MoneyNeverSleeps

This week we welcome back Andrew Mullaney, CTO of Premind AI, sharing his story on the last 2+ years of building Premind, streaming 57,000 stock prices into a million news stories a day, the impact of high-speed information flow on age-old market theory, the differences between his last startup NewsWhip and Premind AI, surviving in the startup desert…and still trying to be relatively innocuous!

MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by PAT Fintech, the training partner that demystifies fintech and digital finance for financial services professionals.

Premind AI is an Ireland-based deeptech venture providing institutional investors the 'edge' through anticipating market reactions to news events.

HIGHLIGHTS:

On the scale of data that the Premind AI ‘machine’ is processing: “We stream through one million articles a day, and we can burst 20-30 articles per second with each article averaging 500 words. So, we have 10,000 words per second coming through. We monitor 57,000 stocks, and each one has 20 descriptive words, so that’s one million words. Together, that’s 10,000 words per second coming through on the news side that we stream through a million words on the stock side. That’s just to get a match.”

On not trying to make sense out of market movements: “We're looking for patterns that are repeated over and over again, thousands and thousands of times a day. The very minute you put something in cognitive terms, like whether the movement was sensical or not, you're out of the picture. We don't really care. We look for cause and effect.”

On how fintech has only scratched the surface: “What I call ‘fintech v1’ is just digitizing banking, things like making payments go through instantaneously. It's crazy to think that the most powerful banking institutions could be impacted by something so simple. But the next level is the actual application of the more complicated systems that technology companies are bringing into all aspects of finance.”

On surviving the ‘startup desert’: “The pandemic is a scenario where you're already going through the desert as a startup and you've got to ride it out. It's one of these massive external scenarios that nobody could ever predict. There's nothing you can do about it. You just have to be able to get through it.”

Episode title inspired by The Prediction by Nas.

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Oli Cavanagh and Charles Dowd, the co-founders of Strike, tell the story of the confluence of experiences and ideas that brought them together to launch Strike, getting a product live and raising an angel round in less than 3 months, the benefit of having done it before when you need to build a team swiftly, and the big road ahead for Strike.

MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by PAT Fintech, the training partner that demystifies fintech and digital finance for financial services professionals.

Strike is portable personal payment tech designed to make tipping, giving and paying convenient, safe and easy for all. Strike and its patent-pending technology has been successfully deployed in multiple verticals in Ireland and is expanding to a number of international markets.

HIGHLIGHTS:

Oli Cavanagh on moving fast: “I've been involved with a number of startups, but this one is really different to any of them. None of them have ever moved this quickly, and it's because we had the idea and within 24 hours Charles was building the product. We had an MVP very quickly and we were revenue-generating within three months.”

Charles Dowd on the confluence of technologies: “Technology hasn't really moved to where we needed it to be until very recently. We now have a ubiquity of mobile phones. NFC tech is available in almost all of them. QR codes are ubiquitous, especially in Asia. So now we've got this combination of technology on the doorstep when the pizza arrives that actually matches the problem that we're trying to solve.”

Oli on building the Strike team: “We were able to bring 13 people into Strike - six full-time and the rest part-time - normally it would take a long time to build up a team like that, and we did that in a few months, and they’re all fantastic.”

Charles on timing: “The pandemic has accelerated the density of the need, but it's actually a tipping point. This was a perfect combination of events that was ready to happen [and the pandemic just accelerated that].”

Episode title inspired by The Tipping Point by the Roots.

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We’re back with another Money Talks segment this week, and we get into the story of Coinbase going public and the cryptofication of fintech, Starling Bank’s big investment from Goldman Sachs, the credit-building appeal and 'rundle' potential of the latest Apple Card feature, and buckets more!

MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by PAT Fintech, the training partner that demystifies fintech and digital finance for financial services professionals.

MAIN STORIES WE COVERED:

Coinbase Goes Public (Form S1 filed with the SEC, 25-Feb-21)

Eoin Fitzgerald zooms out on the bellwether moment for crypto: “One of the most important things about it is this is a company that's only nine years old. It’s only taken 10 or 12 years for cryptocurrency to go mainstream. It's incredible when you think of how far we've come with even fintech, and then you have something of this magnitude happening in a short period of time.”

