084: Money Talks #12: Challenger Bank Brands - Bó, Revolut & N26

0:10 Hey there, welcome to money. Never sleeps podcast. Looks inside the head of entrepreneurs and it what makes them do what they do. I'm Pete Townsend from knowing Adventures, your co-host of money, never sleeps. Along with Owen, Fitzgerald. This episode of money. Never sleeps is kindly sponsored by Ireland's fintech and financial services recruitment specialist, top-tier recruitment, fewer colleague need, help attracting retaining great talent for Core financial services company. It is highly advisable that you build a relationship of the team of top. Tier recruitment is a really know their stuff. You can find them at top-tier Recruitment.com and tell him we sent you this week. We've got another money talk, special segment with a comeback kid. I want Fitzgerald House meeting into a few of the things that happen in the past week in, tech, Venture deals and the topics we generally cover in our day jobs. So, let's just get right to it with this week's episode of money, never sleeps.

1:03 Here we go. Again. Welcome to money, never sleeps. We're recording today from the home studio. And in this episode, we're looking at three pieces of content from this week that are relevant to us in this Cosmic cloud of startups and Enterprise that we operate in. And hopefully, it's also important to all of you are faithful listeners. We've got Owen, Fitzgerald back again this week. How you doing today? Bro? Pretty good. I'm tired. It's been a long day, but I've been looking forward to catching up. To chat. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, it's been, you know, I'm getting used to not spending much time outside of the house, but it's just really not healthy. Not leaving the house at all on any given day. Is it? I know I'm Joe and I find any party find the same obviously trying to work with kids. By the end of the day.

1:47 That guy five, loads of books here that I really want other I've ordered or halfway through reading but actually just the energy levels for sitting down and then reading a book at the end of the day. Sometimes I'm just like, no now it'll put your eyes believe them. Watching Netflix is something absolutely snow. All right. Well, we're going to take a look at three. This is all on the theme of Challenger Banks and not only just in the context of startups, but also the Enterprise level and the big news from earlier this week. Actually it was late last week. Was it RBS axed their digital Bank bow, right? That was reported by TechCrunch on the first of May.

2:28 So that would have been Friday last week. Week also a bunch of other outlets, but I just pick this one from TechCrunch because it seems to be the most interesting one. So Beau was the digital Bank developed by R vs. / NatWest. It is to shutter just six months after launching publicly and Gathering 11,000 customers. The incumbent Banks consumer Challenger brand. It was their attempt to build a start-up within a larger bank and in the longer term compete with trendy upstart banking apps as Bordered by TechCrunch, including those such as Manzano, revolute, Starling and others. The bank plans to focus on metal which is its small business banking Challenger brand, which is the author Steve-O here. Reported had already begun to assimilate bow, after the two respective teams were moved into the same building. I know and I think the world knows because it's public information that metal came out of a partnership between eleven fs and RBS in 2019 that they had been working on. On for, at least, I think 12 to 18 months. So 11 FS must be pretty.

3:34 Happy to see metal take the lead with in, RBS, in terms of their Challenger Brands, but, you know, they're consolidating the to, they had already done a bit of a consolidation with the aqua higher up, the loot team, which was kind of a millennial / student geared Challenger Bank app. I think we've seen this before we're going to see it again. What do you think about it own? Yeah, I mean Is this is an interesting one because this one didn't get off to a good start. Anyway, I mean, aside from anything else. They launched the brand and said, oh, here's a name, that's unique to the World on was like, well, no, see Irish cow, you know, you're like you're paying somebody in marketing to come up with a brand name. I just think it like Cash.

4:19 Cow, like no, does it make? It didn't really work. No, but, I mean so they brought in a CEO. I'm trying to remember, Mark Bailey. Yeah. So, I mean he left after two months. So there seemed to be some sort of power thing going on. And then obviously the I thought it was, I thought they made a really smart move by bringing in Allie Purdue and the guys from loose which didn't work out. But I mean he left also and they brought in a lot of our team. But I mean, what do you want to miss her? It was watch for at some point to last couple years were 44 applications for Challenger Bank licenses. For I work. Yeah. This one to me was was on, was going to be something. We're going to see happening anyway, specifically Bow and then, you know, points or a wider issue with the market and these types of companies that can you build a banquet in a bank or outside of a bank or connected to a bank?

