Tag Archives: Investment

LFP171 – The Past, Present and Future of Venture Capital w/Josh Bell Dawn Capital

Venture Capital is nigh-on essential for many ambitious, big-build, fast-scaling Fintechs and Techs in general. Fund raising is essential. Thus how the VC market is evolving is of the utmost importance to ambitious firms and founders.

In this episode Josh Bell one of the founding partners of leading London-based European-wide VCs Dawn Capital who have raised over a billion to invest in growing businesses joins us to look back, look around now and look into the future. How can you best raise funds? Plenty of learn…

Topics discussed include: Continue reading

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

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

LFP129 – IPO-ing & Patient VC Capital Via Closed-End Funds? w/Tim Levene CEO Augmentum

Today we merge two fascinating topics – the Gold Medal for a startup – the Public Listing and innovating in Venture Capital to provide more patient capital. Our guest who connects these two is super-serial entrepreneur Tim Levene who listed Augmentum last year and is a real Fintech insider being on the Boards of Iwoca, Zopa, Seedrs, amongst others.

Tim’s career is most impressive, as we shall hear in the show – did you know he founded London’s juice bars called Crussh.

Before we turn to weaving in the Augmentum model of venture capital provided not from a limited lifetime fund but from a “permanent capital” closed-end investment trust let’s turn to listing which is something Augmentum have been through themselves

When you are a NewCo or Startup it seems inconceivable (even if you go round proclaiming the opposite) that one day you might be listed on the LSE. It can seem like starting some sport tomorrow and ending up being selected to run for your country. So there is quite some sense of achievement for the founder in doing so.

However wiser older owls realise that listing is no nirvana – ask Funding Circle who listed at 440p at the end of September and were trading seven months later at little over half this price at 250p.

Topics discussed on the show include: Continue reading

LFP127 – Impact & Ethical Investment in the Fintech Age w/Tom McGillycuddy CEO Tickr

Almost all investment has collapsed onto a simple idea of maximising your return. But what if you don’t want your investments to harm society and the world? What if you want to help the world and make a great return? What then? Into this gap steps ethical and impact investment.

Tom is CEO of Tickr which he co-founded to open up impact investing to the general public from as little as £5. As well as a career in this area he also did a masters at Oxford Business School on the topic so is well-placed to guide us thorough the maze.

Some of the first ethical investment funds were shariah-compliant Islamic funds. With these in broad terms ethical means not investing in alcohol and armaments and other such categories. At a more detailed level a religious authority rules on whether an individual company is or isn’t “ethical”.

Ethical investment is clearly A Good Thing but once it spread to more secular lands definition became problematic. Furthermore it turned out that between “all white” and “all black” investment lay a huge grey area.

More recently impact investment has appeared on the scene where the focus is not so much avoiding investing in “bad” companies but targeting “good” companies.

Once again though we have a problem that in the real world good and bad are not black and white. For example I might consider Brewdog to be a great company – ethical and impactful (as producing great beer responsibly seems to me both ethical and impactful). However for you this might be neither ethical nor impactful?

So if the principle is simple – ethical investment is clearly Good and impactful is clearly Good. But who defines? The challenge lies not in the concept but in the practical implementation.

Topics discussed include: Continue reading

LFP120 – Two Tribes: VCs and CEOs (w/a side-order of #StableCoin) w/Steve Findlay CEO BondMason

Today the super-important topic of “What VCs don’t know about Entrepreneurs;  and what Entrepreneurs don’t know about VCs”. Steve Findlay is a great guest to have to discuss this as he has been a long-time VC and now founder/CEO (Bond Mason and AAA Reserve). How can this culture divide, objective divide be best managed? How can the tribes get along better? For sure having a successful board is definitely a win-win proposition.

There can be considerable “challenges” in Fintechs between these two tribes – investors and founders/management. This challenge of “two tribes” is centuries old. In my interviews with now over 60 folk on the management of the unlisted board the most vitriol by far has come from founders/CEOs about VCs. Equally as you might imagine VCs biggest pain can be the management of a firm.

Steve spent 12 years investing and advising in technology VC and mid-market private equity, including co-founding Fidelity’s $500M technology buyout fund. He had a coding sabbatical in 2012-13, is an angel investor, along with BondMason who  enable clients to invest in loans secured against UK property he has cofounded a stablecoin startup.

So as well as our topic du jour we also have a dive into #StableCoin – a first on the show.

Topics discussed include: Continue reading

LFP116 – Should You Invest In Corporate Bonds Rather Than P2P? w/Rezaah Ahmad CEO WiseAlpha

We all know that investing in the top P2P has been a good plan. But do corporate bonds offer better risk-adjusted value? Historically you had to have megabucks to buy bonds, or invest in a unit trust. However now WiseAlpha are Finteching the Corporate Bond Market and making direct investing available from as little as £100. Yields from high quality corporates can even exceed unsecured consumer debt on P2P platforms and the industry is far older and more solid.

We are joined today by CEO Rezaah Ahmad to discuss corporate bonds in the Fintech Age and WiseAlpha’s platform.

The corporate bond market is literally huge – $11.7trn and in a sense an amazing omission for Fintech so far in its mission to digitise and revolutionise the world of FS.

Topics discussed on the show include:

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

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

LFP106 – Bumper Episode! The Future of Leveraged Trading, UX, & Education w/Ivan Gowan CEO Capital.com

On the show this week we have a bumper edition – the future of leveraged trading, online/in-app education, IT Dev, user experience design, new ESMA rules – and much more, Responsible for this fireworks show is Ivan Gowan CEO of multi-award winning capital.com. who have125 staff and over £30m of capital.

In the previous episode LFP105 we covered the digital approach to execution-only stockbroking.

In this episode we cover the more rarefied world of leveraged trading which democratises as it were the magical powers of hedge funds to trade efficiently and leverage positions. You can see this as a crossover of capital markets Fintech and trading for sophisticated investors. One for the cognoscenti but a market which has seen huge growth in the past two decades. Fintech is truly revolutionising everything.

Both last weeks episode and this cover the waterfront of the disintermediation of investment management. It’s also important not to see them as opposing – most moneyed folks will have a core portfolio that is solid and stable and those that do leveraged trading do it with a portion of their funds.  As we come into in the show the demographic of such folks is pretty wide going far beyond the ex-traders that I had always imagined.

So without further ado lets sketch some of the detailed topics in this episode. Topics discussed on the show include: Continue reading

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

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

LFP094 – 2018 New Year Special! Fintech Tour d’Horizon, Report Card & Its Context

In this New Year Special I’ll survey the state of the art and present a report card for each of the main  Fintech sectors – P2P, Bitcoin, Blockchain, Money, App-only banks, Insuretech, Digital I.M., Regtech, Payments and a deeper dive into the leading AI of 2017. We also examine the broader context for Fintech – namely US Tech Giants who had a seismic shift in 2017.

No awards as such this year but plenty of honourable mentions and a host of goodies for those of you in search of new ideas.

Topics discussed include:  Continue reading