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V O L . X X V N O. X X V I I N OV E M B E R 2 5 , 2 0 1 9 22 B A N K I N G / F I N A N C E F inancial technology entrepreneur David Joseph is a Yale- and Juilliard School-educated former restaura- teur and wine wholesaler who now calls himself a "simplified sales tax evangelist." He's the co-founder of DAVO Technologies, a Westbrook-based provider of automated sales tax man- agement for small businesses across the country. e 16-employee startup was born out of Joseph's tax frustrations as a New Jersey restaurant owner. "Sales tax was a constant, the bane of my existence," he says, recalling the day a state tax collector came by and demanded $15,000 in two weeks or else. "I walked out of the kitchen saying, 'Why can't someone do our sales tax the way ADP does payroll?' at was the germ of DAVO." Joseph teamed up with a customer to apply for a patent that took a decade to come through. When it did, they started their business in 2014. Today on his own, Joseph is seeing 120% annual growth amid plans to scale up with $2 million recently raised from angel investors. DAVO shares an office at the Dana Warp Mill with Wallit, a savings app provider launched by Mike Vien in April and already up to 30,000 users. Its 12-strong workforce consists of six-full timers and six independent contractors, in engineering and sales and marketing. DAVO and Wallit are among a burgeoning crop of financial technol- ogy, or fintech, startups operating out of the Portland area. Together, they're turning Maine's largest city into a fintech hotspot — still a ways from rivaling Boston's Route 128 as another eastern Silicon Valley, but impressive enough to grab attention from inves- tors, job seekers and big players look- ing for acquisitions. Acquirers include EVO Payments (Nasdaq: EVOP), an Atlanta, Ga..- based payments processing firm that acquired three Portland firms, and privately held BlackHawk Network, of Pleasanton, Calif., which bought CashStar in 2007 and employs more than 100 people in Portland today. Why so much activity here? "Portland has created an amazing niche of fin- tech companies, due to the intersec- tion of talent and technology," says Nancy Strojny, who leads the Portland chapter of SCORE, which provided free mentoring to DAVO and named it last year's top successful innovative business in Maine. e Maine Technology Institute is equally bullish on the niche field, invest- ing in three startups including DAVO and Wallit because "it is a sector that we are actively supporting," says MTI President Brian Whitney. Vien, in fact, lives in Boston but says he chose to base his company in Maine because of "progressive" support organizations like MTI and the Finance Authority of Maine, and because it has more banks and credit unions than any other state. "ere are also a lot of pay- ments companies," he says," so it made sense culturally to be in Maine, and Portland, especially." e big kid on that block is WEX Inc. (NYSE: WEX), a global corpo- rate payments provider with $1.5 bil- lion in 2018 revenue. It's so bullish on Portland it invested $10 million in a new $40 million East End waterfront headquarters. e fintech boom in its own back- yard has WEX executives excited. "Fintechs are popping up all over the place because there's opportunity all over the place," says Jay Dearborn, president, corporate payments. "He notes that WEX, which owns a bank in Utah, positions itself as both a fin- tech and a bank. Because fintechs are clients as well as rivals, Dearborn is not concerned P H O T O / T I M G R E E N WAY Fintech disruptors Portland is seeing a new wave of startups, attracting attention from job seekers, investors — and competitors B y r e n e e c o r d e S F O C U S David Joseph is the co-founder of DAVO Technologies, a Westbrook- based provider of automated sales tax management for thousands of small businesses nationwide. The company is headquartered at the Dana Warp Mill. Believe in what you're doing and then really persevere and focus. It's very easy to get distracted by the next shiny object. — David Joseph DAVO Technologies

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