Pete Townsend talking about upside of fintech “Chamath (King of SPACs) looked at some of the numbers and said if you take Stripe out of the fintech unicorns, you're in the tens of billions of dollars in market cap for fintech. I looked at the top fintech unicorns and it was a lot more than tens of billions – it was closer to $300 billion. That's about 125 fintech companies that are north of a billion-dollar valuation. If you look at the S&P 500 US Financials index, that’s $4 trillion. That’s the upside in this space.”

Starling Bank secures £50m investment from Goldman Sachs (CityAM, 19-Apr-21)

Pete thinking about the next steps for Starling Bank: “How might they continue to move up the curve beyond banking SMEs into mid-sized corporates? Would they start providing lending and revolving credit? They've done really well in getting the SME experience right, because it is a hundred percent digital. They have no branches, you can't go fill out a form anywhere. When you move that into corporate banking, there's a lot more to do there."

Cleared of gender bias, Apple announces Apple Card Family for spouses and teens (TechCrunch, 20-Apr-21)

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This is a special bonus episode welcoming back Ollie Walsh, co-founder and CEO of Pipit Global, a for-profit social impact fintech based in Galway here in Ireland. Ollie was on the show back in July 2019 in episode 52, and as Pipit's crowdfunding campaign on the Spark Crowdfunding platform here in Ireland is about to go live to the public, we brought him back to bring us all up to speed on Pipit and share his story on the campaign.

MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by PAT Fintech, the training partner that demystifies fintech and digital finance for financial services professionals.

Pipit is a platform that now touches every continent and has the potential to impact the lives of millions with a safer and more cost-effective way for migrants to support their families. Ollie and the Pipit team are enabling the public to invest in their vision to reduce the global cost of remittance, and are launching their crowdfunding campaign the week of April 26th on the Spark Crowdfunding platform.

To learn more about the Spark Crowdfunding platform, check out the interview we did with Chris Burge, co-founder and CEO of Spark, in episode 111.

[For the sake of transparency, Pete Townsend (host of this episode) is a non-executive director on the board of Pipit Global, and is invested in the company.]

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Mike Cavanaugh, Managing Partner at Regiment Alpha, shares his story on lessons learned in the open outcry commodity trading pits, his multiple entrepreneurial ventures amidst a life in fintech, having things thrown at him for saying ‘blockchain’, advising and helping to raise investment for fintech startups…and the joys of barefoot water skiing behind the Cheddar Curtain!

MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by PAT Fintech, the training partner that demystifies fintech and digital finance for financial services professionals.

Regiment Alpha is an early-stage venture fund investing in seed-to-Series A startups in four specific areas of fintech: Payments, WealthTech, RegTech, and Capital Markets Tech. The team is based in the Mid-West US but are open to investing as a lead anywhere in the US and as a “follow” globally.

HIGHLIGHTS:

On starting his career in the open outcry trading pits at the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT): “I started trading in the late nineties and got introduced to the trading world at an interesting inflection point where technology was really starting to heavily integrate into the exchanges. Being a 24-year-old kid that was backed by a prominent trader, you don't think when it's happening that it's ever going to go away.”

On his approach with digital assets: “We started telling people to start looking at infrastructure and don’t put all your money in the coin itself. Think of the coin, think of your typical financial services infrastructure, and then identify the points within that ecosystem that are going to be needed and start investing in those companies.”

On what he looks for in companies: “There's never been any edge outside of information. Legal, informational edge is the only edge that exists. Everything else is BS. You can't time the market, you can't use leverage for your long-term benefit as there are two sides to leverage. The only edge is informational edge - you having information legally before somebody else and being able to act on that. So, knowing that and seeing those different points, that's where we're looking for - we're looking for edge.”

On the big lesson learned with startups: “I think that's the number one rule - it's really about people. Great people build great teams, great teams build great cultures and great cultures build great companies.”

Episode title inspired by Jump Around by House of Pain, especially when played at Camp Randall Stadium at halftime of a University of Wisconsin Badgers football game (Mike’s alma mater).

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Fiona Edwards Murphy, co-founder and CEO of ApisProtect, shares her story on channeling her technology expertise into a passion for helping beekeepers, her transition from academia into the life of a startup founder, raising ApisProtect’s first round, building a customer base looking after 20mn bees…and playing the bagpipes!

MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by PAT Fintech, the training partner that demystifies fintech and digital finance for financial services professionals.

