The F in Tech Podcast

When he got his first taste of startup life, in San Francisco, freshly-graduated Freddy Kelly did a few months at culinary school on the side. Little did he know that years later, his baking skills would help him blag his way into a conference by virtue of a chocolate cake he'd baked. He met Credit Kudos's first investor there, and his fintech - an open banking credit-reference company - was off to the races. It hasn't stopped running since.

In its early days, banks tried to block Bankin’. Some set up call centres, warning customers of the danger of using the personal finance app, and encouraging them not to use it. On one occasion, they even called Joan, not realising that he was the fintech's co-founder. Nowadays, with open banking, it's a different story; banks, for the most part, are cooperative. And Bankin' is now blossoming into one of Europe’s leading consumer finance apps - with a potential B2B spinoff to boot.  

Some people thought launching a fintech during a pandemic was crazy. Then Banxware - a Germany-based, white-labelled SME lending platform - saw its banking partner, Wirecard, blow up. Since then, it's been relatively plain sailing! 

How Olivier Jaillon cheated death, and survived the failure of his U.S. startup, to reinvent a 200-year old insurer-turned-insurtech, Wakam. 

How having investors from day one helped wealth management platform, Elinvar, get off to a flying start, and why co-founder and CEO, Chris Bartz, says that doesn’t mean there was any less pressure. Fun fact: "elinvar" is an alloy of iron, nickel, chromium, and other constituents, resistant to rust and magnetization and having a low rate of thermal expansion.

Aged 14, Radko Albrecht, was one of Germany’s top figure skaters. A child of Slovakian refugees, he was on track to become an Olympian, something that would have required focus, dedication and the ability to pick yourself up when you’re down. He never made it to the Olympics, but those same skills have come in handy with his chosen path: founding BitBond, which helps banks and intermediaries issue and securitize bonds using blockchain technology and tokenization.

When Christoph Rieche told colleagues at Goldman Sachs he was leaving to set up iwoca, some of them thought he was crazy. Others were jealous. Ten years later, the second group would appear to have been right: iwoca has now helped more than 65,000 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) gain access to capital. It's building out new products all the time, raising $350m in debt and equity capital along the way. And although Christoph's creative talents may not have come up to snuff for him to have become an architect, the businesses iwoca has helped people to build may end up having an even bigger impact than any structure he may have designed. 

The buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) space is on fire right now - just look at Klarna's latest funding round, valuing the fintech in excess of $45b, or the $29b Square paid for Afterpay. So it seems as good a time as any to catch up with Christer Holloman, founder of Divido, which connects banks to retailers, to offer customers BNPL. His other big passion is promoting diversity in fintech through his charitable initiative, Fintech Finishers.

"I'm raised by a single mother in northern Sweden [and gay]," he says. "So for me, gender diversity and equality has been a given from day one. And then when I came to the UK, started my company and just sort of being busy building the company, I didn't really think much about it. And then, one day, I took a good, hard look at my leadership team, and two middle-aged, white, straight men were looking back at me, and I realised: 'hang on a second, where did I go wrong a long the way here'."

How Ali Niknam went all in with more than 100 million euros ($125m) of his OWN money to create an eco-friendly neobank called Bunq (now valued at nearly $2b), and why he doesn’t lose sleep over it - despite the high steaks. 

Joakim Sjöblom founded Minna Tech to stop people wasting money on subscriptions they no longer want - but seeing his first company fail, and losing money in the process, he says, was worth every penny.

How Nimrod Lehavi turned his frustrating experience of buying crypto into Simplex, and why it was anything but simple. 

His grandfather founded the Cincinnati Bengals American Football team. Ricky Knox co-founded Tandem (along with 10,000 other people - kind of), while almost striking gold with Bitcoin. He's now stepped down as CEO of the neobank. But with an entrepreneurial journey that's included selling clubbing clothing, and mobile phone infrastructure to the Central African Republic, you can be sure that whatever he does next will be anything but dull. 

How Nicolas Meric made the leap from particle physics to fintech, and the challenges he faced along the way with Dreamquark. 

Entrepreneurs often describe multiple existential challenges hitting them at the same time as “a perfect storm”. But Nigel Verdon, CEO of banking-as-a-service platform, Railsbank, must surely be the only fintech founder to have gone through one in the literal sense. Of course, being able to keep calm in such trying circumstances can give you perspective when dealing with 30-foot swells like a financial crisis or a pandemic - enabling you to see through choppy seas to the destination that lies beyond.

