What’s the future of cryptocurrencies?
How can decentralization transform capital markets?
What impact will blockchain technology have on the developing world?
Find out what Arifa Khan, a well known distributed ledger evangelist, the India Partner of the Ethereum Foundation and CEO of Himalaya Labs had to say, when we posed these questions to her on the sidelines of the Blockchain and Crypto Champions Showcase, in London.
If Blockchain is analogous to the internet’s rapid development, we are currently in the mid nineties, around the halcyon days of early-Amazon and Hotmail. At present, it’s unimaginable as to which brands and businesses will become the cultural cornerstones of this era. But that’s what makes Silicon Roundtable’s blockchain startup pitch event all the more exciting.
These are the brave new worlders effectively converting blockchain’s abstract potential into real world solutions. Of the five pitchers, an altruistic algorithm, really-smart real estate, and transparent Big Pharma supply chains are using blockchain to develop products driven by sound-ethics. While two new ICO’s continue to position City of London as the home of fintech.
#GiveALittleByteOfLove is definitely the cutest hashtag of the night.
It’s also the philanthropic message behind one of the most profound platforms pitching. GiveBytes.com harnesses the same process as mining bitcoin to exchange crypto rewards in return for your computer’s processing power. Except, explained co-founder Jacob Piotrowski, with Give Byte, instead of harvesting coin for your own wallet, you are donating your rewards to crowdfunding campaigns of your choice.
And Piotrowski has a compelling case for 99.99% of the population on-boarding:
“Unless you use your computer for heavy computing operations like 3D rendering, you probably only utilize 10–30% of your Central Processing Unit (CPU)”.
Give Bytes’ platform goes live at 00.00 on Saturday 1st September 2018. No download is required: just visit the website, find a campaign you are interested in supporting, and click ‘SMART MINING’.
What are you waiting for?
In London, we have an empty home epidemic with 20,000 unlived properties, while house prices continue to rise exponentially.
Go to any city in the world and housing is a key issue, says twenty-something CEO Josh Graham. His startup ehab is aiming to disrupt this flailing market with affordable, smart housing solutions.
Their MVP is an interactive instrument for the beginning of any conversation about sustainable development: allowing for fundraising, community-consultancy collaboration, and smart contracts. ehab’s flagship pilot project in the Cambridge-to-Norwich corridor has the potential to build 26,000 new homes in the next ten years. And with a projected £78–231 million in revenue the future looks, well, sustainable.
Given the negative press on the imminent arrival of smart cities — especially around Big Data and Big Brother — ehab certainly buck the trend and appear to be a values-driven organization.
Very refreshing, indeed.
Veratrak position Big Pharma as the next global industry that is about to be revolutionized by blockchain.
Led by two Oxford University alumni, co-founder and tonight’s pitcher, Matthew Wilson, is confident “there aren’t many pharmaceutical supply chain experts in the room” and proceeds to give the crowd a quick crash course…
Essentially, in the global medical-system legal regulatory documentation needs to accompany all biomedical products as they travel from manufacturer-to-supplier-to-administrator-to-patient. However, there is no auditable track for these products so when things get lost as they invariably do, certain agents get into a lot trouble. Veratrak brings together the disparate pharmaceutical players onto one customisable workflow communications platform.
Veratrak also operate a think tank, EPOCH (or The European Platform on Changing Healthcare: a forum where supply chain experts and blockchain leaders can examine the future of the pharmaceutical supply chain, and “begin to disseminate the hype from the reality”.
If 2018 is the “Year of the Security Token”, then a digital asset exchange platform like DIGAX, is one of the calendars that records this important moment in the history of finance.
Founded only eighteen months ago and originally bootstrapped, CEO, Ben Morley’s background in bitcoin broking and asset trading has helped them achieve quick growth, with a two seed rounds behind them and a team of ten in place already.
They are currently at private beta level and looking to roll out to the public soon. According to Morley, “anecdotal evidence suggests the world trusts the UK for FinTech.”
It’s innovative startups like DIGAX that keep that faith alive!
The Debt Securities industry topped more than $100 trillion in 2017: 36% larger than the market capitalisation of all listed companies globally. But, questions, Capexmove CEO, Dario Scarcella, why has it become so expensive to borrow?
The answer is in the inefficiencies of the manual intermediaries in the dealing of bonds. And it is these inefficiencies — read, middle men — that Capexmove’s can supplant by leveraging the Ethereum blockchain and smart contracts. This disruption will reduce the cost of borrowing, and may, in time, provide a massive headache for the traditional bond market.
Situated in Level 39 — Canary Wharf’s new fast growing tech community in cybersecurity and fintech — Capexmove are in the right place to launch their funding round.
