Featured Guest: Sarah Biller

Sarah Biller is an Entrepreneur, Investor, and Educator in the FinTech sector. She is the Executive Director of Vantage Ventures, a collaboration of West Virginia University (a Research 1 University), global Technology leaders, Fortune Class companies and Venture Capital firms, focused on providing entrepreneurs in the center of the country a systematic and efficient approach to build world-changing ideas into scalable, investable businesses and raise venture capital. Under her leadership, West Virginia is now the fourth state in the nation to pass legislation authorizing the creation of a Regulatory FinTech Sandbox, providing FinTech entrepreneurs a partnership-driven approach to building transformative products and services to serve Main Street.

Ms. Biller is also the co-Founder of the FinTech Sandbox, a Boston-based not for profit that accelerates the product development cycle of over 290 global FinTech start-ups by providing them free access to high quality, diverse datasets. She is also the co-Founder of Capital Market Exchange (CMX), a predictive analytics platform for institution bond investors that integrates natural language processing, Bayesian estimation techniques and machine learning to identify and quantify the impact of nonfinancial factors on near-term credit spreads. She was named by New York FinTech Women as a top innovator, Innovate Finance one of the Top 150 global women leaders in FinTech and Lattice80’s list of Top 100 Women in FinTech in the UK and Hong Kong.

Ms. Biller designed and taught a graduate level course on the evolution of Financial Technology at Brandeis University and is a frequent guest lecturer on FinTech and entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School, MIT and other institutions. Ms. Biller was most recently the Chief Operating Officer for Innovation at State Street Bank’s Global Exchange division and Head of Innovation Ventures. In this role, Ms. Biller had responsibility for implementing large scale data science, machine learning, natural language processing and predictive analytics. She the creation and / or purchase of proprietary datasets, including the client consent data process and the development of processes, procedures and technology applications to ensure the data acquisition process met standards set by audit, compliance and legal

Prior to joining State Street, Ms. Biller has been a Principal in the launch of several successful venture-backed start-ups in the FinTech and Life Sciences sectors. She is the Independent Director for Rialto Markets, a New York-based FINRA-regulated FinTech firm automating the fundraising, compliance, regulatory requirements for large and small firm investors and KALYP technologies, a London-based blockchain company digitizing assets for cross=border distribution. Ms. Biller also is on the Board of the Nashville-based FinTech back office technology providerCore10 and an Investor and Director at Thread Bank. She also sat on the board of a trading platform for Bitcoin Options, Alt-Options, LLC until its acquisition in 2016, WalletFi until its acquisition in 2021 and Finomial until its acquisition in 2020.

Ms. Biller has chaired Ernst & Young’s National selection committee for its Financial Services Entrepreneur of the Year award. She is an active mentor in the Barclays Techstars and StartupBootcamp FinTech accelerators as well as the Founding Advisor for MassChallenge’s FinTech Lab initiative. Ms. Biller has also held roles at Fidelity Investments; worked on MCI’s corporate venture team; and launched and led research divisions for Fortune 500 CFO’s and treasurers at the Corporate Executive Board.

Episode Transcript

0:00 – [MUSIC PLAYING]

0:01 – Sarah Biller

I think fintech will eventually be the driving force on how we solve for challenges that we’ve faced, not only in just inclusivity, but also in sustainability. Welcome to the NextGen Banker podcast where we explore what’s next in banking and talk with the innovators responsible for creating positive change in the financial sector.

0:25 – Becca Hoeft

I’m your host Becca Hoeft, and I am joined by my Sunrise colleague and friend, Bryan Toft. And I am very excited to welcome Sarah Biller today. Sarah, thank you for being on the NextGen Banker podcast.

0:39 – Sarah Biller

Becca and Bryan, I couldn’t think of a better way to spend an afternoon. Thank you.

0:43 – Becca Hoeft

And even a Monday afternoon too.

0:47 – Sarah Biller

It is. It is.

0:50 – Becca Hoeft

Well, before we get started, it’s just a reminder to stick around to hear our musical feature at the end of the episode. Each NextGen Banker episode showcases one new artist from somewhere around the globe, representing a wide range of different genres. So be sure to check it out.

