Health innovation has been the story of COVID, but economist Mariana Mazzucato says we’re still not doing it right. We need to redesign procurement, rethink old narratives and reassess the value of public investment.
Karsten Wenzlaff, Advisor
August 26th, 2025
Karsten Wenzlaff is a Crowdfunding and Fintech Expert from Germany. He is Secretary-General of Digit[...]
Category Archives: Voices
Taking part in Y Combinator from Europe: is it worth it?
Sifted | Anh-Tho Chuong | Sep 16, 2021
Precious days spent working on our application, labouring over every word, filming our one-minute video over and over. Hundreds of pages of paperwork to register the company in the US, tens of thousands of dollars of legal fees. And the biggest sacrifice of all: 7% of our company.
These are all the things we had to give away to have a chance at participating in the world’s most famous accelerator programme, Y Combinator.
We breathed a sigh of relief when we got the email telling us we had a spot.
But what’s Y Combinator really like for a European company? And is the intense programme really worth it?
YC or not YC: our rationale
Capital has become increasingly abundant in the European ecosystem, especially for experienced operators like my cofounders and myself; I was the first employee and VP Growth of Qonto, a European fintech unicorn. So naturally, we considered taking a term sheet for a pre-product seed round when we created the company in March 2021. That would have given us a secure runway for the next two years so we could focus on building.
On the other hand, joining YC meant investing time and equity, both precious commodities for founders. But we believed Y Combinator would give us global exposure from day one.
What was it actually like?
Our batch was fully remote and included 400+ companies. Less than 10% of the cohort were female founders. It officially started in early June and ended with the Demo Day at the end of August, where each founder gave a one-minute pitch to 1000+ investors.
Here are our main learnings:
1/ The sooner you adapt to the new rhythm, the better
YC organizes two to four sessions per week: all-hands sessions, some featuring YC alumni, group office hours and individual office hours.
It’s easy to get overly excited and spend a lot of time listening to shiny alumni stories, rather than focusing on what really matters: building something people want. That’s why we quickly split up and had only one of us — we are three cofounders at Lago — attend each session based on who would benefit the most from the insights.
See: Are you a Pig, Gazelle or Bear? Beyond Unicorns, Zoology of startups
Juggling creating value from the programme and the network, committing to bi-weekly goals and leading the Lago team on a daily basis completely disrupted our existing rhythm. This pushed us to iterate faster. We were constantly held accountable and challenged by our YC partners, but this at times stretched us and our employees very thin. Be prepared to adapt fast.
2/ Leverage Bookface
We also quickly learnt that we had to be entrepreneurial in the way we built and got value out of our YC experience. Don’t expect any hand-holding, especially now that the batches are massive and 100% remote. So be prepared to leverage Bookface.
Bookface is YC’s knowledge base, and it answers 80% of the questions a founder can have about building and selling a product, be it to clients, candidates or investors. It’s the most valuable content I’ve ever read. I spent my first nights at YC crunching every article on my own, selecting insights and defining takeaways from them for our team.
See: How to Find an Idea for Your First Startup
Bookface also offers a YC investor database that pulls together information on relevant investors, ticket size, specific interest, and curated reviews from other founders. This enabled me to build an extensive list of relevant target investors, prepare for pitch meetings — based on YC alum advice — conduct due diligence and have a complete fundraising battleplan in a few hours. We only used our partners’ time to review the preparatory work we had done on our own, practice pitches, and get help to negotiate the term sheets we got.
3/ Seek support outside the official program
YC offers a wide support system outside the official batch programme, especially from alumni. We had our technical infrastructure reviewed by a CTO who scaled his company to unicorn status, for instance. Before Demo Day, female alumni also offered ‘fundraising as a female founder’ specific coaching as well. As YC is more a ‘buffet’ than a predefined experience, it’s easy to get lost in the sea of support that is offered, and not spend enough time actually building the product or talking to users. We constantly fought to find this balance.
