We recently attended the London Stock Exchange’s Fintech Investor Forum 2017, where Ahmed Badr from GoCardless was involved in a panel on Infrastructure.
Sometimes it’s just nice to have a brief selection of notes, quotes and highlights. Read on to see what caught our attention.
"For banks, innovation is launching a lab in their building. This is not serious enough" @hiBOBhr @ #FIF17
Are larger investors switched on to thriving fintech opportunities
Juan Lobato, Ebury
“The reality is that even some very successful fintech cos have been going for 8 years or so and even then, it’s not clear enough that it’s a safe bet.
The company needs to be stable before you get institutional in. For many B2B finetch cos, it’s not there yet.”
Jon Prideaux, Boku
“Big investors aren’t even necessarily desirable from the startup side either. A 5% change in meeting your target can have real consequences. And you may see that if a customer ships just slightly late, which can easily happen.”
Difference between B2C and B2B fintech
Todd Latham, Currency Cloud
“Customer acquisition is substantially higher but when you get it, is more predictable, sticky, margin rich. Businesses will pay for value.”
Ronni Zehavi, Hibob
“It’s B2B2C for us. Had to build the ultimate experience for B2B with the employer. Then also handle large old-fashioned systems of suppliers. And then consumers.”
Ahmed Badr, GoCardless
“You attract different types of individuals at a B2B fintech.”
“Also, scale has a completely different meaning. 20000 customers may be poor for a B2C play, but for us that would work very well.”
Challenges
Todd L, Currency Cloud
“Competitors can become ambiguous. Look at ClearBank. They can compete but also be a partner.”
“I worked at Microsoft when Linux became a thing, and you could position against them. You don’t have that luxury here — it moves to fast and you have to be nimble.”
“It’s also too easy to get wrapped up in any single piece of news. You should drive and execute your plan. That’s where success lies.”
Juan L, Ebury (re. Brexit)
“On a beautiful day like today, people want to be in London. But we have people interested in living in Paris, in Madrid. And these cities are giving you amazing tax breaks.”
“These cities will attract talent and I don’t think it’s a bad thing out have talent spread out. And the reality is, London can only cope with so many people.”
We get it. Everyone in our business wants to be Don Draper.
Big pitch day. Stand up, leaf through the cards, standing ovation.
But then reality strikes. You do the kick off meetings and start trying to implement things, only to find that the “big idea” in your strategy isn’t possible for another year (if at all.) Or that the founders’ real passion isn’t “OPPORTUNALISING ENTERPRISE SOLUTION BEST EXCELLENCE”, but something rooted in the reality of their industry and experience.
For a couple of years now, we’ve been trying a different approach to the traditional pitch. And it’s based around a simple question:
How can a company who hasn’t spent any time with you write a realistic plan that reflects your true strength accurately?
So here’s what we do.
Phase 1: Discovery
After gathering a few top line details, we’ll talk on Zoom or Skype. Having written up interviews for places like tech.eu and Wired, we like to think we know how to ask the right questions.
The idea is to really listen carefully, pin down the specifics of the next challenge and determine what we think might conquer it. It often gives you an opportunity to learn more about us and our experience too.
If we don’t think it’s a match, we can help you find someone who is. Remember, Augur is designed for one thing: companies at Series A upwards, in “Unsexy” tech categories, looking for integrated comms against business challenges.
Alternatively, we might suggest we help out with Augur Unbound, our free service to share great stories from younger companies with key media.
Once we have what we need, we’ll start on the Strategic Spec document.
Phase 2: The Strategic Spec
This is a very simple one pager, designed to take the minimum time possible to create a first outline of what we might recommend, based on our previous experience.
It’s a starting point for you to provide feedback, to start the conversation going, instead of disappearing for weeks in Powerpoint with only the occasional question.
It includes:
Diagnosis — what is the problem, as we see it?
Guiding Strategy — what is our topline mechanism to tackle it?
Example Objectives and Key Results — what’s the goal and deliverables?
Estimated Timelines & Resourcing — how long will it take, and cost?
Next steps
Beat it up, tell us what you love or hate, tell us what you think of our measurement and evaluation suggestions, or how it may need to fit into other plans.
The result is designed to give you an estimate of how the plan might look, at the top level, if we start working together.
It establishes an agreed rough outline, so you know what to expect if you go ahead with the next step: The Planning Project.
Phase 3: The Planning Project
Now this is the big difference.
Augur will come to your office, spend time with you, interview key members of the team and really dig into what makes your company great. It’s about finding what you believe, holding a mirror up to your most talented people, helping identify the insights you may not even quite be aware of.
We try to find the signal in the noise.
Instead of going away and making up ideas by ourselves, we look to your strenths to build our plan. And we work with your team to identify what’s practical and possible for the first phase and further down the line.
We worth together, with just a little of your time, to flesh out the skeleton of assumptions from the Strategic Spec.
We deliver on questions like:
What is your pitch and key campaign ideas you will keep coming back to?
Who should you be introducing the company to?
Do we have a customer pipeline for case studies and other stories?
