The Financial Club reposted this
Founder @ Financial Club and Fintech Retreat / DeFi Retreat. Bringing together Government and Private sector leaders in Finance and Technology across US / Europe / APAC.
The Financial Club turns 2 years today! Here is how The Financial Club came from idea to becoming the only professional network in #Fintech. 💡 Stage 1 - Ideation It took about 6 months from having the idea of building a community, using the network we've built at Fintech Retreat and DeFi Retreat, to host the first club meetings. The retreats served as a backbone for everything we've done since. 🎯 Stage 2 - Testing for Product Market Fit After launching the first Financial Club meetings in San Francisco and New York City in March of 2023 with a curated cohort of members and guests, we spent the next 16 months hosting meetings and testing different content and interaction formats, mainly to understand what should a fintech community deliver to its members. 🚀 Stage 3 - Scaling The work that we did over the first 22 months helped us come up with a unique product which incorporated the most successful parts from our annual Fintech Retreat and DeFi Retreat gatherings, new things we learned by running a closed community and also apply a more industry agnostic startup building techniques. As a result, The Financial Club opened it's doors to the entire Fintech Community in July of this year and has quickly grown to almost a 500 member strong community in just 2+ months! The growth is mainly driven by the club offerings that are helping our members: 1️⃣ Grow their professional network. 2️⃣ Participate in meaningful and interaction discussions with industry leaders 3️⃣ Explore business opportunities. 4️⃣ Find support groups of professionals that represent the diverse fintech ecosystem. Just like Fintech Retreat and DeFi Retreat gatherings have inspired a large number of new events or existing ones to create more engaging and curated content and networking opportunities (especially a growing number of new events this year), we expect The Financial Club to inspire stakeholders to think differently about what a Fintech Community can be. As I am looking back 2 years from now I am really excited to see how far we have gotten from the initial idea. Of course none of this would be possible if it wasn't for an incredible group of industry friends that have helped make the club what it is today. I wanted to give a shout-out to: Sheila Warren, Carole House, Ari Redbord, Patrick Hillmann, Dan Roesbery, Adam Pluemer, Daniel Gorfine, Michelle O'Connor and our newly appointed advisor - Sanjib Kalita for their support, time and for trusting that an immigrant from Moldova, who didn't really know a single person in Fintech before the pandemic is worth their time and attention. I also want to thank our non-public advisors that aren't mentioned on the website, but who agreed to be a reliable support system for me. And last but not least, I am really lucky that my old friend, amazing C-Suite operator and now partner - April Wong, agreed to join me in building the premier Fintech Network in the US and beyond! Really excited for what's coming!