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The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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“It’s absolutely mad if you think about it” — the need to rethink what we value
MaRS | Molly Shoichet | Sep 8, 2021
Health innovation has been the story of COVID, but economist Mariana Mazzucato says we’re still not doing it right. We need to redesign procurement, rethink old narratives and reassess the value of public investment.
Mariana Mazzucato is one of the world’s most influential economists — professor at University College London, founder of the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose and author of books rejecting business’s monopoly on risk-taking and value creation.
Molly Shoichet: The COVID economy has had an outsized impact on women and racialized communities. What is the connection between public health and a healthy economy?
Mariana Mazzucato: We hear it’s important to invest in health, it’s good for the economy. But in my work as chair of the World Health Organization’s Council on the Economics of Health for All, we want to determine the actual goal we’re trying to achieve.
COVID-19 has woken us up to the fact that we don’t have health for everybody. It’s not enough to have a vaccine if not everyone has access to it. So, if our ambition is health for all, how do we set up our economy? Outcomes-oriented budgeting? Procurement processes and budgets?
See: Why a shift to Impact Investing will create big winners and big losers
So, the connection between health and the economy has to be about creating stronger health systems. But it also has to be about how we structure the economy to deliver on our goals, including the nitty gritty of tool design.
Shoichet: How can we ensure vaccines are equitably available around the world?
Mazzucato: I think we need to really question whether vaccines should be produced in a for-profit model.
With the pandemic, unless vaccines are available to everyone, we’re all going to remain unsafe. Otherwise we have vaccine apartheid, as WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus calls it.
There is this idea of having a patent pool — we have to rely less on voluntary charity. Governments and philanthropies can also use prizes to encourage certain types of inventions. We don’t just have to rely on patents and pricing, especially in an area with such a strong “public good” dimension.
Read: Getting tangible about intangibles: The future of growth and productivity?
There’s also the concept of collective intelligence. One example is the “people’s vaccine” concept promoted by the Costa Rican government and others. And there are people like Dr. Tedros who are asking how we share knowledge, how we construct collective intelligence about tools and therapies in a pandemic, how to structure public-private partnerships.
Shoichet: Societal value is increasingly equated with financial value. How do initiatives like value-based care help create new frameworks that will truly help people?
Mazzucato:
In a system that confuses price with value — the thesis of The Value of Everything — we assume that just because someone is paid a lot, they are more valuable.
This is why Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, had the guts to say after the financial crisis that his workers were among the most productive in the world. We laugh at that, but in a way, he was right. Because when we look at productivity in terms of output per labour, we don’t know how to value the output of public health workers. Their output might end up being free to the consumer, so we can only put a number on their inputs.
Also: Financial data unbound: The value of open data for individuals and institutions
We must value the work of women, caregivers, public health workers, school teachers, in such a way that validates them and the value of their labour. It goes beyond their incomes to the value of the output. GDP doesn’t include the value of a well-structured public education or health system because it’s free. It’s absolutely mad if you think about it. We currently just look at the cost of the teachers or the nurses.
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The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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Digital Euro Report: Design considerations facing the European Central Bank
Internet Economy Foundation | Clark Parsons | Sep 8, 2021
New Study Highlights the Key Design Choices Facing the European Central Bank and Makes Recommendations for Building an Innovation-Compatible Digital Euro
Berlin, 08. Sept., 2021 – If money is now completely programmable, how should a digital Euro be established? This is the question addressed by Establishing a Digital Euro – How to Ensure Financial Sovereignty in the Digital Realm, a new joint study published by the Internet Economy Foundation, Lakestar, Chainlink and iconomy.