If it really is the mid-nineties of the blockchain life-cycle, let’s hope we are a long way away from the inevitable bubble burst.
Let’s see if these five — among hundreds of other blockchain startups — can deliver with the revolutionary new tech at their fingertips. And witness if decentralization will make for a better new world.
It’s the age of disruption. Fintech and cryptocurrencies are equally galvanising and polarising the financial sector, while Netflix has made it almost impossible to not binge through dramas in a way that can only be described as “unsociable”.
So, what about the food industry? Where is the disruption there?
“Deliveroo” and “Just Eat” are the obvious answers, but while they have clearly exploded, they haven’t changed one integral element:
THE FOOD.
I interviewed Dhiren Master, Founder and CEO fast food startup, Firebrand Fresh. We talked about his healthy, ethical and sustainable concept, his hard fought battle, and the sad truth that the fast food industry is simply too bloated to disrupt.
I love food over charcoal: it’s super tasty, healthy and quick. The trick of bringing those three USPs to market was to make cooking over charcoal idiot-proof. Obviously there’s a health hazard with flames and smoke. So I opened a development kitchen in North West London, and used my degree in engineering to build a fully automated charcoal oven.
Yep — just flick a switch and an automated arm pours fresh charcoal into a completely sealed enclosure. The fire lights up and the temperature gets very hot, very quickly—but safely—and the spear of chicken or whatever else slides inside. The oven’s patent is still pending.
Many things:
First, this chicken takes 6 minutes to cook. Not only is it fast, it’s nutritious too. The two methods employed by traditional fast food chains to get their “food” out so quick is by deep frying it — meaning lots of rank oil — or by using processed foods: packed with preservatives, salt and E numbers. Both methods are extremely unhealthy.
Second, our food is fresh. We achieve that by implementing tech into the customer experience. So when you decide that your going to eat with us, you tap our app and order. We can see from the integrated maps how far away you are and your estimated time of arrival. We start the cooking when you’re 6 minutes away, meaning you get freshly cooked, healthy food on arrival. In the same 6 minutes we prepare the sides and salad.
Indeed, the traditional fast food industry has been remarkably robust in it’s decisions not to change its processes. In truth, it hasn’t changed since the 1980s.
Well, my intention was for Firebrand Fresh to be a social movement: a movement for change.
I have developed a business model that gives shares to managers and makes working in a fast food joint actually worthwhile and exciting.
I educate people through my marketing. Nutritional content of every dish is clearly viewable and when multiple items are combined (say, main, side and drink) the carbs, fats and calories were calculated, so people can make a more informed decision about their food choices.
I use packaging that was completed sustainable, including compostable cutlery.
We were unlucky. Despite being a finalist for the London food and drink business of year (Jan 2018), and receiving 100% (90/90) 5 star reviews on our social media pages, the bottom fell out of the UK restaurant industry.
Five years ago when the food industry was booming, every man and his dog was investing in new restaurants and food concepts: street food trucks etc. Many of those investors are now regretting those rash decisions. Smallish brands (eg: Byron Burger and Wahaca) expanded nationwide, while longer-established eateries such as Carluccio’s and Nando’s — who’s hot sauce is not fresh or healthy at all! — cannibalized the food market for the little guys.
Exactly. And the whole foodworld rhetoric was that tech has reinvigorated the UK food scene. When in fact these app and delivery services have a stranglehold on independent businesses.
These apps simply eating up the profits of the actual kitchens who make the food we eat. They are wildly successful, yet they haven’t increased the size of the pie at all. Rather, they gobble up 16.5% of restaurants’ sales.
Additionally, they have made it very hard for small and new businesses to drive traffic to their own website. People search and order their food through the Deliveroo app, not a restaurant’s websites or social media.
Since, the market has bombed.
Well, for now. There’s no investment in it at the moment. At least, not for startups who are concerned with the nations’ health, plastic straws clogging up our oceans, and corporations running the world.
It’s not over yet.
GDPR
Europeiska Unionens nya lag för datahantering av personuppgifter, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), ersatte den 25 maj 2018 Personuppgiftslagen (PUL). Detta innebär den största förändring inom datahantering sedan PUL trädde i kraft 1998, då PUL är en föråldrad lag i en tid med sociala medier och smartphones.
Dem största förändringarna innebär följande:
“Missbruksregeln” försvinner
Tidigare i Sverige har vi haft enklare regler för personuppgifter i ostrukturerat material, den så kallade missbruksregeln, men med dataskyddsförordningen gäller inte denna längre. Nu gäller samma regler för alla personuppgifter.
Hårdare straff
Under GDPR har straffen höjts betydligt jämfört med vad dem var under PUL. Straffet kan landa på upp till 20 miljoner euro eller fyra procent av företagets årsomsättning.