1:06 – Bryan Toft

Now, let’s give some background on Sarah. Sarah is the executive director of Vantage Ventures, a venture capital firm located in West Virginia. She is also a board member at a multitude of organizations including Thread Bank, FinTech Sandbox, KALYP Technologies, Rialto Markets, and Core10.

1:25 – Bryan Toft

Sarah is an advisor for Candidly and the MassChallenge Fintech Lab, and an adjunct professor at Brandeis University. So Sarah, it’s great to have you on the show today. Thank you for being here. And you bring more than two decades of experience across finance and tech. And you even spent some time in health care, it appears.

1:43 – Bryan Toft

So we would love to hear your story. So did you always think you would end up in finance? Please tell us your background and how you got to where you are today.

1:53 – Sarah Biller

Yeah, Bryan, thank you. I wish we had more than the time we do to talk about the importance of non-linear backgrounds and how connecting those dots has really paid off in these last two decades of work I’ve done in financial services. But I do have– had the benefit of working in multiple industries in telecom, you mentioned in life sciences, before really reaching my true passion, which is fintech, and seeing the power of what we can do when we motivate capital, when we organize technology to enable non– right now, people who are underserved to come into the banking system, support small businesses, all the way through to large capital allocators and helping them better understand how they– what impact they can have on day-to-day lives of people.

2:46 – Becca Hoeft

So here at Sunrise, we talk a little bit about that, in that we talk about fintech for good. So what can fintech do to help those underrepresented communities? Do you have a favorite story you can share or a favorite fintech or product that you’ve seen the most progress in helping these communities?

3:08 – Sarah Biller

Yeah, Becca, one of the areas that I’m particularly passionate about is the intersection of capital markets at its highest level and in Main Street and how you build those bridges. So one of my favorite stories in entrepreneurs is a woman named Shari Noonan. She’s from the Midwest. She came to New York.

3:30 – Sarah Biller

Like a lot of financial services professionals, made her way through the big banks, Goldman and Oppenheimer, and turned her capabilities and her attention to actually supporting the movement of capital to private companies, to companies that actually would enable individuals who had a passion, whether it was around putting just $1,000 against an environmentally-friendly, call it, electric vehicle in the next generation, all the way through to small businesses like a better way to deliver anesthesia if you’re afraid of the doctor that we see today as hard to fund in our traditional channels of venture capital.

4:14 – Sarah Biller

She saw an avenue to enabling the everyday individual, one, to participate in an asset class that has historically been the purview of the high-net-worth individuals, but two, enabling us as a first person to invest with our passion and with our social values. And so her company, Rialto, today is in partnership with a company, for one example, that’s out of Texas Pacific Group called Rubicon. And they’re actually creating a liquid environment for the buying and selling of carbon credits. And they’re enabling us.

4:50 – Sarah Biller

And so I love this trajectory that we’re on that we’re able to motivate capital into small value-based businesses that have the potential to grow, that lift up the economic outcome for individuals as well as enable us to, again, support our value system that in no way displaces, by the way, the role of our community banks. Those institutions that sit on Main Street that are every day the engine of growth for the economy for the US, which means in many ways if you extrapolate that up to its highest level, the engine of growth for the world’s economy.

5:29 – Becca Hoeft

Wow. That’s outstanding. And I remember when I was prepping for this episode, I was reading some things that you had written. And then I actually saw you speak at Money20/20 most recently a few months ago. And you talked about how fintech will play a role in mitigating the effects of climate change.

5:52 – Becca Hoeft

So tell me a little bit about that with Rialto. Can you talk more about the statement and what you see as a potential from a fintech side, but also, if you have an opinion about how community banks can get involved?

6:11 – Sarah Biller

Yeah, well, I’ll start with how we met, Becca, which is that story of Money20/20. And we have to– I think we all– I want to posit with you all that for the last– actually I’m going to go back a little bit from our work at Brandeis at the university. Let’s just start here.

6:28 – Sarah Biller

Fintech is not new. It’s a 2000-year-old category. Fintech, and in my case, my love of the credit markets, shows up no less than 10 times in the Old Testament, how do you administer credit, how do you talk about exchange of value, all the way through to today.

