Mercury’s Post

It's #WomensHistoryMonth! We're thrilled to start our spotlight series with Catherine Unertl, Head of Partnerships and Operations at Mercury. Catherine was recently named one of NYC Fintech Women's 2023 Inspiring #Fintech Females. She manages Mercury's work with partner banks and financial institutions to ensure seamless services for their #startup customers. Read her full Q&A to learn about #bankfintech partnerships, her experience joining Mercury as the 20th employee, and her advice for women in #fintech. 💫 Tell us about yourself and your current role. Mercury works with partner banks to provide our core services. This allows us to invest deeply in our product, user experience, and in helping more startups succeed. As Head of Financial Partnerships and Operations at Mercury, my focus is on managing and enriching our relationships with partner banks and financial institutions, ensuring seamless onboarding and smooth financial transactions for our startup customers. This role demands a blend of fintech acumen and relationship-building skills, areas where I draw heavily from my background in education policy and edtech to make strides. 💫 What's an achievement you're most proud of? One achievement that stands out distinctly in my career at Mercury is the successful launch of our corporate credit card, IO, in 2022. Joining Mercury as the 20th employee, I've had the unique opportunity to witness and contribute to the company's growth and innovation firsthand. The IO card project, in particular, represents a significant milestone in our journey to offer financial solutions tailored for startups. The process of bringing the IO card to life was a testament to the power of collaboration and partnership. Working closely with our financial partners, we navigated the complexities of the fintech landscape to design a product that not only meets the dynamic needs of startups but also sets a new standard for banking services in our industry. The IO card's launch required a harmonious blend of technical innovation, strategic planning, and relentless dedication to our vision of empowering startups with the tools they need to succeed. 💫 What's your advice for women in the fintech industry? Invite more women to join your events, whether it is a partner dinner or a quarterly business review. Bring other women with you to observe, learn, and back you up in these spaces. Any time I meet with partners, and I can bring a member of my team with me, I do. There is a ton of power in telling younger women that they belong in all spaces and in rooms where decisions are made. Lean into your strengths - build relationships and run partnerships the way that feels right to you rather than trying to fit the mold of how your peers are doing the work. The banking industry tends to be heavily male-dominated. When you make space for yourself and your way of doing things, you make space for other women as well.

Women leading tech companies remain a rarity. Women raising finance for tech companies like hen’s teeth. Anne Boden of Starling Bank is on a mission to change things. Just two per cent of venture capital funding goes to female entrepreneurs. Only 18 per cent of high-growth enterprises include one or more women, while all-male founding teams make up 82 per cent of high-growth in the UK. #scaleups #tech #finance

If money is culture and fintech is culture, then let’s be clear—women run both. There are a million ways to become a creator, but here’s how mine started: in a newsroom, reporting on billions of dollars pouring into #fintech, and watching, frustrated, as women were constantly left out of the conversation. So, three years ago, I quit my 9-5 and launched Fintech Is Femme to change that narrative. I wanted to spotlight the brilliant women building new business models, tackling structural barriers, and, frankly, proving they’re the best bet for the future of our financial system. In Year 1: Our newsletter hit 50,000 subscribers. In Year 3: It evolved into Fintech Feminists, a 350-page book showcasing 40 trailblazing women in fintech, and will be published this October with Wiley. Along the way: We’ve hosted SEVEN sold-out Fintech Is Femme Summits—including our first-ever Creator Summit on Monday! 💸 One thing has become clear through it all: Women are the key to unlocking a better financial future. Female-founded companies generate more revenue, more profit, and better ROI. And these women are just plain better under pressure. 💪 Yes, producing these events as a team of two with Anton Briones has its challenges. But here’s the thing—the creator economy is now a $100 billion industry. It’s the fastest-growing segment of entrepreneurs, and women are leading the way. Fintechs like Wave HQ are catching on to this massive opportunity to serve the creator-turned-business leader, and business leader-turned-creator. We’re just getting started. 🚀 To my Fintech Is Femme community, our speakers, and supporters: Thank you for backing our mission and proving, time and time again, that women are the greatest ROI. 💜 To our sponsor Wave HQ, Kerry Reynolds, Catherine Andrew, thank you for seeing the vision and being the fintech platform for the creator economy. And thank you to LetterShop and Brigid Nelson for sponsoring our Happy Hour with wine and delicious treats! 🥂 And Whop for sponsoring our closing fireside chat with young business leaders who amaze me every day - and inspire no matter your age - Morgan Young; Ume Habiba; Keta Bagashvili Our venue Rise, created by Barclays To the rest of our speaker faculty, thank you for your time and expertise: Alex Chester-Iwata; Anam Lakhani; Eve Halimi; Angella G.; Arden Elizabeth Evenson; Brett Dashevsky; Caitlyn Kumi; Caroline Tanis, CDFA®MBA; CHRISTINA FARINACCI-ROBERTS; Eve Halimi; Elana Zak; Fell Ogden Gray; Katie Perry; Kim Rosenblum; Kathryn Vazquez Kmiotek; Liang Zhao; Marion Siboni; Preeya Goenka 🐝; Priyanka Vazirani; Shannon Almeida; Supreet Kaur; Thamina Stoll Let's keep pushing the boundaries together. 💜 #WomenInFintech #FemaleFounders #CreatorEconomy #Innovation