Once we’re done, the planning document usually looks about a dozen pages long, full of everything you need to hit the ground running.
It literally gets everyone on the same page with what to expect in the first episode of activity.
And it’s yours. In the past, we have actually recommended to one company that they take the Planning document and run with it themselves. Because it is a paid project, we are not incentivised to try and close you on a long programme, just to justify our costs on the pitch.
The resourcing costs for this project tend to be about half the anticipated monthly total we expect to end up at.
The point is: agencies say what they want but while their incentives don’t change, their actions won’t either.
This update refines Augur’s focus further around strategy and iteration in house, while introducing new ways to create value for the tech ecosystem alongside it. A great agency does not try and do all things for all people — and Augur is being designed very intentionally for a specific purpose.
Two example programmes in particular reflect how Augur differs from other PR agencies in its actions, not just words.
Revealing Augur Edits
In trial with retail tech clients in late 2016, Augur Edits invites freelancers from Retail Week, the FT and more to pitch their best ideas to Augur’s clients. Not PR fluff — but exactly the kind of ideas they are already pitching to traditional editors.
Clients get access to the best editorial, great journalists can place more ideas (with 24 hour payment terms) and Augur manages the back and forth, providing a brief to ensure it is perfectly in sync with the rest of the strategy.
Augur Unbound subverts the idea that PR agencies are a channel to media. Great news stories are easy to pitch — so we will take any good piece of news and pitch it to the most relevant influencers for free.
Clients hire Augur to build and optimise ongoing, channel-agnostic strategies, not to spam journalists. This is about sending a message about exactly what we believe is really valuable, while helping great companies get their message out.
If you agree with what we’re thinking, we’re inviting other agencies to join us in this mission. Contact us here to take part.
Joining BookingBug and card-linked offers platform Birdback
Augur mentoring at Level 39, Barclays Techstars Fintech Accelerator, Notion Capital and more
Money makes the world go round. But often too slowly, inconveniently and on the bank’s terms.
Fintech promises to present a glass of icewater in this hellish landscape. What’s more, London’s history as a financial capital means it is literally made to nurture the greatest fintech companies in the world.
In the consumer world, yes, there are wiser ways to transfer money across borders now. But in the B2B world, that’s where fintech is really rewriting what’s possible.
We know, because in 2016, we made leaps in helping them tell that fintech story.
Win-Tech
With GoCardless, we have been working together since its latest funding round, revealing its unique position to build the first global payments network on debit.
Soon after the initial work, Co-founder and CEO Hiroki Takeuchi said:
“Our first project with Augur was intended to be a one off around an important piece of news. However, the speed and effectiveness with which they advanced key relationships and delivered against our KPIs convinced us to add ongoing PR to the marketing mix.
“We are now working together on a smart, integrated PR strategy that will support the next stage of GoCardless’s growth.”
With Pleo, we helped introduce the product to the UK community, amplifying its launch and its victory at Pioneers.
Co-founder and CEO Jeppe Rindom said:
“Even a great story will flounder without great implementation. Augur helped us refine our pitch for the UK, identify key audiences and kickstart the relationships that will serve us as we grow.”
“Their understanding of what’s important in B2B and Fintech is outstanding in their industry.”
For Augur
2017 is about really showing the world what a PR agency can do when you re-engineer it to better fit for fast-growing technology companies.
Coming next, we will reveal what Augur has been doing to create a PR service that isn’t just different in rhetoric — but demonstrably different in its design. Rethinking the old PR incentives, we are aiming to do what older established agencies can’t (or won’t.)
Notes + Quotes: Fintech Investor Forum 2017
TechWe recently attended the London Stock Exchange’s Fintech Investor Forum 2017, where Ahmed Badr from GoCardless was involved in a panel on Infrastructure.
Sometimes it’s just nice to have a brief selection of notes, quotes and highlights. Read on to see what caught our attention.
Are larger investors switched on to thriving fintech opportunities
Juan Lobato, Ebury
Jon Prideaux, Boku
Difference between B2C and B2B fintech
Todd Latham, Currency Cloud
Ronni Zehavi, Hibob
Ahmed Badr, GoCardless
Challenges
Todd L, Currency Cloud
Juan L, Ebury (re. Brexit)
How Augur Works: Pitching vs Planning
AugurWe get it. Everyone in our business wants to be Don Draper.
Big pitch day. Stand up, leaf through the cards, standing ovation.
But then reality strikes. You do the kick off meetings and start trying to implement things, only to find that the “big idea” in your strategy isn’t possible for another year (if at all.) Or that the founders’ real passion isn’t “OPPORTUNALISING ENTERPRISE SOLUTION BEST EXCELLENCE”, but something rooted in the reality of their industry and experience.
For a couple of years now, we’ve been trying a different approach to the traditional pitch. And it’s based around a simple question:
How can a company who hasn’t spent any time with you write a realistic plan that reflects your true strength accurately?
So here’s what we do.
