Riding Unicorns: Venture Capital | Entrepreneurship | Technology

S2E4 - Laurence Krieger, CEO @ Tide UK

June 23, 2021 Riding Unicorns Season 2 Episode 4
Riding Unicorns: Venture Capital | Entrepreneurship | Technology
S2E4 - Laurence Krieger, CEO @ Tide UK
Show Notes Transcript

Laurence Krieger is the CEO of Tide, the leading provider of UK SME business accounts and one of the fastest-growing FinTechs in the UK. With over 12 years of experience working in senior roles at fast-growing fintech start-ups Laurence has played a huge role in shaping the industry that we see today. Prior to Tide Laurence launched one of the first prepaid cards into the UK with Moneysupermarket and before joining working at Revolut as its COO. 

In this episode we hear about Lawrence's career in tech, Tide's plans to expand into India and what Lawrence looks for when hiring - customer focus, data driven and team first approaches are ingrained in the Tide culture. 

Make sure to like and subscribe to the Riding Unicorns podcast to never miss an episode. Also don't forget to give Riding Unicorns a follow on Twitter and LinkedIn to keep on top of the latest developments.

[00:00:00] James: Hello. Welcome to season two, episode four of riding unicorns. Today, Hector and I are delighted to welcome Laurence Krieger. The UK CEO of Tide bank tide is revolutionising how small businesses manage their money admin.

[00:00:26] Tide is used by over 360,000 businesses and have raised over 120 million pounds in funding.

[00:00:33] James: So let's get started.

[00:00:34] Welcome to Riding Unicorns. Laurence. Thanks very much for joining us.

[00:00:38] Laurence Krieger: Thank you. Great to be here. Thank you for

[00:00:42] James: cool. So Laurence, as we always like to start with getting a background on our guests career, so maybe you could take us right back to the start and how you ended up at tide.

[00:00:51] Laurence Krieger: Wow. Okay. So the start is a long time ago, unfortunately, for my sins. So I left uni in 94 [00:01:00] and in 94 was basically the birth of the worldwide web. I mean when I was at uni, I remember we didn't even have internet. We didn't have dial up. I think there was one internet computer in the library and Manchester, which, you'd go in and search for reference notes on, but that was about it.

[00:01:18] And then in 94 we saw the kind of first inkling of the web and there started to be companies that were focused on webinar. I was about to do law. I was about to do a conversion and I thought, actually, you know what? My dad hated law. He was a lawyer. So I thought I'm not going to do that. This thing just seemed really interesting.

[00:01:37] Everyone. I was mad, like, why are you getting involved in that little thing called the internet? Um, so I went and did it and I went to the first one world conference. I remember Olympia. It was like a little bit of a. And I think it was some multimedia conferences. The back of it, there was a few stands which were sort of internet related.

[00:01:57] So yeah, so that's where it all started. And, uh, w literary [00:02:00] to my CV, a long pitch for jobs through the, probably the 10 companies that were there at the time. And haven't really looked back since I think, you know, it was probably the best. Decision. Well, what's going to tell me the best decision of my life obviously was Mario.

[00:02:14] But other than that, it was the best decision. My life was just getting, um, into this new thing called the world wide web internet and starting working in that. And, uh, yes, from there kind of Greer and I, I was working for the first I started doing. Like I was actually going to see very large companies back then companies like Nortel.

[00:02:36] I bet. Even after a run nowadays, Motorola tells you to come to the era, who were like, you know, the biggest companies back then are literally having to see that board and explain to them like what the incident did. So I was essentially selling web services to them. and then from there went to work for one of the first.

[00:02:53] Internet recruitment sites that got folded into monster.com. It was set up by Harvey Nash and computer people and a [00:03:00] couple of other companies at the time. Um, and roundabout, the kind of internet, boom era. Um, you know, the first wave of the.com boom, as they called it. Um, I decided, right. You know, there's all these companies making a fortune, hence, you know, back then, I didn't even know if we definitely weren't using the unicorn, but we were using, you know, like the people were, people would say talking about these multi-billion pound companies risen from nowhere and most of them were not making a penny.

