MoneyNeverSleeps

By Pete Townsend | GP at Norio VenturesTechnology

MoneyNeverSleeps episodes

December 13, 2019 068: Money Talks #6: The Seed 2.0 | Pete Townsend on Seed Investing
"Pete Townsend goes solo" would have been a better headline in the '70's, but our Pete takes the mic in this episode to unpack the realities and economics of funding pre-seed and seed-stage startups through the lens of Finn Murphy from Frontline Ventures.
This episode is kindly sponsored by Ireland's fintech and financial services recruitment specialists, Top Tier Recruitment.

'Round about the same time that Pete Townsend was finishing a VC project in August 2019, there was something missing for him in the context of placing bets on pre-seed and seed-stage startups. Could you just "sprinkle the infield" and dole out half of a $10mn seed fund to the first 25-30 founders that fit your investment thesis? With the known odds of 1-2 venture capital home runs out of every 25-30 investments, something didn't fit with a venture capital strategy that expected anything less than a home run from every founder before investing in them.

Conveniently, a blog post on pre-seed investing by Finn Murphy from Frontline Ventures in Dublin helped Pete to crystallize his thoughts and refine his own framework for helping founders craft their pitch. But it's about way more than a slide deck and a hockey stick, as founders need to truly believe in themselves and convince a whole bunch of people that they have the right vision, conveyance and hands-in-the-dirt determination to build a substantial and sustainable business. You need an audience first though, and you need a compelling story to draw that audience closer.

Beyond the framework that Pete covers in this episode and Finn's blog post, here's what he shares with founders to get them started on crafting their pitch and getting VC meetings:
Episode 31 of The Full Ratchet show notes on Deconstructing the Elevator Pitch - published in 2015, but it's timeless, as it helps to craft a concise and impactful elevator pitch and a slidedeck that focuses on what matters. If you can build this pitch perfectly, not just in Powerpoint but as the 'story' of your business that you can live and breathe, you've got your first VC meeting.
Examples of 18 startup pitch decks from names you should recognize, courtesy of Erika Desmond at Cirrus Insights. The early-stage decks are the most relevant, but the later-stage decks give you a good idea of the picture you need to paint in the VC's head of what your business can achieve.
16 Non-Obvious Fundraising Lessons on Pitching, courtesy of James Currier at NFX - read the blog post but also take the 20 minutes to watch the videos, as the vignettes really drive things home.
Top 100 early-stage venture capital investors in Europe - it's not a perfect list, but it's a start. Do your homework first on the pre-seed vs. seed vs. Series A investments the VC has done to make sure you're a potential match for the VC's risk appetite and thesis.
To listen to more, please visit https://www.moneyneversleeps.ie/ for all of our other episodes. Also, follow us on Twitter @MNSShow for updates and more information.
16 min
December 09, 2019067: Startup Insights #2: The Unexpected | Martin Brown | Lizzy Hayashida | Andrew Mullaney | Paul Smyth
In this special segment, we feature four founders sharing how they dealt with one thing they didn't expect to face as a founder - Martin Brown from Unitek, Lizzy Hayashida from Change Donations, Andrew Mullaney from Premind and Paul Smyth from Top Tier Recruitment.
This episode is kindly sponsored by Ireland's fintech and financial services recruitment specialists, Top Tier Recruitment.

As a startup founder, there are tons of challenges thrown at you every day of the week, and no one can anticipate before taking the leap the level of adversity that you're going to face as an entrepreneur. Depending on how many other founders you talked to before launching your venture, you may have heard some of the war stories, or perhaps not. We asked four founders to share with us an unexpected challenge they faced and how they dealt with it:
Martin Brown, founder and CEO of Unitek (also featured on episode 55)

Lizzy Hayashida, co-founder and CEO of Change Donations (also featured on episode 56)

Andrew Mullaney, co-founder and CTO of Premind (also featured on episode 57)

