wesabe.com>
Wesabe was the first PFM online community ever launched, back in 2006. It is one of the most innovative startups out there. The latest addition to their service was to offer the option to update your Wesabe account in "real-time" via the hugely popular twitter.

Marc Hedlund became CEO after Jason Knight stepped down due to personal reasons (Jason, we all hope August's condition is improving). Just like Jason, Marc makes himself available: you can contact him directly everyday at specific times.
As far as I am concerned, they have the best Marketing/Comms team: Debbie, Allese, and Gabe, are doing a great job with the bloggers.

I invite you to check my video interview with Marc Hedlund, co-Founder & CEO.
Coverage on NetBanker


* WeSeed <weseed.com>
WeSeed is a free online community for sharing ideas and to figuring out the stock market-without the middle man telling you how to invest.

I have never met them, but it would be a pleasure to interview Jennifer Openshaw - CEO & Co-Founder if she is around.
Currently, they have a splage page with several videos from YouTube. I invite you to check their Twitter page (with only 11 followers and 1 update...) They also have a page on Facebook.

 
* Yodlee <yodlee.com>
Yodlee delivers innovative financial applications that make online banking more profitable. Accel and S1 Corporation are two of their investors. Their solutions are focused mainly on three key areas of online banking: Personal Financial Management, Payments and Customer Acquisition.

I really like Yodlee. They provide excellent products, made by great people like Peter Hazlehurst - SVP Products (un grand bonjour egalement a Melanie Flanigan - Senior Director, Marketing)

Yodlee managed to reinvent themselves: they are not the "account aggregation company" anymore. They provide an excellent Personal Finance Management solution for banks as well as individuals. They power the popular PFM service from Bank of America.

I met Peter on many occasion. I invite you to check my two video interviews with him: @ Finovate 2007 in NYC, @ FinovateStartup 2008 in San Francisco.
Coverage on NetBanker


Related articles on Visible-Banking.com
* Finovate 2008 - Conference demo Lineup (Part 1)
* Coverage - FinovateStartup 2008 (San Francisco)
* Coverage - Finovate 2007 (New York)
* Video - Coverage of FinovateStartup on NetBanker and Visible Banking
* Video - Interview with Peter Hazlehurst, SVP Product at Yodlee
* Video - Interview with Marc Hedlund, co-Founder & CEO of Wesabe

Interview with Yodlee (San Francisco - April 08)

While I was in San Francisco to cover FinovateStartup live on NetBanker, I had to chance to visit Yodlee's offices in Redwood City. I was keen to catch up with the knowledgeable Peter Hazlehurst.

I met Peter for the first time last year in New York at the first Finovate event.
 
Interview with Peter Hazlehurst, SVP Product

Related articles on Visible-Banking.com
* Coverage FinovateStartup 08 (San Francisco)
* Coverage Finovate 07 (NYC)
* Interview Peter Hazlehurst, SVP Product at Yodlee

FinovateStartup - Interview with Jwaala

I covered the first Finovate event organized by Jim Bruene back in October 2007 (in New York City).
The event was such a success that Jim decided to organize two more Finovate events in 2008: FinovateStartup & Finovate 08.

I was delighted when Jim invited me to be the official live blogger on NetBanker at FinovateStartup in San Francisco.

Interview with Andrew Taylor, CTO of Jwaala

Related articles on Visible-Banking.com
* Coverage FinovateStartup 08 (San Francisco)
* Coverage Finovate 07 (NYC)
* Interview Andrew Taylor, CTO of Jwaala (October 07)

FinovateStartup - Interview with Buxfer

I covered the first Finovate event organized by Jim Bruene back in October 2007 (in New York City).
The event was such a success that Jim decided to organize two more Finovate events in 2008: FinovateStartup & Finovate 08.

I was delighted when Jim invited me to be the official live blogger on NetBanker at FinovateStartup in San Francisco.

Interview with Shashank Pandit



Related articles on Visible-Banking.com
* Coverage FinovateStartup 08 (San Francisco)
* Coverage Finovate 07 (NYC)

FinovateStartup - Interview with Wesabe

I covered the first Finovate event organized by Jim Bruene back in October 2007 (in New York City).
The event was such a success that Jim decided to organize two more Finovate events in 2008: FinovateStartup & Finovate 08.