[00:03:29] And I thought, well, I'm going to try my luck at this. So I. I started up my into internet business. Um, and this was, this was in the late nineties. Um, and I had a web development company, built websites for, other companies built an internet portal business called 24 7 net, which, um, was actually, we were pretty, pretty successful, raised some, some money and then.

[00:03:51] Boom.com bubble burst back in 2000 and, uh, literally all the money dried up. And I thought I'd [00:04:00] better go and work for someone who can look after me. So I, I went off to work. We are here. Um, so I went to what VR, which was, I kind of thought who's going to weather the storm, like which businesses are going to be around.

[00:04:13] And back then Yahoo was the number one, um, website worldwide and pretty much every country. Although if, if they don't weather the storm, then no one can. Um, so I, I became business development manager ended up at Yahoo running business development and client sells, And that was a fantastic time. I really, really enjoyed my time, at GRU.

[00:04:35] It was fantastic working for really the number one back then, the number one web company, um, and gave me the first sort of global exposure, and spent about six years there. I then got into payments. It wasn't FinTech. It was payments back then was far less sexy. Um, but yeah, so I've got into payments and I realized that there was like all these opportunities in the payment space.

[00:04:58] And I started working with [00:05:00] businesses. I launched one of the first prepaid cards in the UK, um, actually Yahoo then with MoneySuperMarket. Cause I knew that Simon they're the, uh, the founder. And things sort of spawned from there. And in the end basically was, working in this kind of whole global in money wallet, prepaid card space, contracting consulting with other companies.

[00:05:24] And that brought me into Revolut. I was, I was asked by early investors in Revolut to essentially just meet the founder and sort of. I think they would do asking me to do a bit of due diligence. Uh, so they, I can't mention their name, but they were a large London say who doesn't me get involved in, um, sort of seed round and, , had, basically just put some money in them.

[00:05:47] Pre pre-series. I said it's really early stage went to, level 39 in Canary Wharf, met Nicola and blood. And it was, I think it was about five people in it. It was kind of [00:06:00] pre-launch stage. And I was like, oh, this is interesting. And I was about to start on my own business with 'em. Uh, , who's, who's a serial investor, probably nine months in you're nodding your head.

[00:06:12] Um, and I had a bit of time. I hadn't. So, um, Nicola literally said to me, would you, can you come and help me build out my, my, my payment infrastructure? And, um, I was kind of busy. And then he's looking at how about three days a week? So the next day I was in level 39, working with Revolut initially as a contractor.

[00:06:30] And then when we launched, it just took off from nowhere. As sometimes unicorns do, and he persuaded me. I stayed on as a CLL and, uh, I was there for about a year, almost two years. Um, working with Nikolai left when it was about. A million customers. So we'd kind of gone into Europe with we grown very, very rapidly and the reason I left and I'm often asked, why did you leave and kind of tied, two reasons, one we'd launched reveling for business.

[00:06:59] And I [00:07:00] knew there was a huge opportunity to just go in the whole pure play SME space. Um, and I, I really saw that that was a massively underserved market. And then. Aero who I'd kind of let down because I said, I'm not going to do this venture with you. and, um, I went into Bradley instead, and then he packed tide and he was the connection that kind of brought me to meet George, the founder of tide.

[00:07:23] And I saw what they were doing. And I realized there was a massive opportunity. I realized that one company is going to do this. So, um, sort of jumped ship, went to tide. Initially as a COO, um, then became chief operating product officer. And more recently, um, the beginning of this year, I was made CEO of the UK business, obviously tides on a massive journey.

[00:07:45] And, um, I've been very, very lucky. So when I joined tide, it was again, very, very small summits. When I joined roughly five, 10 people. We're now about 750 people employees, uh, we'll be probably thousand police by the end of the year, but more importantly, [00:08:00] we serve about. 360,000 businesses in the UK. Um, we're, we're basically the next player.