Read: JP Morgan warns CBDC could mean banks lose 20-30% of funding
In the wake of the European Central Bank’s announcement in July 2021 that it will begin the process of developing a digital Euro, this new study explains the key design decisions that lie ahead and how each of them can potentially affect the longstanding structures of the monetary and financial systems. It also recommends important guidelines for the ECB to ensure that a digital Euro addresses Europe’s current weakness in global financial services and strengthens Europe’s booming ecosystem of innovation in FinTech, Decentralized Finance (DeFi) and emerging sectors.
The policy recommendations are:
● Create the Digital Euro with a focus on European Financial Sovereignty.
● Use the Digital Euro to reinforce the position of the Euro as an international reserve currency.
● Design the Digital Euro with a wider vision for a more secure future financial system.
● Form should follow function and keep innovation at heart.
● Tailor the Digital Euro to fit the needs and realities of the European startup, scaleup and DeFi ecosystems.
See:
BIS Research: CBDCs beyond borders: results from a survey of central banks
Podcast: Requirements for a fully functional CBDC
The study examines the existing structures of central banks and how the current system relates to financial service providers as well as consumers. It then depicts a pyramid of the four main design decisions that the ECB will have to make and lays out the key pros and cons of each decision. For instance, would a Digital Euro be an anonymous “token”, like a 1 Euro coin, or would it always be tied to an “account”, like the Euro that is spent with a bank Girocard? Each design decision can potentially send a digital Euro in a different direction and have a large impact on its potential usage in the innovative digital economy.
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Download the 52 page PDF report 'Establishing a Digital Euro' --> here
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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Why is venture capital still ignoring women? The case for investing is clear.
Pioneers Post | Tove Ahlström and Sofia Breitholtz | Aug 26, 2021
It could take an astonishing 200 years to close the global gender gap, if we continue on our current path.
Yet the evidence is clear: backing female-led businesses is a ticket to prosperity for everyone. As the world seeks solutions for post-pandemic recovery, it’s time for investors to put their money where their mouths are.
A disheartening 3% of global venture capital went to female founders in 2019, and the figures for women from minority groups are even more dismaying, a 2020 report by Crunchbase shows. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the outlook worsened still, with venture funding to female-founded enterprises plummeting 27% worldwide.
See: Women In Fintech Will Play A Crucial Part In The Covid-19 Recovery Plan
Global challenges, like the Covid-19 pandemic or the climate crisis, have more direct consequences for vulnerable groups in society, who are already subject to uneven distribution of resources, oppression and marginalisation. As the world turns to solutions and strategies for recovery in a post-pandemic reality, investors and politicians need to put their money where their mouths are – and they might benefit, too.
Everyone’s ticket to prosperity
Women are powerful catalysts for development. Data shows that investing in their economic empowerment sets a direct path towards poverty eradication in all groups, inclusive economic growth as well as sustainability and resilience. The recent discussion paper from the European Commission once again shows a correlation between gender equity and GDP growth, productivity and rising wages.
The flow of investment capital needs to be diversified, less focused on the short-term, and more focused on the long-term, with innovations promoting the necessary combination of sustainability and profitability.
The same source also shows that women are associated with long-term, patient capital and more social impact investment. Building capacity for women's economic independence is crucial in the Covid-19 response and also sets an effective path for the achievement of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
A shared problem with a viable solution
One major obstacle for women in both starting enterprises, and taking them to scale, is the lack of access to capital. When female-founded companies get funding, the amount of money is less than male teams receive. A report from Unconventional Capital on Nordic startup funding shows that all-women teams only get between one-third and two-thirds of the funding compared to men. In the US, research shows that women start businesses with roughly half the amount of capital compared to men.
See: Reg CF Update: Interview with Sherwood Neiss on Investment Crowdfunding
The story is much the same across the globe, but – unsurprisingly – even more difficult in emerging economies. Not only does the lack of investment and capital reinforce structural inequalities, it also hampers the growth of female-led businesses. What the world needs is specific programmes that build female capacity, and that stimulate investment ecosystems to become more inclusive.
