Episode 1 with Valentina Kristensen, Director of Growth & Communications at Oaknorth

What a great way to kick-off the podcast!

For our first episode I’m joined by Valentina Kristensen, Director of Growth & Communications at Oaknorth.

Valentina was one of those lucky few who found themselves at university amidst the global financial crisis in 2007/2008, trying to figure out what path she could take after graduating. After witnessing the effect of the financial downturn she decided that she wanted to bring the trust back into banking – she has been a resounding success in the pursuit of that goal. From being a modest start-up when she joined Oaknorth, they are now a business of over 600 staff globally and are set for continued stellar success!

I’m delighted to have shared the mic with Valentina, who shared some great insight into her career, the success of Oaknorth and how she sees the sector is evolving.

Podcast transcript:

Lloyd Wahed: [00:00:02] Welcome to Searching for Mana. The podcast focused on tech innovation in finance, fintech. I’m Lloyd Wahed and I’m a headhunter. I’m privileged to spend my days meeting with some of the influencers, leaders and founders in technology and finance from unicorn companies to financial disruptors. This podcast – we’re gonna be hearing from these individuals and really trying to understand how they got into fintech, what they’re doing, what their company is all about, and perhaps some of the trends that they’re looking at in the market. In this episode, our guest is Valentino Kristensen, director of Growth and Communications at Oaknorth. In 2007, Valentino found herself, amidst the financial crisis at university, trying to determine what career path to take. She decided that she wants to bring the trust back to banking, and she’s certainly been involved in that. The fintech boom over the last five years. Oaknorth have gone from a modest start up when she joined to over 600 employees globally today. And it looks like they’re set for stellar success. It’s a really interesting episode. I hope you enjoy it.

Lloyd Wahed: [00:01:15] Valentina, Oaknorth, thanks for coming in today.

Valentina Kristensen: [00:01:19] Thanks for having me.

Lloyd Wahed: [00:01:20] Pleasure. We’re in our shell of a new office.

Valentina Kristensen: [00:01:26] I like it. It’s got nice, clean white walls and like furniture, stone boxes. It kind of reminds me of the early days of Oaknorth.

Lloyd Wahed: [00:01:33] Yeah, that’s that’s how we’ve designed it. We’re gonna keep it like this. So if we have we always retain that startup vibe. So to start with could you just talk us through Oaknorth in brief please.

Valentina Kristensen: [00:01:49] Sure, Oaknorth is a business that is fundamentally trying to improve the way that lower mid-market businesses. So that’s sort of I guess, scale ups rather than startups and how they obtain debt finance to grow their business. It was founded by two entrepreneurs who had actually had a pretty negative experience and trying to obtain debt finance while scaling their previous business. So we tackle the problem sort of in a two pronged approach. We have a platform that we use to, we license other banks to help them do mid-market lending more effectively in their own markets. And then we use that platform in the UK to lend off our own balance sheet via Oaknorth Bank.

Lloyd Wahed: [00:02:30] And why would banks choose to license that platform? They’re just behind on the technology?

Valentina Kristensen: [00:02:35] So I think it’s a couple of things. I mean, there’s definitely from all the banks that we’ve spoken to and we’ve now spoken to, you know, dozens and dozens, all over the world. And there’s definitely a recognition that this is a part of the market that has been dramatically underserved for decades. If you look at where the tech investment has really been historically, it’s been much more at the lower end of the market. So if you look in the US, you’ve got platforms like Cabbage, Lending Club. Here in the UK, you’ve got iwoca, Funding Circle. In China, you’ve got Ant Financial. But that’s very much focused on much smaller loans, typically tens of thousands of pounds rather than the millions. And where we’re playing is in that sort of next stage where the business actually doesn’t really need an off-the-shelf product. They need something that’s very bespoke to their business, that looks at the assets in their business and their unique situation and enables them to draw down the capital in a flexible way, in a way that works their business.

Lloyd Wahed: [00:03:29] Right. So an example of one of the companies in the lower end of the market might be somebody who’s actually trading on Alibaba or eBay, for instance, and needs to buy some stock and then makes a profit on that.

Valentina Kristensen: [00:03:42] Correct.

Lloyd Wahed: [00:03:42] And in terms of the mid level, could you give us an example of a company you’ve lent to?

Valentina Kristensen: [00:03:49] Sure, so Oaknorth Bank in the UK, one of the businesses that we’ve lent to, and I’m going to say this because I’m drinking coffee right now, but Leon – so they’re pretty well-known brand on the High Street. I think they got about 60 sites now across the UK and at the time that we did the loan with them, I mean, it was August of 2016. So literally, you know, a few months after the Brexit vote, which I think..

