Matteo Rizzi Profile Picture

Keynote SpeakerMatteo Rizzi

Co-Founder of FTS Group, Investor, Author, Executive Producer of Breaking Banks Europe

Matteo Rizzi is the Investment Director of the BLOC Smart Africa fund, where he focuses on Tech4Impact investments in Africa and advises Bamboo’s other funds on financial technology investments. Matteo is an unconventional investor, entrepreneur and thought leader with two decades of experience in financial technologies. For three years in... Read more

Biography

Matteo Rizzi is the Investment Director of the BLOC Smart Africa fund, where he focuses on Tech4Impact investments in Africa and advises Bamboo’s other funds on financial technology investments.

Matteo is an unconventional investor, entrepreneur and thought leader with two decades of experience in financial technologies. For three years in a row (2014-2016), Financial News has nominated Matteo as one of the “40 most in influential FinTech executives in Europe”.In 2008 he co-founded Innotribe, the innovation arm of SWIFT, where Matteo worked for 13 years. He also launched the Innotribe Startup Challenge, the first global FinTech deal ow of its kind. He left SWIFT in 2013 when he co-founded and became a partner at SBT Venture Capital, one of the first funds solely dedicated to early-stage FinTech investments, with USD 100 million under management, building a portfolio of a dozen startups including eToro (worth USD 2.6 billion today) and Mobeewave (acquired by Apple).

Since 2015, after selling his interest in SBT Venture Capital, Matteo Rizzi took venture partner positions at Omidyar Network, Société General Ventures, Bamboo Capital Partners and NEVA FinVentures, where he was involved in investments in companies like Flutterwave in Lagos. He also created and co-founded FinTechStage (now FTS Group), a platform for investors, innovators, and start-ups to foster FinTech disruption globally, which carried out some 50+ missions and events all over the world and throughout Africa. As a byproduct of Fintechstage, Matteo founded Timepledge, a global program helping African entrepreneurs in several domains of their businesses, from product to strategy to channel management to investors pitching.

He is the author or “The FinTech Revolution” (EGEAN, 2016, ITA) and of “Talent & Rebels, dealing with corporate misfits” (HOEPLI, 2019, ENG, and ITA). Recently,

Matteo Rizzi took the position of Executive Producer of Breaking Banks Europe (a spin-o of Breaking Banks US) available on Soundcloud, iTunes, Spotify, GooglePlay and YouTube.

Matteo speaks five languages, holds a University degree in Computer Science (University of Genova) and a Postgraduate in Financial Transactions (Solvay Business School).

“If you’re looking for a speaker that does his homework, customizes, engages and delivers for your audience – run, don’t walk to have Matteo speak at your event! He and his team are a pleasure to work with. They are so knowledgeable, unafraid to be provocative, and make it a fun and truly collaborative experience all around.” Alison Estrada (she/her/hers), Managing Director at Dolmen Communications, LLC
“We worked with Matteo at a huge virtual conference for young people in Colombia and it was awesome, Matteo offered us a speech full of cutting-edge content that inspired the audience to conquer their dreams and build a better future for our country. Also, Matteo was very helpful during the process, so it made it very easy to work with him and the result was excellent! Thanks Matteo for your knowledge.“ Esteban Barrera, Helping Thought Leaders and Speakers to Spread their Ideas Around the World | Business and Corporate Developer in the Americas | Networking Enthusiast

Popular Talks by Matteo Rizzi

  • Remental & Disruptive Innovation
    How an unconventional approach to innovation can save your business from disruption. Idea Management, Talent, Integration with your day-to-day business, and company culture are all parts of a recipe where incremental innovation is one of the outcomes, yet often not complement by a more fundamental and disruptive approach to apprehend...
  • Tech for Good
    Technology with a purpose, sustainability, financial inclusion, and impact investing are becoming key factors in the way we do business, regardless of the part of the world we are looking at. What can we learn from the evolution of the emerging markets in terms of technology adoption, financial literacy and...
  • Resilience & Antifragility
    The world digital leapfrog, the challenge of reinvention, dealing with uncertainty. All at the same time. Most of the business is facing an unprecedented market disruption, and no one can predict the speed of its recovery. Resilient businesses will survive, anti-fragile ones with thrive. What’s in it for you? Through...
  • Deepening the financial sector

    Let’s advance the dialogue and make progress from the Financial Inclusion angle. How the underbanked and the unbanked became the biggest opportunity for incumbents and FinTechs to tap on.

  • Talent and rebels
    If you hire the same talents, you will end up in places where someone else has been before. Rebels and Innovators are often misguided, isolated and pushed away by large organizations. Matteo has been an Intrapreneur and an Innovator for the past two decades, and love to share his view...
  • Dealing with FinTech startups

    Investing in Fintech startups and advising organisations on how to best deal with startups, creating the right collaboration environment.

  • Investment and FinTech trends

    Often, executives of large organisations want to have a snapshot of the market, investment, and tech trends within the banking and insurance market. Having kept an investor hat for the past seven years, Matteo has first-eye insights constantly in the financial services marketplace.

  • Building eco-systems; the game of FinTech thrones

    Building strong financial eco-systems is key in every society. Matteo believes that the ingredients for a healthy and productive Fintech Ecosystem are: government policies, startups community catalyzed, capital, and talent.