[00:08:07] Um, if you look at the sort of big four, then you've got some time there in terms of market share for business banking. We come next. Um, and we've done that in space of about four years. So we've been growing incredibly rapidly and as we've announced recently, we are , going to India as our next territory this year.

[00:08:26] So yeah, we're on a high octane, great journey. It's been incredibly exciting to be part of two big FinTech players. I would like to say just now that. Often people think about titers as a kind of, a neobank for businesses, but we're much more than that. We're actually building a business financial platform for businesses.

[00:08:44] So, yeah. So I guess that's, try to be as quick as possible just to give you my story, but that's my brief story of how I got hit.

[00:08:50] James: It's that sort of Steve jobs, you can't connect the dots, looking backwards. You can only connect them looking forwards or whatever way round it is amazing how [00:09:00] it kind of led you to this point.

[00:09:02] And I'm sure some of those experience in recruitment and early stage and funding and all those things have been absolutely critical to what you do

[00:09:11] Laurence Krieger: now. Yeah, I'd love to say it was a grand master plan. I'd love to say a plotted, the whole therapy, but of course she died. Um, but yeah, I've, I've been very fortunate in the, I guess I've, I've chosen the right opportunities at the right times , in, in my career.

[00:09:26] And, often things just grow from this, but, obviously, it's nice to be able to look back, but, uh, yeah, that's certainly been an interesting ride. Put it that way. Yeah.

[00:09:36] James: And when you're staring a sort of big company that is pretty big now, really in startup terms, when you come to a decision like going to India, how did that process come about?

[00:09:48] And who's involved in a decision of that magnitude?

[00:09:53] Laurence Krieger: It's a collective decision. Firstly. So if you look at the tide, business, I run the UK business. [00:10:00] Um, Oliver is, is global CEO. So he's obviously at the end of the day is instrumental in making that decision. Um, but it is a collective decision.

[00:10:08] We, we went about it in a very different way to some startups. So some startups really try to throw flags on the map. They literally just try and go as many places as possible. And then what they try and do is see which, you know, where they get sort of pick up. It's almost like MVP get up and then go from there.

[00:10:28] Um, within business banking and within the area that we're in, which is this business financial platform, um, actually the, the, there are a lots of complex issues we're trying to solve. So basically our mission is to get back time to businesses. And we do that through basically taking all the financial and admin complexities that a business owner would need to get their head round.

[00:10:53] And looking after that, all in one, one place form app, a website, and [00:11:00] in looking at that, there's a lot of, um, Use cases and a lot of value add that we were building. And therefore just launching say just a simple banking service. Isn't really enough. We want to go much, much deeper than that. So if we go into market, we want to really heavily invest and we want to add massive value.

[00:11:19] And ultimately our vision is we, you know, w we quite aggressive in our vision. We want to be the market leader in the space. So when we go into a new market like India, we really go in. Full blast. So, you know, what we did is as a business is we looked at the world, we looked at where there was a large population of SMEs and you know, India is certainly, I think, I think actually the largest, I mean, if you think about population wise, you've got 1.3 billion people in India.

[00:11:49] We call ourselves in the UK an entrepreneurial nation but really in India everyone's an entrepreneur.

[00:11:54] Hector: Yeah. Everyone's a micro company.

[00:11:57] Laurence Krieger: Exactly. Exactly. And there's not like the differences in, [00:12:00] in the UK. If you drive down the street, you'll just see the same brands on the high street. Whereas you drive down the typical streets in say Mumbai, and you know, you'll see hundreds of, as you said, micro businesses in one street.

[00:12:14] And there will be businesses that, you've got like a small shop and then above the shop, you've got like an office. And then in the front of the shop, you've probably got a stool, but selling fruits and vegetables on the pavement, I would say if you think about a very small space of few square foot, there's three businesses there.

[00:12:31] So there's tens of millions of businesses, in India. So it's an enormous. SME population. And I think the other thing about India is that, um, which is really exciting is they're very much digitizing payments. They're very much moving towards a, fully digitized society in that, in that kind of picture that we talked about on the streets.

