Fintech companies and new avenues of profit are on Barclays’ radar as it has made a partnership with corporate venture builder Rainmaking.
With the support of Copenhagen-based Rainmaking, Barclays seeks sunny days and will launch new initiatives targeted at fintech founders across the globe, from early-stage to scaleup and beyond.
Mariquit Corcoran, Group Chief Innovation Officer at Barclays, says: “We have been humbled and changed by the incredible fintechs we have worked with, and we understand first-hand the power of collaboration to evolve and unlock opportunities for our customers, clients, colleagues and the communities in which we operate.”
Chris Locke, CEO Europe, Rainmaking, adds: “By providing the tools to enhance digital skills, founders can build and scale their businesses for future revenue growth.”
The first initiative to launch is the Rise Start-Up Academy, a virtual digital skills-building accelerator targeted to idea- and early-stage fintech founders. Applications are open for founders in such areas as “wealth equality”, climate and the future of money.
At a later date, Rise Growth Academy will be launched to provide development around areas such as investment readiness, recruitment, sales and leadership.
A Fintech Venture Studio will also go live later this year and focus on co-developing new fintech ventures through working with internal staff, startups and other companies.
Rainmaking has been around for 12 years and has partnered with other large corporates to build new ventures.
Its approach seems to work as it has been used to build 65 of their own ventures and through its subsidiary, Startupbootcamp, to help 950+ startups and over 100 cohorts. The stats seem good as 76% of Startupbootcamp companies are still active or have exited. According to Rainmaking, this has led to the creation of 4,626 jobs and raised over $800 million (£592 million) in funding.
This new partnership will be led by Sonal Lakhani, Global Head of Programmes and Strategic Initiatives at Barclays Innovation Office, who also led the expansion of the Female Innovators Lab by Barclays and Anthemis last year across the UK and Europe.
Like many of the old guard, Barclays has been interested in making money from the fintech crowd over the past decade. This has been done via its Rise platform, which has offices in London and New York – two lively cities for fintech activity.
Rainmaking has 15 offices around the world, including in tech hubs such as London, Copenhagen, Dubai, Singapore, New York, and Sydney.
Rainmaking has partnered with 10% of the Fortune 500 companies including IKEA, Visa, Airbus, Engie, HSBC and Jaguar.
More details on the Rise Start-Up Academy can be found here.
