Amilcar Chavarria

Assembled founding engineering team and led execution of this early stage FinTech startup focused on helping Small & Midsize Businesses meet their working capital requirements by turning their customers into investors through crowdfunding. 

Accomplishments

• Built four products during the first six months including APIs and embeddable Web Apps.
• Raised $325,000 from two strategic investors and also bootstrapped company.
• Generated inbound demand of over 200 leads and $560MM+ in potential deal flow.
• Closed the firm's first 30 clients and 10 partners.
• Responsible for first revenues (less than $10K).
• Grew from a team of three to twelve with limited resources.
• Featured company on major publications including Yahoo Finance, CNBC, CrowdFund Insider, CrowdFund Beat and Market Watch.
• Increased web traffic by over 10,000 users and 15,000 sessions.

Largest Engagement -- Well Known FinTech Firm (11 month project)

Led clients' efforts from concept to launch of their Wealth Management Cloud Platform, a powerful set of APIs that can power any Robo-Advisor in today's market.  

General services provided to my clients included:

General Management & Leadership

• Entrepreneurial Management.
• Turnaround Management.

Product Management: from POC to Launch

• Product vision, roadmap & execution.
• Functional specifications (Apps + APIs), wireframes, prototypes.
• Tools: JIRA, Confluence, Balsamiq, Gliffy, Postman, SQL, JSON, REST APIs, Swagger, 3Scale, Mashape.

Marketing & Sales

• Market Research: segmentation analysis, perceptual maps, customer development.
• Go-To-Market strategy: business unit strategy, value proposition definition, segmentation, product development, pricing and customer success.
• B2B prospecting with major enterprises 
• Product Marketing: catalog, product brief, white paper and blogs

Complimentary Services: Training & Events 

FinTech Entrepreneur | Investor | Co-Op Founder @FinTech Portfolio

Founded a growing cooperative of FinTech Entrepreneurs, Ex-Bankers, Tech Pros and Ex-Regulators to build fintech companies from scratch. Two notable companies include our training offering, FinTech School which has clients like Moody's, IBM, Calstrs and The Wharton School of Business.  Our events business, FinTech Meet, has landed Fortune 500 companies (e.g. Ernst & Young) & FInTech Unicorns (e.g. Prosper, Tradeshift, Xignite)  as hosts, speakers or sponsors.

Promoted to VP and GM of the Invest Product Group from Director of Business Development and Sales

COMPANY & PRODUCT:

Ventured backed company ($11MM) from Tier 1 VCs. Our product helped crowd-funding & private placement platforms secure and manage funds throughout the entire transaction lifecycle while complying with regulations (e.g. KYC), e-signature collection and stock transfers in a cost-efficient and fully automated manner. This was done through a proprietary set of APIs that were specifically built for this industry. We also handled ongoing distributions (i.e. repayment) back to investors.

ROLE:

• Led Business Development, Marketing & Sales.
• Relationship management with strategic partners and top clients. Managed in and outbound pipelines.
• Responsible for developing new marketing collateral (pitch decks, product overview, workflows, integration aids).
• Represented the company during prominent crowdfunding conferences.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS:

• Increased new client relationships by 291% in 6 months going from 23 to 90+ private placement portals.
• Built new partnerships with custodians, banks, distribution partners as well as key players in the crowdfunding ecosystem.
• Promoted the company through personal networks to onboard new talent. Collaborated with two top 10 schools to establish a summer internship program.
• Developed the first strategic marketing plan for Bancbox Invest.
• Conceptualized key enhancements to our web copy. Worked with UX/UI designer to craft new product collateral.
• Implemented the use of new tools for CRM and Client Education.

Business Legal Name:4StepFinance which owned Bucksprout(TM). An investment management startup and one of the earliest Robo Advisors.

LEADERSHIP

• Built impressive team of business & engineering talent - a $2mm per year payroll burning less than $1,000 per month.
• Led recruiting, funding and overall company direction & execution. Gained admission and recognition within Wharton's Venture Initiation Program (VIP). Cleared most regulatory hurdles (S65) and Form ADVs to set up Investment Advisory Firm.

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT & MARKETING

• Customer Development: customer discovery and need validation.
• Online User Acquisition Strategy (B2C): CRM, SEO, some multi-variate testing, webinars, blogging, email marketing, social media marketing, online PR.
• Partnerships (B2B) with data providers, advisors, investors and accelerators.

PRODUCT MANAGEMENT

• Developed 1st technology vision and execution strategy for our minimum viable product. Conducted user research and competitive analysis (perceptual maps / conjoint) to compile feature set and phasing strategy.
• Created specifications, wireframes and prototypes.
• User research: usability testing, web analytics (Google, Facebook, Crazyegg).

• Analytics Product Manager overseeing team of Quants & Portfolio Analysts responsible for Risk, P&L analysis and cross-functional projects for $280B in assets among 176 model-based fixed income Hedge Funds, CTFs and ETFs.
• Independent Controller for a $1BN multi-asset class Hedge Fund.
• Hands on Fixed Income expertise in cash and derivative products (ABS,MBS,CDS,IRS, Futures), FX, equity derivatives (TRS, Futures) and alternative assets (R/E, Hedge Funds). Also various broad index ETFs.

• Put together a business plan and built an investment advisory practice from scratch.
• Business Development, Relationship Management & Portfolio Management responsibilities for High Net Worth clients.

Controller for a $400mm long and short prop trading equity portfolio.

2005 - 2006:  Local Currency Trading, Finance. Product Controller for $300mm Brazilian onshore/offshore markets.  Emerging markets finance role working with FX and Fixed Income products for LatAm (Brazil and Mexico) institutional clients.

2001 - 2005: Technology Manager for Liquidity, Trading and Risk Management systems. Held various technical roles ranging from BA/QA, Production Support, Release Management and Project Management. Managed onshore and offshore resources.

• Founder, Industry Bytes Club: a student led career exploration group that accelerates industry knowledge by assembling panels of experts.
• Steering Committee Member, Founder's Circle
• Venture Initiation Program (VIP) Alum & Volunteer.  Mentor to 3 full-time Wharton students