Lloyd Wahed: [00:04:11] I’ve been familiar with Leon for many years. Yeah, they were founded..

Valentina Kristensen: [00:04:17] I mean, they were founded, you know, almost as I think of 18 years ago. But they like when they came to us, they’d about half the number of sites – at about 33 sites.

Lloyd Wahed: [00:04:24] And so in that instance, they’re looking to accelerate or actually at that point, you know, financially, they need to secure the capital? A combination?

Valentina Kristensen: [00:04:33] So, I mean, it was that they wanted to continue to grow their business. So they used the capital to open other 30 sites, hire another 1000 people. And, you know, one of the benefits of coming to us is that, you know, that’s the only product we do is SME loans. Right. We don’t offer current accounts, credit cards. So they could stick with their clearing bank at the time and continue to sort of have the day to day financial support from them and then come to us for a loan quickly. That was, you know, property structure for that business.

Lloyd Wahed: [00:05:02] Yeah. So a lot of the technology platform element in the lending business is trying to drive that decision to be more risk averse, more accurate, more bespoke. That’s what is fundamentally different to, perhaps, a lender 20 years ago. At this mid level – a few guys specifically – what is your technology allowing you to do?

Valentina Kristensen: [00:05:28] So if you think about, I mean, I suppose it’s it’s broken down into two things that as the credit analysis and there’s the monitoring. So going past the lingo on that, the credit analysis, if you’re looking to do a loan, you’ll typically have a credit analyst who will manually pull together the 30 to 40 page document that has all the information you need to make an informed decision on the loan. And that will be things like how did the sector perform in the last two economic cycles? How would it fare if it lost, let’s say, its five largest clients, if if relevant for that particular business or sector, what is the average footfall? What is the average occupancy rate? What are seasonality fluctuations? What’s the location? So let’s say if you take location as an example, you’re looking to do loan to a care home. You will have someone, who will think, OK, well, how close is this care home to the nearest train station, the nearest supermarket, the nearest post office? Amenities like that that might be useful..

Lloyd Wahed: [00:06:25] So that’s so tailored per company?

Valentina Kristensen: [00:06:26] Absolutely. It will be. Isn’t that that’s a manual process where you have someone literally going into Google Maps and typing in the location of the care home and then being like, okay, the nearest transition is 0.2 miles, 0.4 miles. Whereas if you can create technology, you can create an algorithm that can do that in a fraction of a second. So it’s really pulling together all the different parts for each type of sector, the different data points that you need to look at and then using technology to pull that data together much more quickly than a human could, which then is a benefit to the credit analyst because they can then get soft in the next deal. And it’s a benefit to the relationship manager or the originator because they can then actually spend more time getting to know that customer and also out on the road finding new deals. The second piece of the puzzle is the monitoring side. So what typically happens in big banks is they put together a period of time during the year with a go and look at their loans. They go through the data and they say, OK, the monthly financial and operations data on this. OK, this looks good. Or we actually had four late payments from this company or actually this company is not doing very well at all. It looks like they are going to default now. And unfortunate when you when you did in that regard, you spot problems a bit too late. And then a default is inevitable. What our platform does is that it proactively flags up any potential issues before they’re actually going to be problems so that we can have a conversation with the borrower and say we can see things are trending towards a certain direction and you might want to look at this and address that. And over the four years that we’ve been lending, we’ve had we had about 20 adult conversations. The vast majority of which have gone phenomenally well because the customers actually really glad that you’ve spotted something and which they were we hadn’t seen themselves because they were so busy running their business. And then in the, you know, the few instances where they disagree and they say, you know, actually, I think our business is fine and I do disagree with what the data is showing. Then they can refinance with another bank.

Lloyd Wahed: [00:08:20] Yeah. Okay. So if we look at Brex in America, which is all over the headlines right now for reaching a valuation in an incredibly short period of time, coming out of Y Combinator, I think a similar valuation perhaps to to your business. What are you guys doing that’s different. From my understanding, they’re looking at earliest stage businesses that are going three rounds of venture capital funding. And based on those companies continuing to get those rounds, they will keep providing credit. The businesses that you’re in business with, are more mature typically and aren’t venture capital across the board. They are looking for debt finance.

