Fintech Accelerator SixThirty Announces Spring 2015 Cohort

On Tuesday, April 21, in his new position as managing partner, Atul Kamra announced SixThirty's newest cohort of companies that will go through their financial tech accelerator program.

Looking to grow your company? Check out EQ’s startup ecosystem guides to startup accelerators and business incubators in St. Louis.

In his new position as managing partner, Atul Kamra announced SixThirty’s newest cohort of companies that will go through their financial tech accelerator program. Six companies total were chosen, a departure from previous cohorts when only four companies were included, out of 100 applicants from locations all around the world, including Finland, Lithuania, Israel and Denmark.

In his announcement, Kamra picked out the common thread that spans across the goals of companies chosen: working together to make things better. This goal especially hits the mark with Kamra, who said his perspective coming into his new role was, “things can be better.”

These six companies will have access to mentoring, funding and the ability to make connections with established financial service providers through access to the Greater St. Louis Financial Forum, a roundtable made up of CEOs from local financial service companies, including Wells Fargo Advisors and Edward Jones. Of the companies selected, three already went through SixThirty’s curriculum in the fall 2014 cohort, a first for SixThirty.

Atul Kamra SixThirty
Photo courtesy of Cultivation Capital

Read more to learn about the latest entrepreneurs to grow their company with St. Louis’ help:

Bandura Systems

The cybersecurity software company made the move from Maryland to St. Louis and currently resides in the CIC@4240 building. Chief Technology Officer Dave Maestas described Bandura’s service as a sort of background check on IP addresses that stops network threats, attacks and data leakage. Marketed to financial, healthcare and energy services as well as government, this service, offered as easily deployable software, gives companies more control over those high-risk situations.

Davo Technologies

Its second time in SixThirty’s cohort, Davo Technologies is a company looking to make merchants’ lives easier when it comes to sales tax, as Chairman and Co-founder David Joseph said. Their service stands to take the weak link, human error, out of the equation, but sorting through sales tax reports and removing that money from the merchant’s account and placing it into a holding account daily. After setting that money aside for a month, it then pays it directly to the state. Using this same model, the company is also looking to address merchants’ other payments that take place on a 30-day schedule, such as rent and utility payments.

FinLocker

Peter Esparrago, co-founder of Cultivation Capital and also the CEO and co-founder of FinLocker, explained that the “financial locker” gives transparency and control to lenders in the mortgage-lending process. It gives insight into bank, credit card and tax information to reduce costs and risks to solve the problems involved in getting credit.

New Constructs

Also in its second round with SixThirty, New Constructs offers investors the “CliffNotes to financial reporting.” Five analysts and complex technologies research SEC filings to present information on mutual funds, ETFs and stocks. Through that research, investors can be notified of any red flags that crop up that weren’t readily available in the company’s financial statements. Kamra described the company as “throwing light into dark corners.”

PFITR

Public Funds Investment Tracking and Reporting (PFITR) returns to SixThirty for a second time to further develop its cloud-based dashboard that mitigates risk in investment portfolios. It provides investment accounting, analytics and treasury management on fixed-income portfolios to help public fund investment managers achieve success.

Rippleshot

Rippleshot aims to address an issue that creates nightmares for financial institutions and customers alike: data breaches. Through their service, card issuers, processors and merchants themselves are able to monitor suspicious activity, which Rippleshot highlights before a full data breach takes place. Should a breach occur, their service still guides those affected through the process and implements “smarter” fraud risk strategies.

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