[00:12:51] You'll see all three shopkeepers sitting there on their mobile phone. Um, and that's one commonality that you'll always see, right? They're all connected to their [00:13:00] mobiles. There's actually great wifi in my cities. So, it seemed like a great fit. Um, and then the other thing by India is, the government is really encouraging businesses to become formalized.

[00:13:12] That was a lot of like cash economy and informal businesses. And obviously from a tax point of view that doesn't really work for the government. So government is really sort of prodding businesses into becoming formalized, and registered them. And we see that as a huge opportunity there. So, yeah, so that, that was a lot of deep thinking.

[00:13:30] And obviously we looked at the globe, we looked at all the different countries that we could. Guy too. And we thought, well, you know, our next country could be France or, you know, nothing wrong with France. Love the country, but relatively small population of relatively small, uh, business population compared to say, India.

[00:13:49] Hector: Yeah, no, it's super interesting. Are there things beyond the banking infrastructure for SMEs, is there stuff beyond that that really excites you, the use of AI kind of network effects [00:14:00] where customers can provide and offer value to other customers and it becomes more of a kind of community.

[00:14:06] Laurence Krieger: A hundred percent, a hundred percent. So I think this is you've hit upon one of the areas that we see as a huge opportunity for us to help our members, businesses that are on tight. Um, so yes, as I said, we were really have a plan rather than trying to be a business bank. We obviously do offer real FSEs, business accounts.

[00:14:25] So we, we offer that service anyway. and then alongside our service, we, we offer a number of other services, which plug into it. So, one of the big areas is business admin. So it's expenses, it's invoicing, it's receipt management. For example, you can set up your invoices on time, we'll chase it for you.

[00:14:43] You can have expense cards, field team, you can set limits and that kind of thing. As well as the expenses in an admin, you've also got credit. And obviously that's an incredibly important part of most businesses, especially now. So we offer many different credit [00:15:00] facilities. Uh, we also offer, merchant acquiring and that's something that we were actually going to be live with this year, we were building out, with a partner and merchant acquiring facilities.

[00:15:10] So you can take payments as a business on tide, and that will be for both. Businesses that say need to do e-commerce, but also for, for those that are dealing with, physical commerce. So, you know, it might be micro-business, it could be tradesmen who coming to your home, do some work like a plumber, and then can WhatsApp your link and you can pay by link.

[00:15:30] So those kinds of services we're offering as well. Um, and. Uh, finally of course, payments is a massive area for us. So we were doing a lot in the whole payment space. So that's, that's in a nutshell what the, the areas that we focus on, at tide and then we also have this huge community. So we've got about 360 odd thousand businesses on, in the UK alone on, on tide.

[00:15:53] And as you said, that there is a real opportunity for us to really network those businesses up so they can [00:16:00] start to, Basically buy and sell services from each other. So we will be launching a member of the directory service for soon. That's something we're working on. And then the other thing that we were working on at the moment is, launching a, uh, basically a marketplace for businesses.

[00:16:18] So, um, you can get, for example, your accounting. Uh, we'll, you can plug into Xero, Sage or QuickBooks through tide, but if you want, for example, an accountant, you will be able to find an accountant on tide and we'll look after the end-to-end experience. So we'll write out accounts and we'll make sure that's certified.

[00:16:35] We'll make sure that, they deliver the service at the end of the day to the customer. And it's those kinds of services as well. That we're basically, cross-promoting, cross-pollinating both our customers, but also our partners.

[00:16:47] Hector: Yeah, no, I think it's cool. we see episode one 70 companies who pitched to us at pre-seed and seed saying that this is the first thing that we're going to do.

[00:16:54] We're going to nail it. And then we're going to have an app store and we're going to have a marketplace where people developers can [00:17:00] develop their own widgets and apps for, for the community to use. And I love that vision and I love it when it works out. And I wonder where the stuff you're talking about, the credit, the other things, are they.

[00:17:12] Built by you guys or that, is it part of a closed ecosystem or is there an opportunity to open it up?

