Tag Archives: Equity Crowdfunding

LFP162 – The Past and Future of Fintech w/Vinoth Jayakumar Partner Draper Esprit

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Draper Esprit are one of London’s longer-established VCs and with investments in the likes of Revolut, Transferwise, Thought Machine, Seedrs, Crowdcube and Freetrade might know a thing or two about Fintech. Draper Esprit, like Augmentum who we had on the show last year are also a listed AIM and thus also can offer finance not tied to the cycle of underlying funds – the so-called patient capital model.

Vinoth not only leads Fintech investments at Draper Esprit but has had a long running interest in the sector being at a Zopa Party in around 2007/2008 long before almost every firm now on the scene existed.

In this episode he picks out the key developments in Fintech over the past decade and a half, some of the takeaway lessons that all businesses can implement, some of the challenges and ends with his prospects for the upcoming decade.

Topics discussed on the show include: Continue reading →

LFP145 – New Year Special! 2020 Hindsight – A Decade In Fintech

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

In this show we review a decade in Fintech. Although the earliest Fintechs were formed around 2004/5 (WorldFirst, Zopa) many big names formed around 2010 (Funding Circle, Ratesetter, MarketInvoice). The LFP formed started covering the scene in mid-2014, the year of the first London Fintech week and the year that the Fintech word first hit the broadsheets. Using the shownotes at the time as a diary I trace the evolution of the promises, the hopes, the disappointments, the old innovations and the new innovations. Where did it all go?

No long show notes this week – it is a podcast podcast and in listening you can draw your own conclusions – indeed that’s the point of using dozens of real world examples as seen at the time not as seen through the dark glass of memory.

Congratulations to everyone involved in the London Fintech scene and wider UK Fintech scene and to all listeners. Want to know what the next decade might hold? Check out the previous decade and join the dots…!

LFP136 – Regtech: Using Tech to Connect Data to Consequence and Action w/Evgeny Likhoded CEO Clausematch

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

A super-important overview today. Data is just information is the standard line. Correct but not what matters in the real world. In the real world a regulatory announcement has consequences in organisations and requires actions – be it changing client agreements or operating procedures. What if we could use tech to go beyond the “regulation as pdf” to something far more third millennium? What if the new reg change was instead a domino which set in process a whole series of other dominoes falling inside regulated businesses?

Something radical is surely required given the absolute tsunami of regulation and the ludicrous black-hole like ability it is having in sucking increasing percentages of banks into being paper-pushers rather than wealth creators. At some point we will fall inside the event horizon and one person will be trying to make money in the bank and the rest pushing paper.

Clausematch and Evgeny came recommended to me long ago by Fintech übermensch Nigel Verdon. In this episode Evgeny leads us into the world of Regtech and gets beyond all the mad hype all too often associated with the sector. Whether we like it or not the world of Emperor Palpatine (“the bureaucrats have taken over”) is the world we live in whether #oldFS or #Fintech. Dealing with all the crap is a differentiator – indeed a sine qua non.

Topics discussed include: Continue reading →

LFP130 – Equity Crowdfunding – Past, Present and Future Innovations w/Jeff Lynn Exec Chairman Seedrs

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Ten years ago Jeff and his co-founder came up with the idea for Equity Crowdfunding and seven years ago Seedrs became the UK’s (world’s?) first regulated Equity Crowdfunder. In this episode we revisit the origins of the concept, what it was thought to be then and how it has evolved with the person who can surely lay claim to be the father of UK equity crowdfunding.

As often everything takes time to evolve and build out. But ten years in much has been achieved – and not only much for Seedrs but importantly for the hundreds of companies who have raised vital capital on the platform. In the world of the now much forgotten “supply-side reforms” there is arguably nothing better that can be done for SmallCos than to have such an effective conduit to raising funds.

One thing that has taken time to evolve is for the rest of the world to catch-up with the UK’s lead. However as we shall hear there are promises that Equity Crowdfunding will finally become a Thing across Europe so plenty of exciting times ahead as well as behind.

These topics and much more are discussed in the show: Continue reading →

LFP124 – The Reality of Being an Entrepreneur w/Ruzbeh Bacha CEO CityFalcon

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

What is it actually like being an Entrepreneur? Despite being experienced and having an MBA Ruzbeh Bacha, CEO of personalised news aggregator/filter CityFalcon has found that the reality is very different from expectations. What is it really like? How hard can it be?

