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Hey, fintech fam 💜

Big moment today: we officially dropped the press release announcing that Fintech Is Femme, alongside our partners at Fiat Growth and Identity Strategies, is producing FTW: NYC — the Official New York Fintech Week Conference, taking place April 28–30, 2026, in the heart of Manhattan.

It’s truly an honor to carry forward a decade-long New York Fintech Week legacy originally built by Empire Startups — and to reimagine what’s possible when content, community, and culture come together with real intention. You can explore the event site for a first look at what we’re building.

This is very much a build-it-together moment — and we’re just getting started. As always, reply to this email if you want to build this one with us.

Today, though, I get to do one of my favorite things: spotlight an iconic woman in fintech you need to know about.

Let’s get into it ✨

_#SPONSORED

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✍🏽 _{ON LEADERSHIP}

The Long Game: How Luan Cox Pioneered One of Fintech’s Most Profitable—and Most Influential—Infrastructure Platforms

Before Luan Cox ever built fintech infrastructure, she learned how to compete.

At four years old, she picked up a tennis racket. By her teens, she was nationally ranked, traveling constantly, and living what she now calls “a full-time job before most kids know what a job is.” Burnout came early — and with it, a question that would quietly define the rest of her career: What do you do when the path you trained for disappears?

She found her answer, improbably, in the movie Wall Street.

“I saw it and thought, that’s it,” Cox told me. “I didn’t even fully know what a stockbroker was — I just knew I wanted to be in finance.”

That pivot set her on a collision course with every major wave of modern fintech — often years before the market realized what it was becoming.

Selling Before the Internet Had a Name

Cox graduated from the University of North Texas in the early 1990s, racing through school in three years out of financial necessity. The job market was brutal. She landed at Jefferson Pilot, one of the largest insurance companies in the country, selling annuities, mutual funds, and life insurance — at an age when most of her peers were still ordering drinks.

“I had to figure out how to sell life insurance to people who didn’t think about dying,” she said. “So I went to bars. I’d ask my friends, ‘You don’t need life insurance now—but do you plan on getting married? Having kids?’ Then I’d show them the math. What happens if you wait versus buying now.”

It worked.

Her pitch was simple, relentless, and effective. Within a year, Cox landed in the top 2% of sales across the company — a pattern that would repeat throughout her career: find friction, remove it, execute relentlessly.

Then came the internet.

In the mid-1990s, Cox joined a tiny Dallas startup experimenting with something no one quite understood yet: online investing. She asked for a title no one had ever heard of — Internet Director — and was promptly sent on the road to pitch mutual fund companies on digital advertising.

“They’d look at me like I was speaking another language,” she said. “Half of them didn’t even have a website.”

That work led her to Silicon Valley — and to Quote.com, one of the earliest companies to put real-time stock quotes on the internet. Backed by Sequoia Capital, Quote.com was building what Cox describes as “Bloomberg-quality data for everyday investors.”

The incumbents laughed — until they needed it.

Schwab, Fidelity, and E*TRADE soon realized that if retail investors were going to trade online, they needed content, analytics, and infrastructure. Cox helped pioneer what would later become SaaS licensing for financial data — embedding Quote.com’s technology directly inside brokerage platforms.

“We didn’t just build a product,” she said. “We built the pipes.”

A Pattern Emerges: Build First, Wait Second

That pattern — building infrastructure before the market asks for it — became Cox’s signature.

After senior leadership roles at Screaming Media (which became part of Dow Jones, which later sold to YellowBrix) and Interactive Data, where she helped build a managed solutions business from zero to tens of millions in revenue, Cox and her longtime collaborator Sri Goteti saw another shift coming.

Peer-to-peer lending. Crowdfunding. The early signs of capital democratization.

They launched Crowdnetic with a bold thesis: become the Bloomberg of private markets. They aggregated data from hundreds of crowdfunding platforms, built indexes used by CNBC and Dow Jones, and even piped data into Thomson Reuters terminals.

“And yet,” Cox said, “no one wanted to pay us.”

So they pivoted — not because the vision was wrong, but because the timing was.

FinMkt and the Long Bet on Platforms

That pivot became FinMkt.

Instead of selling data, Cox focused on a harder, messier problem: point-of-sale lending. 

Consumers juggling multiple loan applications. Merchants logging into eight different lender portals. Lenders operating in silos, optimizing for themselves — not the borrower.

FinMkt built a multi-lender “waterfall” platform that allowed borrowers to receive the best offer across lenders in real time — with FinMkt handling KYC, fraud, compliance, and orchestration.

Once again, the industry said no.

“Every lender told us nobody would ever want a platform,” Cox said. “So we waited.”

That wait paid off when Renewal by Andersen — a home improvement giant driving billions in annual loan volume — issued an RFP for exactly what FinMkt had already built. FinMkt won.

Suddenly, lenders had no choice but to integrate.

Today, FinMkt powers financing for some of the largest home improvement companies in the U.S., employs more than 160 people, has appeared on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing companies, and has grown profitably — having raised just $15 million total.

“We were forced to be capital efficient,” Cox said. “Female founders don’t get the luxury of burning cash.”

The Innovator’s Advantage

Cox doesn’t romanticize waiting — she weaponizes it.

While others chased headlines, she built moats. While competitors copied, she kept moving. 