[00:17:17] Laurence Krieger: Yeah. So it's a really, it's a really important distinction. So what we realized about SMEs is one size does not fit. All right? So there's no point in us, for example, building out like a accounting product and then expecting all of our business customers to use it, right.

[00:17:33] Because some will want to use it. And we are launching a tied, labeled, counting product, um, with our partner. But also at the same time, we're going to be, Allowing, if you want to access. And we already do this today. Other accounting products, so already today on Sage, on tide. So you can access Sage zero QuickBooks, all the other accounting services.

[00:17:57] And then in addition to that, You may [00:18:00] decide, well, actually I just don't want to do anything. Any of that stuff is a little bit too complex. I just want him to counsel and going to look after me. And that's where the marketplace comes in. And, we see it more as like an Amazon seller than a marketplace.

[00:18:12] So the problem with marketplaces, it tends to just be very shallow. So you tend to just link from. Tied to a third party and maybe there's a bit of data sharing, but that's about it. The problem there is that you kind of like left and left on your own and the experience disappears. It's almost like, okay, here's, here's a provider.

[00:18:31] And if you want to use them, use them.

[00:18:33] Hector: Yeah. And you've got control over the

[00:18:35] Laurence Krieger: experience, right? Yeah, exactly. And that's the way, that's the way Amazon works. Right. So if you're buying on Amazon or you're buying a site, does the experiences, the site parents, and that's how we look at it. And that's, that's really our approach.

[00:18:47] Hector: Very interesting.

[00:18:49] James: Yeah. I love the mission statement to give business owners back more time. Uh, it definitely resonates for your advertising, which is really great. Do you think that there'll be [00:19:00] any acquisitions from tides in the near future? I mean, not a pre-approved question, but it sounds like you've got so much that you could cover.

[00:19:09] Um,

[00:19:11] Laurence Krieger: yeah, so we we're, we're certainly not in the, the, the, um, space of trying to build everything. And I learned that very early on in my career. So if I, if I go back to my Yahoo days, you know, as I said, Yahoo back then was, was the number one internet property. Um, they tried to build pretty much everything themselves for music and mail to search and sports, and really that approach didn't work.

[00:19:36] And that's probably why you've seen. If you look at history of Yahoo, they've gone from being number one to almost disappear. So, that's certainly not Austin. We don't believe if you want to really build out a strong, horizontal play, which is what we're building. We don't believe in doing that all ourselves.

[00:19:55] So what we do is we work with partners. We integrate either [00:20:00] through our own branding, our entire label branding, but ultimately we'll do the kind of front-end experience layer. And below that we'll sit the partner. or we will as, uh, just connect out to partners through like, you know, as I said to you before, like zero Or we will connect through a marketplace, but what we don't try to do is build everything ourselves.

[00:20:19] and really the experience layer is the bit that we add value in. The other bit of value that we really add, um, which you commented already on the call is the data, right? So we collect a lot of data. We, I know everyone talks about ML, but we really do invest heavily in ML. And that's where we can then bring the right products, the right services to our members through really understanding our members and that's through data.

[00:20:45] But no, we don't try to build everything ourselves. We really partner is, is our approach. Um, and also, as I said before, what we don't try to do is just. Um, shoe horn, a certain service or certain partner through to our members. We want to offer choice.[00:21:00] Because we believe that SMEs, a very diverse they're complex.

[00:21:03] You can't just offer one standard service per, per sub site. Yeah. So that's really our approach and, Obviously any business has limited, engineers and product people. And we really want to put those, valuable people to best use. And as I said, that's really in the experience layer rather than trying to compete with, a third party, who's really gotten off to the vertical.

[00:21:26] Hector: Yeah, I'm really interested also to hear about the, transition from COO, um, revenue and then COO, um, tied and the transition to CEO and what that meant for you and different skills, different things that were needed. Things you enjoyed more about each role.

[00:21:43] Laurence Krieger: Yeah. So I think I'm ready. I've done up until now has kind of prepared me for the new role in the CEO of the, of tidy UK.