This week's #fintech news: 1. Lule D. Steps Down as CEO of eToro US: She will transition to an advisory role for the rest of 2024, helping her successor, Andrew McCormick, to take over. With experiences in high-profile leadership roles across banks, brokerages, and fintech, she has created a historical mark for women in the industry. This is especially true considering women hold less than 10% of leadership positions as founders and members of executive boards of fintech firms and only 5.6% of CEOs in fintech are women.   Only four Black women have ever been CEOs in a Fortune 500 company: - Ursula Burns served as CEO of Xerox Co. from 2010 to 2016, - Mary Winston was the interim CEO at Bed Bath & Beyond in 2019. - Rosalind Brewer when she assumed the role of CEO of Walgreens Boots Alliance in March 2021. - Thasunda Brown Duckett when she became the President & CEO of TIAA in May 2021. “I don't want to be a unicorn; I want to be a farm horse,” Demmissie told me in my first interview with her in 2021, when she was still president of Ally Invest (see my old InvestmentNews reporting linked in comments). 2. Tala Stacks Leadership Team With Women: Women in fintech face the "triple glass ceiling" at the intersection of financial, technological, and entrepreneurial gender inequalities. Tala is defying this trend. The company announced this week that it recently hired Damier Xandrine as its new Chief Legal Officer. Xandrine joins a leadership team already rich with female talent: Shivani Siroya, founder and CEO; Jennifer Loo, CFO; Kelly Uphoff, CTO; Lauren Pruneski, Head of Brand and impact; and Julia K., Head of People. World Economic Forum data shows that fintech companies with over 30% women leaders are more likely to outperform less diverse firms. These companies also see a 12% increase in their female customer base and a 30% increase in products targeting female customers. 3. Startup Katapulte Brings Fintech Solution to CPG Industry: For SMBs in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry, securing shelf space in major retailers like Target and Walmart is akin to getting drafted into the NBA. That’s according to Michelle Dalzon, founder of Katapulte, a startup dedicated to providing equitable access to loans for micro-businesses through technology solutions. Over 70% of the 33 million small businesses in the U.S. require funding, yet only 48% have their needs met.    Despite over $200 billion in available funding from 1,300 Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs), many small businesses remain unaware of these resources. Katapulte aims to change this by building an active lender pipeline. *** Love news like this? Sign up for the Fintech Is Femme newsletter via link in comments 💜 *** Photo featuring Lule and me at Future Proof 2022. 🥂