6:50 – Sarah Biller

And what we see is in our modern conception of using the modern tools of today, technology to meet financial services, there are multiple companies coming on board, for instance, that are allowing communities, small towns just like my hometown in West Virginia to begin to create more transparency into their financial security– or excuse me, their financial returns, their tax base, and develop a much more efficient way to tap the municipal markets for the investment in, for instance, like solar– community-driven solar projects where they can go and build out utility grade solar arrays to help manage– right now, we do have a pretty– we have some pretty strong weaknesses on our grid augmented with these renewable returns using municipal tax dollars to reduce the cost of energy and strengthen the grid in their own communities.

7:52 – Sarah Biller

The muni bond market is an amazing source of capital, but you have to know how to tap it. You have to know how to reduce your cost of capital and create transparency. And we have a number of fintechs, for instance, in the not-for-profit that Bryan mentioned that I’m the co-founder of, FinTech Sandbox, that we’re providing them that data to test that thesis and that hypothesis.

8:15 – Sarah Biller

And so I started with this idea that fintech is a category thousands of years old. And it has long been its own industry. It’s been in financial services. It sought to improve the exchange of funds.

8:28 – Sarah Biller

But I think what I believe we’re all seeing is that fintech is beginning to embed itself, is the word that’s often used, but influence the outcomes in adjacent industries, whether it’s what the example I just gave you of helping an age-old municipal bond, offering actually tap out because you’re looking to put a green investment to play. Fintech is showing up in the way that health care is paid for.

8:58 – Sarah Biller

But also increasingly, we’re seeing companies like Royalty Pharma use the discipline of financial services and technology to introduce products that mimic a traditional option, for example, in the financial markets to help more directly bring capital into the discovery of drugs and development. That’s a sea change from how we’ve actually tried to advance research and advanced care. And so I would tell you that fintech has a place and we’re seeing it happen in adjacent industries.

9:31 – Sarah Biller

And a lot of those are trying to do good, make sure that climate change is addressed, that we actually, in my case, very interested in closing the urban rural divide in digital health care, and the advancement of using capital to further our drug discovery in key areas. It’s certainly happening in transportation. And so I think fintech is– will eventually be the driving force on how we solve for challenges that we’ve faced, not only in just inclusivity, but also in sustainability.

10:05 – Bryan Toft

Yeah, it seems like you’ve had a history of unlocking capital for improving social and financial wellness. And that seems to be the case with FinTech Sandbox. I’d love to hear more about FinTech Sandbox.

10:17 – Bryan Toft

My understanding is it’s a nonprofit. And you open up data and APIs and things for fintechs that want to go in and test things and try things. Tell me more about that. I’m curious.

10:28 – Sarah Biller

Yeah, Bryan, isn’t that a nutty idea to have a not-for-profit business?

10:32 – Bryan Toft

Yes, I love it.

10:34 – Sarah Biller

Yeah, so I give all the credit to my co-founder David Jegen for the managing director at F-Prime Capital, a really fantastic fintech venture firm based in Boston, for envisioning this idea that in the kind of 2012/2014 timeframe, innovation although I’ve argued it’s longstanding, it was quite nascent in this cycle, right? We had new tools that we could put in place. We were just operating in the wake of the credit crisis.

11:05 – Sarah Biller

And so you had all of these innovators coming on board saying we can do this better. The credit crisis opened up and showed us there was a fracturing in the way that we had actually done financial services from payments, from lending, from institutional and retail investing, you name it. But what was the stall point? And I confronted this in my own company, which was a predictive analytics platform for institutional bond investors trying to identify and price emerging risks that were non-financial.

11:34 – Sarah Biller

Today, we call those ESG. Back then, we didn’t really know what to call them. But anyway, long and short, the challenge that stood in our way and in my way and then that of other fintech entrepreneurs during that time was access to data. And David was astute enough in his understanding across his portfolio of companies to see that this was a true stall point if we didn’t find a way to, one, work with the large data providers to actually make the procurement process more efficient, more easy to navigate as a single operator.