Valentina Kristensen: [00:09:08] Exactly. So we only offer debt funds and we don’t invest in businesses. And just as you say, that’s sort of more mature. That’s why we sort of describing the scale ups rather than startups. So they they typically have to be profitable trading for a few years. And many businesses, I mean, Leon as an example. They’ve they’ve gone through most multiple credit cycles yet.

Lloyd Wahed: [00:09:26] So internally you structured similar to a private equity business.

Valentina Kristensen: [00:09:32] I mean, that’s something that we work with a lot of private equity companies because in some cases they either want to borrow from us to invest or they partner with us on a deal where a borrower wants a combination of debt and equity. And they often say: so much of your business is like what I see it at private equity down to the level of your underwriting, which is sort of line by line extremely robust underwriting, similar to what you would do in a PE firm. But also in a PE firm, you meet the investment committee, right? So you sit down and you pitch your business. And that is also something t hat’s quite unique to Oaknorth, because we invite every borrower to come in and meet credit committee and discuss their borrowing needs directly with the decision makers. So there are things like that where we’ve tried to take some of the best elements of private equity, but obviously it’s for debt. So it’s not quite as expensive.

Lloyd Wahed: [00:10:17] So it’s incredibly exciting times with Oaknorth. And Valentina, your journey, perhaps you could just bring us up short.

Valentina Kristensen: [00:10:26] So I actually was working with Rishy and Joel, our co-founders, since summer of 2015, and that was really as a communications consultant. There’s not much need to to bring in someone to run incomes before you’ve actually launched. So we were working together for a few months prior to launch. And shortly after OakNorth Bank got its banking license. And then I was seconded sort of towards the end of 2015. And I think sort of after a few, a few months, definitely both sides felt that it was a really good fit. This was, you know, when we were no less than 40 people. So a very different company to where we are today. Much, not much. Not as nice offices as the ones we have.

Lloyd Wahed: [00:11:12] How many people are there now?

Valentina Kristensen: [00:11:13] 650 globally. And so that was really a good fit and a good cultural fit, and I definitely believe in the vision. I mean, I’m the daughter of an entrepreneur. So that is sort of the bravest people I know and I know how difficult it is. So I have a huge amount of respect for entrepreneurs and. And so I guess it’s quite fitting that I would end up working for a bank or a company that is that is trying to help them ultimately.

Lloyd Wahed: [00:11:42] And you’ve been focused on joining a startup or a scale up because you can enjoy and appreciate entrepreneurship that you were at that moment.

Valentina Kristensen: [00:11:54] Yeah. I mean, I think for me, actually, it was more so I was I went to university in the midst of the financial crisis. And I always knew I wanted to work in a communications role, but I just didn’t know.

Lloyd Wahed: [00:12:06] Why was that?

Valentina Kristensen: [00:12:06] Actually, it’s because of my mum; going back to – I’m the daughter of an entrepreneur. My mum is a fashion designer. And I used to watch how, you know, she would do a show. They’d put out a press release with some images of the latest collection and those pieces would then appear in the magazines or a stylist would come in and ask to use the dress for a photo shoot. And then you’d have someone come in a week later holding the magazine saying, I’d like to buy this dress. And I just loved the idea that through communications, through being able to write well and take potentially very complex things and whittled them down into something that can fit on one side of paper, that you could then make money. So, but I think the reason I sort of moved towards finance as a focus was because, as I said, I went to university in the middle of the financial crisis and watching the, well, the repercussions of that and the lack of trust that then, rightly, there was in the finance industry and sort of thinking, actually, who needs help right now in terms of rebuilding some of that trust, rebuild their reputation. But also, it looks like because of changes in regulation, there’s going to be a whole new sector born out of this. And I see. And I think anyone could have anticipated just how big the fintech sector would become.

Lloyd Wahed: [00:13:24] Yeah. So it’s a master class in comes and fintechs since the crisis. Do you generally believe that some change from I mean, in 2007, what is it? It’s incentives in companies, making people make ruthless decisions that benefit themselves. Has that fundamentally changed in human nature or their constructs that change that? There’s definitely: we’re on a mission, we want to make finance trusted because that makes business sense. If you’re trying to appeal to, let’s say consumers  – which is the most headline worthy part of fintech in London, probably. What’s actually changed?

