This is an article I previously wrote for Financial News. When mentoring start-ups, I sometimes hear a pitch like this: “With our revolutionary fintech service, we are looking to get 10,000 customers in the first year and need $300k of funding”. This immediately tells me I am talking to a first-time entrepreneur – or that(…)
(This is part 1 of this topic. Part 2 with the discussion results can be found here) That will be the fascinating theme of the roundtable that I will be discussing with my fellow attendees at Money X (part of Web Summit) this week. To prepare for the conference, I’ve put together a few data points to start the(…)
“Nearly 20 years ago, the launch of online payments giant PayPal shook the financial services industry. Now, a new generation of financial technology or “fintech” companies is once again breaking down the oversized doors of the conservative banking business…”
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The growth in Fintech has been phenomenal during the last few years: 10 times more startups in London in 3 years, dozens of Fintech companies valued at more than $1bn, record breaking VC investments year after year. On the one hand, it is totally justifiable. Finance will be drastically different in 10 years, and the(…)
Consider these two statements : “The party’s over, for the banks at least” (Transferwise) “Today we are announcing an exciting new partnership with Santander UK, …” (Funding Circle) These statements were made by Transferwise and Funding Circle, two very well known Fintech startups. Both were created a few years ago, both are Unicorns (i.e.valued more than(…)
In the same way that we could feel the emergence of Fintech in London a few years ago, we can detect a similar trend coming from Asia today. Remember that only 3 years ago there might have been less than 100 Fintech startups in London – whereas there might be 10 times that amount today. Are(…)
With thousand of startups working on the next financial innovations, it is clear that banks – despite all their resources – will find it challenging to be at the forefront of innovation. On the other hand, banks know that they will have to adapt to the world of Finance 2.0 and we have seen many(…)
“I want the UK to lead the world in developing Fintech. That’s my ambition – short and sweet.” (George Osborne, UK Chancellor at the launch of Innovate Finance) And as evidenced by the multiple initiatives coming from the Silicon Valley, New York, Amsterdam, Paris, Berlin, Singapore, Hong Kong, Sydney and many others, this is clearly(…)
I had the pleasure to present to the students of the Master in Technology Innovation & Entrepreneurship at my alma mater, Ecole Polytechnique in France. Some people say that problems between co-founders is the first source of failure for startups. I don’t know if it’s true, but it’s clear that the “wrong” choice of a(…)