FinMkt is now pushing into captive lending — enabling large merchants to become their own lenders, cutting fintech middlemen out entirely.

“Why shouldn’t they own the paper?” she asked. “They already generate the volume.”

It’s disruptive. It’s uncomfortable. And it’s exactly why Cox is this year’s Innovator of the Year at the FEMMY Awards on March 2 in New York City. 

Because innovation, in fintech, rarely looks like hype. More often, it looks like patience — paired with conviction.

“I’m always thinking five steps ahead,” Cox said. “Not when it will happen — just that it will.”

And when the market finally catches up?

She’s already built the platform.

What Leaders Can Learn From Luan Cox

1. Build for where the market is going — not where it is.

Cox didn’t wait for validation. She built infrastructure years before the industry admitted it needed it. Her advantage wasn’t timing — it was conviction paired with patience.

2. Waiting isn’t passive if you’re building moats.

While others chased headlines, Cox used the “waiting years” to perfect technology, hire loyal teams, and deepen her understanding of how money actually moves. When the market finally turned, she was ready — competitors weren’t.

3. Capital efficiency is a strategic weapon, not a constraint.

FinMkt raised just $15 million and grew profitably, a reminder that discipline can outperform scale. “Female founders are forced to build differently,” Cox said — and that difference can become the edge.

4. Don’t confuse rejection with irrelevance.

Every lender told her no. Years later, those same institutions came back asking for the platform they once dismissed. Innovation often looks like persistence long before it looks like success.

5. Power comes from owning the rails, not the noise.

Cox didn’t build a flashy consumer brand. She built the pipes behind the scenes — the systems that make other businesses run. In fintech, infrastructure is influence. 

Want to Meet Women Leaders Like Luan?

Join us on March 2 in New York City for the FEMMY Awards, kicking off Women’s History Month with a night celebrating the women actually building fintech’s future.

• Meet founders, operators, and innovators like Luan Cox

• Cocktails, community, and industry-shaping conversations

• Where leadership, legacy, and deal-making collide

Join us at the FEMMY Awards by attending, securing your Academy of Fintech membership, or purchasing a table and co-hosting with us!

🎤_{ON HUMANS OF FINTECH}

Meet the Engineer Who Shaped Fintech’s Events & Narrative

Sanjib Kalita, Chairman of Fintech Meetup, Opens Humans of Fintech Season 10

Before fintech became an industry, it was an idea — and Sanjib Kalita has spent his career translating complex systems into stories people can actually understand.

In the Season 10 premiere of Humans of Fintech, Kalita opens up about his journey from engineering the Google Wallet to ecosystem builder, why narrative matters as much as infrastructure, and how fintech’s next chapter will be written by those who can think long-term and connect technology, trust, and people.

🎥 Watch the full episode here — this one is equal parts thoughtful, honest, and essential viewing for anyone building in fintech today.

Oh, and if you want a chance to win VIP tickets to Fintech Meetup, be sure to nominate yourself or a colleague here.

_{NEW YORK FINTECH WEEK 2026}

Haven’t you heard? Finech Is Femme, Fiat Growth, and Identity Strategies are producing this year’s official New York Fintech Week Conference.

Introducing, FTW: NYC, a three-day, targeted conference experience bringing fintech’s most influential brands and leaders together across innovation, leadership, and security — in the global center of financial innovation.

Interested in sponsoring? I’m already in conversations with iconic brands to shape this stage. Reply to this email and let’s make sure your company has a standout presence at New York Fintech Week.

Interested in speaking? I love hearing smart, compelling content pitches. We design each stage in close collaboration with our core partners, then thoughtfully expand the lineup with voices that bring fresh perspectives, credibility, and substance to the conversation.

_{I WANT IT, I GOT IT}

• 📚 Today’s Read: ICYMI, I interviewed Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni, the founders of Phia, for Forbes—exploring how AI agents are reshaping fintech and redefining what comes next. Read it here.

• 🎬 Today’s Watch: Bad Bunny didn’t just headline the Super Bowl halftime show—he redefined what it means to be proud of where we came from. A celebration of all Americans, culture without translation, and success without assimilation. If you’re looking for a real snapshot of the modern American Dream, this was it. Watch the full performance here.

• 💫 Today’s Fit: If you’re coming to the FEMMYs on March 2, consider this your style inspiration. My dress is ready, the mood is set, and we’re about to kick off Women’s History Month in the most iconic way.

_FINTUNES

🎵 BAD BUNNY - DtMF

From Bad Bunny’s Debí Tirar Más Fotos (“I Should Have Taken More Photos”), this track turns nostalgia into movement — a song that keeps you dancing while gently reminding you not to rush past the moments worth remembering.

_{LET’S CONNECT}

📰 Share this newsletter with a friend and start growing your network.

🔗 Connect with me on LinkedIn for daily insights on leadership.

🤝 Grow your business through content & community by partnering with me.

📣 Promote yourself to 50,000 subscribers by sponsoring this newsletter or the Humans of Fintech podcast.

🎤 Host an epic event by booking me as a speaker, moderator, or emcee.

📚 Increase your expertise by ordering your copy of my book, Fintech Feminists: Increasing Inclusion, Redefining Innovation, and Changing the Future for Women Around the World.

That’s all for now! See you on Thursday.

Love,

Nicole 💜