5:09 Or you know, what, a certain point manager and they're gonna have to make a choice and in clearly. In this case, the middle choice to get rid of all 11,000 customers is nothing in the scheme of things, when you compare it to what the revolution the manzo's have the competency. The number is ramping up. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, it, it's, you know, they spent 100 million on this, right? It's a lot of money and well, sorry, it is absolutely, but in the scheme of things from internal from a large multinational bank and the money it would spend on the tech side of things. It's probably not that much from their point of view. Oh Yeah. From their point of view, but imagine what, like, a talented fintech team could build with 100 million in six months. Yeah, huge.

5:54 And, you know, I think being within the confines of a regulated bank, they have All different types of compliance requirements. They need to meet with each bill. They have all different types of quality control, which is a good thing but can really slow you down and all those kinds of people are really costly, right. I think it's like I think it's the culture and it's the, you know, the buy-in from senior manager because reality is you're creating this alternative Bank to Target certain types of customers. Put your like a factory shooting one off from the other Sobo can't go after the normal customers and Then the rest of NatWest or / or BS. Can't then go after the types of customers the potion go after.

6:34 But yet, they're all customer would say, yeah, that that's the problem with these things, right? And you know, I've read and as have a bunch of people, the innovators dilemma by Clayton Christensen, and I've read it twice and I talked about this quite frequently and I've talked about it on this podcast before the main lesson from that book is that when corporates are trying to be disruptive with Innovation and new brands, new? Challenger things that they're doing, go set it up as a satellite to the Mothership and keep it far enough away. So that you're not really infecting that satellite with all of the things that have slowed down the mothership over the years and, and beyond that it's cut. It's just a conflict in conflict of interest, in my opinion, in that you've got the business development people, the product management people.

7:25 The marketing people that are all get their bonuses out of the Mothership. The year based upon new accounts, being opened new customers, new credit lines. Nevermind Wells Fargo. We all need to get into that, right, but how can you like, like you said, how can you where do you draw the line right between? Okay, you can go after these customers, but our Challenger brand needs to go after these other customers. And that's it, just doesn't seem right, you know, so I'd say just, you know, what is it that you actually really want with this. Challenger brand. It's not necessarily the Challenger brand. It's the functionality, right? It's the app.

8:07 It's everything that you get from the experience that keeps you surprised and delighted over and over again. Do you need to really go set up a brand new Challenger brand to do that as a big bank? No, just make your app better. Yeah. Well, there's that but I suppose what you want they want to be able to do is they want to be able to launch this Bank on the side that can do all of the stuff that the Big Bang wants to do but Do it quicker and better. So I worked in an unnamed German bank and we propose that piece of work to it. Like a very large customer around the kind of dashboard for managing accounts monetary accounts globally. And that would and they loved it. And we said great, welcome back to us in two years when we build it for you.

8:48 It's that sort of thing. So like, you know, the issue is transforming your existing bank because the reality is it was I don't think it works. Try build this and have it attached to it. He feels like you said, it needs to be far enough at arm's length, that they can't have much, say, over it to a degree. But if your truck is still trying to keep it very much attached to your big bank and reality is it should I don't think is going to work out and I think you're better off. Trying to adjust focus on transforming your business. So don't actually you as the as the bank can adapt and roll out those products and their to do things better and faster instead of just trying to like bold on this thing on the side that supposedly going to do everything greater. Yeah, and I wonder What the, you know, the over-under is is that still right from my American football days? Have I lost that much touch.

