From Student to Future of FinTech: Meet Intrinio’s Rachel Carpenter

Published on February 27, 2020

Rachel Carpenter founded Intrinio because she saw an injustice in the world of financial data.

Massive companies like Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters had cornered the financial data market making it incredibly expensive to use the data in any business venture without significant capital.

Carpenter and her co-founder Joseph French started Intrinio to change that. Companies can buy just what they need and the prices are much cheaper than their larger counterparts.

“The fintech entrepreneurs would face higher prices from a competitor and need to redo their integrations losing the most valuable thing for an early-stage company – time and capital,” said Carpenter.

Without Intrinio, the current landscape of data that people have come to know and rely on for their businesses would be gone.

“Institutions would be faced with lower-tech solutions that could take months to get through licensing and delivery, delaying their investments and sinking their alpha,” said Carpenter.

What started it all

Carpenter is an entrepreneur today largely due to the experiences she had in college.

“I was severely micromanaged at one of my positions as a student, while working at a healthcare software company,” said Carpenter.

During one of these positions, her boss yelled at her over a stamp on an envelope and consequently she decided to be her own boss.

“That day, I added “entrepreneurship” as a second major and decided I would never work for someone else again,” she said.

That didn’t mean that the path to Intrinio was simple but she was determined.

“There were probably two dozen times I thought it would be easier to throw in the towel, but I never considered it,” said Carpenter.

Her dedication to the company was one thing but it still was an uphill battle as they were one of the first to try and bridge into this new venture.

“It seemed impossible, but that lit a fire in me.”

Early days

The hardest part of creating the system that she wanted was getting everything off the ground.

“In the very early pre-seed days we were scrambling to get our first traction and bring a brand new platform to an archaic industry,” she said.

Funding for the company was also difficult to find.

“Raising early-stage capital in Florida where investors didn’t understand technology companies,” said Carpenter.

During the beginning, Carpenter’s challenge was finding the right team, learning how to program, not making any money from the company and having to manually input over 500,000 financial statements.

Looking back, she says all these little things were the most trying time for her in the company.

“[I was] Firing employees that weren’t rowing the boat in the same direction,” She said, “Pitching to large companies that were afraid of startups.

These challenges did not turn Carpenter off of the business, but instead helped her.

“I say bring it on – each of these things have made me who I am today,” said Carpenter.

Today, the company is thriving.

“Where we are standing our ground is in having the fastest, easiest, quality access to a-la-carte (only pay for what you need) data feeds that are delivered with industry-leading support and service,” she said.

Forbes’ 30 under 30

Carpenter is one of Forbes’ 2020 30 under 30 in the finance category.

“Initially I was shocked; I had no idea who nominated me,” said Carpenter.

She said initially she had her reservations as she feels that her team is largely responsible for the success of Intrinio. Recently though, she has started to realize that she is part of the success as well.

“I’ve never been a CEO before and I’m proud of how much I’ve grown and been able to navigate our company through this journey,” said Carpenter.

She said that she understood why people would look at her company because her team inspires her as well.

“My third thought was ‘duh’ – what they built, their hard work, their ideas, they are catalyzing real change in our industry and our team is the backbone of innovation across financial services,” said Carpenter.

She said that this team is not only just efficient but also a fun group of people to work with.

“I can’t imagine myself working with a different team – I’m continually inspired and challenged by everyone at Intrinio and it’s just fun to work here,” she said.

In the future, she hopes that Intrinio will grow. The company has big plans to change and grow the platform this year.

“I plan on continuing to grow as a CEO and see my team through these next major strides as we scale up,” she said.

Sarah Smith is a Staff Writer at Grit Daily. Based in Tampa, Florida, she primarily covers new tech and events.

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