Findr, a B2B matchmaking service between fintechs and customers, plans to launch in September.

The platform, which is halfway through closing its initial £300,000 seed round, will connect fintechs with corporates who have already said they are interested in what their start-up has to offer.

Fintechs will post details about themselves and can then search Findr for suitable customers, such as banks or other financial institutions.

If a potential client or commercial partner, as Findr calls them, responds positively, then the fintech is charged a one-off introduction fee, much like an online dating agency.

The platform, which is currently being built, is still deciding on the fee size for each successful introduction but it should be around £99.

See also: UK accounts for almost one third of foreign investment in European tech

Findr is the brainchild of Greg Watts, former head of partnerships at Visa Europe, where he forged connections between retailers and corporates including Tesco, Carrefour, BP and Shell.

Watts said: “Even with the Visa brand and significant budgets behind us, it was still a manual, resource-intensive process, often taking months – if not years – to finalise a partnership. So, it’s always been in my mind – how can you automate, simplify and accelerate the traditional partnership process?”

Watts points out that most fintech start-ups only have enough seed money to last between nine months and a year, while it can take anything between one and two years to cement a commercial partnership between your start-up and a business which wants to license your technology.

See also: Investment in start-ups increases by one third to £663m since lockdown

Cash runway

Given how short the cash runway is, says Watts, it’s no wonder 90 per cent of start-ups crash before take-off.

And even if you do comb LinkedIn to try and find the right customer, you then need to identify the right person within the organisation. Findr does that all for you, says Watts, providing warms leads who are in the market for what you’re offering.

Watts said: “We’re offering more targeted warm leads with key decision makers, who are interested in what you have to offer. None of the other platforms such as LinkedIn have that matchmaking facility.”

Companies such as Visa, Microsoft, British Gas and Lloyds all struggle to understand the fintech landscape, supplying the kind of technology they want, he explains.

Indeed, JPMorgan and Oracle have already signed up to Findr as potential fintech customers.

The start-up has also signed a one-year deal with Crunchbase to use its data to help build corporate profiles alongside information from Companies House and companies’ own websites, to give users the fullest picture of businesses they want to target.

Although when he had his lightbulb moment while out Christmas shopping and began planning Findr in the New Year, what Watts could not foresee – along with anybody else – was the impact of the global coronavirus pandemic.

However, launching Findr now could be propitious – its virtual introduction approach eliminates the requirement for face-to-face meetings, providing a safe solution for growing your business.

Although it has started with fintech, Findr wants to move on to the next vertical, which could either be insuretech or regtech.

Says Watts: “Our vision is to become a global partnership matching platform not just for fintechs, but for all start-ups and their partners – whatever the vertical.”

Further reading

Over half of start-ups only have enough cash flow to survive six months