“At Yoyo Wallet, we believe a company’s key assets are its people. It is no secret that it is a very competitive market for talent in London, and it is difficult to find the right candidate for the job when you needed someone yesterday. In the midst of rapid growth, it can be easy to neglect the other side of the equation – retaining and nurturing top talent. We at Yoyo are keenly focused on devoting resources to invest and promote our top performers, balancing the agility of a growth start up while building a foundation of talent for long term excellence.”
Min Teo | Director of Strategy and Finance, Yoyo Wallet
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“After fund raising, the challenge turns into preserving cash. First use the cash balance to get a least 3 banking relationships. Remember, this will be harder to do when you are about to run out of cash. Secondly, invest. For this budget, planning must be reliable in order to pick up the right maturities. However, given current interest rates this may not be that relevant after all. I would then recommend to implement strict cost control / expense management processes. There’s nothing worse than opening the door to dummy spending because there is a feeling rich effect.”
Laurent Descout | CFO, Kantox
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“Like any startup scaling at pace, managing supply and demand on the platform is a constant challenge. At Property Partner we are buying institutional-grade properties across the country on a weekly basis, so the capital flows are substantial. Making the right hires across the business is another big challenge, and the finance team is no exception – at the moment we’re looking for a Senior Finance Analyst. My priority is to grow capacity and resilience as we drive towards our goal of creating a global stock market for property.”
Warren Bath | CFO, Property Partner
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“Our biggest challenge is matching Onfido’s pace of growth with a financial infrastructure that is not only robust, but also scalable and flexible enough to incorporate the company’s international expansion. As a startup, Onfido must make decisions fast and effectively, and the Finance Team should respond quickly to evolving business needs. That requires significant investment in finding the right talent – we need people who feature a rare combination of detail-obsession, resourcefulness and commercial awareness.”
Alex Cram | Finance Director, Onfido
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It was never going to be easy starting a new company that competes directly with the large established financial companies however three particular challenges have been:
- Recruiting and building the right team – Finding the right combination of passion and skill is crucial to all startups who are trading on it’s innovation and fast paced development
- High growth – A luxury problem sure however scaling a customer base faster than you can say “Now hiring more customer support agents” can be challenging!
- Uncertain regulatory environment – With the possibility of Brexit looming, startups face a lot of uncertainty
Laurence Krieger | COO, Revolut
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“Our biggest challenge is being able to maintain the agile company culture and processes, whilst delivering significant growth globally”
Corinne Thompson | Head of Finance, GoCardless
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