Three Bay Area startups seek to shape the future of financial services.
Wells Fargo has announced that it has selected three early stage companies – Gridspace, Roostify, and Splice Machine – for investments of up to $500,000 for the fall 2015 class of the Wells Fargo Startup Accelerator, a semiannual boot camp for innovators who seek to shape the future of financial services. Companies join Wells Fargo’s accelerator to refine their potential breakthrough technologies for financial services and other applications. Wells Fargo also is now accepting worldwide through Dec. 16 applications for its spring 2016 class at https://accelerator.wellsfargo.com.“Our Startup Accelerator expands our vision of the future of financial services beyond the boundaries of Wells Fargo and banking, introducing us to innovators who want to shape how our customers handle their financial needs in the future,” said Steve Ellis, head of Wells Fargo’s Innovation Group, a company-wide organization that leverages emerging technologies to deliver customer-inspired products and services. “Our business and technology leaders work closely with accelerator members to test concepts, validate technologies, identify market opportunities, and guide them through the process of bringing their ideas to market.”
Fall 2015 Class:
- Gridspace of San Francisco – a collaboration between SRI International, the lab behind Siri, and a multidisciplinary team of engineers that creates software that harnesses the power of voice communications by making them searchable, organized, and accessible. “Connectivity isn’t the issue anymore,” said Evan Macmillan, CEO of Gridspace. “It’s making sure the content contained in each call is cataloged and analyzed. Working with Wells Fargo allows us to learn from its leadership in financial services and to discover new use cases for voice technology.”
- Roostify of San Francisco – a developer of automated real estate transaction technology that seeks to improve the customer experience and conversion rates. “Technology that automates any lengthy process, such as the process of purchasing a home, is a welcome addition to both lenders and consumers who are looking for efficiency in a daunting process,” said Rajesh Bhat, CEO and co-Founder of Roostify. “We are thrilled to have been accepted into the Wells Fargo Accelerator program and look forward to working with the bank to further enhance our technology platform for lenders and consumers.”
- Splice Machine (@splicemachine) of San Francisco – provides the Hadoop RDBMS, a next-generation database that is 5-to-10 times faster at one-fourth the cost of traditional databases. “We are proud to be selected for the Wells Fargo Accelerator program,” said Monte Zweben, co-founder and CEO at Splice Machine. “It validates the Splice Machine RDBMS value proposition to the financial services industry, where the need to more quickly manage rapid data growth to make more in-the-moment, data-driven decisions is growing.”
Wells Fargo’s Accelerator looks to explore big ideas with startups that provide technologies in fintech areas, such as analytics, big data, credit, deposits, marketing, mobile, payments, security, robotics, wealth management, and wearables, among others. Since its inception in 2014, the Wells Fargo Startup Accelerator has received applications from innovative companies in 23 countries.
Accelerator participants are paired with a Wells Fargo business leader that also is a potential customer for the startup. The mentoring executive introduces the startup to technology leaders inside the bank, and helps them work through the due diligence that’s required before an emerging technology results in a purchase order with the company. Wells Fargo is investing up to $500,000 in each participant in the fall 2015 class.
The newly selected Wells Fargo Startup Accelerator startups follow the spring 2015 graduates that have completed the program and are growing rapidly in multiple industries. They are:
- Bracket Computing of Sunnyvale, California – a company that harnesses the public cloud to securely and reliably run enterprise applications;
- Context360 of San Mateo, California – a company that interprets and predicts mobile application behavior, combining those insights with sensor data and machine-learning algorithms to power better decisions around when, where, and how to best engage mobile application users; and
- MotionSavvy of Rochester, New York – a company that has developed the world’s first two-way communication software for the deaf, utilizing the latest innovations in gesture and voice technology.