We'll add you to the list for our newsletter to go deeper into the topics we cover!
Brian McNulty, founder and CEO of FundAdminChain (FAC), joins the show to talk about solving a real business problem with distributed ledger technology (DLT), how funding your business takes a team effort, enabling positive change for the investment funds industry and end investors…and his secret life as a qualified football coach!
This episode of MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by PAT Fintech, the training partner that demystifies fintech and digital finance for financial services professionals.
EPISODE OVERVIEW:
FAC is a network for launching, distributing and trading digital investment funds, connecting investors, fund managers, and their service providers in a distributed digital ecosystem. Brian just completed the first half of raising FAC’s seed round, and although the fundraising round will stay open until February, Pete Townsend wanted to crystallize this moment in time by capturing it in this episode. For the sake of transparency, Pete is also an advisor to Brian and FAC.
HIGHLIGHTS:
On the core proposition: “We're facilitating the more forward-thinking incumbents to digitalize what they do, improve their services and pass those benefits on to their customers and the end investors.”
On one of the influences for founding FAC: “At R3, we were bringing the buyside into the office, and looking at how the funds industry is still quite antiquated and extremely busy with many layers and intermediaries, but all doing an important job in the current state and all playing necessary roles.”
On the opportunity: “With DLT, we could see the opportunity to collapse those layers, and if everyone shared the same data, then we don't need all the reconciliations and oversight teams. This means we can drive out some of the costs, risks and data lags.”
On the reason for a comprehensive approach: “We know this takes a blend of business, technical and regulatory considerations not only to ensure that it's a real business problem we’re solving, but also that the business model itself stacks up.”
On the context of collaboration: “You’ve got to make sure that you are listening to what the individuals and organizations want and that it’s the right time for them. There may be a time when you need to pull back on the collaboration, and other times you’ll want to push for it.”
On raising capital: “Everyone tells you how much work it is and how it's another job and you hear those words, but you don't really know what it's like until you're close to closing.”
On finding initial investors: “We spent a lot of time sitting up late at night trying to find investors. I’ve always held the belief that if you can do another 0.001% effort, then do it, and we got an investor from that extra 0.001%, which was a LinkedIn message. I’m not saying that should be your whole strategy, but I don’t fully buy into the view that you only get investors from warm intros.”
On the guiding forces: “We want to improve the industry – this is not a gimmicky thing - and we want to see that improvement passed on to the end investor and revolutionize the way that the funds industry operates.”
On the team effort: “Fundamentally, it's been a phenomenal journey so far with FAC as a result of the phenomenal team we've got and also some great organizations we're working with, so I’m looking forward to the next phase.”
For more detail on FAC's ongoing seed round, see their recent press release here.
Leave a review and subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google
Check out our MoneyNeverSleeps website and subscribe to our newsletter on Substack
Follow us on Twitter Podcast |Twitter Pete |Twitter Eoin
Get in touch at info@moneyneversleeps.ie
--- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/moneyneversleeps/support
We'll add you to the list for our newsletter to go deeper into the topics we cover!
Here are some great episodes to start with if you're new to the podcast!