12:11 – Sarah Biller

You can imagine, just take a Bloomberg sales guy for a minute. Does he want to spend his time selling 25 terminals, or does he want to spend his time selling one? We know what the answer is. It’s also pretty costly to get data, right?

12:27 – Sarah Biller

And so FinTech Sandbox, our origin story was is that there was a future market– there was a need for data-driven solutions, putting data in the hands of entrepreneurs who were envisioning the future of financial services differently, and that the data providers could actually see a pathway to new applications for their data, new uses, and of course, new distribution channels. And so we came up with the idea that we would approach the big data providers, and they would provide data for free for six months. And we would work with our financial institution partners who were beginning to have an appetite for innovation to be able to be on the front page or front lines of where change was happening.

13:10 – Sarah Biller

Remember, artificial intelligence as an application, today, it’s ubiquitous. A decade ago, it was just in its infancy. You needed data to train those models. So we provided everyone a front line view. And Bryan, as crazy as it sounds, we said we want to give it away for free.

13:30 – Sarah Biller

We don’t want to charge the entrepreneurs. We don’t want to take equity. We just want to advance innovation, and Becca, your words, for good.

13:38 – Becca Hoeft

Nice.

13:39 – Sarah Biller

Today, we’ve worked with over 250 startups. They sit on all continents but Antarctica. So I’m making an official call for an Antarctica fintech to come.

13:58 – Sarah Biller

But really that’s– the way that we will advance innovation, I still hold it true today, is that we put data in the hands of individuals who can do something with it. Chat GPT, the next generation, good, bad, we’re not sure. It’s being trained on unstructured data sets. We must put data in the hands of individuals who can affect great change with it or we will stall.

14:28 – Sarah Biller

And so that, Bryan, was our thesis. It’s worked. We could dive a little bit deeper into startups if you wanted. But it’s been one of the most rewarding acts of my life, which was to give to others something that I had such a problem getting myself.

14:44 – Bryan Toft

I highly encourage listeners to check it out. FinTech Sandbox is unique. It’s very interesting. And to be a nonprofit in that space and then give it away for free is amazing. So people that aren’t aware of it should definitely check it out.

14:58 – Bryan Toft

Speaking of innovation, I want to move to an article you wrote about the metaverse. Very interesting article. I had a chance to read it. Becca did as well. I know. And you had said in that article you compared the metaverse to what the Renaissance did for math, science, and art, and that fintech might be a way to get there in that kind of change.

15:18 – Bryan Toft

So fintech is rapidly changing. It’s growing. And I was just curious. You’ve got Facebook changing its name to Meta, making a big investment in it. And then there’s detractors that feel like it’s flopping a little bit, and that comes up. I’m just curious, do you still feel the same way as you did when you wrote that article? And how do you think the metaverse fits in today to that landscape of fintech?

15:42 – Sarah Biller

Yeah, I have not gone away from the point that I made, that the metaverse opens an aperture of opportunity, not unlike when we– during the Renaissance times understood perspective in more than just a two-plane dimension. If anyone has studied how the– not Milan. In Florence, the Duomo, the dome was built, you understand it wouldn’t have been done if we hadn’t understood from a framing perspective that a dome had– it actually had six dimensions required for the architecture. It could not be done on a two-part plane.

16:22 – Sarah Biller

That is the case with financial services today. What we don’t have is two things. We don’t have a multidimensional environment in which to understand that it’s just finance does more than just have volumes of trade, variety of instruments, and individual perspective, right? There’s a lot of other dimensions.

16:46 – Sarah Biller

So I really think as we step into the metaverse and we begin to explore the dimensionality of banking in different ways if the delivery of products and services, not like you’re an avatar, but like understanding that there’s probably 15 to 16 different dimensions that can be measured there and acted upon to improve– well, decrease, let’s just take this away, decrease the friction that exists in our transactions today, improve our ability to overcome the hurdles that exist from digital identity to awareness of actions, both good and bad that happen by counterparties in the transaction.

17:26 – Sarah Biller

I don’t think in any way the anonymity, as an example, that exists in certain segments of financial services is going to help us build a more inclusive financial system. We need to really think on a multidimensional way about how we’re going to prove identity. So yeah, I still stand by the idea that the metaverse, it has some ways to go.

