Innotribe Carries On Without Its Founders

Innotribe, the innovation arm of the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, more commonly known as SWIFT, has closed one chapter and opened another.

Three of its founders have moved on from Innotribe to pursue other ventures, all of them related to Innotribe’s mission of positive social change and work with startups.

Kosta Peric, former head of innovation at SWIFT, has left to work at the Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation.

Matteo Rizzi, another cofounder, is now general partner at SBT Venture Capital, funded by Russia’s Sberbank. He will look to fund some 20 to 25 fintech startups in 2014.

Nektarios Liolos, a third cofounder, is working with the new head of Innotribe, Fabian Vandenreydt, to ensure an orderly transition. Liolos will continue to work with startups on his own outside of Innotribe, Vandenreydt told Bank Innovation.

Mariela Atanassova, the fourth cofounder of Innotribe, will start her won facilitation and interactive events company.

Vandenreydt is an old associate of Kosta’s and was hired by him to work at SWIFT nine years ago, eventually becoming head of markets management at SWIFT. In his new role as head of Innotribe, he plans to concentrate on continuing the Innotribe Startup Challenges in 2014. Three are planned: one in London, one in North America and one in Asia. The final challenge, where two winners — one startup and one established innovator — are selected, will be held in Boston from Sept. 29, 2014, to Oct. 2, 2014.

The Startup Challenges have been open to this point, but Vandenreydt is interested in adding a more focused challenge, as well, based on feedback from past event. The focused challenges will be based on “themes” that were not further explained.

In the longer term, Vandenreydt hopes to “leverage even more of Innotribe and put it at the center of what we do at SWIFT.” Many technologies nurtured by Innotribe are disruptive to SWIFT’s business. An example is foreign exchange service KlickEx, which won the award for startups at Sibos this year. Referring to the financial institutions that use SWIFT, Vandenreydt said Innotribe has an obligation to “expose those guys to disruptive ideas” — even if SWIFT is the player being disrupted.

Andenreydt described the departure of Innotribe’s founders in this way: “When you are active in innovation, you get interested in doing more.”