ApisProtect is an Irish tech startup using unique, innovative bee monitoring technology to help beekeepers prevent losses and increase productivity in their hives. Just this week, Fiona was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe list for 2021.

HIGHLIGHTS:

On Fiona’s attraction to IoT: “I really just fell in love with using sensors in the real world to achieve meaningful things. You're taking all of these concepts that you've learned about to get those sensors out to the real world, give people information that they don't have already and get meaningful results.”

On the early days of identifying the problem to solve: “Beekeeping works almost the same way as it did back in the middle ages. Before our technology, the last big advancement in beekeeping technology was the invention of the forklift.”

On the business impact for commercial farming: “If you want to really level up your operation, if you want to dramatically increase the revenue from your farm without having to increase the size or change the crops that you're growing, you're talking about getting your crops to be more effectively pollinated.”

On Fiona’s transition from academia to startup life: “You have to be really passionate to do a PhD, and you have to be really passionate to be an entrepreneur.”

On the importance of timing for a startup: “It was a combination of a very good product, a very good opportunity, and being the right team to go after it as we had been working in the area since the very early days of bee monitoring technology being a concept. We were in the right place at the right time with the right skill set and it all just came together really well.”

On the never-stop-learning realities of a startup CEO: “I often say I learn more in any single six-month period at ApisProtect than I did in eight years at university. That's the nature of the job. You have to understand everything that's going on because at the end of the day, you're responsible for everything.”

Episode title inspired by Wings by Little Simz

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Barry Darmody, founder and CEO of Search4Less and ENKI, shares his story on the life experiences that were the catalysts for him becoming a startup founder, getting the Search4Less product to market in the early days, keeping the faith through the lean years, making yourself expendable through building a great team, and connecting the dots of life through his passion for problem-solving.

MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by PAT Fintech, the training partner that demystifies fintech and digital finance for financial services professionals.

Search4Less is a limitless company information platform that allows you to access any publicly available information about directors, shareholders and companies in seconds. ENKI is also part of the family, which is a focused product built around the Search4Less core that makes law searching easy and efficient for property transactions.

HIGHLIGHTS:

On the impact of playing a key role in acquiring businesses early in his career: “I learned a lot in the due diligence phases and in being part of the discussions in the negotiations. A lot of empathy is required to convince the vendor that their ‘child’ is going to be looked after and their reputation is going to remain intact post-deal.”

On waking up to what he really wanted to do: “I moved into crisis management, rationalizing businesses, managing shareholder relations. All of that helped the business, but it was all complicated, and it wasn't what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to build products and make processes better, use my skillset to make life easier for people and to be more efficient in delivering the end product.”

On early customer feedback after launching Search4Less: “When people started to use it, they were saying ‘wow, this is impressive’. And the prompt just kicked off from there - half of the clients that we sign up are referred by somebody else. We're even seeing trends now where people move between firms or start new firms. And the first thing they do is ‘What do you mean you don't have Search4Less? We need to have it, this is an essential tool’, and it just grows from there.”

On staying agile: “If you get too big, you can't react quickly, and I think that's our secret sauce. A customer might make a suggestion to us in the morning, and it could be there by close of business tomorrow. I like being able to do that, and that's what gets my juices flowing.”

Episode title inspired by All the Things You’re Searching for by G-Eazy

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SOUND QUALITY WARNING:  You know how Marc Andreessen said 'software is eating the world'? Well, software ate this episode, please excuse the underwater sound and we'll be back to normal next week!

In this Money Talks segment, Pete and Eoin trade ideas on the impact of Ireland’s investment in Stripe, Revolut’s American dream, the season of the SPAC with eToro, Bakkt and Kraken and thoughts on DeFi vs. mainstream crypto.

MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by PAT Fintech, the training partner that demystifies fintech and digital finance for financial services professionals.

STORIES WE COVERED:

The double-bottom-line impact of Ireland’s investment in Stripe (Irish Times, 22-Mar-21)

Pete channeling Chamath Palihapitiya: “Take all of the old school, traditional financial services players that are valued in aggregate in the hundreds of billions right now. Then have a look at FinTech, and when you throw out Stripe, you’ve got maybe tens of billions of market cap. There's so much more room to grow in fintech.”

