Maria Gotsch. She’s the president and CEO at the Partnership Fund for New York City, which is the investment arm of the Partnership for New York City. In addition to leading the funds operations, Maria has spearheaded the creation and operation of a number of fund strategic initiatives including The Fintech Innovation Lab. Prior to joining the fund in 1999, Maria was a managing director at a company that is now part of Deutsche Bank, providing strategic and financial advice related to mergers, acquisitions, dispositions, joint ventures and the development of business strategies. Maria worked for LaSalle Partners in the New York area and Merrill Lynch Capital Markets, in both New York and London. She graduated with an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA from Wellesley College. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – “A book on the Iranian negotiations with the US around the treaty” What CEO do you follow? – Henry Kravis Favorite online tool? — MyCity Bike app How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7 and a half If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Be bold, be bold, be bold!”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:11 – Nathan introduces Maria to the show 02:15 – Partnership Fund is the corporate sector at the table that is trying to grow the NYC economy 02:21 – Henry Kravis of KKR has raised funds in the late 90s and raised from major corporations and individuals, in NYC 02:32 – The investor list is the “who’s who" of the private equity 02:36 – Partnership Fund was structured as an evergreen fund 02:48 – “We can do things that are a little bit riskier and take a little bit longer than a traditional private sector investor” 03:02 – “We often work with government, but we’re privately funded” 03:13 – Partnership Fund is like an interest-free loan for 45 years 03:33 – All of Partnership Fund’s gains just go back to their funds and they reinvest it 03:41 – “We have the investors’ money for 45 years and if we make returns, it comes back to us to fund new projects” 03:58 – The Fintech Lab is currently in their 7th year and has 75 graduates 04:08 – It is an elite program and takes 68 companies a year 04:18 – It is structured as a civic program 04:32 – The goal of the program is to help reduce the pain and agony of a small emerging company trying to get into and get attention from large financial institutions 05:06 – “Because it is competitive to get in, it’s a shark tank to get in, but once you’re in, it’s a dolphin tank” 05:18 – They get 150-160 applications a year 05:28 – Companies are selected by their financial institution partners 05:34 – A company’s technology has to rise to the level of addressing a major pain point for major financial institutions 06:10 – In some cases, it’s not about an acquisition, it’s about using 06:15 – The fact that they are a non-profit civic organization is important 06:29 – CTOs and CIOs will come to the table as a civic program, partly to help grow the fintech community in NYC, to create jobs 07:23 – They invest in some of the graduates’ post programs 07:30 – The lab is laser-focused in solving problems 07:41 – They are not doing any direct-to-consumer programs 08:20 – The big 3: data, security and risk management have been on the top of the CIOs list from the beginning 08:43 – However, new things are coming 08:47 – Disruptive talent management has been added as a new category 08:58 – Blockchain has gone through an interesting cycle 09:14 – This year, there’s much less interest in blockchain and distributed ledger 09:52 – Maria predicts that in 2 years, there will be an increase of interest in enabling technologies that fit around the distributed ledger 10:31 – In data, Digital Reasoning came into the program with an interesting technology that is able to read unstructured data, and they’re working for the government 11:03 – They were advised to focus on compliance 12:04 – In security, Centripetal Networks has a perimeter defense technology and they’re gaining