I often joke that in October 2023 Anton Briones proposed to me And by November 2023 I was proposing to him — To be co-founder of Fintech Is Femme full time. Just like when he asked me to marry him His answer was an unequivocal “Yes!” So we decided to become life and business partners right then. And haven’t looked back since 👀 Together we’ve produced full fledged conference experiences with a team of 2 — and a handful of #fintech most fabulous volunteers. Fintech Is Femme has graced stages across the world, with a 2x feature this year on Nasdaq’s MarketSite in Times Square NYC. We’ve secured brand partnerships and sponsorships with the industry’s most formidable companies like TruStage Ramp Grasshopper Bank Carta — and international friends like Milano & Partners. Oh, and he supported (and helped keep me fed) during the long hard days of finishing my book manuscript Fintech Feminists published under Wiley. And with his performance coaching, we’ve watched #femalefounders secure millions of dollars in funding — quite literally getting more money into the hands of female fintech founders through Fintech Is Femme 💜 We’ve also pulled a few all nighters getting every last graphic, speech, and detail perfect ahead of our Fintech Is Femme Leadership and Founders Summits this year. We’ve pushed ourselves physically and mentally harder than ever before. And We are just getting started. I cannot imagine building this incredible media company and community that is Fintech Is Femme with anyone else. We have so much more planned, including truly solidifying the premium Fintech Is Femme community, newsletter, and the Fintech Feminists book experience. Because the women in our community sit at the intersection of the two most powerful business sectors on the planet — finance and technology. And they deserve the damn best networking, conference learning, newsletter analysis and community That fuel their success from fundraising to landing that dream position in fintech. If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. Thank you mi amor for seeing my dreams as yours 😘 Team Fintech Is Femme is resting and recovering and back so soon! 👏🏽

I’m excited to continue our Female Founders in Fintech Office Hours series into 2024 with the first session of the year happening on Thursday 29th of February 🗓 (sign-up link below) Myself, D'Arcy Jade Whelan and Victoire de Lavigne started these sessions in 2023 with the aim of opening up the fintech-focussed experience and network of our funds - Augmentum Fintech, Outward VC, Portage  - to more female-led companies. It’s fair to say the response in 2023 exceeded our expectations - across the year we connected with a total of 59 teams  🤝 During the sessions, fundraising strategy was the most popular topic of discussion and, with just 1% and 12% of VC funding going to all-female and mixed gender teams respectively in 2023, there is no question that this is an area that we as individuals, funds and an industry must to do more to address. Advice and network only go so far - capital has to follow - but as far as we can offer support to female-led teams through these sessions we will continue to do so. 2023 in review: - Connected with 59 female-led fintechs across 10 office hour sessions - These teams are building companies across a diverse mix of fintech verticals - Wealth & Asset Management (34% of sign-ups) and Payments (20%) the most popular - 74% of our sign-ups came from Linkedin, 23% via investor and founder networks and 3% through in-person events - thank you to everyone who engaged with our posts and shared the scheme - it really makes a difference in terms of our reach! Sign up for Feb 29th session here https://lnkd.in/eiUCYa9X Note - the meetings are virtual (over zoom) 👩💻 Please do continue to share across your network! 🌍 #fintech #femalefounders

Thrilled to continue our Female Founders in Fintech EU Office Hours series into 2024 with the first session of the year happening on Thursday 29th of February 🗓 (sign-up link below) Myself, Ellen Logan and D'Arcy Jade Whelan started these sessions in 2023 with the aim of opening up the fintech-focused experience and network of our funds - Augmentum Fintech, Outward VC, Portage - to more female-led companies. It’s fair to say the response in 2023 exceeded our expectations - across the year we connected with a total of 59 teams 🤝 During the sessions, fundraising strategy was the most popular topic of discussion and, with just 1% and 12% of VC funding going to all-female and mixed gender teams respectively in 2023, there is no question that this is an area that we as individuals, funds and an industry must to do more to address. Advice and network only go so far - capital has to follow - but as far as we can offer support to female-led teams through these sessions we will continue to do so. 2023 in review: - Connected with 59 female-led fintechs across 10 office hour sessions - These teams are building companies across a diverse mix of fintech verticals - Wealth & Asset Management (34% of sign-ups) and Payments (20%) the most popular - 74% of our sign-ups came from Linkedin, 23% via investor and founder networks and 3% through in-person events - thank you to everyone who engaged with our posts and shared the scheme - it really makes a difference in terms of our reach! Sign up for Feb 29th session here https://lnkd.in/eiUCYa9X Note - the meetings are virtual (over zoom) 👩💻 Please do continue to share across your network! 🌍 #fintech #femalefounders