Valentina Kristensen: [00:14:04] Well, I think firstly, there’s been a large change in regulation in terms of actually accountabilities. You’ve got things like this new Manager Certification regime, which actually means that individuals have to be held accountable for their act, their actions and the actions of that team. So none of what we saw post-crisis, which was: “well, I wasn’t aware of the..”. Lots of finger pointing and ultimately very few people actually ending up going to prison. And then the other thing is obviously regulation that has helped to open up the market for more competition. So open OakNorth Bank was only able to really come to market because we were able to apply for a banking licence. Obviously, back in 2010, that was Metro Bank, the first UK bank to get a license in 150 years or also my first client out of university. And that was very much why I sort of fell in love with the idea of disruptive finance. But then obviously you’ve seen in other sectors. So if you look in wealth management, you’ve got players such as nutmeg. And if you look in, you know, pensions, you’ve got new fintechs like pensionbee. If you look at trading, stock trading, you’ve got players such as freetrade, Robinhood, Revolut is obviously in that area. So there’s now such a broad market. When you talk about fintech, actually the umbrella fintech, there’s so many different strands of finance that can be applied to it.

Lloyd Wahed: [00:15:22] Yeah, exactly. We’re trying to work out whether as a search firm, we class ourselves as fintech specialists or whether we’re, you know, financial technology. And I’m sure as time is forward, it’s all one and the same. It’s a fusion of the obvious platform, that you put in the financial business and the technologies you operate through. So we’ve seen, let’s say, the first five years of entrance to market, taking or acquiring large amounts of business from the incumbents. How do you see that moving forward, that there will be a myriad of different outcomes, such as acquisitions, IPOs, companies going bust. But right now there’s a number of companies that headline worthy that you’ve just listed through. What’s the next five years for fintech / financial technology?

Valentina Kristensen: [00:16:18] So I think fintech has had a really good few years. I mean, it’s the sector that’s attracting the most investment. It’s a sector that in the UK, it’s it’s a sector that is attracting a lot of talent and there’s huge amount of innovation coming out of it. But I think the challenge for the next five years is going to be around the metrics that we actually use to determine success of these businesses. I think there’s sort of too much of a Silicon Valley mindset of, you know, pursue growth at all costs and be willing to sacrifice profit. And I don’t actually think the two need to be mutually exclusive. I think we’ve proven that right. I mean, we haven’t exactly grown slowly. And we’re a profitable business. And I think, you know, you can’t really apply the same metrics of success. So things like customer growth or revenues, which you apply to, you know, the big tech companies historically. So looking at companies like Google or Amazon and people always say, oh, what took them so many years become profitable. But collectively, between the FAANG companies, it took three and a half years on average to become profitable is actually not that long. But things like customer growth numbers don’t really apply when you talk about fintech because it’s such a heavily regulated sector. No regulator in the world will ever let two and a half billion people bank with the same bank like they would with letting two and half billion people use Facebook, for example. Why? Because there’s a financial crisis every 13 years on average. And we don’t want too big to fail. We don’t want systemically important financial institutions. So actually, there’s regulation that creates a barrier to, in my view, the number of customers that you can actually acquire and therefore you need to find ways to monetize your customers much more quickly. And I think that’s going to be the realization both from investors but also from fintech going forward that they have to make money and they have to look at profits as as an actual metric for success.

Lloyd Wahed: [00:18:13] Yeah. And I think you’ve got to look at what part of the economic cycle you’re in. And that’s been a really great 10 year run. Exactly. Could just keep pushing acquisition. And as long as there’s operational profit underneath at some point, then you can pinch, burning more money and then you can take profit out. But right now, and maybe for two years, there’s been discussions of the end of the cycle. So I’m seeing a lot of change in the mentality. And companies that already have a high revenue, have profit or profit levers clearly make more sense to invest further into. What I wonder is do we end up in five years considering our finance as almost technology companies? So Apple or some of the merchants like Visa who have very strong hold, or will they look like the new version of Goldman Sachs, with a Marcus, for instance?

Valentina Kristensen: [00:19:06] I think so. That’s definitely that will happen. And obviously you’ve seen with Goldman Sachs and Marcus, you’ve seen it with. Is it NatWest and Bo? You’ve seen it with CYBG and B, I mean, this, you know, RBS and mettle. There’s lots of examples you can draw upon of big banks then saying, you know what, the legacy is too complex and we’re just going to create something completely new, new brand, new entity or in the case of Goldman, a Marc.., sorry, Goldman and Marcus that they say Marcus buying Goldman Sachs. So there is clearly a connection with the brand. But actually, if you look at it, I mean, it’s it’s JP Morgan partnering with Apple, it’s Amazon sorry. It’s Goldman Sachs partnering with Apple so that you’re seeing the big tech companies partnering with the big financial institutions much more than you’re seeing big tech companies partnering with the small fintechs, because a small fintechs is still too new and a bit too early stage and don’t quite have the customer numbers to make them interesting enough, quite frankly, to the FAANG or the BAT companies.