Paul Smyth, co-founder of Top Tier Recruitment and Possible.ie (also featured on episode 61)
To listen to more, please visit https://www.moneyneversleeps.ie/ for all of our other episodes. Also, follow us on Twitter @MNSShow for updates and more information.
12 min
November 29, 2019 066: Major Distribution | Sorcha Mulligan and SMEChain
This episode is kindly sponsored by Ireland’s fintech and financial services recruitment specialists, Top Tier Recruitment. If you would like an intro to the team at Top Tier Recruitment, please click here. Sorcha Mulligan is an expert in driving business development strategies from a blank canvas, raising the profiles of the brands she works with in new markets by building reciprocal relationships through her global network. Sorcha has broad and deep experience in working with small-to-medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in a financial and broader business capacity, and has an excellent understanding of their everyday challenges.Through her awakening to the potential for blockchain and distributed ledger technologies to enable significant changes to how SMEs do business, especially in the context of supply chains, she came across a problem. While many big corporates have people working on digitalizing elements of their business (or their entire business!) and how they engage with customers and suppliers, SMEs with more modest technology budgets are at risk of falling behind. So, Sorcha is taking on the challenge of moving SMEs up the curve and helping them to get involved with the multiple consortia engaged in digitalizing supply chains. If you would like an intro to Sorcha, please click here.To listen to more, please visit https://www.moneyneversleeps.ie/ for all of our other episodes.Â Also, follow us on Twitter @MNSShow for updates and more information. Â
51 min
November 22, 2019 065: Money Talks #5: Anne Boden, Chris Skinner and the Myths of Fintech
We once again get inside the minds of entrepreneurs by diving deep into a recent piece of content that struck a chord, and Chris Skinner's recent blog post on Starling's Anne Boden and her recent talk on the myths of fintech.
This episode is kindly sponsored by Ireland's fintech and financial services recruitment specialists, Top Tier Recruitment. If you would like an intro to the team at Top Tier Recruitment, please click here.

In this episode, Pete Townsend and Paul Smyth (filling in for Eoin Fitzgerald) unpack the November 6th post from Chris Skinner's daily blog where he steps through a talk from Anne Boden, the CEO and Founder of Starling Bank on November 5th, 2019 at the New Statesman's Fintech Summit in London.
During her talk, in addition to talking about the path to profitability for Starling Bank, Anne Boden presented her view on the 'seven myths of fintech'. Anne's seven myths are a blend of social, demographic, competitive and technology themes, and Chris Skinner took a different view on most of them in his blog post the following day.
In a world where society's collective grasp on myths and truisms tighten and loosen daily, the different perspectives always make for a better conversation, and we addressed the following questions during this episode:
-Why is fintech heavily populated by young white men?
-Are most banks truly run by old white guys?
-Are people changing their bank accounts for better tech, services and experiences?
-What kind of banking services are the challenger banks / neobanks providing?
-What kind of banking experience do small businesses need?
-Can big banks catch up with the tech prowess of challenger banks?
-Are challenger banks going to achieve profitability?
To listen to more, please visit https://www.moneyneversleeps.ie/ for all of our other episodes. Also, follow us on Twitter @MNSShow for updates and more information.
30 min
November 13, 2019 064: I Can Transform Ya | Eddie Dillon and CreditLogic
Eddie Dillon from CreditLogic joins us on the show to talk digital transformation, making the move from corporate to entrepreneur...and his love of skiing!
This episode is kindly sponsored by Ireland's fintech and financial services recruitment specialists, Top Tier Recruitment. If you would like an intro to the team at Top Tier Recruitment, please click here.

Eddie Dillon is the founder and CEO of CreditLogic who are powering simplified and scalable mortgage origination. CreditLogic is a mortgage origination platform for both customer-facing advisors and lenders which reinvents application processing. The platform streamlines application data capture, validation, review and integration for compliant scalable origination.