Revolut applies for US banking license (Finextra, 23-Mar-21)

Eoin’s own doubts: “Aside from it being that one big market with 300 million people, there are some serious players there that Revolut will be competing with. Square are looking at becoming a bank, they’ve got 30 million users with CashApp, and you’ve got Venmo. I think the only way that they're going to crack a market like this is with a large acquisition of an existing customer base. The spend alone of trying to get your name out there to compete with the likes of CashApp or Venmo, it's just not going to work.

Season of the SPAC – eToro, Bakkt, Kraken (Coindesk, 16-Mar-21)

RELATED LINKS:

The Square Crypto Book of Bitcoin Mythology (shared by Jack Dorsey on Twitter, 18-Mar-21)

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedber‪g (podcast referenced in segment on crypto)

MONEYNEVERSLEEPS LINKS:

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Robert Alice, artist and creator of the ‘Portraits of a Mind’ project, shares his story on how bitcoin - and to quote Robert – “and its essential ties to the past instead of the perpetuated perception of its radical severance with it,“ was a catalyst for a melting pot of inspiration for his mesmerizing artwork Portraits of a Mind, the crossover from physical art into digital art with non-fungible tokens (NFTs), the intersection of artistry and entrepreneurship…and the joys of life as a triplet!

MoneyNeverSleepsis sponsored by PAT Fintech, the training partner that demystifies fintech and digital finance for financial services professionals.

Robert Alice founded his project in 2018 to promote blockchain culture within the visual arts. The completion of Portraits of a Mind spanned 3.5 years and resulted in a 40-painting work of art. Each of the 40 paintings is the size of a small but circular garage door and each represents one of the first 40 blocks of the bitcoin blockchain.  ‘Block 21’ was recently auctioned at Christie’s and had a guide price of $12,000-15,000, but sold for $131,250 in October 2020.

Each ‘block’ is as intricately crafted as a cuneiform tablet with the original source code of the relevant block carved into paint, with specific numbers on each block embossed in gold. When combined, the gold digits become global map coordinates tied to a location on Earth where a significant event occurred in the 5,000 year history leading up to the creation of bitcoin.

Accompanying each painting is a non-fungible token (NFT) including a digital version of that piece of the artwork. The full story of Portraits of a Mind can be found on Robert Alice’s website.

Episode title inspired by Ten Thousand Hours from Macklemore & Ryan Lewis.

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In this Money Talks segment, Pete and Eoin trip through the wires of Starling Bank’s latest fundraise, investing in Roblox’s direct listing, Walmart’s SuperApp vs. ‘The Bank of Walmart’, the Square-Tidal / Jack Dorsey-Jay Z tie-up, and Ireland's new national startup accelerator, international startup accelerators and pre-accelerators.

MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by PAT Fintech, the training partner that demystifies fintech and digital finance for financial services professionals.

MAIN STORIES WE COVERED:

Starling raises £272mn at £1.3bn valuation (Sifted, 8-Mar-21)

Pete’s overall thoughts on Starling Bank at this point in time: “Monzo, Revolut and N26, have all raised at higher valuations than £1.2bn. Starling now outpaces all of them in terms of value per user at £650 per user. Out of this entire story, after reading Anne Boden’s book ‘Banking on IT’, I think that’s the thing that she would point to and be the proudest of.”

Roblox direct listing gets $45 reference price from NYSE (Marketwatch, 9-Mar-21)

Eoin’s parallel between Robux and crypto: “Something like Robux, which is the in-game currency, to me is the prime example of a digital currency's potential usage. You see Bitcoin becoming more widely adopted, but here's a currency within a game that's being used by 32 million people every day – it’s the potential for that, and to me, is what digital currency could become.”

Walmart’s Fintech Ambition: A Super App, Not The ‘Bank Of Walmart’ (8-Mar-21, Forbes, by Ron Shevlin)

Square acquires Tidal (TechCrunch, 4-Mar-21)

RELATED STORIES:

JPM Kills ChasePay (Finextra, 9-Mar-21)

Applications for the Expert Dojo accelerator are open with the next cohort kicking off on 5th April (Expert Dojo, Spring 2021)

Applications are now open for NDRC’s new accelerator (Silicon Republic, 5-Mar-21)

Applications are now open for the Startup Boost 2021 Spring cohort (StartupBoost, Spring 2021)

LINKS:

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Get in touch at [email protected]