Rivera Should I invest in bitcoin/BTC? I am being asked this question very often these days, and as always I find easier to write a blog post when I see myself repeating the same opinions. And I still believe that “If you don’t have strong opinions, you do not have an opinion.” But first a little […]
Tag: innovation
Fintech Disruption?
I have been talking about Moven for a while now on the conference circuit, to an audience that included bankers and investors in fintech. Here are my main talking points, in a more elaborate version than what I say on stage, where time slots are tighter. What is Moven? Moven is a “fintech” “neo-bank” early […]
Moven and the Diffusion of Fintech Innovations
Perpeetum Mobile When I was in 5th grade, at the end of the academic year, just before the start of the summer vacation, our Physics teacher shared with us a “big secret”: he invented a “perpetuum mobile” machine. He went on a rant about how he has it all designed, could not build it because he did […]
Do Cool S*it
I’ve been reading recently an interview with one of the big banks CEO, saying, essentially, that fintech startups have no chance of success, as banks have both the resources and the know-how to change themselves, flawlessly execute their digital transformation plans, and leave all startups eating dust. Of course he is right, as it is […]
Competing with Incumbent Banks with a Stacked Deck
In a very interesting piece about a financial services conference, I found out about Victoria Raffe, a former bank regulator in the UK, now an independent consultant, talking about the process of getting approval for new banks in the UK. As someone following closely fintech startups like Moven (and Simple before that) and others that deliver […]
The New Age of Algorithms
I come from an engineering background, for me computers were, for a long time, calculators, a tool to perform either complex calculations, or on large data sets. Otherwise a handheld calculator – standard in my university years – would have been more than enough. Computers were expensive, data entry was a pain, and output was […]
The Startup Team: 4 + 3 = 1
The days of building something really innovative on your own are long gone. Edison – the prototypical inventor – had a huge lab and many assistants. Steve Jobs led teams of innovators. I have been arguing for a while, in corporate environments and my blog, that no sane company should reward individual contribution/results and settle […]
Innovation Teams and Innovation Culture
In a sense, life is simpler in a startup — you have an idea, you select a team, you get some money to start, build the product, launch, and try to make money from customers that love your product. If you fail at any of those steps, you learn and start over. The innovation culture […]
Fintech Thoughts
Many years ago, I was working for a large Canadian bank, managing two very different development teams — one using C++ to build a derivatives trading system, and one of Cobol programmers maintaining the bank General Ledger application. While the culture clash was obvious to any observer, nothing reflected it better than the big poster […]
Persuasion and Gamification in Fintech
We don’t like to admit that we are easy manipulation targets — but we are. In his classic book, Prof. Robert Cialdini talks about five ways to influence people. In summary, we can be persuaded through (with some fintech examples): 1. Reciprocity – People tend to return a favor, therefore marketers love to give “free […]