9:37 Was it under over under over under over under? Now the over-under explain what exactly that means because I do want to follow an American football. I always hear it mentioned them like it's not like what they have to score by or have to store more than those points, you know, for you to win the bet or whatever. Yeah, you can, you could place a bet on whether the combined score of the two teams is either over or Under a certain amount, right? You know, so but the over-under really to get back to this on how many corporate clients that are vs. /, NatWest brought through the bow office as a kind of petting zoo type experience for these big corporate clients to get this. Warm fuzzy feeling that RBS / that West where a really Innovative Forward Thinking back. It's like look, we're launching.

10:29 And you know, our own Challenger brand, right? And listen, I don't know. Alison Rose is CEO. I feel like I'm slacking her a bit. So I'm going to step back from that, from that line of thought. I'm just going to let that one lie, and I think, you know, I like she said in the article, it was listen were prioritizing right on where we choose to invest and this is a place where we choose not to invest any more. So I think like I said, I come back to then, you know, choosing to invest like 100 million in the scheme of what their Tech cost. Be every year is probably very little, I know. But that's the problem. Right? That's a problem. With big bang and Banks aren't going to be able to get away from this. You can't just change A banks. Technology platform in three or four years.

11:11 You can't do it. And everyone that is coming at this from a fintech angle and the last five to ten years. They have the benefits of being based on 2010 to 2015, to 2018, grade technology, right? Which is just completely different than the banks that are operating on platforms. That are an average age. Of 37 years old, right, you're just you're just not going to get there. So, you know, I think try to compare the two too much is difficult, but you can actually, you know, I think what Alison Rose did here is, you know, let's fail fast, which is startup 101. It's all right, so but I do think it matters. What you're like where you're focusing on because I think you know, this one is more interesting in some of the other ones.

11:54 Like JPMorgan shoot-down fan earlier. Yeah, this year. I think it was like this is more interesting because of choose. To keep metal going. So I'll give you think about it from the bank's point of view. Like really what I'm trying to do here on the challengers side. They're just trying to keep up with the times and be cool. Like, you know, all of the other cool challenges out there and trying to make sure that they're still seen in the same degree to a different type of consumer, but realistically, you know, by keeping the likes of metal to really just want to doing is bringing some Innovation but not a huge amount of innovation to the corporate customers because ultimately those guys, those guys going to stay with you any way I want Yeah, I'm starting previous work. Whereby, you know, you can you go to your large corporate customer and you're like, oh we've made this like change things and how you can get your like Doc your heel and statements online, and when I'm printing them in, posting them to you and then I got, it's great because I'm not going to move from you.

12:45 Mr. Big bank. Anyway. Yeah. No, I know what you mean. And and if you think about that from that angle, which is a really good point O, and that would you rather be a business banking customer of metal, right, which is backed by RDS. Or a revolute, right and revolute business. I know from experience that I would pick metal seven days a week and twice on Sunday, right? So, you know, at for my business account for my personal spending and moving back and forth, you know, between currencies absolutely revolutes. Brilliant, but, you know, not from a business perspective yet. They've got a long way to go on that. Note revenue or segue there. But thank you.

13:28 Thank you. If there's one thing I learned from the 11 FS guys doing podcast with them a couple years ago. It was the segue right? The revolute is on the hunt for Acquisitions. And this was in the Ft today. Wednesday, the 6th of May, as we're recording this, they're looking to use some of the proceeds from its recent, 500 million fundraising to by rival technology companies that have been hit by the coronavirus pandemic. So they raise 500 million from investors in February, valuing them at 5.5 billion, which is a nice big chunky, number. That's a funny thing about these, big valuations. You can't actually cash out at that point. It's a completely illiquid asset, because, yeah, if you try to the value, would drop considerably but away from that nixed, Iran ski, who's the CEO of revolute? Said, that, they're targeting deals in areas such as travel aggregation, which was a surprise to me, when I read it. But when I thought about it, it it got me thinking and that would allow Revenue customers to buy flights or rent cars through the revolute app.