Lloyd Wahed: [00:20:07] So from a individual who’s looking to work in one or which of these type of dynamics? Where, I mean, five years ago, like you’re almost an example of an outlier, right? You’ve come from the exact point where there’s a terrible situation happen in finance when you’re in education that’s related to you and you’ve had some commercial experience and you’ve landed into a company that’s just done incredibly well. And it’s been on that journey of like 0 to fintech being the hub in the world is in London. But if you were reassessing that decision now, you know, would you anymore go to, there’s so many variables, I understand this, but generically speaking, would you still go for a in its infancy fintech? Would you start thinking, well, actually, maybe I should be looking to go somewhere where Apple’s got some play with one of the really large financial organisations? Would you actually not be looking at fintech any more?

Valentina Kristensen: [00:21:14] So I think I mean, I would definitely still be living in fintech. I think it just depends on where you are in your life stage and your risk appetite, I guess, because at 21, when you’re out of university, you don’t have any kids, you don’t have a mortgage to pay. You know, and you can afford to sort of take a risk on a startup and hope that it obviously goes, you know, goes far and does very well. But you have no guarantee. But there are equally people who I graduated with who wanted to go and work for the JP Morgans, McKinseys or very big tech companies because, you know, they wanted a degree of security. And also they wanted the nice big salary that these guys were offering graduates. But I think if you’re at this point now, when you may be looking for a career change or looking to come into the sector where I am now, you know, almost 10 years on, I would say, well, actually, my entire risk profile is very different. I would want to join a company that I can see as doing well, and especially given what you’ve said about coming to the end of a cycle. I’d want to join a company that’s profitable, you know, because I’d be a bit too nervous that otherwise joining a company that’s still very much in that early startup phase that’s still waiting for the next to be seen paycheck that I would maybe be made redundant if things turn sour. And I really want that security of being in that company that’s still new and innovative because we’re still only four years old. But we are able to offer that that job security and in a different way than some of the newer guys.

Lloyd Wahed: [00:22:45] And is that the experience at OakNorth insanely credible grads are choosing you guys right now because you’re at this very nice stage.

Valentina Kristensen: [00:22:55] I think that is part of it. It’s also because if you think about I mean, definitely one of biggest growth areas in the company is engineering. About 22 percent of all, as I said, 650 peron team, work in engineering or data science. And, you know, how do you get a fantastic engineer to join you versus going to Amazon or Google where they might have an offer? And I think, you know, it’s the fact that people do want to come in when it’s it’s sort of we’re not quite at floor zero, but we’re definitely not at, you know, one hundred and one hundred thousand plus organization like like Google. So actually people don’t want to be engineer number 50.000 or 10.000, but actually they want to be in the first thousand employees and really make a difference and an impact on how the products produce, but also working very closely with the founders. I mean Google is still a founder led company, but you’re not me bumping into Sergey Brin or Larry Page in the hallway probably as often as, you know, as you would do at OakNorth.

Lloyd Wahed: [00:23:54] And for growth over the next five years, for OakNorth, with some companies, that’s not relying on more engineers, more people. It can be a variety of makeup. It could be like a Warren Buffett type of business where he’s making investments and having portfolio companies. Is it like for you guys internally? So we’ve got 22 percent or thereabout engineers right now. How’s the business split in terms of its funnels?

Valentina Kristensen: [00:24:22] So, I mean, obviously, there’s I guess it’s back goes down to the fact the business is split into two really different quite and different entities. So you’ve got the platform, which is where the the target customer is banks who could use the platform to do mid-market lending more effectively. And then you’ve got the bank where the target customer is, you know, mid-market businesses in the U.K. who are looking for a loan of half a million, up to 50 million pounds. So very different talent that you’ll be recruiting for those different types of businesses, because as a bank, obviously, you’ve got corporate governance and regulatory reporting you have to do. You have sort of people an internal audit compliance, obviously origination teams. And you’ll have credit, you’ll have monitoring, you’ll have client onboarding, people doing due diligence and anti-money laundering, all of that.

Lloyd Wahed: [00:25:11] So the people who are coming with experience to the business from finance predominately.

Valentina Kristensen: [00:25:17] Yes. On the bank side.