Media narratives are of some startups achieving amazing success with amazing amounts of work. Well the amazing amounts of work come to them all but the super-duper successes are perhaps less than 1%. And – like restaurants – most startups fail but one never gets to hear of those.

In between the great triumphs and the failures is a large limbo land. The reality is that for the majority of Fintechs that started say five years ago and are still going they have scored some successes (otherwise they wouldn’t be here). But, rather like swimming in a gloopy soup, there is much friction along the way be it the crazy times it takes to raise funds (every year being the rough rule of thumb) or crazily long purchase processes and buying decisions for BigCos or even with App Banks that boast millions of users (and so get into tech print as being “worth” billions the difficulty of actually doing the making money thing.

Topics discussed on the show include: Continue reading →

LFP112 – FCA Proposes Undemocratisation: Taking the “P” Out of P2P with Ryan Weeks Editor AltFi News

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

You may not be rich, you may not be “sophisticated” but what kind of Stalinism is it that means The State can order you re what you can and cannot do with your money?!?

The entire ethos of “P2P” – the heart and most successful sector of Fintech – was connecting ordinary people, enabling lenders and borrowers to meet via the internet and both get a better deal than they would going through the megabanks.

Now if current FCA proposals go through this is all but dead – Ordinary Joe can keep borrowing (the system loves people being indebted) but the lending will only be unrestricted for Ingsoc Party members (“rich”, “sophisticated”) – Ordinary Joe will be capped at 10% of his investable assets.

It is also a constitutional outrage. The FCA’s job is to regulate platforms and ensure the bad/dodgy ones get shut down. The FCA is undemocratic and unelected – unlike our MPs we cannot vote them out of office – how dare they “regulate the people”? Regulating the people is something that ought to go through parliament not an office in Canary Wharf.

This topic undermines everything we have seen since the Magna Carta in 1215 became the first piece of legislation to limit the arbitrary power of the monarch.  Are we to return in this area to early Medieval Monarchical powers?

Ironically it was the UK’s Zopa that invented the UK globally. For a long time the UK State as a whole was highly supportive of Fintech and P2P. Now with government distracted, over a dozen years of success (&the records of the leading platforms have been far far better than bank returns for a diversified portfolio). Now only Party Members can fully avail themselves of these excellent returns. “To them that hath shall more be given”.

Ryan Weeks is the editor of AltFiNews the longest running AltFi news site, a real insider in this area. He is also the host of the successful Millennial Money Matters podcast and author of a best selling book as we shall come on to.

He joins us to discuss the Proposals in the round. Its a long document after a long consultation. Some proposals are sound, some so-so but this one is just plain wrong.

We all make mistakes and these are proposals. I call on the FCA to rethink this marketing restriction proposal. Already we have seen plenty of platforms changing from being P2Ps to avoid increasingly Draconian legislation. Already we have seen institutional money flooding into the sector. The whole purpose of the Fintech revolution was to make FS something of the people for the people. Let us keep it that way.

Topics discussed on the show include: Continue reading →

LFP105 – Execution-Only Stockbroking in the Digital Age with Adam Dodds CEO Freetrade

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

The ultimate disintermediation in FS is for folks to directly buy shares/binds directly and cut out the whole investment management industry as we know it.

Even better if it’s cost free to deal. This amazing proposition is becoming real as Freetrade’s core offering gets rolled out to its first users and we are joined today by founder and CEO Adam Dodds to dive into this whole world.

Freetrade is a member of the London Stock Exchange but at the same time a real Fintech, designed from the ground up for the digital age of Fintech.

Topics discussed include:  Continue reading →

LFP078 – Special Episode! 30,000 Feet Guide to UK Property Investment in the Fintech Age with Alex Michelin, founder CapitalRise

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

We all know that buying a property in the UK is a nightmare, that property prices are through the roof, that a first time buyer in London has an average age of 39 and that the “Bank of Mum and Dad” now has to contribute to around a third of first time purchases. Yet most folks in the UK are owner-occupiers and have to go through this.

How can Fintech help?

