Afyonkarahisar 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: venture capital
Investing In Challenger Banks
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Hiring for Insurance, or Potential?
The “job description” has achieved gospel status in the modern corporation, from startups to large multinationals. It lists tasks, responsibilities, competencies, skills, and anything else the hiring organization, through the hiring manager and HR specialist eyes, thinks is important to help filter and select candidates for a job. I refer to this hiring strategy, jokingly, […]
The Startup CEO
There is no shortage of advice for startup CEOs, from books to blog posts, and an endless stream of online advice. The bigger the mainstream media buzz about startups, the better the chance of seeing almost every day something like “The 3 Most Important Characteristics of a Successful Startup CEO”. But I digress… I have […]
Q&A with SBT Venture Capital
1.What is your definition of fintech? My view is that fintech is a misnomer, but good as a shortcut name. What we really mean is the disruption of financial services through technologies like mobile, cloud, social, big data analytics, crypto, etc — and whatever will be invented in the years to come. While financial services companies […]
Getting To Know You, or Why We Invested in IdentityMind
We have recently announced our investment in IdentityMind Global, a software-as-a-service company that provides technology solutions for mitigation against financial crimes like identity fraud and money laundering. The problem of fraud and financial crime has always been with us, before computers and the internet. And as the financial system evolved, so has financial crime. In the age of e-commerce, with an […]
Why We (Sometimes) Invest
Our job at SBT Venture Capital is to invest in startups. To a novice, it sounds simple, until you realize there are thousands of startups, at various stages, and we need to narrow it down to a manageable list of teams that we can work with. I wrote recently about our filtering process, the “why […]