If you would like an intro to Eddie, please click here.
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46 min
October 25, 2019 063: Money Talks #4: Coinbase and the Crypto Economy
Recorded live in Dublin at the BFC EU 2019 conference on DLT and emerging tech, Zeeshan Feroz from Coinbase and Pete Townsend took the stage for a fireside chat on Coinbase's institutional presence, custody as a building block of the crypto economy and crypto regulation.
This episode is kindly sponsored by Ireland's fintech and financial services recruitment specialists, Top Tier Recruitment. If you would like an intro to the team at Top Tier Recruitment, please click here.

Our MoneyNeverSleeps co-host Pete Townsend from Norio Ventures and Zeeshan Feroz, CEO of Coinbase in Europe, sat down on October 9th, 2019 at BFC EU 2019 for a half-hour chat on:
How Coinbase are connecting institutions with the crypto economy.
Trends in institutional crypto and custody as a building block of the crypto economy.
Financial institutions' ongoing acknowledgement that the backbone of the financial system is changing.
The infrastructure to support the widespread institutional adoption of digital assets.
Engaging with regulators, welcoming crypto regulation and operating as a qualified custodian of digital assets.
We'd like to extend our thanks to Hannah Kitchen and Dean Murphy at Fintech Network for sharing the audio track of Zeeshan and Pete's chat so that we could create this episode!
39 min
October 18, 2019 062: Money Talks #3: Joining a Startup, Scaling It and 'Adminovate'
Kindly sponsored by Irelandâ€™s fintech and financial services recruitment specialists, Top Tier Recruitment.Â If you would like an intro to the team at Top Tier Recruitment, please click here.

Ciaran Walshe joined Fund Recs in early 2016 after 8 years in the investment funds industry, taking his leap into fintech with a business that many refer to as a startup.Â But after 6 years of operations, Fund Recs are now scaling into an international player in the investment funds industry with clients such as Deloitte, MUFG Investor Services, Link Asset Services and Apex Group.Â If you would like an intro to Ciaran Walshe, please get in touch here.

Along with our MoneyNeverSleeps co-host Pete Townsend from Norio Ventures, FundRecs organize and deliver the Dublin-based annual Adminovate conference for the investment funds industry.Â Tickets for the 2020 edition are on sale now here!

Fund Recs was founded in 2013 when the company founders were approached by a large bank to develop a new reconciliation platform for it's Fund Administration unit. With over 25 years operational and technology experience between them the team are building a platform to transform how data is managed, processed and leveraged by the Funds Industry.

Taking the latest technology and approaches from the best loved consumer software applications, the Fund Recs team are combining consumer user experience and interfaces with enterprise accuracy, security and availability.Â The team at Fund Recs believes that the software we use in day-to-day business activities should be as well designed and easy to use as the consumer applications we enjoy every day in our personal life.

By combining ease of use with powerful processing, flexible data import and key Industry knowledge we have set out on our mission towards developing the most efficient, powerful and cost effective reconciliation software available.

27 min
October 11, 2019 061: Anything is Possible | Paul Smyth from Possible.ie
We get back into the interview format this week as Paul Smyth returns to the show to talk about his new coaching venture (Possible.ie), getting to the lightbulb moments, the importance of trust and fairness in business relationships....and channeling Wendy Rhodes from Billions!
Kindly sponsored by Ireland's fintech and financial services recruitment specialists, Top Tier Recruitment. If you would like an intro to the team at Top Tier Recruitment, please click here.

In 2016, Paul co-founded Top Tier Recruitment, and over the last three years, he and his co-founder Laura Smyth successfully built the business through excellent client relationships in Ireland. In 2019, he undertook a coaching skills course spread out over five months and 135 training hours. Paul's idea was to add coaching to Top Tier's overall service offering, and having experienced the transformative power of coaching first-hand and completing the course, he launched Possible Coaching this year.
If you would like an intro to Paul Smyth, please click here.