14:28 We travel Winds are finally lifted. And who knows when that will be, we had to cancel a family holiday to the state's coming up in July because we just don't know when we're going to be able to leave Ireland, which is fine. But, you know, so so the if I'm thinking about the budget for that, a lot of aggregators must must be think a lot of Big World issues. Anyway, a lot of them are in trouble at the moment, you know, and Nick store on ski said, we could probably purchase one and sell flight tickets at cost and be ten to fifteen percent cheaper than everyone else. So this is A weaving in a very interesting Direction. When they said by some rival technology companies. I immediately thought of an aqua higher for a crypto wallet, that was incredibly Innovative and that the founding team couldn't commercialize and sell right? So, but they're looking at the travel side. What do you think of all this?

15:20 That was unexpected? Because like, the play here, obviously, with the we can regulate and others is to bring more things into your ecosystem within your app, more partners. It's so like I mean on one hand, yes, it makes sense to clearly lots of good deals and opportunities open the market. I mean, you only have to thank you reference Expedia and obviously they've raised a lot of money recently from the like to Silver Lake like Silver Lake are going into deals left, right and Center. They're effectively becoming the new Berkshire Hathaway. I get a nickname for a lot of companies and where the value is dropped, hugely sort of getting to realize deal. So it makes a lot of sense, that revolute. Another should be raising what is effectively a war chest and to go out and purchase really nice? Add-on businesses. I was surprised. It's true. Like education one but I suppose maybe it's just that they're looking at. Okay.

16:02 What what what particular space is? Can we get a really good deal and that would be one of the first ones you look at. You know, I'd imagine they did expedia's and the booking a calm down. All these are the ones are under a lot of pressure and it's probably a good deal to be had and it's a case of well, you know, we could get that now. So I don't forget us and see what we can figure out what we can do with it. Yeah. Now I'm with you. I'm with you. And it had to me. This feels like it's all about timing, right? It's that Expedia had just raise them. Mmmmm self 3.2 billion, right? And it's like they did that just by chance and February. They've been working on it. Obviously for a number of months, you know, they're going to be fine. But, you know, let's look at some of the others like Travelocity orbits priceline.com, you know, they're gonna probably be in some kind of trouble and you can pick them up at a cheap price, you know, so if you can actually acquire all those assets from those companies, All those relationships that they have at A Cut Rate price. That's something you just can't do in the normal scheme of things without a pandemic on like realistically, what you're looking for.

17:11 So, you know, the travel a creation space for five months ago, probably not. But it's you know, where could we pick up something really game-changing which gives us access to like because I mean a lot of these aggregators obviously because if it's the back to what I'm saying, when we go, whereby, if the revenue plan is to incorporate more and more things into your into your, a pour into your wider ecosystem, but why not go after someone who as part of their offering already knows that. So Expedia booking.com, like, you can get everything through those websites are getting the getting the getting the whole end-to-end. Piece of it already just by acquired one company. So everything that's a, you know, having on Expedia and a while there. But like, what do you can book, flights? Obviously, you can book hotels.

17:56 Believe the book current will all that sort of stuff. The amount of I suppose add-on pieces of red balloons would get by going after a space like that. Yeah, valuable done them. Try to do it bit by bit and integrate all those individual Parts themselves. Yeah, and and now you're thinking laterally and like crash Davis said breathing through your eyelids, so I'm with you. Yeah, there's so much Downstream connectivity that they would get out of one of those deals to buy. One of these companies that would just open up a whole bunch of transaction, charges FX everything. You name it, right? And it just all about that flow II. Don't, you know, I like I said, I don't see, Expedia kind of being in the, in the target for their Acquisitions, you know, I saw today as well Airbnb, they're not a travel avek aggregator, but obviously there, In there in this space, they shut down all their marketing in March.

18:53 They were spending eight hundred million dollars a year on marketing. I don't crazy numbers and that's they now have they put the kibosh on that and that will restart it and a number of months, but it's amazing that you can, you could save that much money. I think they're laying off a whole bunch of people as well. Yeah, 12:33 Imports. So interesting times without one, but it'll be interesting to see. You because obviously I'm the on the other side then in the u.s. You have Alexandria crazy of Cortez and Elizabeth Warren. Try pushing bills in the Senate that will stop large tech companies from doing, mergers and acquisition. Because I think the obvious thing would be to look at the example and say, well, why aren't you picking up companies left? Right and center with your hundred billion on the balance sheet or whatever, what then does the US attorney like actually stop that from happening there. That might, that might impact on the likes of are going to try to do.

