compatibly I am back from a summer sabbatical, it feels good to write with a purpose again, and this time it’s about investing in challenger banks. This blog post has been planned right before my summer vacation, based on first-hand experience. My last one about the topic of challenger banks — it has been an almost […]
Tag: startups
“Challenger Bank” Challenges — Getting Customers
I have written in a previous post about the business model challenge facing all challenger banks. Today I am moving to the next big problem – customers. A successful business model describes a way of making money and be eventually profitable, and for a retail bank it also means people, customers ready to use the […]
Chatting About Management
I am sharing some of my thoughts on management, the kind of issues that I encounter quite often, and where my views are different than what you may read in a management book. This post is by no means an exhaustive list, just what you would hear when chatting with me. Experience is overrated We […]
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 […]
Bootstrap If You Can
For an aspiring entrepreneur, there are many ways to learn about how to start a company, how to pitch to a VC, how to get funding. We used to survive without good books about the startup process itself, but now we have Steve Blank. And many entrepreneurs that were not at ease when dealing with […]
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 […]
A Dynamic World
Every now and then I receive an email from a recruiter who has seen a particular keyword in my Linkedin profile and is offering me the “opportunity” to talk with a company that is looking for that skill. Not really reading my profile, not understanding my career progression, just the simplest rule of all: if […]
Focus on Moven
A word I constantly hear these days is “focus”. It comes in many forms, from advisors insisting the company should focus on this or that aspect of the business, from experts that have focused their career on a narrow field, to behavioral experts explaining that multitasking is “killing our brains” and we should focus on […]
Back to the (Fintech) Future
Another Career Switch I have spent three years of my life as a venture capital investor, talking with over a thousand fintech startup teams, looking for outstanding teams, excellent ideas, and good enough execution – in this order. My previous experience as entrepreneur, software executive, and internal innovation promoter has helped – many times too […]