On the show this week, we’ve got Victor and Lee and Alvin Foo, co-founders of Securo Finance (formerly DAOventures) who are build…
On the show this week we have Filipe Pereira and Mario Frade from Crowdclass, a web3 protocol for online education using the powe…
Eugene O’Brien and Kurt Pittman from Ireland-based BigFan join Eoin Fitzgerald and Pete Townsend on the show this week. BigFan is…
Carla Rosenkranz, founder of Barterchain, riffs with Pete Townsend about how the Barterchain idea is rooted in her own experience…
What a week! Techstars kicked off the Launchpool Web3 Techstars Accelerator this week in Dublin and they’re already moving at a b…
Nik Milanović is the founder of This Week in Fintech, a global digest of fintech news, and General Partner at The Fintech Fund, a…
Eoin Fitzgerald and Pete Townsend riff on what started out as a student lending platform in SoFi now becoming a full-service digi…
Adam Bialy is the founder and CEO of Fiat Republic, the compliance-first, API-driven and highly secure and scalable bridge betwee…
Matthew Larby is the founder and CEO of Realm, a blockchain metaverse ecosystem where you can create and explore your own play to…
Eoin Fitzgerald and Pete Townsend are back with the first Money Talks segment of 2022 with a big bump in consumers spending crypt…
This episode is from the second edition of the Finsight Series virtual event that Pete Townsend moderated recently hosted by Navi…
Joey Krug is the Co-Chief Investment Officer of Pantera Capital, the first institutional investment firm focused exclusively on b…
Matthew Graham is the CEO of Sino Global Capital, who are providing strategic investment to best-in-class companies that are movi…
John Wu is president of Ava Labs, an a16z-backed technology company building the next-generation blockchain platform, Avalanche. …
Teana Baker-Taylor is the Chief Policy Officer of the Chamber of Digital Commerce, the longest established trade body representin…
Michelle Tsing joins Pete Townsend in a special segment from the Techstars Web3 Convo Series of fireside chats driven by the Laun…
Referring to Colm Lyon as an Irish fintech ‘O.G.’ is just the tip of the iceberg, as at the core, he’s an entrepreneur who’s buil…
Eoin Fitzgerald and Pete Townsend dive headfirst into insights from the first AMA session on the Launchpool Web3 Techstars Accele…
Laura Walsh is the COO of Launchpool, a digital asset platform with a mantra of egalitarian investing in blockchain projects. In…
Eoin Fitzgerald and Pete Townsend dive into the big news for Ireland’s startup ecosystem as Techstars come to Ireland with the La…
Our guest this week is Gershie Vann, Founder and CEO of Magma Capital Funds, a Chicago-based quantitative hedge fund firm. We tal…
Sophie Guibaud is the Chief Growth Officer at OpenPayd and she’s spent the last 10 years designing and executing the go-to-market…
Shane Monks O’Byrne, founder and CEO of Aikido Finance, joins the show this week to talk about the Aikido Finance mission of demo…
Brian Kenny is the CEO and Founder of MiniCorp. Brian left the Lego behind at an early age and started building through code. We …
Eoin Fitzgerald and Pete Townsend dive deep into the annual results from UK neobanks Starling and Monzo and what’s next for both,…
Achia Nila, Founder & CEO of Women in Digital, joins the show to share her story on Women in Digital, an all-star team of female …
This week, Joseph Chang and Gray Webb join the show to share their story on Liquibit Capital, a quantitative-driven investment ma…
Fiona Edwards Murphy, co-founder and CEO of ApisProtect, shares her story on channeling her technology expertise into a passion f…
Barry Darmody, founder and CEO of Search4Less and ENKI, shares his story on the life experiences that were the catalysts for him …
Brian McDonald from Bay Advisory joins the show for Part 2 of a 2-part series on M&A and raising capital for entrepreneurs and ta…
Elisabeth Dana from Infinity Circle joins the show to talk about how a career in wealth management inspired her to start all over…
We’ve flipped the tables this week, with Ken Coyne from OpsTalent interviewing Pete Townsend on his own digital awakening, insigh…
For the 100th episode of MoneyNeverSleeps, Eoin and Pete dive into their favorite topic – the challenges of challenger banks – an…
Faye Walsh Drouillard from WakeUp Capital joins the show to talk about how her formative years and life experience drove her towa…
Elaine Deehan is back on the show with Pete Townsend to talk about "the trilogy" of her earlier career as the perfect foundation …
Gene Murphy, co-founder of Startup Boost joins our first video edition of the podcast to talk about his earliest entreprenurial e…
"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 th…
In this special segment, we feature four founders sharing how they dealt with one thing they didn't expect to face as a founder -…