ScratchWorks Kicks Off Its 3rd Annual Star Search

Earlier this year, ScratchWorks held its "Season 2″ event live at the Barron's Top Independent Advisors Conference, where pitches were presented by semi-finalists that included 280 CapMarkets and its fixed income trading and software-based price discovery platform; AdvicePay, the fee-for-service billing platform from advisors Michael Kitces and Alan Moore; and SolidusLink, a digital gold technology platform.

280 CapMarkets has seen "dramatic growth" in RIA firms using its cloud-based BondNav platform, which highlights the success of the company's new features and other enhancements, Gurinder Ahluwalia, the company's CEO and co-founder, told ThinkAdvisor last week.

Advisor-focused marketing technology company Snappy Kraken, which was granted $100,000 at the inaugural ScratchWorks event in March 2018, was granted an additional $1 million in September, followed by $2.5 million last month, Kevin Corbett, senior vice president of strategic initiatives at Mariner Wealth Advisors, recently told ThinkAdvisor, pointing out he's directly responsible for managing the ScratchWorks program. The latest seed funding round was led by Bicknell, who said in a statement Tuesday that he and the other ScratchWorks investors were "extremely impressed with the caliber" of the participating fintech firms the first two times.

Continuing their support of the ScratchWorks program for the third time as sponsors are Fidelity Clearing & Custody Solutions and the University of Colorado Leeds School of Business.