Nya rollen “dataskyddsombud” införs
Det har införts en ny roll, dataskyddsombud, som är ett krav inom myndigheter, stora organisationer samt mindre organisationer som hanterar särskilt känsliga personuppgifter.
Strängare regler om samtycke
Företag måste kunna framföra bevis för att samtycke har getts vid insamling för särskilda personuppgifter. Detta samtycke skall även kunna hävas när som helst.
Vad har hänt sedan GDPR?
Det har snart gått 3 månader sedan GDPR trädde i kraft. Sedan dess har det hänt en hel del, bland annat har flera amerikanska nyhetssajter valt att sluta publicera sina tidningar online för användare inom EU, däribland LA Times, Chicago Tribune och New York Daily News.
GDPR har också ökat medvetenheten hos konsumenter angående vad deras personuppgifter används till. Under månaderna maj och juni skickades det ut mer information angående dataskydd i Europa än vad det någonsin gjorts tidigare. Detta har lett till att många företag har rapporterat en förlust på cirka 25% till 40% av deras nåbara marknad. Det gäller kunder eller potentiella kunder som inte gett sitt samtycke till att delta i marknadsföringskommunikation eller att profileras och som därför har gått förlorade.
Inom Sverige påbörjade Datainspektionen sina första granskningar av ca 80 myndigheter, företag och organisationer redan efter två veckor. Denna granskning innebar att företag och myndigheter var skyldiga att bevisa att man tillsatt de dataskyddsombud som lagen kräver. Lagen säger även att det finns en skyldighet bland företag och organisationer att anmäla till Datainspektionen när det finns en risk att personuppgifter har hamnat i fel händer, och det tog inte mer än en vecka innan Datainspektionen började motta anmälningar kring detta.
Kort sammanfattning om vad GDPR är
Företag förväntas implementera åtgärder för att skydda data samt ta tekniska och organisatoriska steg för att säkerställa individens integritet. GDPR gör företagen skyldiga att bevisa att de följer GDPR-överensstämmelser och att rimliga åtgärder har vidtagits för att skydda människors personuppgifter. Lagen kräver även att företag säkerställer att det finns system och processer som kan testa, övervaka och mäta datasäkerheten när det krävs.
Vad har Calcey gjort?
Som en extern utvecklare till klienter inom Europa gör vi på Calcey inget som samlar in personuppgifter om europeiska medborgare, vilket gör att vi inte hamnar inom GDPRs räckvidd. Vi har även innan GDPR trädde i kraft minimerat åtkomsten till känsliga uppgifter angående våra kunder och samarbetspartners, vilket i sig gör att vi minimerat vår exponering. Med denna grund, att du inte kan gå miste om (och inte heller missbruka) något du inte har, är logiskt, men att faktiskt följa reglerna som GDPR innebär kräver mycket mer.
Eftersom Calcey är ett techserviceföretag som förser utvecklingsmöjligheter inom IT till snabbt växande företag faller vi inte inom ramarna för att bli en data controller. I och med våra nuvarande uppdrag tillsammans med Calceys europeiska kunder är vi istället data processors. Detta leder till att Calcey har genomfört åtgärder med fokus på följande:
Hur vi behandlar personuppgifter kommer med all säkerhet vara något som, tack vare GDPR, alltid diskuteras in i minsta detalj vid starten av nya projekt. Den slappa inställningen till hur man hanterar data är något som numera tillhör det förflutna.
Referenser:
https://www.datainspektionen.se/lagar–regler/dataskyddsforordningen/samma-regler-for-alla/
https://chef.se/5-viktiga-skillnader-mellan-pul-och-gdpr/
https://www.resume.se/nyheter/artiklar/2018/08/08/efter-gdpr-amerikanska-medier-blockar-europeiska-besokare/
https://www.dagensmedia.se/marknadsforing/efter-gdpr-datainspektionen-inleder-sin-forsta-granskning-6918783
https://www.zdnet.com/article/gdpr-whats-really-changed-so-far/
The government might be off on their summer holidays but the London tech startup scene continues apace. Indeed, the August edition of the evergreen Tech Startups and New Ideas Night features six incredibly diverse and ambitious startups. Covering anything from short films to pollution to robotics, the entrepreneurs seen here reflect the rich variety of innovation happening around London’s Old Street today.
So without further ado, here’s a quick summary of those sixes pitches…
Qualis Flow is the B2B startup we should be grateful that they are in existence. QFlow use IoT technology to help the construction industry better manage their environmental impact. Sound boring? Not when they’re saving precious newts from extinction in major railway builds.
