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Increasing automation is what the tech revolution is about – by definition. In this episode we dive into this topic starting at the highest levels – Government intelligence community quality tech at GCHQ (where Jeremy and his four co-founders had been long-term employees) and the immense value of technology transfer between state and private sectors. We then move through some of the more challenging questions of definition of terms (super-relevant for computers and their usage by business) and that these terms (eg crime, terrorist et al) vary per location – a real challenge for global enterprises.

Finally we move on to a particular speciality of Ripjar (who recently completed a $37m raise) – adverse media screening  – which is not – as it sounded to me – a PR function but rather the automated processing of billions of news articles for credit/regulatory/business relevance re, as it were, early-warning/detection of say credit or regulatory or ethical problems with clients while these are still over the horizon rather than at the front door (or inside it) of the business.

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This 2023 New Year Special forms the fifth is a series of five about how technology is changing us directly and indirectly by empowering tyrants. It is by far the most ambitious, empowering and positive of all suggesting that we use the insanity as a spur in our sides to seek to flee Plato’s cave, escape the Matrix and speed up our path to awakening in search of love, light and healing.

Sound like a cool topic, a worthy goal to you?

It has five chapters:

1. Metapolitical Awakening
2. Psychological Awakening
3. The Wasteland and the Grail
4. Existential Awakening
5. A Magical New World

There is a huge shift in consciousness going on now. The old world is dying in front of our eyes. However a new world is arising and there are a phenomenal number of green shoots growing for those who will look and find.

Let’s take a journey from understandable disenchantment and toxic metapolitics, through  an examination of the deepest roots and causes of this disenchantment in ourselves, in our civilisation, in our hugely increased use of technology, to a world of re-enchantment.

Don’t choose the old world, fear and control, choose the new world of love, light and healing…

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So yet another fresh topic we haven’t covered so far 🙂 What is the role of a CLO – Chief Legal Officer – aka General Counsel in a Tech firm in general, as a superset of Fintech? Back in the day, well quite a few days ago most all companies used external lawyers almost entirely. At a certain point the concept of in-house lawyer appeared. Since then the number of laws has only mushroomed and the whole world of regulation has exploded massively. To cut a long story short there is an ever-expanding need to “square the circle” where the circle is the businesses creative desires and the square is the Lilliputians’ zillion and one Rules That Must Be Obeyed At All Times.

It is perhaps this need more than anything which has driven the evolution of the in-house lawyer into becoming a CLO/General Counsel as to get the optimal outcome someone needs to deeply understand both a specific business with its idiosyncrasies and desires as well as the law/reg thing.

So in this episode we dive into the world of a CLO with Harj who is GC at the LiiV Group and will leave you all with some feel for what type of company when should start considering creating another box on the organogram, another chair around the C-suite table.

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Ricardo is a Brazilian serial entrepreneur who joins us in this show to give us an overview of the key features of Fintech in Central/Southern (aka Latin) America. The region includes the worlds highest valued neo-bank which has reached an astonishing 65 million client base in less than a decade – most of whom never had a bank account before, so amazing things are happening down there.Which are the major players out of the nigh on three dozen countries? What are the trends. What historical and geographical features lie behind the patterns we see? How do Latin American Fintechs expand beyond their home territory?

Pismo is a Brazilian Fintech who provide core banking technology globally and who raised an impressive $108m B round last year… it only seems like yesterday that $10m was an impressive for a B.

They have offices in many countries around the world and for example power N26 neobank in Europe.

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What actually is due diligence? How does it work and how should you if you find yourselves approaching one best prepare for it? Barr Blanton CEO of Crosslake Technologies, whose strapline is “private equity and management teams trusted advisor for technology”, and half of whose business is doing due dil joins us to outline what due diligence is and how to handle it best for both buyer and seller (or in the case of VC raises when raising). Crosslake advise 500 Private Equity firms worldwide and have done an amazing 3,500 due dils in recent years so who better to ask?

Due diligence is a topic that few of you may have come across but it’s an absolutely vital one to know about – not least of which as the most common case is that VCs/PEs funding offers are always dependent on due diligence – rather like your offer to buy a house is conditional on a survey first.

There is a parallel here with another funding phase change stage that of IPOing. As we have heard in prior LFPs on How To IPO unsurprisingly the companies who get themselves in shape well ahead of deciding to IPO fare best. The same applies to due diligence yet the realpolitik is that plenty leave the shall we say “internal tidying up off the office” to roughly the day before the inspector comes round leading to a non-ideal experience.

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All sane Fintechs will have a security system to try and keep out as many attacks and fraudulent would be clients. However the nature of the attacks and frauds is getting ever-more hardcore. As Martin says in the show back in the day to rob a bank you would have to take significant personal risk when getting into and out of a bank with your shotgun and a high risk of capture by the authorities. These days the risk:return is way lower (and one reason for much higher levels of fraud) as one can sit in a warm office on the other side of the world, far from the local police force and in no physical danger). What is to be done about this massive change of dynamic?

