Introduction
If you are at all attuned to the St. Pete start-up community, you have heard of Rachel Carpenter and her company, Intrinio. After nearly four years in St. Pete, this company is making a name for itself by partnering with other start-ups and higher education institutions (including Cal Tech, Harvard Business School, and USF) while it rises up the food-chain in a highly competitive and ever-changing industry. Rachel and her team at Intrinio are literally changing the way finance is taught at these institutions, and disrupting the status quo with real-time, affordable, and democratized financial data. As an individual, Rachel is a go-getter, an athlete, and an entrepreneur. She lives and breathes Intrinio and has knack for communicating its message powerfully.
Years in St. Pete
4 years.
Organizations involved in
Board member of CASA, the largest domestic violence services organization in Florida. We also advocate on behalf of a number of data organizations: XBRL US, Developers Alliance, FISD, Data Coalition.
What gets you out of bed every day?
Intrinio’s mission and why we started, we wanted to build an app but we couldn’t afford the financial data. Our dreams were crushed, and we want to make sure that never happens to anyone else. Unlike a CEO of an established larger company, as a start-up CEO, I live and breathe Intrinio all day long. I’m also so inspired by all of the amazing things people are building on our data.
Why St. Pete?
Before we move down here, we were in Chicago. Chicago winter, need I say more? Alongside the weather, we knew that we would spend two years building our platform. That meant two years of no revenue. We needed to be somewhere where the cost of living was low but the quality of life was high. St. Pete was exactly that.
What is one habit that you keep?
Exercise. It’s my stress relief. I was an athlete in college, so it’s always been a part of my life. I use it to decompress after a long day and to stay healthy.
Who are some people that influence you?
My mom. She is a badass: a best-selling author (she’s written like 14 books), world-traveller, journalist, and she owns Wine Madonna in downtown St. Pete. She has a wonderful attitude and immense confidence that she instilled in me.
What is one piece of insight - a book, methodology, practice - that you would share with our readers?
I always tell my team – ask for forgiveness, not permission – that might sound crazy, but we are in a constantly changing industry. Constantly innovating, trying new things, and failing fast are a part of living in that world – otherwise you don’t survive. I’d rather my team learn from their mistakes and ask forgiveness than not try something innovative.
What is one thing you wish you knew about your work 3 years ago?
When we first started we spent a lot of time courting big institutions – the Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanleys of the world. At that time, we were still young, and it was like asking them to take off their oxygen mask and jump, even though we hadn’t built our credibility yet. If I could go back I would have started smaller, built our credibility, and then approached the big institutions.
What’s next?
We are embarking on adding new infrastructure. We have a new API so developers using languages like C#, Ruby, Python could start using our API instantly. Now we are looking at going after Asia, we have pretty good coverage in the United States and we’d like to move into markets in South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Singapore.
