From branch manager to robo-adviser: the rise of the ‘fintech’

‘Fintech’ is part of almost everybody’s life, in one form or another, today. In my view, its driving force has always been: “How can technology make financial services work for the average person?”

From the shift away from personal banking undertaken in high street branches to the rise of online solutions, fintechs emerged to address the specific customer needs that were once met by named bank managers.

What were your biggest learnings from your time at Blinkx and the 12 years spent in Silicon Valley?
Blinkx was an incredible journey – but not without its challenges. Building a company is all-consuming and after more than a decade as CEO, I was done. I do wonder about whether I would have felt differently had I planned my life for a thirty-year journey. You can’t start out at 100 miles an hour and expect to sustain that pace for decades.

Over the past decade, the food industry has seen a boom in vegan and plant-based brands in order to capture what has been regarded as ‘the future of food’. However, as quickly as this trend has started to rise, it has started to fall with a growing number of plant-based companies entering administration and cutting their workforces. It’s clear that just being vegan isn’t as substantial a mission statement as it used to be. Companies need more. Foodhak has more.

The current economic situation has been a major challenge for me as an entrepreneur. With the risk of recession looming, it has been difficult to navigate the business landscape and more challenging than before to raise investment. However, this difficult economic situation has also presented an opportunity for us at Immersive Fox – our AI creates video clones of you that do the heavy-lifting of video creation This leads to cost savings in video production and, when used in cold outreach, boosts sales responses – it has become increasingly attractive to businesses in this climate. This has enabled us to grow our business, despite the difficult economic conditions.

Alisa Patotskaya
CEO, Immersive Fox

What have been your biggest learnings in venture and as a Board observer at WeGift, Moteefe, and Deployed?
As I’ve always been focusing on early stage, my biggest learning is that this is completely a people game. You can have incredible founders execute a mediocre idea but you can’t have mediocre founders trying to execute a great idea. Founders (and fund managers!) need resilience and unwavering drive to execute. This also applies to the types of networks and communities you build around you which is so incredibly important in venture and one of Pact’s strong suits which appeals to founders.

Artificial intelligence is constantly at the centre of widespread media scrutiny and debate, with consistent concerns about the potential for unethical usage and privacy and data infringements. However, whilst measures must be taken to mitigate these worries, we need to open up the conversation to understand how AI, when used ethically, can be a significant force for good. A key example of an area where AI has huge potential to improve outcomes is in mental health care. AI offers an opportunity to help unlock a more objective and safer approach to assessing and diagnosing mental health conditions.

I actually think the most interesting results will show up in the earnings of companies using generative AI rather than the tech companies selling it. For virtually all businesses, generative AI can provide a huge cost savings by automating mundane tasks – reducing the need for manual labour. Mainstream businesses that embrace generative AI will see their cost-base fall and their revenues increase.

1. ’Tech founders need to be treated like athletes to avoid burnout’ (FT 10.07.23),’Some tech investors are now realising that putting entrepreneurs under too much pressure can be bad for businesses well as the founders themselves…’
How do you balance the desire for return and profitability against the health of the entrepreneur?
It’s important to note that pressure is essential to a founder’s success. Using the example of elite athletes, they perform under incredible pressure, pressure is a real catalyst for improvement and success – one of my favourite cheesy lines is “pressure makes diamonds”. However, there certainly needs to be a balancing act where the pressure is reasonable. Now with regards to returns vs health of the entrepreneur, there should be no compromise. Unfortunately, there is an antiquated and toxic mantra within the start-up sphere whereby founders feel they must sacrifice everything, take a miniscule salaries and eat beans on toast every night to be a success. This is wrong. In my opinion, there is no balancing act between returns and the health of the entrepreneur – the two are positively correlated. If you want a founder to succeed, then you must provide an environment for them to do so – paramount to this is their mental and physical wellbeing. This is why we have Harry Jameson, CEO of Pillar Wellbeing, on our Advisory Board – he’s a world leading fitness professional who has spent his career training and coaching C-suite execs to enable them to perform in their careers better. Harry is working with us to design a framework that we can give to our founders to ensure they are looking after their own wellbeing as much as possible.

The United Kingdom’s public healthcare system faces significant pressure, with long waiting lists of seven million people making headlines. 1.5 million of these patients are waiting for diagnostic tests such as MRI and CT scans, and there is a side to this story that is sometimes overlooked: the diagnostic gap. 

I have always liked cracking hard nuts, and disliked bad processes that could be done better. My latest venture TRIVER is going after one of the most complex and poorly addressed financial services need: small businesses’ cash flow management. This is a major issue for the real economy and the society, and I believe it can be solved today leveraging the power of data science and technology.