Resistant.AI specialise in adding an additional layer(s) of protection(s) to existing systems and with an approach analogous to antivirus software – namely using AI to detect the latest patterns of attacks and updating their software hourly to keep pace.

As Martin explains there is no such thing as perfect security – however as with most of evolution perfection is not required – merely being one step ahead of the competition. If you make yourself a harder target to defraud than your competitors the fraudsters will got for them not you.

How is this done? What are the challenges? Topics discussed include:

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Swiss Kickstart Innovation are highly active in enabling deals between Fintechs and incumbent FS – when we recorded the podcast for example they had facilitated an extraordinary 300 negotiations in the prior 10 days. As we haven’t dived for many years into the whole challenge of young Fintechs managing to close deals with incumbents whose heartbeat, whose pace of change is radically different from the newcomers, it is rather overdue a visit? What has empirical evidence found in the meantime? After all you can probably meet someone new and get married in less time than it takes to seal a deal with some of FS’s slower-moving incumbents. 

Katka herself has a varied background – from Czechland through US government to Kickstart in Switzerland – all of which enables her to take a 30,000 feet view of the challenges and opportunities. The Art of Diplomacy is invaluable in marriage-making on the corporate front.

;So what are Kickstart’s experiences? What how they found works well and what not so well? What should all Fintechs that need to do deals with MegaFSCos (that’ll be most all) have on their checklists?

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Payments orchestration is all the rage. But what is it, and amidst all the hype is it all it’s cracked up to be? Good questions and who better to ask than serial entrepreneur Kristian who founded Cellpoint Digital back in 2007 to do precisely what became known today as payments orchestration and indeed their website says they are the global leader in it. Thus Cellpoint have the claim to not only be the first to do orchestration but to do it before it existed and to chart the convergence and confluence of multiple factors which have made it the complex beast it is today.

The origins of the whole payments value-adding by third parties came about as having a global business means having to handle global payments. And this involves multiple banks in many countries, many regulatory regimes, many currencies and people travelling around as well as buying online,

Not only this but there is a whole back office set of processes behind all this ensuring that the money that you expect when someone “paid” actually ends up going kerching in your bank account in the right amount at a later date. Not only is there this saving money on managing and processing payments for merchants but what was to become orchestration evolved into more pro-active ways of actually increasing merchants cashflow – we are well beyond the world of the late 90s when smart money realised a red button would get more clicks than a green one. As we hear Big Merchants do payments orchestration as they can get an over 10% increase in $$$ inflowing. Wow… :-O

Kristian leads us through these thickets in the clear and methodical way that you might expect form someone who has spent 14 years watching this scene slowly develop.

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Africa in general narratives is all too often treated – like many matters – as a super-low-res jpeg, more as if it were a place, one which is complex and widely misunderstood, or not even understood. Africa is, of course, in reality it is a vast continent of a billion people, over 50 countries and countless different languages and peoples. Africa has fractal complexity. Zoom in  at any level and you find even more complexity – whether geography, peoples, languages, history, governance, development (from hunter-gatherers to Chinese railways faster than any in the UK) or, as we shall see Fintech where with M-Pesa formed in 2007 Africa has been one of the global leaders in Fintech per se. In LFP210 we discussed the fact that its largest country, Nigeria, has not just three main tribes but another 180 peoples and languages. In terms of physical size it takes less time to fly from London to Cairo than it does from Lagos to Cape Town.

This makes covering Africa from an investment perspective extremely challenging in all aspects. In this excellent tour d’horizon long established techster Gbenga, born in Nigeria and now working for Global VCs QED investors as their African head of Fintech investment  joins us to literally lay out the landscape and explain to us how one even approaches such a vast and varied territory in terms of finding key focal markets – five in QED’s case – to firstly invest in and secondly act as hubs for spokes to other local markets.

Finally away from all simplistic narratives it should be noted that QED has a global fund – the corollary of which is at the highest level – QED are simply trying to find Fintechs that are great per se with no allowance or bias towards or against region, merely trying to find great founders and great businesses.

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Incumbent banks – as Fintech has found in the past decade are rather safer from having huge slices of their business nicked than many Fintechs have imagined. However Allica Bank, established by some pretty experienced individuals have a plan. In this episode we dive into that plan along with quizzing Conrad, who was last on the show as Founder/CEO of Funding Options on what the pros and cons of being a past Founder/CEO are – a little discussed topic.

We also take a look at the SME market and its three main components – micro-businesses which are somewhat private-client like, medium sized businesses and then what are effectively small corporates.

Once again we get a great example that any word, any labeling of a category – whether it be Fintech, Africa (coming soon) or SME is not really a thing but a handle on a series of things – which of course themselves can be further zoomed-into.

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