19:44 If someone is ruled out for us companies. I don't know what. How much class they'll have with that, actually think it seems, it seems a bit on turn one way because he would argue, it's probably better for some of those companies out in required. Now, what do I think? I think it'll be really interesting one and I'm surprised there hasn't been more detailed stroke already. Yeah. I know. It's, I think everyone's time will come when it comes to these deals. There's consolidation of of Tech players or not even Tech players, but those that are delivering real world services, but completely based on technology. Oh, there you hit a point where there's very little differentiation between them and it just going to make a lot of sense to consolidate them.

20:25 But hopefully the barriers won't go up in the US to prevent that from happening because it should happen. One of the other things with revolute. Is that a Monday? It announced. It had finally started operating as a full bank and Lithuania were secured. Its first banking license and late 2018. Probably just to do things like current accounts now, they're actually able to do lending and those types of things. So, you know, they're going to keep Adding on these Services going to be really interesting to see, you know, can they provide credit for you to actually go on holiday? Right? And now, that type of that type of linkage between the travel aggregators. In the end, the lending business Lithuania, I thought was a neighboring country to Germany, but it's not. I just looked at my map.

21:07 So, geography lesson. It's actually next to Poland, which is next to Germany, which is a lead into the next point on and 26. So they just raised a hundred million. And, and that was reported in finestra today and they're extending their series D round to 570 million and they're valuing it at 3.5 billion, you know, which is just a little couple billion down between friends between revolutes, valuation, and then 26, is valuation, the joined by all the, all the core investors. In this round Valor Ventures who's backed by Peter Thiel, tencent Holdings, which is interesting to read that. I was never really aware of that tencent in one of the Financial Brands behemoths obviously that they have a piece of n 26, which is kind of their European banking play.

21:55 Obviously early bird Ventures, who we know, Insight Partners a big name, a leonce x, which I think is Ali Oz, corporate Venture, fund GIC, and Singapore, who we know as well. Owen and then Greyhound Partners, all of these are in this and 26 raise. Now again, 100 million topping up their series D, taking it to 570 million. Not that At big difference maker on the global scale, right? We just said that RBS, spent 100 100 million on Bo, you know, and 26 took in 100 million to actually, you know, Bridge them to their series. He probably they've developed quite interested me because they have five million users in Europe, racked up 250,000 users in the US after launching last year and also smartly, in my opinion.

22:42 And I think it, everybody else's opinion, exited the crowded, UK filled with manzo's, Starling and revolute. All Ahead of them. They're the bottom of the list in terms of accounts, probably above bow, but below everybody else and we know an-26 well enough I met sarunas the gekas last year. He's a general manager for greater Europe looking after their smaller, European markets, like Portugal Ireland. I had a pint with him at Mulligan's in Dublin and unfortunately actually for me it was just water because I was driving that's almost like sand to have water in Mulligan's which is like the best plan. Again, it's in Dublin or one of the best pint of Guinness in Dublin. And another time when he's back. I'll have a true point with them and all.

23:23 Would you interview their former head of Partnerships? I look at that today on LinkedIn. I didn't know that that he'd left at the Dublin Tech Summit last year and we joined him on it. Episode 43 Dan Calvert. He's now. Mym, why would you like a Kate? Yes, startup. It's a catering business or something like that. Hope he's doing well. Anyway, long intro into this. Hang on 1026, you know, given that we don't yet have mons over Starling available at to us here in Ireland. With a shout out to a lane D and from Starling Ireland. Let's just focus on and 26 versus revolute. Why would you choose one over the other?