Don’t look away, investors and politicians
Investors – who tend to proudly describe their decision-making as rational and number-driven – would benefit from looking their (often well-meaning) biases in the eye and actually focusing on data. A now well-known 2018 study by BCG shows that women-founded businesses outperform and deliver higher revenue than male-run ones, making them a rational investment.
Continue to the full article --> here
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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On the Brink Podcast: George Selgin of the Cato Institute on Stablecoins, Bitcoin and Free Banking
On the Brink Podcast | Aug 2, 2021
George Selgin, director of the Center of Monetary Alternatives at the Cato Institute joins the show to discuss Bitcoin, Free Banking, and stablecoins. In this episode:
- Why George refers to Bitcoin as a synthetic commodity money
- Why George was excited by the possibility for synthetic commodity money
- What conditions would have to hold for Bitcoin to be considered money
- Why money is a spectrum rather than binary
- Are stablecoins prone to bank runs?
- Is Tether’s melange of underlying collateral sufficient?
- How should stablecoins be regulated?
- Why are regulators looking into stablecoins today?
See:
FCA Chair Charles Randall Discusses Crypto, Stablecoins and Digital Asset Regulation
More regulation coming: SEC Chairman signals stablecoins and other tokens could fall under its rules on security-based swaps
Minister Freeland releases final report with 34 recommendations on Open Banking from the Advisory committee
- Comparing stablecoins to Money Market Mutual Funds
- Why money market funds broke the buck in 08
- Are stablecoins as systemic as money market funds?
- George’s objections to Gorton and Zhang’s paper on free banking and stablecoins
- George’s definition of free banking
- Was the 1830s-60s period in the U.S. a period of genuine free banking?
- The actual causes of bank failures in the pre-Civil War period
- Why ‘unit banking’ was so fragile
- What lessons can be taken from Canada’s experience with free banking in that era
- Why the history of Free Banking is a red herring in the stablecoin debate
- George’s recommendations for a primer on free banking
- George’s reflections on Hal Finney’s reference to his work
- Why bank failures are often the consequence of regulation
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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Where the UK is heading with Smart Data and why Fintechs want a cross-sectoral access
Innovate Finance | Rolf Merchant | Sep 7, 2021
Data is a hugely valuable currency in the financial services world. In sufficient quantities and with the knowhow to analyse and interpret it, data provides a tremendous amount of knowledge for financial services companies. The old tenet “knowledge is power” could justifiably be updated to “data is power” for 21st century finance.
What is Smart Data?
Smart Data is the secure sharing of customer data with authorised third-party providers upon the customer’s request.
These providers then use this data to provide innovative services for the consumer or business user, such as automatic switching or better account management.
Data sharing could unlock a huge number of benefits for consumers and businesses alike.
Read: Kalifa review of UK Fintech report
We might see the creation of an entire “data economy”, where consumers are more informed and empowered because of the data they can access, and where businesses can make use of shared data to create and improve products and services that target real needs and desires. This is why FinTech companies are so interested in the Smart Data initiative.
Next steps for Smart Data
We were particularly interested to read the report in June from the UK government’s Smart Data working group, Next steps for Smart Data. It was encouraging to see a reaffirmation of the value of financial services-specific initiatives such as Open Banking and Open Finance.
The report detailed a number of the brilliant uses of Open Banking by FinTech companies – including by some of our own members like Yapily, Yolt and Monzo – showing the power of shared data in action.
It was even more promising to read practical proposals for cross-sector coordination. It’s worth referring to the Kalifa Review, which listed taking a “cross-sectoral approach” as the number one recommendation for Smart Data.
See: Will the Law Keep Up with Smart Contracts in 2021?
Innovate Finance agrees with the working group’s four key principles to inform the design of cross-sector coordination and collaboration, as detailed in the Next steps for Smart Data report. These four principles are:
- Sectors working together – bringing together all bodies leading sectoral delivery of Smart Data with industry and government to enable coordination.