I’m delighted to be joined today by Alex Michelin, a former investment banker turned highly successful property developer, who not only has been immersed in this for over 15yrs but who recently founded CapitalRise a Fintech property portal. The team of eight at CapitalRise has over 75yrs of direct retail investment experience between them and the co-founders Alex and Andrew Dunn, who have acquired, developed and sold over £1bn of real estate. CapitalRise has been spun out of the highly successful top-of-the-market luxury property developers Finchatton.

Given the “challenges” (<coughs>) of the UK property market how can Fintech help? Before we get to that Alex sets the scene with an overview of all the many ways one can get exposure to UK property. So by the time we get to Fintech y’all should have a good idea of where it fits in, what it disrupts and its potential relevance to you.

Topics discussed include:  Continue reading →

LFP069 – IFAs, Fintech & Roboadvisers with Dan Kiernan Research Director Intelligent Partnership

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

IP banner for London Fintech Podcast“Everyone” frets over financial advice in the Fintech Age. Regulators set out to “protect the consumer”, worthy bodies talk no end about the need to protect “people” (never themselves oddly – generally they imply (/mean) folks of lesser education/wealth) and the rest of us are just confused over the labyrinthine rules around tax, savings and investments.

Needless to say a myriad on rules and regulations and the implicit costs of this suprastructure all act together in a Kafkaesque way to produce the opposite result – known as “the advice gap”.

In Fintechland breathless media and PR firms high on sugar, caffeine and other stimulants promise us a golden era of so-called “roboadvice”.

Dan KiernanHow to make sense of all this?

I am delighted to be joined today by Dan Kiernan Research Director at Intelligent Partnership “the UK’s leading provider of research, training and events on Alternative Investments” to cut through all this and to give us insights into why advisers are not recommending eg P2P to their clients when it has outperformed bank deposits for more than a decade.

On the show today we discuss all of the above and: Continue reading →

LFP055 – How Fintech Could Become Far Greater by Re-Forming FS with Professor John Kay

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

John KayI am delighted to be joined this week by Professor John Kay – one of the UK’s leading economists and outstanding authority on Financial Services to discuss the truly vast potential that still exists for Fintech to disrupt FS. Fintech as we know it now has so far only put its toe into that ocean of possibility.

Maybe Fintech as we know it now is as good as it gets. Or maybe it could be far far more. If the latter it really needs to get stuck into the areas we discuss on the show and in a far more radical way really support society at large and both re-form and reform FS.

John’s CV includes having written for the Financial Times for over 20yrs, being a successful author of at least 9 books, a fellow of St John’s college Oxford for some 46yrs, a visiting Professor at the LSE, being awarded the CBE, has been a director of well over a dozen FS companies, a successful businessman (Google tells me he has an investment in London Fintech Nutmeg), a member of the British Academy, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, establishing the IFS as one of Britain’s leading think tanks,  and in 2012 producing a review for the UK Government on equity markets and long term decision making. Post-Brexit he has been appointed to advise the Scottish Government on European Union issues.

So he knows a thing or two about FS. Not only this but as his website strapline is “accessible and relevant economics” he has the rare ability to take all that knowledge and experience and make it readily assimilable to the layman. Never more so than in his latest book “Other People’s Money: Masters of the Universe or Servants of the People?” (which currently gets 4.4*/5 from 32 reviews on amazon.co.uk).

If you want a taste of the book and an education (I learnt a lot and I know a little about FS myself) I recommend checking out John talking about the book at Google or at the LSE. And then buy the book 🙂

Anyway all this deep background serves for a very deep and vitally important issue.

Fintech would not be where it is today without the FS crisis of 2008. Leading authorities – John, the ex-governor of the Bank of England and the ex head of the FSA – have all written books saying that the fundamental dynamics behind that crisis have not been eliminated and that we will see a similar crisis again. I agree entirely.

In his Google Talk John mentioned that his book was in part educative but also in part so that when the next FS crisis breaks authorities will not be able to say (as they did last time) they had no forewarning and no policy prescriptions to reach for.

This made we wonder whether we couldn’t repurpose and leverage John’s work – inverting it as it were – turning problems into opportunities and showing what Fintech could do to both reform and re-form FS. Continue reading →