24:04 Besides the obvious of FX, four, revolute, that's kind of the question? And it comes back to the previous conversation. We're having about, you know, the the 44 Challenger Bank licenses being applied from UK and stuff. Like I mean how much difference is there between We know any of them or do than, you know, who's got to, who's built a critical mass. I got, I find these announcements kind of strange in one had. Like it sounds great and everyone looks at everyone focusing on the valuation. But like in reality most of them are just raising Runway because they're still not making enough money yet. So every time there's a raised, its what was this one series, 350 series Hemi and then the next one, you know, there'll be another hundred million plus for the next one or whatever.

24:46 And obviously, they're all I'm trying to chase getting into the lending space to be at actually, lend proper money. Maybe bring in proper profit so that they do not only to raise another hundred million or 200 million. So they're kind of unusual. I want to, like I said, everyone's focusing on the valuation. I mean, there's so much difference between any of them. I'm sure if they're all sitting around a table, it would tell us differently, but I suppose, you know, you hit the nail on the head earlier when we were talking to her of it as part of the intro there, when you're talking about starting a munzo and 26 Revolution like they're the four. Main players. I would say I would expect the rest will fall off. How much of a difference is there between all of them. I can't see that. There's a huge difference. I don't know what your view on it is. But yeah.

25:29 No, I mean I've used both and 26 is kind of that's my allowance, right? So that's where I put the money that I have is my own spending money each month. There's a number of bills and we talked about this before when we covered the myths of fintech with that Chris. Enter did with Ann Bowden and and that, you know, there's a number of utilities or service providers or accounts that I have Financial accounts that I have that won't accept. And I ban that doesn't start with ie, right in terms of where the money is paid from. So I can't use my in 26 account for that because that starts with d e for Germany, right?

26:11 So, until the European market, kind of opens up a bit more, I can't use that. 26 for everything. So although I'd be comfortable doing that and completely switching over to end 26 for everything for my personal account. It's just not feasible. Just because the rest of the world hasn't caught up yet. I do like the experience of being able to have the things, like, Apple pay is fully integrated and the Irish bank that I'm with. It's not and they don't have a an indicator for when they might ever be ready for Apple pay, which is, you know, again, back to the point of Legacy banking. For sure that we talked about, you know, it is what it is. And I use, I use revenue and lost but a loss in terms of Reno, like what I actually find these revolute for the most is that in terms of managing the kind of grocery bills and stuff like that is that I'll top it up, top it up for the week when a certain amount and then obviously, we all know about a Tracker. We spent on groceries and stuff like that. I download our, I put myself, I set myself up on the trading partners to by fractional shares because it felt like it was Oleg comparison to a company.

27:18 I'm working with at the moment. Give me a bit of insight into what some of the other companies are doing. Okay, and that was incredibly slick. It took me like two minutes and I did like even the terms of reference and all the sort of documents. Like they were, you know, they weren't, you know, I'll scroll through and pretend I read hundreds of pages and fine until I get to the take the bit at the bottom. It was all fairly well explained that I thought was very slick to be set up and then I get to the point to do I want on my account on like nope. I just want to see how it worked and it was very sick, you know. Yeah, very straightforward. So You know, I think offering like that, I would say that the more the show, so intimately, it's the more they can bring into their ecosystem. To me is always going to be what will drive me to switching things over.

27:59 But again, that piece of, if I can, if I can set it up to pay by direct debit from my electricity over them and will then, you know, I'm only ever going to use it for the not important things. Yeah. I know, I know and revolute. I really only use when I traveled to the US, that's all I use it for n. 26, gives me that budgeting that you just talked about. Out, it's funny. I had to move, I was gonna move a bit of money to over to coinbase it because it some watching the Bitcoin price like a hawk. And so it started from my end 26 account on Friday because of the bank holiday in Ireland, but it took until Tuesday for that money to go from n 26, two revolute, because revolute was the only account that I had had linked to my coinbase account, right? So then I moved it onto.

28:47 They afternoon from revolute to coinbase and it was in coin basis, account in a matter of a half hour. So something's going on there, you know, in terms of, okay, went from a German iban over to a UK iban four, revolute in basically what three calendar days. But then it took 30 minutes to get out of the gbi, ban the UK iban of revolute back to to Estonia, which is On the other side of Lithuania, and Germany, and so on and so forth, geography lesson kids, don't listen, because I got it all wrong. But like you, you would wonder because I mean, for someone looking at both of them are, you know, a couple of the options. Like, like what are you looking forward to it? Because, like I said, there are some there are some Integrations that aren't there.

