Nick Evens
President and CEO
As President and CEO of Curql Collective, LLC. Nick cultivates opportunities to help fintech and credit unions collaborate on breakthrough technologies that minimize threats and successfully, transform, improve, disrupt and position the industry with a best-in-class member experience. Curql Fund I has 68 credit union and industry investors with over $250MM in capital to be deployed in transformative technology for the benefit of credit unions. Prior to leading Curql Collective, Nick was President of The Veridian Group, Inc. (TVG), the wholly-owned CUSO holding company of Veridian Credit Union, where he led equity investment strategy and direction for the $6B institution. Based in Waterloo, Iowa, TVG’s holdings include Veridian Insurance and Veridian Fiscal Solutions with total staff over 45 strong. During his tenure, Nick managed TVG’s more than ten direct minority investments in CUSO companies, positioning the organization with direct equity stakes in Dwolla, Alkami Technology and Moov Financial and committing approximately $10MM in six venture or seed capital funds. Today, Nick serves on the board of NACUSO, CUNA Strategic Services as well as 2 fintech companies, coviance and Illuma.
Key facts:
- Leads a board of seven Board of Directors who govern Curql Collective, LLC
- Served on the boards of all CUSOs in which TVG had ownership positions
- Experienced in managing CUSOs with expertise in insurance, payroll services, commercial lending, mortgage lending, auto lending, loan technology, digital payments, credit cards, marketing, voice recognition, venture capital, and a mobile wallet
- Co-founded VentureTech, a leading industry fintech forum
- Keynote speaker at many industry conferences and events
Noteworthy accomplishments:
- Led Curql Collective Investment Committee approval of 20 portfolio company investments with $105 million in capital deployment through Curql Fund I to date
- Sat on the Investment Committee of Next Level Ventures, Iowa’s first approved Innovation Tax Creditventure capital fund deploying over $50 MM in capital
- While with Veridian helped support investment in over 30 start-up technology companies with over $50MM dollars of capital put to work
- Started a seed capital fund in northeast Iowa that is invested in five start-ups
- Served on the board of a co-working space offering acceleration programming to start-ups
- Mentors at two fintech accelerators