And given the amount of construction the average Londoner has to duck and cover on any given day, it’s not just the UK’s dwindling amphibian pollution that is at stake. Civil engineer and CEO/Co-Founder Brittany Harris explains that air quality and noise pollution, while currently monitored on construction site, is reported via a PDF, at the end each of month! Meaning the damage is already done before someone can react. QFlow, on the other hand, offer real time analytics.
Brittney is a seriously impressive young CEO, and is currently a fellow at the Royal Academy of Engineering. Hat’s off to her important work.
Paid Spotify and Netflix subscriptions aren’t so much a choice, they’re a necessity. Minuteapp is hoping to rival these cultural movements in the short doc space. Sounds ambitious, but founder and documentary filmmaker, Janvier Wete, is definitely onto something. That was evident from the volley of audience questions that followed his casual pitch: What’s your subscription model? Have you raised funds? Who’s accessing the quality of what’s uploaded? Why don’t we just use you tube instead?
And herein lies the crux. Every filmmaker starts out in short films, and every one of us has a silent ambition to watch better quality content (someone save us from the sneezing baby panda!). Minute app, or the “cinema in your pocket”, vows to only stream high quality short films — anything from 1 min long — to make make even your next wait for a cuppa-tea-to-brew, a novel, enlightening experience. It will probably improve our commutes too!
It’s super early days for the crew at Minuteapp. They launched a beta version only two weeks and received 250 downloads without any promotion. “At the moment”, Janvier said, “we’re hungry for information”.
The truth hurts, but London can be a lonely place. That’s what Italian Marco Gentili, experienced when he moved to the city. And that’s what makes friendrequest a potentially vital development in the social networking space.
For starters, Marco reminds us, this is not a dating app. And friendrequest are also acutely aware that meeting people online/offline can be dangerous. However, they believe that by deploying smart algorithms to make every user’s profile smart, their platform will help people meet other like minded people, safely, so they can enjoy the best the city has to offer, together. The smart profile means a user’s profile is in a constant state of flux–much like a real person — and appears slightly different to every user who views it.
friendrequest already has 2,000 users and hundreds activities and experiences. Proof of concept — check.
GIGSTR is a startup’s dream: they fix up young startups with young upstarts, and take all the risk out of hiring by actually employing the young person on their own payroll, guaranteeing a workers’ minimum wage. They also handle the tax, insurance and leave entitlement that startups can’t always manage.
Pitcher, Head of Partnerships, Emma Blackmore, told the crowd, that GIGSTER is an ethical business model that boomed in its native Sweden, and moved to London nine months ago. Taking its name from the gig economy, GIGSTR allows young companies to not over-commit precious investment, and for young employees to see if there’s a good culture fit with their ambitions, before long term engagement.
Why wasn’t GIGSTR around when I graduated?
Led by Ghanaian Londoner, Metier Digital is run by Nana Parry who previously raised over £150,000 in seed funding from angel investors for his music and social media analytics platform, Dubzoo. Metier Digital help entrepreneurs build their most viable product (MVP) and bring their ideas to market.
Dr. Rupert Young from Perceptual Robots is on a mission to build “psychologically advanced robots”. Although this sounds rather, chilling, apparently, it’s not like Blade Runner at all. Instead, Rupert’s pitch is full of video clips, graphs and diagrams of how a human catches a baseball based on “the optimum velocity of the ball to the human retina”.
The ball, like robotics, goes way over my head.
All the same, best of luck, doc!
Clearly, it’s an incredibly potent mix of startups and London’s Old Street continues to be the hub of new ideas.
A special thanks should go to Irfan Khalil at Heptagon Events for organizing such a well drilled bunch.
I’m looking forward to next time already.
Joel Burgess is the CEO and Founder of Nutrifix: the app that puts healthy on the map.
Since inception back in September 2016, Joel and Nutrifix had an initial twelve month rollercoaster which included a wildly successful crowdfunding campaign where they raised nearly £200,000 from 375 investors. In the same year, Joel entered the Just Eat Accelerator program, but he was “never really happy with the tech”.
In year two, Joel raised a further £250k from a private US investor and Calcey Technologies were invited onboard to strengthen and amplify the tech. Now, armed with a handsome new app, a fresh deal with Deliveroo, and a growing customer base, Nutrifix are looking to go nationwide in UK and beyond.
Clearly, it is the perfect time to catch with Joel in his favourite London coffee shop and find out about his startup CEO rulebook.
Rule #1: Know Your Market
Joel’s love of all things healthy is born from his background in sport and competition. Back in the day, he was on track to be a professional rugby player before a serious injury—and two neck operations—sidelined his dreams of playing for England.
Regardless, his commitment to health and fitness didn’t stop. In the subsequent years, he becomes a personal trainer, competed in boxing competitions, and is now studying to be a nutritionist.
