2013 Innovators to Watch, 36 to 40
36. Billy Robins, business development, PayNearMe
When Billy Robins was a banker at Wells Fargo & Co., but a few weeks ago, he wore t-shirts and jeans. Now that he’s in business development at cutting-edge startup PayNearMe, he sports a suit. What gives? Robins also served as an advisor to BankOns, now a part of Capital One. While Robins is clearly a big plus for PayNearMe, which closes the payments loop, bringing cash into the digital payments world, his greatest strength is in his wide industry network and innate curiosity about the future of banking. Which is why you’ll invariably catch him at random Meetups around San Francisco. Wearing jeans.
37. Mike Maples, Jr., Managing Partner, Floodgate Fund
Mike Maples started a software company in high school and went on to earn an engineering degree from Stanford University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Despite these unpromising beginnings, his Floodgate Fund is the wind beneath the wings of such innovative financial services startups as BancBox, PayNearMe and (close to our heart) Giftly.
38. Patrick Collison, CEO and co-founder, Stripe
Patrick Collison is a CEO at the age of just 25, and it’s not even his first go-round. He also co-founded the auction and marketplace management company Auctomatic. Stripe is a way to accept payments at the code level. Its premise is that online payments are not a financial services problem as much a basic technical problem. The company is billed as a way for developers to accept payments online simply and inexpensively, but its scope is widening Are developers a narrow category? Amazon Web Services was built for developers, Collison counters, and it powers Netflix and Reddit.
39. Debbie Wood, general manager, marketing and industry research at Jack Henry & Associates
Talk to Debbie Wood and you’ll find an executive who is more of a student of banking. Wood, who is in the senior echelons at Jack Henry & Associates, has a passion for banking that burns among the brightest in the industry. Wood doesn’t just ask questions, but looks for understanding, and that fuels her clear sense for what the future holds for banking – a sense that she puts to use at Jack Henry, which continues to expand its product set — especially within its ProfitStars unit — with the speed of a teenager late for a OneDirection concert. And trust us, that’s a lot of speed.
40. Sam Maule, manager, Carlisle & Gallagher Consulting Group
There’s a bit of an #innovationmafia out in the banking world, a group of disrupters working within the system to alter the course of financial services — one tweet at a time. Count Maule as one of its leaders. A former Navy midshipman, Maule did most of his industry work at TSYS before jumping over in 2011 to C&G, seemingly one of the fastest growing industry consultancies. Maule might not have the flashiest title around, but he has over the last two years pressed the intellectual boundaries of what banking could be, while still hewing to a kind of practicality that is both refreshing and necessary. Famously, Maule said at our 2013 Bank Innovation conference: “Sometimes innovating just means getting shit done.” Enough said.