[00:21:51] So along the way, I mean, COO firstly can mean so many different things. So when I was at, Revolut, for example, I was looking off to oversee the operations, [00:22:00] but also I was looking after marketing and business development, where at a tide. I took on products as well as opera and operations for us is, the whole onboarding KYC piece plus customer support, plus transaction monitoring.

[00:22:16] And then product. And then, I guess the new part to my role really is the marketing piece, which I I had before, which, I have some experience in, but I wouldn't claim to be a marketeer. I have a very strong team by me.

[00:22:28] And I think that also, if I think about my role today at CEO, it's really about handling the P and L and the performance of the business and the metrics.

[00:22:38] And I'm quite a commercial person. I've always really been interested in what makes businesses tick, how'd you grow businesses, how'd you go from a standing start to X number of customers, and then how do you 10 X that et cetera, and also how you maximize. Revenue whilst also having a fantastic product that your, hopefully your customers love, [00:23:00] we've really high sentiment scores.

[00:23:01] So I've always been very much looking at those KPIs and those measurements and seeing how you can pool as leaders internally. To be able to achieve those things. Um, so I think really I've got the kind of the tactical answers standing. And I think that the only kind of big difference now is that it's about the horizons you look in.

[00:23:22] So perhaps before I was looking at maybe horizon one horizon two, whereas now my, my role is also horizon three. So I've, I've always got to be keeping an eye on the bullets in the air and making sure everything's working well. And, you know, in the short term, but also always thinking to the future and always thinking, what next, what are we going to be doing at the end, by the end of this year and the next jet?

[00:23:45] I think that's probably the only big difference there.

[00:23:48] Yeah. That's really interesting.

[00:23:49] You've had a number of management roles what's some core characteristics that you. Really look for and admire, and that you've seen as a bit of a pattern [00:24:00] over time, on the best people to have working alongside you. Yeah. So I think if we, if I look at the, um, values of our business, we have three values in our business.

[00:24:11] One is being Memphis. We call our customers members, but really thinking first customer, not thinking first, my job. And that's incredibly important. And I think if you haven't got that kind of mindset, then you're not right for tide because really any great tech business or business for that matter really has to be customer centric and really wants to go that way, to help, the customer.

[00:24:34] So that's the first one. The second one of our values is being data-driven. So within a business like ours, where there are so many things. That we need to do some more timelessly you need to be able to prioritize and you need to be able to look clearly at a situation and you need to be able to think.

[00:24:52] Logically about an approach not going on just gut instinct, not just going on emotion, but you need to go on [00:25:00] data and present that data in a very succinct, coherent way. So that's another one of our values. And it's another thing though, for me, I really look for, and then the final one is being one team.

[00:25:10] So, within tide, of course we have multiple teams. We have multiple teams across multiple regions as well. We're in four different locations globally. So it's really important that we all work as one team. And very often we're all interdependent. You know, there's so much cross dependency across the business.

[00:25:28] And if. We can't afford to have, uh, silos and people just thinking about that, that team or that they're, uh, issue or what they're trying to achieve. So I think in essence, those are the three big values are tied and there's a reason why we have those values. We thought long and hard, and those are really what we look for.

[00:25:47] The final thing I'd say is for me, The pace is phenomenally fast and entitle. I'm sure it's the same in most scallops and startups. In fact, if it's not, then you probably got to ask yourself some questions as to [00:26:00] why not. Um, so you need somebody who's in how I think about hiring is, somebody who's got the feet on the ground who can remain calm under pressure, but as also, Got got enough energy and enough resilience to see them through it.

[00:26:15] Cause this is, you know, this isn't a job for somebody who just wants to do a nine to five role. Ultimately my direct reports, we hear the VPs, you know, they've got serious jobs to do and they take it very seriously. I've been reading a bit about how fintechs will we'll have in the past existed, alongside banks, incumbents, and where that relationship will go.

[00:26:38] And, as someone who doesn't work in FinTech, I invested a little bit in FinTech, but, not as close to the ground as you, how do you see that playing out? Do you think? So for context, I look at them and think, well, okay, tired. On the face of it, it's just a better product. It's better experience for SMEs than using an incumbent.

