Quesnay Holds Women Founders Event At PayPal’s SoHo Office

To help female founders of FinTech firms, Wells Fargo, Discover and PayPal are working to help bring venture funds to FinTech startups launched by women. With those efforts, a Female Founders in FinTech Live Pitch event was held at the SoHo office at PayPal on Thursday (March 8) night, American Banker reported.

Wells Fargo Head of Innovation Lisa Frazier said at the event, according to the outlet, “There’s plenty of venture capital money in FinTech.” Frazier added, “The challenge is to try to get female founders the confidence, exposure and mentoring to go for it.” A company called Quesnay, which runs custom accelerators along with hackathons and ideathons, held the event.

Quesnay President Jennifer Byrne said per the outlet that the company saw roughly 95 percent of its applicants have been entrepreneurs who were male. Byrne said, according to the report, “We couldn’t understand why. We thought, why don’t we run a program called female founders in tech, we’ll be able to encourage women to feel confident, rewarded, mentored and supported.”

The national bank said in May that Frazier was to become head of the innovation group, which is charged with accelerating Wells Fargo’s creation and delivery of next-generation products as well as services. Wells Fargo Head of Payments, Virtual Solutions and Innovation Avid Modjtabai said in a press release at the time, “I am excited to have Lisa serve as a catalyst for innovation at Wells Fargo.”

Modjtabai added, “Her vision, passion, and deep experience in digital transformation at scale will help us further our efforts to build simple, personalized experiences that make a difference in our customers’ lives.” At the time, it was also reported that Frazier has focused on advising startup companies on growth, including product development at SigFig and Jacobi. Frazier has also served as an advisor to the ANZ Banking Group and Citi FinTech.