I was delighted when Jim invited me to be the official live blogger on NetBanker at FinovateStartup in San Francisco.

Interview with Marc Hedlund, Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer

 

Related articles on Visible-Banking.com
* Coverage FinovateStartup 08 (San Francisco)
* Coverage Finovate 07 (NYC)

FinovateStartup - Interview with Mint

I covered the first Finovate event organized by Jim Bruene back in October 2007 (in New York City).
The event was such a success that Jim decided to organize two more Finovate events in 2008: FinovateStartup & Finovate 08.

I was delighted when Jim invited me to be the official live blogger on NetBanker at FinovateStartup in San Francisco.

Interview with Aaron Patzer, Founder & CEO of Mint.com

Related articles on Visible-Banking.com
* Coverage FinovateStartup 08 (San Francisco)
* Coverage Finovate 07 (NYC)
* Interview Aaron Patzer, Founder & CEO of Mint (October 07)

Banking 2.0 - FinovateStartup: Focus on Invesra

I covered the first Finovate event organized by Jim Bruene back in October 2007 (in New York City). The event was such a success (it sold out in only 6 weeks) that Jim decided to organize two more Finovate events in 2008: FinovateStartup & Finovate 08.

I was delighted when Jim invited me to be the official live blogger on NetBanker at FinovateStartup in San Francisco.  Before the event, I plan to blog about most of the 40 startups which will demo their products. My goal is to give you a brief overview of those innovative startups.

Invesra, LTSave.com next generation 
I contacted  Sunil Bhatia, CEO of LTSave.com, via Linkedin.

LT Save is a 5 years old company. Invesra, the new name and new look for LTSave.com, will be launched in April 2008 for banks and Credit Unions.

LTSave is an SEC-registered investment adviser, and offers a complete online web system to these enterprises to provide investment management and retirement planning services.

Sunil will demo their Online Retirement Management System for banks and CU’s for the first time publicly at FinovateStartup. It provides a complete self-service online user experience for retirement and investment management.

Related articles on Visible-Banking.com
* Coverage FinovateStartup

I covered the first Finovate event organized by Jim Bruene back in October 2007 (in New York City). The event was such a success (it sold out in only 6 weeks) that Jim decided to organize two more Finovate events in 2008: FinovateStartup & Finovate 08.

I was delighted when Jim invited me to be the official live blogger on NetBanker at FinovateStartup in San Francisco.  Before the event, I plan to blog about most of the 40 startups which will demo their products. My goal is to give you a brief overview of those innovative startups.

Invesra, LTSave.com next generation 
I contacted  Sunil Bhatia, CEO of LTSave.com, via Linkedin.

LT Save is a 5 years old company. Invesra, the new name and new look for LTSave.com, will be launched in April 2008 for banks and Credit Unions.

LTSave is an SEC-registered investment adviser, and offers a complete online web system to these enterprises to provide investment management and retirement planning services.

Sunil will demo their Online Retirement Management System for banks and CU’s for the first time publicly at FinovateStartup. It provides a complete self-service online user experience for retirement and investment management.

Related articles on Visible-Banking.com
* Coverage FinovateStartup

Banking 2.0 - FinovateStartup: Focus on Jwaala

I covered the first Finovate event organized by Jim Bruene back in October 2007 (in New York City). The event was such a success (it sold out in only 6 weeks) that Jim decided to organize two more Finovate events in 2008: FinovateStartup & Finovate 08.

I was delighted when Jim invited me to be the official live blogger on NetBanker at FinovateStartup in San Francisco.  Before the event, I plan to blog about most of the 40 startups which will demo their products. My goal is to give you a brief overview of those innovative startups.

Jwaala, home to the award winning Money Tracker product
I have met Andrew Taylor in November 07 in NYC. Andrew was presenting at Finovate 2007. 

Jwaala's flagship product is MoneyTracker. It went live at Amplify CU in March 07.

MoneyTracker includes an account aggregation engine, an advanced natural search feature and you can easily turn any search into an automatic alert with the option of receiving the info via email, sms or even personal rss feed. Jwaala's rss feed is a real innovation in the financial services world.

