FinTech50
SYMBIOTIC FINTECH
Greg Rogers, Techstars, Managing Director
I
spent the last 10 years as an advertising technology
entrepreneur in New York City. During that decade,
I witnessed two things happen. New York became
the Silicon Valley of the east coast, and AdTech radically
transformed the marketing and advertising industry. It
made sense that the two would be catalysts for their
transformations. New York is home to the major media
companies and agencies of the United States. The sheer
concentration of talent and experience there converged with
the opportunity of digital and data. In other words, the right
people were in the right place at the right time.
I now run the Barclays Accelerator here in London.
Why would an AdTech guy from New York run a financial
technology accelerator in London? Investors talk about
pattern recognition when judging startup opportunities.
What they mean is that history often repeats itself, just in a
different guise. My investment thesis is that London is going
to