Tamas Giorgadse was a chess prodigy who survived civil war and hyperinflation. He finished school aged 12, and completed his masters three years later. He moved to Germany, gained two PhDs and went to work for McKinsey. Next, he co-founded Raisin, Europe’s leading platform for savings and investments. Already a unicorn, the fintech recently announced a merger with domestic rival Deposit Solutions, to create Raisin DS. 

A back injury - possibly caused by some overexuberant dancing at a wedding - put Anthony Beilin out of action for six months. Luckily, he worked full-time, at Aviva. His income didn't suffer, and he received all the physical and emotional help he needed. But when a contractor friend came to see him - and told him of his loss of income and benefits while off from a knee-op - the proverbial lightbulb went off in Anthony's brain. Why, he reasoned, should gig-workers, freelancers and contractors be deprived of sick pay, holiday pay and other benefits just because of the way they work? This issue became especially pressing during the pandemic - giving Collective Benefits a perfectly-timed opportunity to step into the breach.

In his early 30s, Victor Trokoudes was a man without a plan. He was also a man with no savings, and a father who kept nagging him to do something with his money. What should such a person do? Why, co-found and run a fintech that enables people to save and invest without having to think about it, of course. Plum is young, but it's already on track to have some three million customers by the end of the year, as the coronavirus pandemic gets more people into the habit of putting money aside. 

Editor's Note: No frogs were harmed in the production of this broadcast

Running a fintech is apparently just as challenging as playing professional rugby. Al Lukies should know - he's done both, though he only broke half the bones in his leg with the latter. His first attempt - Monitise - hit a market value of some £2 billion at one point. After a stint as the UK Prime Minister's "fintech ambassador", he went on to found Pollinate, which helps big banks provide digital tools, such as merchant services, to small businesses. And it's a good time to speak with Al: Pollinate has just raised $50m from the likes of Natwest, NAB, Mastercard and Insight Ventures. Enjoy.  

With a passion for motor racing and cars Giles Andrews wasn’t always destined to found a fintech. And when he did, he almost crashed and burned. But under his leadership, he turned the p2p lending pioneer around. And while banks and other lenders were coming unstuck during the global financial crisis, Zopa sailed through - and even grew, eventually becoming one of the UK's biggest challenger banks. 

They say bad things always come in threes. Shachar Bialik would no doubt agree. Brexit and COVID would ordinarily be enough on their own to floor many businesses. Throw in the Wirecard fraud fiasco, and it’s a wonder he’s still around to tell the tale. But not only did he and Curve survive. They thrived. The #fintech recently announced it had raised an additional $95m, taking its total to $175m. Now, Curve is coming to America. (Listen closely, and you may hear his baby son in the background). 

Is working in roller coasters not the perfect metaphor - and experience - for running an online trading platform? We think so! Yoni Assia, who leads social trading platform eToro, had his first taste of entrepreneurship when he founded a startup that involved installing video cameras on white-knuckle rides, and then selling DVDs to the riders as they wobbled out of their cars. He eventually sold it to former a high-flying tech stock called Kodak. And while that company's best years may be behind it, a bumper 2020, profits, and a return to the U.S. all suggest that eToro is very much a fintech for the future. 

"I landed in August 2008, and I looked around me and thought: "Jeez: what I have done?"." That was Christian Faes' first impression when he moved back to London to set up property finance fintech LendInvest, in the midst of the global financial crisis. After a year spent googling and cold-calling investors, raising no funds and doing no business, he'd have been forgiven for packing in the whole thing. But Christian and his cofounder persisted, the company grew, and despite challenges that would prove existential to many, LendInvest continues to thrive. 

In the world of fintech, one-trick ponies are no longer in vogue. Neobanks are getting into trading; trading apps are moving into wealth management; and payment apps are lending money. This suits Fintonic just fine. Based in Spain, with operations in Chile and Mexico, it's already in everything from insurance to banking to credit scoring - a kind of cross between MoneySupermarket and Experian. Before the pandemic struck, it was due to break even in 2020. Bonus points if you can think of any other companies that have THREE co-CEOs.