It is this constant self development in the industry that he is disrupting, that means Joel truly knows his market.
“In the beginning I just chatted to friends in the gym. I kept hearing that between working out and working full-time, eating healthy was a daily challenge for many people…”
“I realised that my mission is to take away the stress of healthy eating”
Rule #2: An Early MVP Is King
Amazingly, Nutrifix’s first MVP was a simple spreadsheet made for Joel’s personal consumption. His weekly eating plan outlined all the healthiest options out of London’s ubiquitous lunch scene: Pret, EAT, Wasabi etc. His gym buddies were so impressed with it they all wanted one too. He started selling spreadsheets for £75 each.
“From that moment I knew I was on to something. If people were buying my dog-eared Excel spreadsheets, I knew there was a bigger market to explore. I did a few tests on facebook: statuses questioning my active network what would make their life easier. An app that guides you around town to healthy eating options was the answer.”
Rule #3: You Don’t Have To Be A Techie
After completing an MSC in mechanical engineering which provided him with the ability to “problem solve”, Joel had stints in the Dubai, Jakarta and Singapore property markets, before returning to the London and the restaurant development scene. He categorically states, he is not a techie and cannot build software.
Regardless, he took plunge into the startup app space:
“In the beginning I made every mistake under the sun! I passed the app production to a UK developer and we just rushed it out. By time we won a place in the Just Eat Startup Accelerator I realised the tech was awful. But I knew we had a ‘half’ an app, a decent pitch and cool idea… I wasn’t going to give up.”
Rule #4 – Be Open To Change
The app-build continued with a different developer but this didn’t work out as planned either.
And that’s when a friend with solid business connections put the feelers out for high quality software engineers and introduced Joel to Calcey Technologies.
“Calcey stepped in and pitched and from the first moment I knew I was in safe hands, despite them being based 4,000 miles away in Sri Lanka!”
Joel employed a consultant CTO to oversee Calcey’s early development projects and he was very impressed from the off set.
“What I liked from Calcey was that they asked the right questions. They were determined to completely understand my business and what drives me.”
That meant Nutrifix could suddenly grow from an app that helps users find healthy meals near their location, to something with much richer technical scope:
“This now applies an algorithm to score every meal according to a user’s fitness goals, dietary preferences and their physical information—height, weight, age etc. The algorithm then recommends meal plans that according to the user’s daily targets, considering numerous technical variables including sugar, fibre and saturated fat contents.”
At present, the Nutrifix is supplying meal recommendations for approximately 5,000 regular users and there are over 90 vendors in 9,000 locations. The recent Deliveroo add on however—which conveniently enables healthy eating to user’s door—should fast track Nutrifix user user base into the stratosphere.
Rule #5: No Regrets
“If I did all again, I’d have bought Calcey in from the start”.
But Joel also knows all too well that the ups and downs of Nutrifix’s first year—and it’s stuttering tech development—made them more robust for the challenges ahead. It all also granted them extra time to fundraise which was vital in not only raising financial investment, but also for realising that lots of people were really behind his idea.
Leading a startup business in the mobile age requires confidence, courage, patience, the ability to problem solve… and?
“A great team of agile software engineers that buy into your idea”.
AI and Ethics: possibly one of the most important debates of our time, and it gets boiled down to a bizarre GCSE-like math problem.
The test goes:
“There are three cars speeding along…
In the Renault is a young single mother, with two jobs and her rent is paid.
In the Chrysler is an aging judge, a philanthropist and a pillar in the community.
In the Ford is a convicted criminal: a real bad egg.
The cars are on course to crash and one individual will perish.
If you, me or AI had to decide, who would meet their maker?”
This is the introduction to a panel discussion on the Ethics of AI. The crowd are asked to stand in an area labeled with the car manufacturer. As an participant observer, I’m in the Ford corner, along with, I’d guess, the 50% majority. The Judge and Mother share roughly equal pickings.
So who was “right”.
No one knows. The moderator didn’t continue the experiment. We were shuffled back to our seats, slightly deflated. That was it.
I sat there thinking, “It’s weird that we have such conflicting opinions, even though we’re all part of the same cultural clique: young(ish), London-based, tech enthusiasts”.
Although no “correct” answer was hypothesized by the moderator, Peter Hotchkiss (UX/UI Manager at Clarksons), it opened a critical vortex in the Ethics of AI discussion. If we can’t agree on the facile death of a fictional criminal over a fictional mother — and we are cut from the same cultural cloth — how is AI going to make decisions, globally?
Indeed, what cultural values system will AI be born into?
“My worldview and values base are very different to my grandmothers”, she said.