Lloyd Wahed: [00:25:18] And then in terms of the trends that you’re seeing in the businesses that are being lent from five hundred thousand to fifty million, what are you seeing trend wise? And so I’m curious in a couple of things like we’re seeing on the high street businesses that are well-known brands going out of business. You mentioned that you guys work in Leon and that’s doing really well. Yeah, I’m trying to wrap my head round. Why does Pret- keep doing well. Let’s say, for instance, another business that fundamentally looks incredibly similar is going out of business. So I think the high street is getting squeezed. And actually I think we are getting what we pay for now. Quality is quite high. It’s so competitive. So that’s that’s interesting to a listener because they see these businesses and experience them. But if you could talk us through those trends that you’re seeing.

Valentina Kristensen: [00:26:05] Sure. And so, I mean, I think, you know, obviously, I don’t know the ins and outs of how Pret vs EAT vs you know, coco di mama, whatever it is, how that how they run their business.

Lloyd Wahed: [00:26:16] But your algorithm does.

Valentina Kristensen: [00:26:19] No, you know, I think what we’re trying to do is I think, you know, the numbers will always tell you so much. And that’s why we kind of take it a step farther by wanting to actually meet the entrepreneurs, because sometimes you can have just about enough on paper to feel comfortable. And then you meet the team and you’re like, okay, this is fantastic. They live and breathe their business. They know the numbers inside out. We want to lend to them equally. You can have scenarios where on paper it’s enough to feel comfortable, but then you meet the team and you kind of feel like actually it looks like they’re just looking for their exit, they don’t seem to be singing off the same hymn sheet. You know, I’m not really sure that they’re in it for the right reasons or the long term. So I think it’s very important to me the businesses, when you look at scenarios like Patisserie Valerie, for example, I mean, you can’t write fraud and underwriting, unfortunately, like. I mean, that’s just that’s not something that you account for. So, you know, unfortunate circumstances. Were things like that happen then, you know, there’s there’s not really a huge amount you can do. And versus obviously, you know, what we’re trying to do is look at businesses. And as we say, stress tests to look at how they would fare if if there was a downturn, if the brexit, if the pound kept on falling and if they, you know, lost their five biggest customers, depending on the type of business that they are. But also having a very diverse portfolio. Right. So we have restaurants, hotels, bars, private equity firms, funds, schools, nurseries, care homes, property developers. So it’s a very broad portfolio and it’s really across the UK.

Lloyd Wahed: [00:27:46] And are you seeing within any of those sections while one or a couple that are more successful in this climate? So, you know, I’ll just, I’ll just list through some examples. The “on” fintech says the interesting dynamic about your business. You know, it could be gyms right now in London are booming. It could be property development. Where if you have a business that’s a hundred person to three hundred. Is the market really great and where is it not so great.

Valentina Kristensen: [00:28:16] So I think right now it’s really a bit too soon to tower because the crisis hasn’t happened yet. I think what we will see, though, is the best entrepreneurs thrive in times of turmoil ratio always, always says that our co-founder and. And why? Because if you think about, you know, if you’re a business in, let’s say, recruitment and, you know, then one of your competitors goes out of business, you have an opportunity to gain that customers their market share, but also their talent. So although it’s bad for that other business, it’s actually an opportunity for you.

Lloyd Wahed: [00:28:46] Absolutely. So so in 2007, I was very much focused on the CRO suite. Because in finance, you know, in awerse times, the risk auditing is going to be cranked up. Companies are going to look at portfolio acquisitions. And so actually, risk analytics was fantastic. And if you didn’t have specialists, search firms competing with you, you took that market. So it was a great time for us. But then you’re completely right. Assume that will apply again if you’ve got a few dynamics. One being that you’re agile, so you can adapt. You’re not relying. And this is what you probably look at in the companies you’re looking to lend to. For instance, they don’t have one or two or three things where the carpet could be taken that then take them out of business. Diversity of client. You know that they’re fundamentally profitable. And that’s what I think over the next year or two. Be interesting and fintech, but outside of fintech, be interesting to understand what’s going to thrive and what’s not going to.

