FinBoard Selected for Santander X 100: What It Means (and What Doesn't Change)

Short, good news: FinBoard has been selected to join Santander X 100, Banco Santander's global community of startups and scaleups. We got the confirmation in September. Since this is the kind of thing that sounds better the less you explain it, we'd rather explain it.

What Santander X 100 is

Santander X is Banco Santander's entrepreneurship platform. It's been running since 2017, is open to customers and non-customers of the bank alike, and in the past year alone has supported close to 60,000 companies and founders across ten countries, with programmes for every stage — from turning an idea into a project to going to market or scaling abroad.

Santander X 100 is the top of that funnel. It launched in late 2021 as a closed community for the highest-potential startups, scaleups and SMEs in the ecosystem — today, 400 companies from eleven countries, including Spain, Germany, the UK, Portugal, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and Chile — and it's built around four resources that are hard for a small company to get on its own:

• Advice and training: access to mentors and experts in specific areas (legal, finance, product, international expansion).
• Capital: connections with international investors and help preparing for funding rounds.
• Customers: doors into large companies and business opportunities.
• Talent and network: direct contact with the rest of the community, which is where the interesting things tend to happen.

It isn't an investment or a cash prize. It's support: people who've already been where we are, and a network we wouldn't have otherwise.

Why it's useful right now

FinBoard is mid-launch. We have the product — bank accounts, broker, crypto and loans in one view, with read-only bank connections under PSD2 — and we have our first users opening it every day. What a startup our size doesn't have is much room to get the next phase wrong: how to reach more people, how to grow without breaking what works, how to fund it.

That's where the programme fits. Over the coming months we'll have access to mentors and experts, to the community's network, and to whatever opportunities come out of it. What we want from this is very concrete: learn faster from people who've done it, and avoid mistakes others have already paid for.

What doesn't change

Worth saying plainly, because "Banco Santander" in a headline can raise fair questions:

• FinBoard stays independent. Santander is not an investor in or owner of FinBoard, and has no say in the product.
• Your data stays yours. Bank connections remain read-only and regulated under PSD2, and we still don't share your data with third parties. Joining a support programme changes none of that. We go into detail in what you authorise when you connect your bank.
• The free plan is still there, no card required — and so is the way we work: a copilot, not a judge.

Onwards

This is good news for us and, with luck, a sign we're heading the right way. But the real measure is the same as ever: that when you open FinBoard you see all your money clearly and make better decisions with it. We'll share what we learn along the way.

Start free, no card required at finboard.me.