17:51 – Sarah Biller

I’m interested that our first movers here are the actually– it’s the retail sector, as opposed to financial services. Historically, it’s been the other way around. But I mean, I can right now walk into three floors in the metaverse and see Fidelity and see my smart cash account, right?

18:11 – Sarah Biller

And so I think that there’s– but that’s a retail perspective. I’m institution– interested in how the institutions are using it. But yeah, I think I took– I actually took a lot of flack for that article.

18:23 – Bryan Toft

You do.

18:24 – Becca Hoeft

I think it was really interesting. And I’ve been following the metaverse for quite some time. And what I’ve seen– to your point, is I’ve seen retail out there, and I’ve seen entertainment out there. So I can be– sit on Netflix– go out Netflix and sit on the couch with my daughter, who’s across the country, and watch a movie together.

18:45 – Becca Hoeft

So I think for our audience who are bankers, who are fintechs who maybe are not as familiar with the metaverse, could you help me, Sarah, in painting a picture on some practical application of what it possibly could look like in 10 years? Do you see financial literacy being out there? We see these transactions. What else would– how else would you paint that picture 10 years from now of what the metaverse could mean for financial institutions and fintechs?

19:20 – Sarah Biller

Yeah, I think if we just– Becca, if we could go across each category, again, fintech itself is comprised of segments. So in payments, the metaverse is very obvious. It is a rail. As you mentioned, we both share retail.

19:38 – Sarah Biller

You can go in now– you can go into Dolce and try on a $5,000 dress and decide to buy it once you see what it looks like on your body shape. I mean, that is the application of a payments rail sitting behind the metaverse that enables you never to leave your home, but still yet have confidence in a high-end purchase. Lending– so for me, fintech is payments lending. I started to rattle that on.

20:04 – Sarah Biller

Lending, I think one interesting example might be in the proptech space, in real estate as an asset class. You no longer have to walk into a home or walk into an apartment physically to understand. I could envision in 10 years in the metaverse. You have the ability to actually go through these physical attributes, make a very significant purchase or commit to a home if you’re moving from California to Boston, as an example, without– with confidence.

20:36 – Sarah Biller

So the metaverse enables you to walk through real estate. If you’re buying the home, you could negotiate without being there. You could talk about lending and insurance. And you could overlay at that point– let’s just go back to climate change for a minute.

20:52 – Sarah Biller

If you’re buying a home on the coast, you could overlay with your purchase the understanding of NOAH-related data of where you are in the flood map, where– so right, so you begin to have a risking. You intersect that conversation with insurance off the bat. You understand if you can insure.

21:14 – Sarah Biller

So I see the metaverse being a vehicle in which, again, we look at the multidimensional sets of data that right now are very disparate in our transaction lives. And that is one of the most critical aspects of the metaverse for me, is again, I keep siloing things, but they become immersive. And in the metaverse, critically, they become immersive in a digital framework which actually lets you– be a better actor in the physical world.

21:46 – Sarah Biller

So the two are not– I don’t see people sitting in their home hopefully for hours on end in the metaverse. I see them in our case, in financial services, using it as a tool to have a better overlay of data and understanding to improve their financial lives. And financial literacy could absolutely come into play.

22:06 – Sarah Biller

Imagine the metaverse you needed to understand financial literacy, but someone told you you need a $10,000 Viking stove in your kitchen. I’m going to see that Viking stove, and I’m going to see whether it’s going to increase the cost of my mortgages real time or I’m going to switch it out.

22:26 – Sarah Biller

So there’s– do you know what I mean? So you can begin to see, again, the layers and layers of data that today it’s hard for us to connect those dots in financial services. And then collect the data on the other side so we improve the experience.

22:42 – Bryan Toft

Yeah, it’s like Chat GPT where you google something, you get a list of articles. But you type in the chat GPT, and you get a conglomeration of all those articles together and the best information at least at this point–

22:53 – Becca Hoeft

It does the work for you.

22:54 – Bryan Toft

Yeah, and this is the worst it’s ever going to be. It’s only going to get better from here. So it’s fascinating to see that. Same with the metaverse.

