New Yorkers in the financial technology are familiar with that week in the fall that brings together the most bustling fintech conferences and parties of the year.
Now, they can get their lanyards on earlier: This year, for the first time ever, there’s an official FinTech Week, because, well, why not? With two headliner conferences and events scattered citywide hosted by incumbents and startups alike, the city will soon be buzzing with the sounds of innovative thoughts, game changing ideas and the makings of a global financial revolution built on some fancy database tech with an exciting though hotly debated name. Here is FinTech Week, which is put on by Empire Startups and FinXTech, by the numbers:
Attendees: 4,000
Years FinTech Week has been happening: zero
Fintech events hosted by Empire: 152, before this
Days FinTech Week runs: four. False advertising.
Number of events: 25
Number of large conferences: two
Events that are actually Meetups: six
Priciest ticket: $1,295
Number of venues: 16
Events at Rise: 10
Number of events you’ll have to travel to Brooklyn for: one
Distance between the Manhattan venues that are furthest apart: 4.7 miles
What it’ll cost you to take an UberX between them: $28
Longest distance traveled for FinTech Week: 7,900 miles (J.A. Chowdhary and Richa Shrivastava from the Government of Andhra Pradesh in India)
Number of male speakers: 73
Number of female speakers: 35
Smallest ratio of male to female speakers: 50/50 (Empire Startups)
Fluffiest title: five words (Global Financial Services Consulting Leader)
Speakers with “fintech” in their title: five
Times “fintech” is used as an ambiguous noun: two
Sessions admitting fintech is unsexy: one (“The Unsexy Side of FinTech” at the FinXTech Annual Summit)
Blockchain sessions: four
AI session: one
Number of times blockchain and AI are expected to be mentioned: 6,789,120 (estimated)
Made up words in the lineup: five (for example, “quant algo”)
Number of Starbucks in the Times Square area: 17
Number of bars in the Webster Hall area: 56
Free happy hours: three
Pounds of dinosaur BBQ that will be served at the Tuesday lunch: 225