[00:26:58] Do you think the incumbents will [00:27:00] catch up and reach product and experience parity? Or do you think it's just a inevitability that people move entirely to, to FinTech, to companies like tide? Yeah. So I think it's an inevitability. There is massive, massive disruption going on right now before our eyes globally in the finance space.

[00:27:21] And you only need to look at, planners, valuation. Yes, the 45 billion. The fact the new bank, is soaring. I think they've got now 14 million customers in Brazil and Mexico, Colombia. You know, the fact that we in four years at tide have grown from being nothing to overtaking brands like, um, Virgin and Clydesdale and, other high street brands.

[00:27:43] So, there is a huge, huge disruption happening and. The big reason for that is for me to two things. Firstly, um, businesses, all the businesses I mentioned to you, first and foremost, tech businesses and [00:28:00] secondly finance businesses, you know, as people say tech fin rather than FinTech. And that's a really important distinction to make because banks in my mind.

[00:28:10] A complete culturally completely different. They think of themselves first and foremost as finance businesses. And they're typically really bad at the tech stuff. I mean the large, large global banks are spending billions and billions a year. Just keeping the lights on, just keeping their legacy systems going and not innovating.

[00:28:30] So in order for a large bank or even a local bank to try to catch up, I think it's almost impossible. with the pace of change and the way in which, businesses and the leading business in tech businesses are able to, um, develop from where they started to where they are today. I think that catch up is just too hard to achieve.

[00:28:53] Today and let alone in the future. I think the other thing I said, there was two things. The other thing is, the, amount of [00:29:00] investor appetite. I'm sure you're seeing this, for, successful FinTech businesses and therefore what these businesses are able to do. They've got the ambition, they've got the technical know-how, they've got the customer demand.

[00:29:13] Having the funds is essentially adding rocket fuel. Therefore, they're able to grow exponentially. They're able to grow into new markets. They're able to grow that their product base and their customer base. So quickly that in five years time in my mind, FinTech, these leading FinTech players, like tide we'd have taken over from the traditional banking space.

[00:29:36] And I think there'll be a role for the incumbents, but I don't think it will be in the same role as you see today. As a result? Why do you think we haven't seen more acquisitions of neobanks by traditional banks? Because there's probably been many opportunities.

[00:29:50] There was rumors about Monzo and Lloyds and things. W, why do you think that hasn't occurred? Biggest reason why that hasn't happened is twofold. [00:30:00] Firstly, I think initially the big banks didn't take the FinTech players seriously. I saw that with my own eyes. I remember when I was at Revolut back in 2015, I'd meet the banks and I'd meet the schemes.

[00:30:13] And really we were seen as this little company that they're going to go nowhere. Um, Is that you've kind of want the smile off their face. I would say that I get, you know, I get, get any satisfaction every day that I get more satisfaction from just growing great businesses and seeing ourselves.

[00:30:35] You know, do really well, but I think there was definitely a complacency there. I don't think, uh, the banks do the FinTech would ever really take off in the way it has and then, so I think that was one of the reasons. And then I think because of that, what happened was businesses, um, became very quickly, a very large, very quickly, and they almost became too large, too quiet.[00:31:00]

[00:31:00] So if you think about multi multi-billion dollar. Valuations of FinTech businesses probably at this stage, probably hard to see how a traditional Bible can acquire one of those companies. I'm sure there will plenty of offers out there for, leading near banks. But I think it's a matter of timing.

[00:31:19] The other question is really, I think if you look a bit at the history books, Are our banks equipped to, to, to purchase these types of businesses and then really make, keep them going and make them as successful as they should be. And, you know, we've had, we've seen sometimes that doesn't work particularly well.

[00:31:36] When you get traditional businesses acquiring. Fast, fast, fast forwarding, tech businesses, sort of AOL Warner merger that they get so big that it becomes a sort of merger. And then they sort of both combo. Yeah. It's, it's two very different cultures colliding in a way. Yeah. No, it's, it's really interesting.