29:37 There are some, some products or whatever you want to buy, they won't accept it. So, like, I'm I don't see them looking at us in the same way that I'm looking at all, when I open up a bank. Our intent. Not to me is fundamental issue here, is that if I can't do everything that my normal buying can do like they can do a hell of a lot of you do probably everything better. But if, if I cut, if they can't get accepted in the same way as my normal buying calls, and I'm not going to move everything across. Yeah. I think when Starling does actually launched here and it looks like it's going to be 20 21 at this stage. There will be obviously, a starling Bank Ireland, iban that everyone will be able to use so that I can just hook up all the direct debits there. I've said it before on this. Podcast and I'll say it again. I'll happily move everything over to Starling bank. And that means n 26 will go waiting on their product development.

30:25 People to say whether or not that means revolute could go as well but I using transferwise now, even anyway, Jesus, this is like the Geeks of fintech. You know, who's got what card I think, but to put that up on the artwork for this episode, anyway, Anything else jumping out at you this week with with any of these topics that you thought were interesting. No, there was an I haven't looked into a deep, you know, if I was reading Chris scanners report on wire card, which I thought was interesting in relation to some itself and its I suppose it's interesting specifically because it relates to a lot of this because it should have see drives a lot in the background for somebody's kind of in Tech startup, so or records and look like I said I was reading it but I haven't really Laughs into it to necessarily give it to detail other than it seems to be a lot of issue around auditing because it's actually what made me think of it there.

31:16 When you were talking about money, going to from one account into another account in the Stony and stuff like that. But my co-workers clients our Revolution Adam buying tandem bike tied here or what the what the auditor seem to be saying is that they can't track some of the revenue like over a billion of Revenue that they're saying they had because it all has to do with the thing called rent, ripping where money would leave a banking work hard. It's in Germany and go off to a foreign country which looks like it's going to a customer and then we also didn't appear back in her day, back in were cards account. Yeah, it was on the financial times yesterday. I think. So, that's interesting Main. And like, it's interesting because I had dealings worker before in the past.

31:56 But actually, it's interesting because they drive a lot of the Innovation that's behind and a lot of payments behind on the challengers. Yeah. I saw that too. I looked at it last year because the client of mine Had asked me to do a kind of Market radar. Look at some of the different fintax out there that might be able to sneak up behind them. And one of the ones they actually mentioned was wire card and that was about a week before the news came out and broke last year that ft had investigated. What had been going on at wire card. And so I excluded them from the the review because they said, listen these guys are running into trouble. I don't know if they're actually going to come out of this.

32:36 They did come out of it. And it looked like things were back to normal for them. And then now this KPMG audit is poked a few more holes in it. So the funny thing seems to be the workers hired KPMG to prove TFT wrong. There's no looks like that. They've made it worse. Yeah. Yeah, I'd say yeah, some heads are going to roll over that one. But you know KPMG got to do their job, right? You know, the letters got an audit. Yeah. So just a little bit. You have you seen anything interesting last few days? Well, Again, my Fanboy status keeps attracting me to Andreessen Horowitz a 16z what they're doing. They can't make topped out there crypto funded 515 million. I think it was something that gave some insight into how they were going to be deploying that.

33:24 And I think, defy or decentralized Finance is a big component of that. Which is the, the alternate economy that has really sprung up over the last five, six years in the crypto space, which is using Cryptocurrency balances for, for Lending for all different types of staking different things that you can do that are far easier to do with crypto than they are to do with fiat currency. So not surprised. Because if anybody's going to be able to raise that big of a fund specifically for investing in the crypto space and again, it's not they're going out to buy Bitcoin, right? They're going out doing the picks and shovels, right? Those that that are provided, the infrastructure for the continued expansion of this.

