Is your start-up Bankable?
Make your case to the people shaping what comes next in banking.
Bankable puts selected start-ups live on the Seamless stage to face the people inside banks assessing what gets bought, backed and brought into the business.
One stage. The right room.
Bankable is a live start-up competition built around the conversations that matter inside a bank. Five start-ups take the stage at a time, each with just 150 seconds to make their case before the conversation opens to senior banking decision-makers, judges and the audience.
Meet our judges
Amit Malhotra
ADIB
MP Oliveira
NeoVentures
Amith Rajan
Mashreq
Kushal Shah
Dubai Angel Investors
Umang Moondra
APIX
Vladislavs Mironovs
Commercial Bank of Dubai
Jovana Jovanovic
Omla
Be seen. Be tested. Become Bankable.
No long decks. No generic demo-day format. Bankable is designed to put the business itself under the spotlight.
Be seen
Take to the stage on the Seamless show floor, putting your start-up in front of the banking, payments and start-up community gathered in Dubai.
Be tested
Make your case in 150 seconds before moving straight into a shared live Q&A where judges and the audience can challenge the businesses on stage.
Become Bankable
Every cohort ends with a live verdict, with the judges naming the start-up they believe is Bankable and the founders themselves selecting the Panelists' Choice.
Pitch to the people inside the bank.
Bankable brings founders face-to-face with corporate VC bankers and members of the UAE Banks Federation - senior industry figures looking at start-ups through the lens of commercial fit, scalability, defensibility and investment potential.
How Bankable works
Fast pitches, direct questions and a live verdict. Each cohort runs as one continuous conversation.
Five start-ups take the stage
Each cohort brings five start-ups together on stage for the full Bankable session.
150 seconds. No slides.
Each founder gets two and a half minutes to make the case for their business. No deck. No lengthy presentation.
One live Q&A
Once every start-up has pitched, the floor opens for an eight-minute joint Q&A with the judges and audience.
The verdict
Judges deliberate live before naming their Bankable pick, followed by the start-ups' own Panelists' Choice.
What makes a start-up Bankable?
The judges are not scoring the size of a logo wall or the length of a roadmap. Bankable focuses on four questions that get much closer to the commercial reality.
Bank fit
Is the business genuinely relevant to financial institutions, or can it become a strong B2B proposition?
Defensibility
What makes the proposition difficult to replicate, and what gives the business a position competitors cannot simply copy?
Scalable growth
Can the business grow without relying on increasingly expensive acquisition and marketing to win every new customer?
Conviction
Is the proposition strong enough that the people judging it would be prepared to put their own money behind it?
Two titles. One stage.
Each cohort ends with two live announcements.
Bankable
The start-up selected by the judging panel as the strongest Bankable proposition in the cohort.
Panelists' Choice
A second award decided privately by the start-ups sharing the stage, recognising the business that impressed their peers.
Bridge Solutions
Bankable is presented by Seamless Middle East in partnership with Bridge Solutions, bringing banks and start-ups together around a live format designed to create sharper conversations between the founders building businesses and the people assessing them.
Could your start-up be Bankable?
Bankable comes live to Seamless Middle East on Thursday 24 September at Dubai World Trade Centre.
REGISTER TO ATTENDContact us
To sponsor or exhibit contact:
Ralph Burgess
ralph.burgess@terrapinn.com
Speaking Opportunities:
Leona Fletcher
leona.fletcher@terrapinn.com
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