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