Beyoncé says it best: An entrepreneur can feel a lot like being: "Overworked and overwhelmed" But despite all the chaos Like the high highs and low lows, We still won't fold. It's what I admire most about women in #fintech, especially the Fintech Is Femme community. It's been almost three months since I took Fintech Is Femme independent. And wow -- I'm nearly out of breath! The speed at which we can move, learn, iterate, and grow impresses me the most about this journey. To make my dreams come true, I've been heads down, working on a few new projects. First, the Fintech Is Femme Leadership Summit on April 8th during NY Fintech Week. (Snag your ticket here: https://lu.ma/tr5di5hq) This half-day summit is my dream event. To put it on, my co-founder Anton Briones has curated a team of creatives and producers to put on a SHOW. And we sold almost 100 tickets before I even dropped the agenda and speaker faculty. Second is my debut book, Fintech Feminists, taking up any and all my "free" time, including weekends, to give our industry the true story of women who are the backbone of our fintech sector -- past, present, and future. And finally, I've been quietly content directing for a fintech company's launch next month -- An incredible female-founded AI-driven platform that will change the game for small businesses and fuel an inclusive economy. All three projects fuel each other -- aligned with my values and mission to unlock a better financial future for the world by amplifying women. ********** Now, this journey is not without its lows! In the last three months, I've felt what the women I've interviewed feel. The exhaustion of being questioned every step of the way -- despite my credibility. Investing in women and community is the higher ROI, yet I find myself constantly having to explain this. The assumptions that premium storytelling, event, and media production should be free -- the shock and awe I have to see on people's faces when I share my fees for my hard work, or the surprise I see when I even ask for one. But hey, this is what happens when you are ahead of the curve in innovation. It takes some time for the rest to catch up. And plenty of incredible brand partners and companies support Fintech Is Femme without questioning the ROI of supporting women in fintech. Proud of this work. Let's keep going. Let's get this bag. Happy Friday all! 💜

I am continuously learning from Nicole Casperson: 🧠 Kevin O'Leary, aka Mr. Wonderful from Shark Tank, recently shared a statistic that, let’s be real, doesn’t surprise women entrepreneurs at all: 70% of his venture capital returns come from women-led companies. 🧠 For O’Leary, it’s not a fluke—it’s a clear pattern that proves what many of us have known all along: women founders are not only great at managing risk, but they’re also crushing it when it comes to navigating complex challenges and delivering higher returns. #fintechisfemme #womenfounders #riskmanagement #revenuegrowth

I think I heard a concerning noise last week - the first death knell of inclusivity being a top concern for Fintechs & VC. Anyone else hearing it? I have been incredibly lucky to have been able over the last year to build a diverse and highly talented team who are charged up to build products that will both better serve the financial needs of households living on low or moderate incomes AND disrupt the entrenched predatory debt system. We were excited to come together at an in-person fintech event in NYC - for many of them it would have been their first introduction to this community. And then we were told by the organizers of the event that we did not “qualify” for the fintech discounted price but instead had to pay the full “financial institution” price. This decision came from an anonymous email. I was sure, as an optimist, that once I explained to a real person our situation they would understand the opportunity that having our group attend their conference would provide to them. I was wrong. I got the same email from the organizer of the event. I believe in the power of grace and steely compassion (thanks to Lucinda J. Garthwaite). I am not naming the event or organizer because they are a product of their environment and I am sure have good reasons for this decision. I have no interest in being responsible for generating more divisiveness. Until the leaders of the fintech ecosystem, ie those with money and power, decide to make diversity a “must have” this will not change. My team will be in NYC on Wednesday, April 10 and would love to meet up at, what are calling, #ALTFintech. If you are a fintech interested in disrupting the financial system so it bends towards economic justice, come join us. We will co-create a day of sharing & learning. Reach out to Christopher Dargin, Theo Vaughn or me and spread the word through your networks. If you hear the #deathknellofinclusion in your networks, I encourage everyone to write about it, with grace and steely compassion.  #financialinclusion #fintechs #fintechstartups #innovation #economicjustice