The F in Tech Podcast Elliott Gotkine

When he got his first taste of startup life, in San Francisco, freshly-graduated Freddy Kelly did a few months at culinary school on the side. Little did he know that years later, his baking skills would help him blag his way into a conference by virtue of a chocolate cake he'd baked. He met Credit Kudos's first investor there, and his fintech - an open banking credit-reference company - was off to the races. It hasn't stopped running since.

In its early days, banks tried to block Bankin’. Some set up call centres, warning customers of the danger of using the personal finance app, and encouraging them not to use it. On one occasion, they even called Joan, not realising that he was the fintech's co-founder. Nowadays, with open banking, it's a different story; banks, for the most part, are cooperative. And Bankin' is now blossoming into one of Europe’s leading consumer finance apps - with a potential B2B spinoff to boot.  

Some people thought launching a fintech during a pandemic was crazy. Then Banxware - a Germany-based, white-labelled SME lending platform - saw its banking partner, Wirecard, blow up. Since then, it's been relatively plain sailing! 

How Yoshi Yokokawa is enabling the world to have Robinhood-style access to financial markets and crypto, and why the Alpaca co-founder & CEO feels the furry camel cousin best symbolises this ambition. 

How Olivier Jaillon cheated death, and survived the failure of his U.S. startup, to reinvent a 200-year old insurer-turned-insurtech, Wakam. 

How having investors from day one helped wealth management platform, Elinvar, get off to a flying start, and why co-founder and CEO, Chris Bartz, says that doesn’t mean there was any less pressure. Fun fact: "elinvar" is an alloy of iron, nickel, chromium, and other constituents, resistant to rust and magnetization and having a low rate of thermal expansion.