Stix calls for a global values system to be created to feed into the development of AI. This shouldn’t be a rigid a doctrine such as the UN Human Right Declaration because anything set-in-stone does not have the ability to change (easily).
Rather, Stix argues, “we have to give an algorithm the tools to reason when it faces an ethical dilemma.”
That way, the value systems is in a constant state of flux, much like our own.
“Algorithms will make more and more decisions about: legally, educationally and in terms of employment”, stated Head of Privacy & Data Protection Practice at Gemsery, panelist Ivana Bartoletti.
Fellow panelist, Seyi Akiwowo, founder of Glitch!, a UK not-for-profit for online abuse, concurs. She speaks about how young black women’s car insurance in Newham is going up, because crime rate in the district is on the rise. The women are being legally judged, and financially implicated, on their postcode.
So how can we prevent this level of bias?
Bartoletti believes algorithms’ development should be made public so researchers can scrutinize tech companies and hopefully guide safer, more holistic AI development. French president, Emmanuel Macron is leading the way.
In March 2018, Marcon “guaranteed that all AI algorithms that his government creates will be open to scrutiny to mitigate the threat to democracy”. I wonder where the UK, Russia, and USA are on that front?
The ‘problem’ [with this debate] is that we are in London.
Well not just London, any wealthy metropolis where these debates happen — and AI algorithms are being developed — cannot be representative of the whole the world, and that is the critical issue at hand.
The pragmatic solution is to make AI a truly global project and debate.
That means, we need AI developers in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, Asia-Pacific and everywhere else. And the best developers from these regions shouldn’t have to ply their trade in Western tech ecosystems for job security and better wages, but in the their own local ecosystems that are also thriving.
The logical way an ethical AI can begin to develop is if there is a focused nurturance of startup ecosystems in emerging countries the world over. Then, smaller nations will be able to enter the AI expansion project. And — crucially — feed their local, culturally-specific values into the global AI system.
Of course, even then there will still be cultural discrepancies. In London we couldn’t even agree what hypothetical stereotype to perish in their car! However, the evolution of developing world startup ecosystems could democratize Western tech hegemony, and help create an AI for all.
Either that, or we start giving ethics lessons to Harvard grads!
THREE out of the five pitchers at FinTech — Silicon Roundabout Meetup at Google’s London Campus were startups for social good, with a specific focus on developing countries.
It goes without saying that the the financial industry has not necessarily been aligned with movements for social good, especially not internationally.
But isn’t that what the startup game is all about? Disrupting the status quo? Breaking from tradition? Reversing 500 years of colonialism and finally delivering products and services that support local people at a grassroots level?!
Hmmmm. We shall see….
First up is Zingr. CEO, Giselle Frederick, is Grenadian-born and makes a compelling case as to why her digital wallet could propel a financially-flailing region above water.
Currently, Frederick explained, the problems in the Caribbean are bank-led and unforgiving to local people. Not only does a standard US dollar remittance cheque take 4–6 weeks to clear, but 20% remittance tax is also whacked on top! Zingr, on the other hand, will offer real-time payments and is free to use for peer-to-peer transactions.
And in a region where 65% of adults are unbanked and 70% of transactions are strictly cash, the majority of people simply have no way of building a credit profile: which in turn affects house ownership, insurance and job opportunities. Zingr’s blockchain value proposition means, however, that all transactions on the app are tracked and many Caribbeans, for the first time, will automatically build a credit profile.
Moreover, she continued, Caribbean governments need this tech implemented. After all, it will make their countries look less corrupt to the outside world!
Zingr is pre-MVP and they are looking for £1 million in seed investment.
Mautinoa Technologies may have a very serious job on their hands. Nevertheless, CEO, Emerson Tan takes a very animated approach to introducing digital payments methods in places liable to disaster, and his pitch is like a standup routine!
However, with thirteen years experience in disaster management, paired with 22 years in information security, Tan is acutely aware that when disaster strikes and infrastructure is smashed, existing digital payment platforms fail. And the people in most need cannot access money. Conventional banks, and, even blockchain, are internet or, at least, mobile reliant.
Mautinoa’s solution is a “fragment of history”: a smart card like no other. Its integrated hybrid platform can deliver cryptographically secure payments while operating offline. “We’re resilient!” Tan exclaims, “We can survive for weeks when the internet is down!”
Excitingly, this is a piece of tech that works; not just a whitepaper. They have raised £2.3 million already and they are looking to raise a further £1.6 to go global. The product is already rolling out in earthquake-prone East Timor, where the first pilot has provided 10,000 cards. They plan to hit the whole population of 1.8 million in the next ten months, and Puerto Rico is next.