[00:31:57] And partly driven, well, [00:32:00] almost seemingly driven by VC dollars. Firstly propping them up with enough capital to get. Big enough that they're taken seriously. And then also that result of those VCs saying, well, why would we exit now where we're winning this war? So correct. Correct. And obviously, the public markets have been also very receptive, you know, and we've seen now some new IPOs in the FinTech space, so, and that's just going to keep growing.

[00:32:26] So I think that that's clearly the logical path for, for a lot of these businesses. Yeah. Sounds like tide becoming a tidal wave.

[00:32:37] I'm glad that one James might be five minutes. Um, so we like to tie things up at the end. We were sort of dinner party guests game, but we call it the business lunch game.

[00:32:48] So do you want to go for lunch for three people kind of pick their brains for an hour, it could be anyone really. Um, who would they be? Okay. So I think.[00:33:00] My first choice would probably be one that, um, many people say, but, uh, he, he's just so kind of crazy that I just think it'd be really interesting to chat to, but I would like to, I'd like to have a on that, um, I'd like to talk to him about his businesses and his future plans and what he thinks is going to happen to the world.

[00:33:19] And are we all going to get off tomorrows and live there one day? Uh, so I think he'd be really interesting. I think the next one for me would be, um, Someone who, who really thinks deeply about, you know, What's going on in the world and tries to make it a better place. Um, and, and I actually, I really rate, Melinda gates because I think she is somebody who actually isn't as much, obviously in the spotlight as, I think her ex-husband now they believe that they're spits up.

[00:33:49] I think she's, she's super interesting because she, from what I read about her, she's really a lot of the. The drive behind the case foundation. [00:34:00] And she's donated plenty to, charity.

[00:34:02] And I think that, she's somebody who really understands, what's going on in the world today, both for a COVID point of view, but also she really thinks about, The disadvantage people how they can actually get out of that state into a place where they can become successful in really investing heavily in various different causes.

[00:34:21] And I think she'd be really interesting to speak to, finally, I would say, Gareth Southgate, I would like to have him there right now, uh, purely to talk team tactics, uh, hopefully to get a bit of an inside scoop on, what's going to happen with the England squad.

[00:34:38] He writes, , a really interesting open letter. Cause I think England manager sometimes, you know, what comes out of their mouths is not that inspiring, but actually he was really inspiring and he was really thinking about, the wider picture of, how important, England players are to the country and how inspirational they are to, to young.

[00:34:57] People. And I've got two young boys and they're going to be [00:35:00] watching and, um, it really hit a chord and I think it would be interesting to have at the table right now. Yeah, I think that's awesome. Yeah. Eat on, just, yeah. Interesting brains to just sort of spend some time with Melinda's, compassion and what she's done that Gareth right now would be so interesting to talk to.

[00:35:21] Yeah. Yeah. Really interesting, great answers. Thank you so much. So it's, it's really great. Um, well thank you so much for coming on and telling us your riding unicorn story. This means some really interesting stuff in that and, uh, yeah, we can't thank you enough and wish you all the best Woodside going forward.

[00:35:38] Thank you very much and great to be here and thanks for inviting me.

[00:35:41] So this week, startup spotlight is claimer claimer.com, which make tax credits really easy. The reason I love this is the general applicability of it. Mm. Was tech startups in the UK have a lot of, R and D expenditure on which they can claim tax credits.[00:36:00] Claimer are doing an awesome job, making it incredibly easy and painless, to do what is usually a, uh, long tiresome, process which they have to do every year.

[00:36:10] I actually entered, invested in that, in their latest round, which will probably be announced soon. There's loads of scope to, expand into other areas of, of business, which they have on their roadmap. And, can't wait to see how they execute on their vision.

[00:36:25] So that's all from riding unicorns this week. Next week we have Matt Ford from Mauro capital. It's suntan Dez corporate VC arm. And they're one of the leading investors in FinTech. Matt's also got a background as a operator, as well as an investor. So it'd be a really interesting conversation. Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and we'll catch you next time.