Delaware's fintech moment: CAFE's 2025 spring cohort and more on the horizon
Since the Center for Advancing Financial Equity — better known as CAFE — launched in 2023 at the then-new Fintech Innovation Hub at the University of Delaware's STAR Campus, it has quietly been building a name for itself.
It's also been building a fintech brand for Delaware, something that has long seemed elusive despite the state being a major financial center since the 1980s. Even with prominent fintech companies like Delaware-based Best Egg, FairSquare and a PayPal presence, there was a certain kind of buzz that didn't seem to resonate beyond state lines.
That may be changing.
For its current spring cohort, CAFE held a three-day event from April 8 to 10 that drew fintech insiders, leaders and investors from all over the country to Delaware, including the Fintech Innovation Hub, sponsor Best Egg's North Wilmington headquarters, and, finally, the DuPont Country Club for an invite-only pitch and networking event that included the fintech portion of the Delaware Prosperity Partnership's Startup302 competition.
'I have really found a tremendous welcoming here in Delaware, so much so that I've adopted the Blue Hens as my own,' said Phil Goldfeder, president of the American Fintech Council, one of the many big names in fintech who came for the event.
Speakers included Wilmington Mayor (and former Delaware Governor) John Carney; Ben du Pont, cofounder of Chartline Capital Partners and Zip Code Wilmington; Rob Habgood, CEO of Wilmington-based FairSquare/Ally Card; and CAFE founder Kristen Castell.
CAFE startups from California, New York and Arizona made their pitches
In the past CAFE cohorts, Delaware startups, including NESTER and Carvertise, participated among others from all over the country. This cohort's six CAFE startups are all established startups from out of state. Some are looking to do business in Delaware, but all are getting an exposure to Delaware's tech ecosystem to take home with them.
The spring CAFE cohort is comprised of AI underwriting platform DubPrime (Los Gatos, California), smart estate planning platform Goodtrust (Palo Alto, California), ATM alternative Spare (Los Angeles, California), expense reduction platform Starlight (Brooklyn, New York), client management system TAZI AI (San Francisco, California) and predictive credit platform Trackstar AI (Chandler, Arizona).
All six gave 5-minute pitches to cap off the event.
Three Startup302 fintech finalist startups pitched early in the day, competing for part of $100,000+ in cash grants, mentoring and investor connections. Those startups are Roam, an Everett, Washington-based HOA management platform (first place), Wilmington-based Grad Village, a platform that connects college students with private donors to help them with tuition costs (second place) and Innocuous AI, a New York City-based data management platform (third place).
There will be two more Startup302 finals competitions at upcoming exosystem events: environmental impact startups will pitch at the Clean Tech Ecosystem Summit on April 24, and life sciences startups will pitch at Delaware's DNA Life Science Conference on May 8. These events will feature finalists from Wilmington, Baltimore and Philadelphia.
A spotlight on Delaware's talent
Delaware's history as a finance and business center was held up as a major component of the state's brand identity, with Mayor Carney telling the story of how Wilmington became a center of banking for out-of-towners from places like San Francisco, New York City and Los Angeles.
'When Ben's father [Pete du Pont] was governor, our economy here in our state was in really bad shape,' Carney said. 'One of the things that the administration did around 1980 was they passed important legislation called the Financial Center Development Act.' What it did, he explained, was bring a big New York bank to Delaware to set up its credit card operations, which was then followed by many others. Later, as banks consolidated, Bank of America bought MBNA, which had turned part of downtown to its own corporate campus.
'There was a lot of talent here looking for things to do,' Carney said, 'and that's where our Fintech sector came from.'
That history continues to be apparent in the state's talent pool, said Habgood. 'What really drove the success of Fairsquare was being here in Delaware,' he told the attendees. 'Just finding ourselves in Delaware was a huge benefit because there's clearly more talent in the credit card space in this Wilmington area than anywhere else on the planet.'
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