By time the time founder, Maxx Ginnane, came to pitch, the fact that current financial services are ineffectual to many people in the developing world was well established.
So, what other pathways to financial inclusion are needed?
The answer: the world’s first peer-to-peer online marketplace for the financially excluded, that allows the unbanked to sell their products to the international community.
Starting out of Africa, and Kenya more specifically, Ginnane revealed that there are 400 million people working in artisanal industries that have no way of bringing their talent to the market. By bringing together blockchain and traditional payments systems (as opposed to using crypto) Market Without Borders deliver payments straight to local kiosks. Their product is unusually bilateral: for not only does it provide a foothold in the digital marketplace by offering supply chain financing to sellers, but it unleashes the amazing African design tradition to buyers around the world.
Market Without Borders’ MVP is two weeks away from launch and they are finalizing their patents now. Ginnane is open to a co-founder, and with 3,000 global buyers waiting for African artisanal designs, they are almost to ready to go!
Of course, FinTech cannot reverse 500 years of colonialism.
That said, all three pitchers reminded us that there are over two billion people who are either unbanked or underserved by current financial processes. These three startups, therefore, could be on course to have a profound effect on how the ordinary people in emerging economies access their funds, build credit profiles and excel in the marketplace.
Two weeks ago I reviewed the Future FinTech Unicorns and the standouts of those eleven UK based startups — Bigcrowd.net, Cap:Ratio, Trezeo and LOQBOX — are also FinTech superstars not only looking to disrupt the status quo, but add value to subaltern populations, globally.
I’d say that today’s three plus the above four is almost a trend. And FinTech could be in very serious danger of getting a positive reputation!
As part of London Fin-Tech Week, the outstanding Future Fin-Tech Unicorns event presented flash pitches of eleven fin-tech startups who have a genuine hope of hitting that $1 billion mark in the near future.
It’s unclear whether inviting eleven pitchers was a direct reaction to the news that amongst the USA’s glut of startup unicorns, eleven are in the fin-tech space. The Future Fin-Tech Unicorns were, however, up against a world cup semi final, but these eminent entrepreneurs easily outplayed France and Belgium’s combined eleven.
Thank Gareth they didn’t organise it for Wednesday, eh?
In no particular order then, here’s a rundown of the Future Fin-tech Unicorns pitches and who to keep an on eye in the next few months and years.
BIGCrowd.net could be one of the most compelling social enterprises in years. Founder, Steve Podmore wants to identify the Big Impact Game-Changers — or “BIG” businesses who are looking to reduce poverty, fight climate change and generally make the world a better place. BIGCrowd.net is a crowdfunding platform who are launching subscriptions in August or September which will include tokens in advance of their ICO scheduled for eighteen months time.
At a time when rising wealth inequality risks leaving UK youth behind, Cap:Ratio is a wealth management automated advisor for the undeserved: Black Minority Ethnic Groups and people who earn under £30,000 a year. Going into their second year and closing their seed round, they have 1100+ subscribers already. CEO and Cofounder, Gibran Registe-Charles was named an “innovative force in business” by GQ Magazine.
We all use Uber, right? And it’s pretty well known that Uber uses its drivers. As self-employed drivers there is no safeguard for slow-days, sick days or holidays. Trezeo offers financial support to these people. And with five million self-employed people in the UK, Head of Marketing, Alysia Wanczyk has a big job on her hands.
LOQBOX is a new platform for those who are financially excluded due to a poor credit history. By signing up for free, anyone can save £20-£500 a month on the platform, grow their credit rating, and then get all their money back at the end. Head of Growth, Ally Fekaiki said, “Your credit rating can have a huge impact on your life. The current solutions just weren’t good enough. We built LOQBOX to allow people to break the cycle.”
In the age of photoshop and fake news, Photocert are fighting back with a software solution that guarantees the authenticity of photos. This is big news for the insurtech industry as it allows for real-time automated claim reporting. Rather than waiting by the side of the road for the loss adjuster to tell you your car has been bumped!
For anyone disenfranchised with the global banking system — and let’s face it, who isn’t since the crash of 2008 — GLINT is seriously exciting. Via their app users can buy gold and then pay for goods and services using the GLINT Mastercard, thereby employing a form of capital that does not suffer the same depreciation as traditional currency. Cofounder and CEO, Jason Cozens said “The policies of central banks erode our money. But gold can’t be corrupted.”
Daniel Vu, CEO of Veblen, almost stole the show with the most dramatic of pitches. At 14 seconds long he kept it to-the-point: “We evaluate startups and their ICOs. And we are good at it! [Mic-Drop!].”
