Kristen Craft is the latest of Silicon Valley Bank’s Boston leaders to depart the organization for a new role.
Craft, who was with SVB for a year and a half as director of early-stage startups, is now the vice president of strategic partner management at Fidelity Investments. She plans to play a key role in building Fidelity into a resource for startup founders, especially in Boston.
“I just am very bullish on and excited by the fact that a company like Fidelity — with the resources they have, the brains they have, the reputation, the long-standing tenure with their Boston headquarters — having a player like Fidelity in this ecosystem supporting startup founders just makes my heart beat faster because it’s just so exciting,” Craft said.
Ever since getting her MBA at the MIT Sloan School of Management, Craft has been involved in the Boston startup scene. She was the head demand generation and business development at Wistia, chief marketing officer at Tettra, and VP of marketing and business development at Ovia Health, to name a few roles.
While Craft said Jesse Bardo brought her into the SVB fold, she’d known about the financial institution for years. She said basically every startup she’d worked with was a SVB client.
Bardo was with SVB for five years as the managing director of founder success. In May Bardo announced he had left SVB and taken a new role as general manager of New England for the recruiting company Hunt Club.
Prior to joining SVB, Craft said her “unpaid side hustle” was advising startup founders. Coming to SVB allowed her to focus on the mentorship and community building she loved. At SVB she helped founders with banking, but also fundraising, developing pitch decks, crafting a go-to-market strategy and connecting with experts.
After SVB collapsed and was acquired by First Citizens Bank, Craft said she stayed for a few months because she wanted to see what things would feel like under new ownership. She said the acquisition by First Citizens was likely the “best possible outcome” for the embattled bank. Craft said First Citizens has made several acquisitions before and its ethos was, “keep doing what you know how to do best, and we’re here to support that.”
During this time, Craft said she also started talking with friends at Fidelity about its recent acquisition of the Cambridge fintech Shoobx. Craft said Shoobx’s team and technology, which helped companies with equity and board management, is part of a new business unit at Fidelity that will go “head-to-head with Carta on cap table management.”
Craft said she found herself sharing advice on how she would approach building this business and getting more excited about the opportunity to create a startup program.
Fidelity has some experience working with startups, including through Fidelity Labs, but working with early-stage companies is still relatively new to them, Craft said.
“The more big organizations that we have, like Fidelity, like SVB, who are working hard to support startup founders, the greater the chances of those startups succeeding,” Craft said.
Craft said Fidelity’s work supporting startups will include offering its cap table management product, other Fidelity financial products and services and community building and mentorship.
People in Boston appear eager to see a new player supporting local startups. Craft said in the three hours after posting on LinkedIn that she had joined Fidelity and was looking to connect with founders, she received 57 emails.
“I think having a player like Fidelity, with headquarters in Boston, now suddenly wrapping the startup community up in a big bear hug in this way is just so exhilarating,” Craft said.
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