Deadline: 24 October 2024
The MassChallenge FinTech Challenge Program is open for applications to support finance and financial inclusion startups on their journey toward early commercialization and scaling.
This program is sponsored by industry-leading corporates, known as Challenge Partners, who seek innovative startups in specific areas and collaborate with MassChallenge to deliver the program.
2025 FinTech Program Challenge Partners include Citizens, Digital Credit Union, and MassMutual. Selected startups will work directly with at least one of these partners throughout the program to address their challenge statements and drive solutions in areas like: managing data for a better customer experience, leveraging AI to enable effective and fast decision making, identifying tools and platforms that provide accessibility to financial planning & education, and much more.
Program participants gain access to the extensive MassChallenge community, which includes experienced mentors, successful entrepreneurs, investors, and industry experts.
The program curriculum is specifically designed to enable startup founders to build continuous traction through engagement with corporate partners and meet them where they are in their startup journey. They also provide targeted guidance through Experts in Residence (EIRs) with industry expertise.
Benefits
- Mentorship and Guidance: Connect 1-on 1 with experienced mentors who offer valuable advice, industry insights, and strategic guidance
- Outcomes-driven Partnerships with Enterprise Partners: Collaborate on the solutions to the challenges faced by participating enterprises, backed by corporate C-Suite support, passionate innovation champions, and resources. Gain valuable insights into partner organizations, leverage internal introductions and work towards an outcome that will advance your startup
- Networking Opportunities: Connect at in-person and virtual events with a network of fellow entrepreneurs, investors, industry experts, and potential customers
- Access to the MassChallenge Investor Network: Gain exposure to a global network of investors and practice your pitch during curated VC judge sessions
- Structured Curriculum Delivery: Learn more about essential topics like business development, marketing, sales, and financial management and scale your startup, no matter where you are in your journey.
Eligibility Criteria
- While MassChallenge supports a wide array of startups, the FinTech Challenge Program is specifically designed for companies with a validated product or solution that is ready for scaling.
- The MassChallenge FinTech Challenge Program requires that at least one founding team member attend all mandatory in-person events listed above. The matchmaking interview process with corporate partners for selected startups will be held in person on January 15-16, 2024, at the MassChallenge office in Boston, MA.
- While funding and revenue are important factors in enterprise readiness, they also look at team strength, product market fit, customer traction, and other elements.
- While funding and revenue are important factors in enterprise readiness, they also look at team strength, product market fit, customer traction etc. For these reasons they use the following eligibility guidelines to ensure they work with solutions that are best positioned to work alongside the partners:
- Solutions that have a clear challenge fit based on the partner’s strategic priorities
- Solutions that have a validated product solution for scaling have previously enabled proofs of concepts (pilots) with corporations.
For more information, visit MassChallenge.
