“The biggest impact will be on early-stage companies,” said Adam Zbar, a startup veteran who has raised three-quarters of a billion dollars in his career and is currently CEO of Hamsa, a global liquidity startup that tokenizes assets to give entrepreneurs enhanced access to capital. Zbar, by the way, personally has been a long-time customer of Silicon Valley Bank and had significant assets in it when it failed. Omnia Family Wealth co-founder and chief operating officer, Michael Wagner added:...

Getting credit as an individual usually happens automatically. Turn 18, or maybe 21, and suddenly financial institutions will tempt you with credit card offers. For a startup business, the reality is different — founders often struggle to get a good credit offer. What happened? And how can you generate legit credit offers for your company? Keep reading. The steps are — surprisingly — simple. Kevin King, Vice President, Credit Risk and Marketing Strategy at LexisNexis Risk Solutions, which...

You know the startup gloom and doom forecast — 70% will fail in the first five years — but here’s the question: will participating in an accelerator increase the odds of survival? Or does your startup more properly belong in an incubator? There are upwards of 2,000 accelerators and incubators in the US, but do accelerators and incubators deliver any value? Research on that question is thin, but a 2015 paper by University of New Orleans professors reported that startups that were alums of...

The realization is growing: at credit unions there is no “return to normal.” Forevermore how business is done will be different. And, a lot more technology focused. That is the conclusion from dozens of conversations I have had over the past weeks with credit union CEOs, consultants, and just plain members. To a person, they all had initially thought the COVID-19 triggered changes – from branch closures to huge spikes in online and mobile banking transactions – were a fleeting change. Things...

Easy question for you: can consumers originate a new account at your credit union within the mobile app? I’ll bet you I know the answer and that is because the answer almost certainly is no. This snippet from a recent Pymnts.com piece explains my confidence: “Only 8 percent of financial service onboarding applications, which includes personal account opening creation, can be completed on smartphones.” That 8% number would have been terrible in, say, February. By now, it’s exponentially more...