KiteEgde is building the 2.0 of search engines, specifically designed for the Asset Management Industry. Why? “Because,” said CEO James Flavin, “search engines haven’t changed much since the late 90’s. And Asset Management is about to explode.” The late stage startup SAAS platform’s key asset is its ability to use Cognitive Ontology to interact with the end-user.
Eliad Saporta, Managing Director of Coriunder, explained how their Backend-As-A-Service system helps PSP and fin-tech companies launch faster. The Coriunder platform handles the boring stuff — the on-boarding, billing and compliance — so the startup can focus on what makes their offer special.
We all shelve our online shopping basket now and again. It’s not necessarily out of lack of purchasing power, probably more that something else literally popped up. Coinypay’s friendly chatbot could solve the millions of revenue lost by merchants and PSP from “checkout abandonment”. Their white-labelled ‘bot uses subtle messaging to convert indecisive window shopping into sales. Finally, a chatbot with a purpose!
Their pitch was rather “discreet”. On their website they describe themselves as “an insurtech startup that unlocks new sources of rich user data hidden in the sharing economy’s walled gardens.” They’ve also won a bunch of awards.
Voila! That’s the Future Fin-Tech Unicorns. Or England’s Next Best Eleven. It’s especially great to see so many startups with a social inclusion message and supporting the underserved in society. More of that, please.
Final thanks to We Are Fin-Tech for hosting an exceptionally good event. More of them, too, please!
Ten years ago the tech industry was aggressive. Everyone wanted to own everything. If your company was involved in a project, that was it: it was your project. Your client, your pitch, your tech, your invoice, your fee.
Now, we are slowly starting to see that change.
For starters, tech has got so big. Not many agencies can truthfully say they can excel at everything. Yes, they can deliver exceptional website design, but can they build complex backend functionality? If one organisation’s tour-du-force is UX design, can their development skills really be that good too?
The smart agencies realise this. They know it’s better to really focus on their core offering. And then look for collaborating partners.
Or wait until they find you…
Meeting Of Minds
In 2017 a new London-based foodie startup wins seed capital. For their UX design they engaged locally renowned Profound. The startup’s CEO also recruits Calcey Technologies from Colombo, Sri Lanka, who have a great reputation for building platforms for Silicon Valley startups. He invites the South Asian techies over to the Profound’s Basingstoke office for a month of workshops.
Ten years ago this kind of organised chaos was unheard of.
But that’s when the magic happened.
“What surprised us most was how in sync we all were”, Matt Quinn, CTO of Profound, told me over a lunchtime lemonade during last week’s heatwave.
“Asela [Calcey’s Director of Product Engineering] was challenging the same assumptions that I was. I could see that the guys from Sri Lanka thought exactly same as I did!”
Clearly, being a tech enthusiast has a distinctly homogenising effect on the brain.
The Breadth Of Tech
Profound are a specialised niche consultancy; the merging of one creative agency and another tech consultancy. Founding Director, Tim McMillen, has pedigree in the early 2000’s enterprise omni channel e-commerce revolution. To this day, Profound’s sweet-spot is Enterprise website design and build for international retailers and manufacturers.
Similar to many other agencies, they have a core proposition that demands deep focus: UX design and CMS implementation.
Increasingly, however, the breath of technologies required by their clients is proliferating so fast that to routinely diversify into new tech—then hire (and probably fire)—is costly, and too high risk.
It could derail their core proposition.
Working In Tandem
So when a client asked at the beginning of the year for a creative UX refresh on their website, plus the development of a mobile app, Profound thought let’s ask our pals in Sri Lanka to manage the tricky conversion to mobile .
“What impressed us most was their relentless pursuit of MVP’s (minimal viable product),” Quinn said about Calcey’s sprint performance philosophy.
“Their approach is to build the leanest product possible—day on day, week on week—so there is always something to continuously test in it’s real world context. It means the speed of progress is non-stop.”
“Another key driver for us was Calcey’s experience with React Native [app building software]. Calcey have quality developers building cross-platform mobile apps [on IOS and Android] with one code base. That allowed us to accelerate delivery, so the app was demo-stable before the client’s major international conference in June”.
Collaboration: Rebranded
Being an agency offering bespoke tech solutions, Profound were, like most out there, profoundly anti-outsourcing. After all, doesn’t it undermine your client needs, and devalue your own workforce? “Outsourcing” is like a swear word to many.
In our modern tech bubble, however, this somewhat outdated word needs a rebrand. Who works in an agency that can genuinely say they are experts across the technical-mix? Furthermore, who wants to give their clients less than anything other than the sharpest service possible?
So, as of today, let’s rebrand small-scale outsourcing.
How about “collaborating”?
Collaborating is when there is meeting of minds. And when two external parties, be it individuals or organisations, work in tandem.
Let’s keep collaborating.
It’s so much nicer.