25 min
October 03, 2019 060: Money Talks #2: Startup Marketing and Raising Capital from VCs
We continue this week with our second edition of Money Talks - Rachel Kenny from HubSpot covers the basics of startup marketing and Bernadette Wijnings from Blanco tells her story about digital asset management and raising capital from VCs.
Kindly sponsored by Ireland's fintech and financial services recruitment specialists, Top Tier Recruitment. If you would like an intro to the team at Top Tier Recruitment, please click here.

In this episode, we continue with Part II of 'How to Survive and Thrive with Your Investors', and you can check out Part 1 in Episode 58.
Featured in Part II are:
- Rachel Kenny from HubSpot - if you would like an intro to Rachel, please click here.
- Bernadette Wijnings from Blanco - if you would like an intro to Bernadette, please click here.
You'll also hear Ian Dalton from Flagship Marketing moderating the discussion, with Jo van de Velde from Euroclear, Koen Vanderhoydonk from Blanco and Pete Townsend from MoneyNeverSleeps and Norio Ventures all piping in.

The genesis of this episode is a Flagship Marketing webinar, and they kindly shared the audio track with us. Flagship Marketing supports fresh-thinking fintech companies with inbound marketing services which generate qualified leads and delighted customers for socially motivated, innovative, financial scale-ups. Flagship have tons of incredibly useful marketing guides and workbooks on their website, so log in and learn.

38 min
September 26, 2019 059: Money Talks #1: Libra vs. Sovereigns, WeWork vs. the World, Uber vs. London
In a new format we're trying with MoneyNeverSleeps, we try to get inside the minds of three entrepreneurs by riffing on recent tech news and venture stories. This episode includes a look at central bank ambitions of the sovereigns pushing back on Mark Zuckerberg's crypto project, Adam Neumann's WeWork legacy, and Uber's London problem.
Kindly sponsored by Ireland's fintech and financial services recruitment specialists: Top Tier Recruitment

In this episode, Pete Townsend and Paul Smyth (artfully filling in for Eoin Fitzgerald) riff on three developments this week in the world of tech and venture capital to try to get inside of the minds of the entrepreneurs behind the stories. Here they are:

How Facebook's Libra fueled push for central bank-run digital currencies - Financial Times - Monday, 23rd September, 2019 (paywall)
-France, UK, Sweden, Japan, China all weigh in with their views
-KEY POINT: To consumers it would feel very much like the electronic payment and transfer solutions that are already available today through their banking apps or a service such as PayPal.
-Why is this important, where could it all go and what's going through Mark Zuckerberg's mind?
-Pete Townsend's recent blog post, "My Thoughts on Libra"
WeWork's Adam Neumann to step down as chief executive - Financial Times - Wednesday, 25th September, 2019 (paywall)
-Neumann will no longer hold majority voting rights and becomes non-executive chairman
-Finance chief Artie Minson and WeWork vice-chair Sebastian Gunningham will take over as co-chief executives
-Comparison to Travis Kalanick, whose former advisor Bradley Tusk was on episode 27 of Money Never Sleeps.
-Threat of lob losses (up to 6K of 15K workforce) reported.
-What's still good about WeWork though amidst all of the negativity? Where could this go? What's next for Adam Neumann?
Uber gains London licence for just 2 months - BBC News - Tuesday, 24th September, 2019
-Reported: Concerns over safety, identification and insurance.
-From the FT - spokesperson for the Mayor's office: "[London Mayor] Sadiq [Khan] has been crystal clear that in London it doesn't matter how powerful and how big you are, you must play by the rules."
-What's one market where Uber just didn't work at all (Ireland)? Why is this important? What's going through Dara Khosrowshahi's mind?
30 min

About MoneyNeverSleeps

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MoneyNeverSleeps is a weekly show where smart people bring one big idea, and Pete Townsend breaks it down in under 15 minutes. Featuring founders, operators, and investors shaping crypto, fintech, AI,…

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