At Finovate 2007, Andrew's demo of the extremely intuitive natural search feature impressed the audience.

I invite you to check the blog they recently launched, BetterOnlineBanking, as well as their two other products, HomeDeposits and SocialCentral.

MoneyTracker 2.0
They have some pretty neat additions to the MoneyTracker platform, things like an iGoogle-like dashboard (or pageflakes/netvibes like), and a slew embeddable widgets.
So now you can embed your networth history widget or your recent starbucks transactions whereever you like (facebook, blog, wiki, etc).
Also, since their customer's can license our full source code stack and use MT as a platform, they have their first customers starting to write their own widgets.

I invite you to watch my video interview with Andrew.

We talked about topics such as Personal Finance, Credit Unions and Web 2.0.

As an anecdote, even though they have been blogging since November 2006, their kept their blogroll short... but the Mint Blog made the list.

Related articles on Visible-Banking.com
* Coverage FinovateStartup
* Interview Andrew Taylor, CTO at  Jwaala
* Interview Aaron Patzer, Founder & CEO of Mint

Banking 2.0 - FinovateStartup: Focus on Expensr

I covered the first Finovate event organized by Jim Bruene back in October 2007 (in New York City). The event was such a success (it sold out in only 6 weeks) that Jim decided to organize two more Finovate events in 2008: FinovateStartup & Finovate 08.

I was delighted when Jim invited me to be the official live blogger on NetBanker at FinovateStartup in San Francisco.  Before the event, I plan to blog about most of the 40 startups which will demo their products. My goal is to give you a brief overview of those innovative startups.

Expensr, another online community focused on personal finance
I contacted Reman Child, expensr's co-Founder, via Linkedin.


Even though the online personal finance management space is crowded, with clear leaders like Mint or Wesabe, expensr managed to be listed as one of the 15 companies that will change the world.


Financials, Figures and stats
* Less than 10,000 registered members and 1,700 estimated unique visitors in Feb 08. (source: NetBanker)

They created the expensr blog back in June 2007.
   
Related articles on Visible-Banking.com
* Coverage FinovateStartup
* Interview Aaron Patzer, Founder & CEO of Mint
* Interview Shawn Ward, co-Founder of Geezeo

Banking 2.0 - FinovateStartup: Focus on Buxfer

I covered the first Finovate event organized by Jim Bruene back in October 2007 (in New York City). The event was such a success (it sold out in only 6 weeks) that Jim decided to organize two more Finovate events in 2008: FinovateStartup & Finovate 08.

I was delighted when Jim invited me to be the official live blogger on NetBanker at FinovateStartup in San Francisco.  Before the event, I plan to blog about most of the 40 startups which will demo their products. My goal is to give you a brief overview of those innovative startups.

Buxfer, Track Your Money

I contacted Ashwin Bharambe and Shashank Pandit, the co-Founders fo Buxfer, via Linkedin.

Buxfer was one of the first online personal finance platforms (launched back in September 2006).

Last year, Buxfer launched a Facebook application and also became the first Banking application to offer payment intergration through Amazon payment site.

I invite you to check the coverage of Buxfer on NetBanker.
 
How it started
While working on his Ph.D. at Carnegie Mellon University, Ashwin was immensely frustrated by the numerous IOUs hanging on his refrigerator. Dinner bills, rent, utilities, ski trips … the list went on. One day he decided to write a program to track all the IOUs for him and his group. It was so useful that all his friends wanted a copy of it. Tired of distributing copies (and subsequent updates) of this script, Ashwin decided to team up with fellow graduate student Shashank to develop a website. And thus was born Buxfer.
 
Financials, Figures and Stats
* As of August 2007, Buxfer had tracked $54.4 million in over 254,000 transactions. (source: techcrunch)
* 80,000 registered users and 9,200 estimated unique visitors in Feb 08 (source: NetBanker)
  
Related articles on Visible-Banking.com
* Coverage FinovateStartup
* Coverage Finovate 2007
* Interview Aron Patzer, Founder & CEO of Mint
* Interview Andrew Taylor, CTO at Jwaala
* Interview Shawn Ward, co-Founder of Geezeo
* Personal Finance, the web 2.0 killer app?