- Develop the Smart Data ecosystem – sharing information and drawing on shared expertise to tackle common challenges and support cross-sector innovation.
- Enable interoperability – to address barriers to competition and realise Smart Data benefits for consumers and businesses.
- Inform the ongoing development of the Smart Data framework – ensuring the ecosystem remains responsive to changing user attitudes and technological developments will be important. Pooling research and findings to develop a cross-sector picture of adoption, attitudes and capabilities will provide an opportunity to identify and consider emerging opportunities and challenges.
What does FinTech want from a cross-sectoral approach?
The Kalifa Review listed specific concerns of the FinTech community relating to Smart Data, including smaller firms not having sufficient access to data to develop innovative products and to compete with established firms with large customer bases and data sets. There is a real need for any cross-sectoral approach to take into account the interests of FinTech startups and scaleups.
Read: FCA Speech: Levelling the playing field – innovation in the service of consumers and the market
The Kalifa Review stressed the need for the government to facilitate (or, where appropriate, mandate) the sharing of data not just within sectors (such as Open Banking), but also between sectors. It added that a cross-sector approach must bring firms that hold very significant amounts of data, such as large technology companies, into the fold.
Continue to the full article --> here
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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Bitcoin ETF option gives investors a safer and liquid way to get exposure
Investment Executive | Pat Dunwoody | Sep 7, 2021
The advent of the ETF option offers investors a liquid and safer way to get exposure
If you were to pick a word that best encapsulates the experience of the past few years, it might be “disruptive.”
One disruptive trend that seems to have caught many investors’ attention: cryptocurrency ETFs. Canada introduced the first set of cryptocurrency ETFs in the world in February. Since then, this ETF category has seen exponential growth, gathering nearly $4.6 billion in assets under management as of August 31.
See: SEC’s Hester Pierce and Ark Invest’s Cathie Wood Bats for Bitcoin ETF Amid Recent Correction
Other countries are attempting to catch up: in the U.S., 16 Bitcoin ETF prospectuses have been filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In August, a French asset manager was granted approval to launch an ETF for European investors with a correlation to the price of Bitcoin using a basket of securities. To date, however, Canada remains the only country to have successfully launched futures-based and direct cryptocurrency ETFs, as well as inverse options.
“Cryptocurrencies have captured investors’ attention for a variety of reasons. For one, they represent a new zeitgeist for financial markets — a ‘new gold’ that is digital, decentralized and non-correlated to traditional asset classes,” said Hans Albrecht, vice-president and portfolio manager with Horizons ETFs Management (Canada) Inc. “But perhaps what’s caught most investors’ attention has been the performance. We’ve seen the outsized return potential of cryptocurrencies, albeit with significant volatility risks. For Canadian investors, ETFs have become the easiest way to chase that potential and get exposure fast to popular cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum.”
The advent of the ETF option offered investors a liquid, safer and truer-to-NAV way to get exposure.
Another benefit of the ETF model versus buying cryptocurrencies directly: ETFs are eligible for use in registered investment accounts, including TFSAs and RRSPs. Bitcoin has returned more than 400% since Sept. 2020, and tax-free and registered accounts offer a potent vehicle for storing your cryptocurrency exposure.
See: Cathie Wood’s Ark grants itself power to buy Canadian Bitcoin ETFs
“While many investors ultimately want exposure to Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, another option that more risk-averse investors have sought out is to own the ‘picks and shovels’ for these mineable digital currencies,” said Albrecht.
“There is a growing ecosystem enabling these cryptocurrencies to function, whether it’s the digital exchanges that they trade on, the blockchain and cloud computing infrastructure that enables the transactions or even the hardware, from GPUs [graphic processing units] to semiconductors needed to mine and power them. Many of these sub-sectors and companies see some correlation to the prices of cryptocurrency, but may provide more of a safety-net given their diversified business operations.”
Continue to the full article --> here
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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