Phase 1: Discovery
After gathering a few top line details, we’ll talk on Zoom or Skype. Having written up interviews for places like tech.eu and Wired, we like to think we know how to ask the right questions.
The idea is to really listen carefully, pin down the specifics of the next challenge and determine what we think might conquer it. It often gives you an opportunity to learn more about us and our experience too.
If we don’t think it’s a match, we can help you find someone who is. Remember, Augur is designed for one thing: companies at Series A upwards, in “Unsexy” tech categories, looking for integrated comms against business challenges.
Alternatively, we might suggest we help out with Augur Unbound, our free service to share great stories from younger companies with key media.
Once we have what we need, we’ll start on the Strategic Spec document.
Phase 2: The Strategic Spec
This is a very simple one pager, designed to take the minimum time possible to create a first outline of what we might recommend, based on our previous experience.
It’s a starting point for you to provide feedback, to start the conversation going, instead of disappearing for weeks in Powerpoint with only the occasional question.
It includes:
Beat it up, tell us what you love or hate, tell us what you think of our measurement and evaluation suggestions, or how it may need to fit into other plans.
The result is designed to give you an estimate of how the plan might look, at the top level, if we start working together.
It establishes an agreed rough outline, so you know what to expect if you go ahead with the next step: The Planning Project.
Phase 3: The Planning Project
Now this is the big difference.
Augur will come to your office, spend time with you, interview key members of the team and really dig into what makes your company great. It’s about finding what you believe, holding a mirror up to your most talented people, helping identify the insights you may not even quite be aware of.
We try to find the signal in the noise.
Instead of going away and making up ideas by ourselves, we look to your strenths to build our plan. And we work with your team to identify what’s practical and possible for the first phase and further down the line.
We worth together, with just a little of your time, to flesh out the skeleton of assumptions from the Strategic Spec.
We deliver on questions like:
Once we’re done, the planning document usually looks about a dozen pages long, full of everything you need to hit the ground running.
It literally gets everyone on the same page with what to expect in the first episode of activity.
And it’s yours. In the past, we have actually recommended to one company that they take the Planning document and run with it themselves. Because it is a paid project, we are not incentivised to try and close you on a long programme, just to justify our costs on the pitch.
The resourcing costs for this project tend to be about half the anticipated monthly total we expect to end up at.
We think it makes sense, and our clients agree.
Don has earned a rest.
Augur updates operating system to suit tech scaleup needs
Augur, NewsThe point is: agencies say what they want but while their incentives don’t change, their actions won’t either.
This update refines Augur’s focus further around strategy and iteration in house, while introducing new ways to create value for the tech ecosystem alongside it. A great agency does not try and do all things for all people — and Augur is being designed very intentionally for a specific purpose.
Two example programmes in particular reflect how Augur differs from other PR agencies in its actions, not just words.
Revealing Augur Edits
In trial with retail tech clients in late 2016, Augur Edits invites freelancers from Retail Week, the FT and more to pitch their best ideas to Augur’s clients. Not PR fluff — but exactly the kind of ideas they are already pitching to traditional editors.
Clients get access to the best editorial, great journalists can place more ideas (with 24 hour payment terms) and Augur manages the back and forth, providing a brief to ensure it is perfectly in sync with the rest of the strategy.
Find out more about Augur Edits.
Announcing Augur Unbound
Augur Unbound subverts the idea that PR agencies are a channel to media. Great news stories are easy to pitch — so we will take any good piece of news and pitch it to the most relevant influencers for free.
Clients hire Augur to build and optimise ongoing, channel-agnostic strategies, not to spam journalists. This is about sending a message about exactly what we believe is really valuable, while helping great companies get their message out.
If you agree with what we’re thinking, we’re inviting other agencies to join us in this mission. Contact us here to take part.
Find out more about Augur Unbound.
Following up
This is not the end. It’s the other thing. More to come, to be revealed.
GoCardless and Pleo choose Augur for Fintech PR
Augur, News, PRMoney makes the world go round. But often too slowly, inconveniently and on the bank’s terms.
Fintech promises to present a glass of icewater in this hellish landscape. What’s more, London’s history as a financial capital means it is literally made to nurture the greatest fintech companies in the world.
In the consumer world, yes, there are wiser ways to transfer money across borders now. But in the B2B world, that’s where fintech is really rewriting what’s possible.
We know, because in 2016, we made leaps in helping them tell that fintech story.
Win-Tech
With GoCardless, we have been working together since its latest funding round, revealing its unique position to build the first global payments network on debit.
Soon after the initial work, Co-founder and CEO Hiroki Takeuchi said:
With Pleo, we helped introduce the product to the UK community, amplifying its launch and its victory at Pioneers.
Co-founder and CEO Jeppe Rindom said:
For Augur
2017 is about really showing the world what a PR agency can do when you re-engineer it to better fit for fast-growing technology companies.
Coming next, we will reveal what Augur has been doing to create a PR service that isn’t just different in rhetoric — but demonstrably different in its design. Rethinking the old PR incentives, we are aiming to do what older established agencies can’t (or won’t.)
More to be revealed very soon.