The F in Tech Podcast

Aged 14, Radko Albrecht, was one of Germany’s top figure skaters. A child of Slovakian refugees, he was on track to become an Olympian, something that would have required focus, dedication and the ability to pick yourself up when you’re down. He never made it to the Olympics, but those same skills have come in handy with his chosen path: founding BitBond, which helps banks and intermediaries issue and securitize bonds using blockchain technology and tokenization.

When Christoph Rieche told colleagues at Goldman Sachs he was leaving to set up iwoca, some of them thought he was crazy. Others were jealous. Ten years later, the second group would appear to have been right: iwoca has now helped more than 65,000 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) gain access to capital. It's building out new products all the time, raising $350m in debt and equity capital along the way. And although Christoph's creative talents may not have come up to snuff for him to have become an architect, the businesses iwoca has helped people to build may end up having an even bigger impact than any structure he may have designed. 

The buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) space is on fire right now - just look at Klarna's latest funding round, valuing the fintech in excess of $45b, or the $29b Square paid for Afterpay. So it seems as good a time as any to catch up with Christer Holloman, founder of Divido, which connects banks to retailers, to offer customers BNPL. His other big passion is promoting diversity in fintech through his charitable initiative, Fintech Finishers.

"I'm raised by a single mother in northern Sweden [and gay]," he says. "So for me, gender diversity and equality has been a given from day one. And then when I came to the UK, started my company and just sort of being busy building the company, I didn't really think much about it. And then, one day, I took a good, hard look at my leadership team, and two middle-aged, white, straight men were looking back at me, and I realised: 'hang on a second, where did I go wrong a long the way here'."

How Ali Niknam went all in with more than 100 million euros ($125m) of his OWN money to create an eco-friendly neobank called Bunq (now valued at nearly $2b), and why he doesn’t lose sleep over it - despite the high steaks. 

Joakim Sjöblom founded Minna Tech to stop people wasting money on subscriptions they no longer want - but seeing his first company fail, and losing money in the process, he says, was worth every penny.

How Nimrod Lehavi turned his frustrating experience of buying crypto into Simplex, and why it was anything but simple. 

His grandfather founded the Cincinnati Bengals American Football team. Ricky Knox co-founded Tandem (along with 10,000 other people - kind of), while almost striking gold with Bitcoin. He's now stepped down as CEO of the neobank. But with an entrepreneurial journey that's included selling clubbing clothing, and mobile phone infrastructure to the Central African Republic, you can be sure that whatever he does next will be anything but dull. 

How Nicolas Meric made the leap from particle physics to fintech, and the challenges he faced along the way with Dreamquark. 

Entrepreneurs often describe multiple existential challenges hitting them at the same time as “a perfect storm”. But Nigel Verdon, CEO of banking-as-a-service platform, Railsbank, must surely be the only fintech founder to have gone through one in the literal sense. Of course, being able to keep calm in such trying circumstances can give you perspective when dealing with 30-foot swells like a financial crisis or a pandemic - enabling you to see through choppy seas to the destination that lies beyond.

Tamas Giorgadse was a chess prodigy who survived civil war and hyperinflation. He finished school aged 12, and completed his masters three years later. He moved to Germany, gained two PhDs and went to work for McKinsey. Next, he co-founded Raisin, Europe’s leading platform for savings and investments. Already a unicorn, the fintech recently announced a merger with domestic rival Deposit Solutions, to create Raisin DS.