23:02 – Sarah Biller

Yeah, I mean, what we– I just said this with this FinTech Sandbox team. We were talking about our thought leadership and where we’re going. And I’m like a year ago, we believed– we didn’t know we were going to hit this future point. Like the future, as you said, Bryan, the future it’s now.

23:17 – Bryan Toft

Right.

23:18 – Sarah Biller

And it is really– it is fascinating to see– I will say this. I’ll underscore Chat GPT is super interesting because, again, it’s a connective tissue capability. It’s pulling lots of disparate information into a narrative that otherwise we might not really ourselves understand.

23:38 – Sarah Biller

And that is so true in our financial lives. And it’s particularly true in the financial lives of individuals who haven’t had the same level of understanding or rigor. Money means different things to different people. And so how do we use this tool, by the way, for the benefit? There’s a lot of challenge I still– I think still sitting out there with these tools. But it’s up to us to innovate against them for good.

24:02 – Becca Hoeft

You’re right. You’re right. And I know Brad Smith, Microsoft CEO, wrote that book Tools and Weapons. And he just talks– Chat GPT, of course, was not out yet. And this was pre-pandemic, but the whole idea that we have a responsibility as organizations to use this technology for good and make sure that the weapons are not built, and so– and putting in those safeguards for that.

24:31 – Sarah Biller

Yeah, and I think, Becca, we have strived as a financial services institution, I think, obviously to do that. Obviously, there’s situations where it’s not. But even our regulatory construct we’re so far behind in our regulation, in our thoughtfulness about what are the guardrails, how do you put in place transparency. The opportunity for fintech entrepreneurs across the entire spectrum has never been greater, particularly if you want to do something good.

25:09 – Bryan Toft

This has been a fascinating conversation. It’s clear you’re a visionary and have a perspective that’s everything from venture capital, CEO, investing in fintechs, among other companies. The nonprofit co-founding, the board member of a bank, you’re seeing all aspects of the financial services arena.

25:27 – Bryan Toft

And so I’m excited to ask this last question. It’s the question we ask every guest. And that is, what do you think the next-gen banker looks like?

25:35 – Sarah Biller

Oh, gosh. It’s such an important moment in time. I think the next-gen banker understands– if we’re just talking about north– I’m just going to talk about the United States for a minute. The next-gen banker understands their role in building community where that community is. So as a small town girl, admittedly, the community bank served a very local region.

26:15 – Sarah Biller

Today, community banking has the opportunity through fintech to serve a multitude of entities. In our bank, one opportunity, as an example, we have is to support the needs of an entity that is helping youth sports leagues have those startup working capital they need every season, whether it’s to buy the baseball gloves, the uniforms, transport that over to basketball. That community exists across the United States. It is a fabric of every small town.

26:59 – Sarah Biller

When you go out and you see those Friday night lights on, somebody has put some money ahead of that. Our community bank course of the future or next gen, the definition of community is evolving as the rap– with the rapid nature of technology. And I think we need to remember that we have a responsibility to meet people where they are and serve them, whether they’re on your Main Street, which I hope we’re all doing. It’s critical, but it’s also across the country. And so that’s my definition of what the next generation banker looks like.

27:35 – Becca Hoeft

Well, Sarah, it has been such a treat to have you on NextGen Banker. Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and insights with Bryan and I today. We really appreciate it. And to all of our listeners, thanks for listening to the NextGen Banker podcast, and we’ll see you next time

27:55 – Becca Hoeft

For this episode’s musical feature, we’re showcasing Ghost. Ghost is an alternative rock project by artist Jessie Villa. Ghost released it’s “Just for Kicks” single in October of 2021. Here is “Just for Kicks” by Ghost.

28:11 – [MUSIC PLAYING – GHOST, “JUST FOR KICKS”]

28:47 – Becca Hoeft

That was “Just for Kicks” by Ghost. You can find more of Ghost music on Spotify. If you would like your music featured on the NextGen Banker podcast, email david@nextgen-banker.com with a link to your music and website. Thanks for listening to the NextGen Banker podcast. We’ll see you soon.