Sara Garces Roselli, Co-Founder of RevTech Labs, Is a Fintech Pioneer

Sara Garcés-Roselli, co-founder of RevTech Labs with her husband, Dan Roselli, is a solutions-focused entrepreneur with more than 20 years of success across the marketing, advertising, oil and chemical, telecommunications and consumer product industries. She leverages extensive experience managing and directing business operations and is a valuable asset for companies struggling with branding and strategy, succession planning, transitioning to the next business stage, or need a fresh perspective as they work to grow effectively into a larger scale company.

Grit Daily: Tell us about RevTech. Who are your clients or customers, and what are they trying to achieve working with RevTech Labs?

RevTechLabs and QueenCity Fintech are pioneers of the Fintech revolution and one of the first global Fintech start-up accelerator programs in the World launched over 12 years ago in 2010. It is also one of the few majority Latina owned accelerator programs in the US. Through 17 cohorts and almost 200 companies, over half of all the companies have a female founder or founder of color on the team making RevTechLabs decade long support of diverse founders unique to the industry. RevTechLabs has been ranked twice by Finovate as a finalist for top Global Fintech Accelerator. Our alumni have raised over $2Billion in venture capital and had over $350m in exits including companies now listed on the NASDAQ.

RevTechLabs has been a leader in solving for the lack of diversity in the Fintech space for over 10 years. Our philosophy has been one of collaborative recruitment with diverse partners organizations to create one of the most diverse applicant pools cohort after cohort. Additionally, we have chosen to not make the program exclusively a diverse founder program proving the thesis that you do not need to adjust investment expectations to achieve diversity in the Fintech space.

Grit Daily: You seem to personify diversity -born in Ohio and raised in Michigan, but you also lived five years in Colombia. How does your personal experience influence your thinking about diversity in business and the general society?

My personal experience as a Latina has really shaped who I have become as a business person. I spent years in corporate America helping companies “teach diversity”, but those efforts didn’t always make the workplace more equitable or more diverse. Most recently, I have been spending my time influencing individuals and organizations to help create meaningful change as it relates to diversity. Understanding each other’s stories and what is in our collective ground is an important step toward advancing equity and justice. The bottom line is that we first need to understand the inequities in our processes, our structures and our beliefs to make intentional changes that actually break down barriers and create opportunities.

Grit Daily: What are some of the lessons you learned during your corporate career, and how do you apply those insights at RevTech Labs?

During my time working in large and small corporations I learned the importance of creating a culture based on respect and accountability, but also one that leverages the individual strengths of the team. We have tried to do that with all of our teams, but particularly at RevTech. Having a growth mindset and a sense of scrappiness has also helped us be successful in our business.

Grit Daily: How did you and your husband and co-founder, Dan, decide on Charlotte to launch RevTech Labs?

In 2010 we went on a couples planning retreat and focused on how we wanted to parent our children for their next 10 years and what we wanted our legacy as business owners to look like. As part of that conversation, we realized that we wanted to give back to the entrepreneurial community so that other start-ups wouldn’t have to make the same mistakes we made. At the same time, we were searching for new office space for our businesses. We found Packard Place and with the help of the Charlotte Community we launched the Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Community Center in the building. Shortly after that we worked to launch two locally focused accelerator programs focused on energy and non-profit start-ups. After having some success with those, we decided to expand to create a FinTech accelerator, leveraging our expertise in the space and the financial services industry resources located in Charlotte.

Grit Daily: I understand you are the mother of two sets of twins. Please share your thoughts on working mothers, but which I mean mothers who have jobs, because just having kids is work.

We do have two sets of twins and would say that is my ultimate claim to fame. I’ve learned over the years as a working mother that there is no such thing as “work life balance”. Scales balance, humans don’t. We have to work to integrate everything that is part of our lives and everything that is important to us. Asking for help has been the hardest part of my learning process, as I’ve always had Wonder Woman syndrome. Once I realized that I have the right to say NO and that it’s ok to ask for help, I became a much saner person. I will say that I have become an expert in organized chaos, which is no small feat.

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