Valentina Kristensen: [00:29:57] I mean, if you look in the last crisis, there was I mean, casual dining was something that saw a real boom. Right, because people still wanted to get out and have a nice evening with their family and go for a meal, but they didn’t want to pay very much for it. So you kind of saw the the birth of the, you know, three course set dinner menu. And, you know, in places like Brasserie Blanc, which is another one of our of our borrowers, where you can have a paid £20 and have, you know, a starter, main course and dessert and feel like you’re, you know, really dining in sort of quite a luxurious setting. But actually, you know, it’s for not very much per head. So and there aren’t any things that you’ll see. And I mean, if you look at Rishi and Joel’s previous business, Copal Amba, which they started in 2002 and then sold to Moody’s in 2014 during the crisis, I mean, that business was doing financial research outsourcing. So it became a huge opportunity for them to grow. Because what happened was that their clients, the investment banks, the asset managers, they then started to want to outsource that research to companies like Copal and versus you know, paying to do it all internally, which was much more expensive. And so I think that’s an example where they continue to grow the business through the crisis and then obviously built it up to a very successful business, 3000 people, and we’re able to sell it to Moody’s in 2014.

Lloyd Wahed: [00:31:21] Makes sense. And if we move forward in terms of how you see your career personally from this stage, I’m assuming that is it only growing with the growth of OakNorth, which should be should be really exciting. But if we go further out 5, 10, 15 years. Do you feel like you’d like to be a founder yourself at some point? Do you have a particular, you know, bringing coms to fashion with your mom at some point? Collaborating?

Valentina Kristensen: [00:31:52] So I think I mean, I probably I intend enough during school holidays to know that, you know, I really like fashion, but it’s really not where I wanted to to sort of focus my comms experience. I think, you know, it’s it’s hard to say because I really love working at OakNorth. And I think, you know, I’m working with the best of whoever I’ve worked with really, really ambitious and hungry people who are focused on the long term. If I’m kind of, as you say, those zoom out fifteen years. I mean, Will I want to do this all over again with a whole new startup and be that from prelaunch and, you know, hopefully work with them to scale.

Lloyd Wahed: [00:32:31] It’s exhausting, right?

Valentina Kristensen: [00:32:32] Well, it’s exhausting. But also like maybe it’s just a I want a new challenge. And actually, as I said, I think, you know, entrepreneurs are the bravest people I know. And now I’ve had the opportunity to meet hundreds of them and learn about their experiences and how they got started and also how they finance their growth. So, yeah, I think, you know, hopefully I would be I’d be brave enough to give it a go, I’d like to think so.

Lloyd Wahed: [00:32:56] Clearly, the the traits of being a successful entrepreneur, something that I’m fascinated in is partly what I’m trying to establish for this podcast. What do you evaluate those to be in the entrepreneurship? You see a success, they will have different color. But some of the traits that are similar.

Valentina Kristensen: [00:33:18] So I think there’s a couple of things. I mean, one thing you hear about so much in work is about work-life balance. And I just don’t really like that term because I think the two are mutually exclusive. And actually, you know, if you love your work, man, it feels like a really important part of your life. And maybe that’s because I grew up around, you know, my mom, she was a single mom, single parent and an entrepreneur. So every time we went, you know, for a holiday at the beach, I mean, she was still doing phone calls and, you know, she was still sketching dresses and thinking about her next collection. So she was still working whilst on holiday, but because she loved it. And Rishi always jokes, you know, when he comes back into the office, you know, people after a holiday, people say, how is your holiday? And he goes, I’m always on holiday. And I think, you know, that’s one of the key things. If you’re gonna be you know, you have to absolutely love it because it takes over your entire life. And it’s probably quite a lonely place. But a lot of people, especially they’ve never done it before, will never understand it. So you have to absolutely love we are doing and you have to believe that you know yourself and that you can solve the problem or you can bring whatever product it is to market and you can create something that’s better. And if you don’t wholeheartedly believe it, then it’s very difficult to succeed. And I think you have to be you know, from what we see, I mean, you know, obviously I’d be hungry. And and, you know, that’s another thing that Rishi and I’ll talk about is sort of the hunger. It’s like that burning desire to succeed.

Lloyd Wahed: [00:34:47] And what did that look like for you guys both now and in the early days is slightly different. But, you know, if we’re being crude, this is extremely long work hours. Yeah. What else if we could visualize that.

Valentina Kristensen: [00:35:01] So, I mean, I think, you know, I mean, I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily extremely long work hours. I mean, it’s it’s what you can get out of it. But I think it’s that if you do want to stay late in the office or switch on why you’re supposed to be switching off, whether it’s on the weekends or on holidays, that then you shouldn’t feel guilty or like go doing something wrong. I mean, you know, I got a dopamine hit every time I got an email on my phone because it’s probably something interesting, you know, in the same way that someone might have if they got a like on Instagram. So and I think that’s also that you have to be working with people who really love what they’re doing. But certainly the founders have to.