34:08 Turn it economy. That is moving at a very quick pace. So, I thought that was interesting and I not to rain on your parade or anything. But I do feel like Angie's in Harvard's could raise 500 million fund to invest in literal picks and shovels, dude. I think you're exactly right. You know, I've got this great, this great icon of picks and shovels that I use in some presentations for folks and I think I might just swap out that a 16z logo and I I think going forward and put picks and shovels in there because you're right. Some tell me this. Before we wrap up water, you're reading at the moment. So I mentioned earlier but being too tired to read, but I do have a couple of interest in one's going to work my way through you reading, anything good.

34:49 I am reading something called something about a moth creative Capital. No, but she was to keep all this stuff in. Ya know who be funny. I'm looking at my kids book list right now because that's taken over my Kindle because they're now reading that it's not Harry Potter. It's not shaking the fourth Industrial Revolution. It's something about a fucking moth. Where is he? The second. The Lonely Planet innovators dilemma. Second bounce.

35:30 The ball. Pedro Flash, Boys. Yeah. I'm going right through it. I don't know. Oh, and what are you reading? What am I reading? I read two books. I'm trying to make my way to two books and about really good, slow reads, one is dollars and cents which is by Don arale. He's the kind of be some really popular, TED talks about behavioral, finance and he's worked with. I think he works currently with with lemonade or has advised them. Yes, he's written a number of books. Very funny that can be put in, check out his dad dollars and cents. So it's how people Miss think money and had to spend smarter, but he said, Like scientists, so it's fascinating but he's really interesting characters once and she listened to some of the TED Talks because he is very funny. So it's an interesting one and then the other one is because I have a slight just to make sure I get the guy's name, right? I spotted, this one was recommended to meet Amazon. Thank you Amazon.

36:26 It's called talking to my daughter, a brief history of capitalism. So it's by yanis varoufakis. Who was the former Finance Minister for Greece at the time of the hell. Yeah. Yeah crisis, so he's pretty left-wing. He's like supposedly one of the prominent Economist Finance ministers in Europe or had been any very well respected and it was a joy. It's an interesting one because it's a really what he does is he like he's writing or he's actually writing a conversation to his 15-year old daughter, but he's explaining in relatively simple terms about how we Comics works and why it's the most important drama or a times but he uses a whole lot of things like use as Sister, he passed Frankenstein. The Matrix all these sort of things to just explain different country concept.

37:14 So when I go, I studied economics as part of my degree all those years ago, but like, I don't think I really got it in the sense of, you know, the practical sense of it. Yeah, but no one's really interesting. I'll have a look at. I have a look at both of those. I was able to find the name of the book that I am actually reading right now. So it's called it's called moth smoke, the first novel by mohsin Hamid, author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist. So I read The Reluctant Fundamentalist first and both books are kind of a look at their fiction and it's a look at culture in Pakistan. And those that are still there, those that have left. And what the impact of how people are raised there is on their looks like they're longer term relationships.

38:01 Right? So, you know, just taking a bit of a shift away from all the books about VC and startups, just to refuel the creativity. And like we said before, give me more of a lateral wide view and let me to allow me to breathe through my eyelids once again, alright, well, we'll wrap it up there. It was great to dive into In 222 fintech to challenge your Banks and books that I just couldn't remember it. So, thank you. Thank you. Alright, so talk to me.

38:41 That wraps it up folks. Thanks for listening to us. Try to figure out why the world does what it does. The links for the stories. We covered, or in the show notes for this episode on money, never sleeps that IE. So check us out online. Remember, if you are a colleague deed help, attracting retaining great talent or your fin Tech or Financial Service Company. It is highly advisable that you build a relationship with the team at top-tier recruitment, is a really know their stuff. You can find them at top-tier recruitment.com. Also, thanks to Conan Brophy, from create sound for recording and editing this podcast. As for me, I increase the odds of startup success. DM me on Twitter at Pete Townsend and V. If you want to know more, you can following on Twitter at 0 and Fitzgerald nine finally till next time. Thanks for listening. See you.