Challenging the Status Quo in FinTech: Announcing Cohort 2 of Barclays Accelerator powered by Techstars

The financial services industry continues to transform, with our second cohort addressing major markets around bonds, investment banking, insurance, Bitcoin, blockchain, and beyond. While some founders are tackling inefficiencies they’ve personally experienced in finance careers, others have spotted opportunities to bring their expertise in security, fraud, or IT change to the fintech world.

Following a very strong first cohort in 2014, we were intrigued and excited to read through hundreds of applications submitted from over 60 countries. Throughout the selection process it has been a sincere honour to get to know many amazing and passionate founders across the industry, and it is never easy selecting ten startups with so many impressive companies being built.

As Day 1 is now upon us, those joining us for this 13 week adventure have moved from parts of the world near and far ranging from Australia to Nepal to Sweden, San Francisco to New York City, and of course the UK with a strong gravitational force for FinTech in London already.

All are challenging the status quo. All are here to advance the finance world, whether building a startup for the first time or as a founder who has taken three of her companies public already. Without further ado, we are delighted to bring together and welcome our second cohort of Barclays Accelerator powered by Techstars, London 2015. Let’s begin!

The Ten Companies

	Basestone provides cloud-based collaboration on major construction projects, creating data streams from the field that impact loan and insurance pricing.
	Blocktrace provides immutable ledger for diamond ownership & related transaction history verification for insurance companies, claimants & law enforcement.
	Godesic – a project management platform for IT infrastructure change-over in the financial services industry.
	LiquidLandscape – data visualization for creating linked, immersive data exploration environments used by traders
Origin	A new marketplace for large corporations and institutional investors, using technology to facilitate direct debt and bond issuance
	PQ Solutions Provides cyber security that uses cutting edge encryption techniques designed to beat attacks by quantum computers.
	Ravelin Provides data science and machine learning with a merchant’s fraud profile to deliver pin-point accurate online fraud detection.
	Safello – a Europe-focused Bitcoin exchange with plans to expand into payments.
	Stockfuse – a gaming platform that quantifies talent through simulation, currently used by banks to identify and find future trading employees.
Startup #10	Has elected to remain in stealth mode until a later date, stay tuned.