By John San Filippo
The 2025 edition of the Fintech Meetup conference was held Mar. 10-13 in Las Vegas. In addition to common conference features – an exhibit hall, breakout sessions, keynotes – the conference is well-known for its speed dating-style meetups.
In advance of the event, attendees were given the opportunity to identify up to 96 other attendees with whom they would like to meet. Then using proprietary software, Fintech Meetup matched attendees to create up to 24 scheduled 15-minute meetings for each attendee. All meetings were held the second and third days of the event, up to 12 each day.
Finopotamus scheduled all 24 possible meetings, although there were a couple of no-shows. To better understand what motivated people to attend the event, Finopotamus asked each person with whom they met what they hoped to get out of attending Fintech Meetup. Presented here in the order in which meetings were held are the results.
Laura Gibson-Lamothe, Executive Director, Georgia Fintech Academy
“We are a diversity talent development initiative in the state of Georgia, working with over 10,000 students, helping them navigate pathways into the fintech industry. I'm here at Fintech Meetup specifically to look for opportunities for our students’ collaboration, partnership, any synergies within the technology that's being developed where we can provide students exposure and access a win-win-win for the Fintech Academy. It's been amazing to be at this event with so many industry leaders present.”
Mitch Rutledge, CEO and Co-Founder, Vertice AI
“I’m excited to be here at Fintech Meetup 2025 and I'm here to meet other credit unions and community financial institutions to learn what their needs and wants are, share more about Vertice and member growth, and also learn from my peers. There's so many amazing founders and early-stage and growth-stage and mature fintech companies. There’s so much to learn.”
Kirk Klinkhammer, CEO, CU LIFT Fund
“Today, fintech success is all about the relationships you forge and the alliances you create. I came to Fintech Meetup to meet like-minded entrepreneurs and explore what’s possible.”
Tylor Tourville, Head of the Fintech Practice, Gregory FCA
“At Fintech Meetup, I'm looking to learn about the latest and greatest trends in in fintech, as well as engage with my clients and do a bit of prospecting work.”
Mike Duncan, Founder and CEO, Bankjoy
“I'm at Fintech Meetup here in Vegas to meet with community-based FIs because our mission is to help modernize digital banking for community-based FIs, help them find their spirit and their soul and reconnect them with core ethos so that we can help them compete against the fintechs and the big banks and everyone else so that we can be uplifting our communities in partnership through them and with them.”
Dan Roselli, Co-Founder and Managing Director of RevTechLabs and RevTechLabs Capital
“We're a fintech accelerator and a fintech and insuretech venture fund. Here we're trying to meet other people that invest in companies like that. We're certainly trying to meet founders that we might have come through our program. And then we're also trying to meet media folks, too and broaden our network.”
Baron Conway, Chief Strategy Officer, Finalytics.AI
“What I hope to get out of Fintech Meetup is a few things. One is to connect with some great credit union and banking prospects to have some really great conversations, and equally importantly, catch up with a lot of old friends and acquaintances and see how folks are.”
Holly Glowaty, Founder and Principal, UniFI Group
“We're a go-to-market strategy company for fintechs, banks and credit unions. When they're launching new products, they come to us. With Fintech meetup, I am a firm believer that the best way to build really great strategies is through partnership, especially in fintechs. I'm always looking to meet new people, connect my clients with other people while I'm here and make a lot of hay in a couple of days.”
Philip Paul, CEO, Cotribute
“I'm here at Fintech Meetup just to meet up with people to learn about technology trends, meet some of our customers and learn from new people and learn about partnerships.”
Chandan Pal, Chief Marketing Officer, Scienaptic AI
“What do I hope to get out of Fintech Meetup? Quite a few things. One, I hope to meet a lot of innovators because there's a lot of new stuff which is happening in the fintech world, both in terms of data and AI. I'm hoping to meet them, learn from them as to what they're up to and what they believe the industry is headed towards.
Two, I'm hoping to have deep-dive conversations with financial institutions looking to learn deeper, looking to build better experiences for their borrowers, looking to build deeper relationships with their borrowers and customers. And I'm hoping that some of these conversations in turn will lead to deeper AI work for us for our customers.”
Kelly Reilly, Head of Financial Services, COMMAND
“From insightful discussions with top media and analysts to connecting with C-suite leaders and financial services pros, Fintech Meetup has been a fantastic experience. Command is here to support our incredibly innovative clients, exchange novel ideas, and be part of the conversations that are redefining the industry.”
Rob Thacher, Founder and CEO, BankShift
“What I look to get out of Fintech Meetup is meeting with a lot of credit unions and community banks specifically and folks like Finopotamus that like to promote good information about credit unions and what some companies are really doing to help them, specifically the $5 billion and below.”
Steven Ramirez, CEO, Beyond the Arc
“We help financial institutions bring new products to market, particularly in B2B payments and commercial banking and new technology. As always, I love being part of the fintech community, so I love seeing friends and colleagues and talking to new institutions about plans they have to launch new products.”
Clint Lotz, Founder, TrackStar AI
“We're looking for way more clients than we currently have because we want to help as many people as we possibly can and improve their credit.”
Kris Wilson, Chief Administrative Officer and Co-Founder, loanTERRA
“I’m here at Fintech Meetup looking to make connections, sell our product, buy some services, and just get our name out there.”
Pete Major, VP Fintech Solutions, MDT
“What I hope to get out of Fintech Meetup is to continue to meet with other exciting fintechs and existing partners to see how we can improve technology solutions and the technology landscape for our credit unions.”
Philip Taliaferro, Chief Growth Officer, Lendio
“We're a platform for small business lending. We are focused on two things. One is building relationships with brands that have a network of small business owners for our embedded marketplace and then working on relationships and business development with depository institutions including both credit unions and banks.”
Jonny Rosen, Manager of FI Partnerships, Hapax
“The main thing is just getting good face time with great people in the industry. I think it's one of the best formats of any conference I've been to. Getting a chance to get 15 minutes face time, meet people, have real conversations and sift through a lot of the back and forth that typically happens at conferences is just a nice change of pace.”
Alex Niu, VP of Marketing, DataVisor
“Because I'm in charge of marketing for DataVisor, I’m just trying to explore different media outlets and connect with folks in this area.”
Liang Zhao, Communications and PR Director, Middesk
“Middesk is a series B-stage company that has about 500 plus financial institutions, banks, fintechs, community banks, regional banks, as well as e-commerce platforms that use us for onboarding, credit assessment, compliance, a ML, sanction screening, you name it, anything that has to do with business identity. This is my second time at Fintech Meetup and I hope to get some new business, get some new friends, and also just relax.”