Talk Business & Politics Daily: The FinTech, transportation and Presidential politics edition

Editor’s note: You can watch the full video of today’s Talk Business & Politics Daily at the end of this report, or download an audio version through the iTunes store under “Talk Business & Politics.”
_________________

On Tuesday’s Talk Business & Politics Daily, Venture Center CEO Lee Watson explains what will happen on Wednesday’s Demo Day at the Clinton School when 10 startup companies roll out the results from their 12-week FinTech boot camp.

Also, we’ll provide top stories of the day, run through the latest Arkansas Transportation Report, and TB&P’s Steve Brawner swings by the studio for a conversation on Presidential campaign trail.

FIN TECH
The Venture Center’s 12-week financial technology (FinTech) accelerator program is about to wrap up and 10 startups will present their business plans to investors and the public on Wednesday afternoon at the Clinton School in downtown Little Rock.

Lee Watson, CEO of the Venture Center and one of the architects behind the FinTech program, sat down on TB&P Daily to discuss the process, the results and what’s next. He says the entrepreneurs who participated are building disruptive companies that can transform banking, investments and finance.

“Literally, there are thousands of early stage companies in the FinTech world out there. We identified 150 through our application process and got that down to 10 that had the most promise to disrupt the industry and we brought them here for the 12 week program. That program includes curriculum in the FinTech space, compliance, regulatory information as well as how to build a business and how to go to market and different strategies for business development,” Watson said.

One of the advantages that Arkansas has brought to the table with its FinTech program is access. The startups that have participated have not only benefited from banking giant FIS (formerly Systematics), the sponsor of the program, but they have been able to meet with banking and investment leaders in Arkansas as well as mega-companies like Wal-Mart leadership.

“They have met with, literally, I think every banker in the state of Arkansas. There have been bank executives from New York and down in New Orleans and Chicago and as far as Seattle that have come in to see the companies. We have had investors come in and we have had over 80 executives with FIS from their global operations meet with the teams through video conference, some of them in person. So they have had the best access to the folks that know this FinTech space as you could get anywhere else,” he said.

A lot of folks think that you can get these meetings by going to a conference or whatever but often the people that make the decisions that you really want to talk to you don’t get access to them. So in this program they have had one-on-one access,” Watson added. “The CEO of FIS did a one-on-one with each company.”

Watson says on Wednesday at the Demo Day there will be announcements that several startups have landed clients in the small-, medium-, and large-bank space.

What announcements might we see? How many companies are likely to scale up? How big could some of these companies be? And, could we see any of these worldwide startups stay in Arkansas? Watch Watson’s interview below for more details.

ADDITIONAL
In addition to today’s top news stories, we’ll also pluck three key numbers from the latest Arkansas Transportation Report. And, Steve Brawner and Roby Brock quiz each other on the latest in the Presidential race.

Watch the full Talk Business & Politics Daily below.