3 Questions With Tim Horton of Chalice Financial Network

FintekNews is pleased to offer our readers our “3 Questions With…” column, where we chat with a thought leader within a unique sector of fintech and ask them to answer just 3 questions (or in this case, 4 today!) for our audience in their vernacular. This week, we’d like to introduce you to Tim Horton of Chalice Financial Network™ (CFN), the premier member-benefit organization—44,000 strong—that empowers small to mid-sized financial advisors start, grow and sell their businesses.

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How did you personally become involved in fintech?

I became deeply involved in fintech when I cofounded a bitcoin startup in 2014. Airbitz, which rebranded to Edge. Airbitz is a non-custodial crypto currency wallet and a key management solution. I feel bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are the bleeding edge of fintech and all the innovation in the space is mind blowing.

What does your firm do/offer within the fintech sector?

Chalice Financial Network (CFN) is a member benefit organization. Our members enjoy discounted pricing to all kinds of services that make running a business easier and more profitable. Want to offer your employees health insurance or maybe you feel you are paying too much for it? Chalice has a solution for you. Need access to the best tools for Advisors? Chalice can get those to you at a discount. Our solutions are designed to help a business owner run their business without taking their eye on the ball. Through the strength of our members we are able to then offer these solutions at significantly discounted prices.

What is your role within your firm and what do you do there on any given day?

I’m the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Chalice Financial Network. I am generally involved with anything tech-related in the company. Currently, the majority of my responsibilities are with designing and building our software products. Our main product is our Chalice Advisor Exchange™ (CAEx). This digital marketplace is where you can find solutions that will help you run your business. I also oversee the technology for Succession Link, which was recently acquired by CFN. We have many more projects in the pipeline. Chalice is just getting warmed up.

What do you believe the next major innovation in financial technology will be and why?

I believe open source finance is going to really change things. It wasn’t long ago that accepting payments online was difficult. Stripe made it easier and cheaper to start accepting payments. AWS made it easier and cheaper to launch your own web service. Despite crypotcurrencies’ tough run this past year, I believe its the greatest financial innovation yet to be fully realized. It is easier than ever to start a company thanks to many other services, and now with the new blockchain software that is being created, it is easier than ever to become a fintech entrepreneur.

Tim spent the majority of his career in startups. His first startup was a geolocation app which raised funding from Qualcomm Labs followed by a bitcoin wallet he cofounded called Airbitz, which made managing crypto assets easier than ever. Next, Tim helped build Succession Link to the 40k+ members and is now the CTO of Chalice Financial Network™. In his free time Tim likes to dabble in bioinformatics (he has co-authored a few papers), hike, play guitar and spend time with family. Tim has been married to his wife Chrissy for 8 years and has two boys ages 3 and 2.