Lloyd Wahed: [00:35:37] Do you keep any controls, therefore, into that, because otherwise you can just be switched on the whole time, particularly if it’s something you’re really passionate about. I understand your work life balance. You know, if you want to have something that’s purely social, if you want to have; a lot of Silicon Valley guys, you know, on a Sunday won’t that phone for instance, you know, it’s in the press, isn’t it? Like, don’t go on Facebook and Twitter the whole time. If you got any of those controls or any routines that you think makes you hyper productive when you’re switched on, but then allows you to to have some rest.

Valentina Kristensen: [00:36:13] So I think I’m much more a morning person, so, you know, mine is trying to get into the office. You know, ideally by about eight so that I have, you know, a good hour at my desk before people really are in.

Lloyd Wahed: [00:36:24] Distracting you.

Valentina Kristensen: [00:36:26] Yeah, I can start to kind of answer e-mails. Tackle the day. You know, I try not to make my phone the first thing I look at it in the morning, but it often is. And I’m being totally honest about it. But no, I mean, I think I’ve done much better recently, sort of just putting my phone down and, you know, a few hours before bed and not looking and not checking emails constantly until I go to sleep, but trying to wind down a bit and and then not making the thing I do before bed another activity in front of a screen. And so not watching telly before bed, but instead reading a book which has been I found I’m sleeping much better, but I sleep pretty well to begin with anyway.

Lloyd Wahed: [00:37:05] So I got rid of my TV. I didn’t get rid of it. I put it into a room. Yeah, I don’t use it because I can quite go to that extreme. So that’s about several months ago. And what I found is 90 percent of the time I’m probably happy with that decision. I find that I feel that I’m really sleepy earlier, whereas sometimes TV or radio or distractions can just, you know, you push on for another hour and a half, then you don’t get quite as much sleep. So it’s worked really well. The net effect is that then I’m working, waking up earlier, having had a better sleep because I’m embracing some boredom in my evenings now actually, which I’m not sure that’s a terrible thing. And then 10 percent of the time, I just really crave, you know, I just want switch off from, watch a program, which is the unhealthy bit. So I don’t. We’ll see. We’ll see how that goes. I recently also got a Peloton.

Valentina Kristensen: [00:38:02] Oh yes. Yeah.

Lloyd Wahed: [00:38:04] Because I just I mean I don’t like spinning. Yeah. And at the moment with a start up I have a daughter who’s about to be a year old. So it’s all really intense. I need to get the exercise. I walk to and from work. If it’s not raining. And then having this Peleton on is awesome because you can just jump on that for fifteen or thirty minutes like every other day. Yeah. And I find that that’s that’s really healthy. If your job is sitting there, analyzing, going to meetings, a lot of my work as a headhunter is building report, having a meal which isn’t particularly healthy, but it’s where networking happens. The in-person element is is super important. Yeah. So in terms of fun right now, what are you up to outside of work? I know work is fun. I don’t believe in work life balance.

Valentina Kristensen: [00:38:51] No, I mean, I would think, you know, you should have a balance, but I think it should be maybe work-rest balance is a better way, a better way to phrase it, because I feel like work should be an important part of your life. And if it’s not, then you probably need to change your job.

Lloyd Wahed: [00:39:08] Or you’ll just probably not going to be that successful.

Valentina Kristensen: [00:39:10] And that’s fine!

Lloyd Wahed: [00:39:11] And some people are not honed in being successful.

Valentina Kristensen: [00:39:14] So I’m actually on a holiday on Monday to go to Florida for two weeks. And I’m very excited about that. You know, and I will have to switch off at some point because of the time difference. And then actually, at the end of the year, I’m going to Costa Rica. So just after after Christmas and for New Year’s. So those are kind of two things that I’ve been really, really looking forward to and wanted to go to Costa Rica for like my whole life, basically. But I mean, you know, I think it’s the same thing. You have to obviously find time to spend time with with friends, family, you know, your partner, doing exercises, you say. I’m quite big into hikes now. So. And actually, OakNorth has arranged a few hikes. So we’ve done a couple trips up Snowdon, Scafell Pike. And I went with my boyfriend to Crete in September. We did a hike there. But I actually wasn’t wearing the best footwear. So I had to get my feet a little bit of a break after that.

Lloyd Wahed: [00:40:13] Excuses.

Valentina Kristensen: [00:40:15] Yeah, exactly. Excuses. Yeah.

Lloyd Wahed: [00:40:18] Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for coming in. It’s really insightful, really exciting times for both you and OakNorth. And we’ll catch up soon. Perfect.