Julian Sawyer | Co-Founder Starling Bank | Europe MD of Gemini

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On Episode 7 of Searching for Mana, I had the chance to sit down with Julian Sawyer.

Quite simply, Julian is an expert in the current FinTech market. He co-founded Starling Bank and led it through a period of incredible growth, advises the board of Australia’s first neobank, Volt, and is currently MD of Europe for Gemini, the world’s first licensed crypto-currency exchange platform, founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss.

We have a great conversation about his journey through his career and life to date, experiencing firsthand the change in FinTech, his thoughts on where it’s headed, as well as his love for Peloton!

 

Transcript:

Lloyd Wahed: 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 going to 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.

Lloyd Wahed: Welcome to Searching for Mana.

Julian Sawyer: Thank you.

Lloyd Wahed: So Julian Sawyer is the Managing director of Gemini.

Julian Sawyer: Correct, yes.

Lloyd Wahed: As of a month or two ago.

Julian Sawyer: Yes. Started at the beginning of December 2019.

Lloyd Wahed: Congratulations. It sounds like an incredibly exciting opportunity. You, before that, were a co-founder of Starling Bank, which was co-founded with you and a few others in 2014.

Julian Sawyer: 2014 was formed. I joined in 2015.

Lloyd Wahed: Ok. As the what number?

Julian Sawyer: I was employee number 7. I was the COO of Starling Bank.

Lloyd Wahed: And then at the end of 2019, obviously you parted ways. Can you talk us through the reasons?

Julian Sawyer: Yeah. I mean, I think Starling when I left 750, 800 people heading towards a million customers, a billion on deposit. It had moved to more of, uhm, run the bank than build the bank. And having been right at the beginning of Starling, when you were sorting every little minor things out, and if we wanted paper for the printer, you have to go and find paper You have to move when we moved into our first office, you know, I was the one carrying the boxes and putting people’s screens in and everything else. So I’m much more of a builder than a runner. And after four and a half years, which was absolutely amazing. It was time for both parties to move on and do something interestingly exciting. And I think the market in crypto is just at the same point as it was at Starling. What I mean by that is when we started Starling, everyone went crazy. You started a bank. That’s difficult. You’ve got a brand that doesn’t mean anything. That’s difficult. With a product that everybody has already got and a product no one actually wants to change because no one want to move current accounts. And then look at Starling, look at Monzo now and you don’t have those statements. So it’s those comments on being spoken about at all with anybody in the market.

Lloyd Wahed: So one of the challenges then when you co-founding Starling was this understanding or perception that to acquire somebody accounts was just incredibly difficult. It’s very sticky. Customer, life-long customer of whatever that might be. This was the thing, the moment when you realised actually, that’s not true. Well, what made you guys believe that you could acquire those customers?

Julian Sawyer: Yeah, it’s an interesting question because I think you probably got to go back. I would say 100 odd years and it was Henry Ford that said people don’t want to faster horses, they want motor cars. And so what’s the incumbent banks were doing was having creating an app that you probably have five out of ten-yard homes, six out of 10. Scoring is a lot four out of ten. And that wasn’t giving the customer experience. It wasn’t giving what consumers wanted. And, you know, without sitting here in quoting a lot of people, Steve Jobs also said that you don’t ask customers what they want because they actually don’t know what they want. And the iPad is a classic example of that. What we fundamentally believed was better customer experience and a better way of doing banking. Customers will move and have an engagement, which is more of a technology product where there’s real passion than the risk for traditional banking. And that has a number of layers to and this is really important when you look at that. So it’s not just about the customer experience, it’s about how you execute. And so as a disruptor, you’re disrupting customer experience and also the execution model. And that’s not just technology agility, but that is also business agility. That is decision making. That is a product prioritization course being made. That is no Microsoft project. That is no business analyst. That’s one or two project managers in a business of 500 people. It’s a fundamentally different way of working.

Julian Sawyer: So the culture is a lot closer to a Spotify or Netflix than it would be to Barclays or HSBC. And that is really, really critical. So the other bit that I think people misunderstand, it is easy to misunderstand is “How do you make money?” And at no time Starling and the Monzo of this world have said we’re going to change the business model.

Julian Sawyer: The business model is banking has worked for several hundred years of lending fee, net interest margin interchange, etc. So for Starling, it’s exactly the same. So the business model has not changed. It is the way you have that customer experience and the way that you execute that. And I guess you could give color of that in a little bit more is that when you talk to people and I don’t think it’s just because I work there. But people would say “I just opened a Starling account, it’s brilliant.” And they would smile. And they’re willing to show you that the feature that you don’t get, that which you don’t you would go to your mates on a Friday night and go, I’ve just opened a Barclaycard, it is a fantastic credit card. It’s you know, you don’t. Someone says, what’s the best credit card. You go, mine’s a Barclaycard and it’s greater mine is an AMEX and it’s fine. Good, good, good points or whatever. And that passion is really, really important because if you look at customer acquisition. So the easiest way of making money today would be to open a Halifax Bank account, because I think you get £150 on June, £25, etc. That’s an easy way to make money. These digital entrants coming in cannot afford them, don’t want to afford that. And so the cost of acquisition will be a fraction of the incumbents. So how do you do that? You do that through social media, through communicating in a fundamentally different way, ut it’s also word of mouth.

Lloyd Wahed: So the Steve Jobs example that you are talking about consensus and non-consensus. If you go and take customer feedback and if you have consensus, hence you ask 10 people in the street several years ago, do you want to, you know, get an app that you can manage your taxi service for free. People would said “No”, broadly speaking. And so the surprise is in the part, where actually if you do that and you predict the timing, right with the technology, then you can have a rip-roaring success on your hands like Uber, for instance. And so if we look at fintech and new banks, in this instance, you can get a bunch of people in a Shoreditch type area to adopt and get excited about design, user experience and all the things that are wonderful. The trick to then getting the type of numbers that you’ve just discussed is more fundamental to that. And this is where I on this show have a lot of different sides of the coin, that there are half the people who don’t believe that these are going to turn into profitable, sustainable, healthy businesses at the scale they’re at right now. They feel like a lot of great PR has got them to this point. And when the VCs don’t carry on pumping rounds and then there is trouble. And then it sounds like you are still absolutely a believer invested into, feeling like this has been the right approach. And what I take from this is beyond the early adopters, you managed to then move through to the mass market and get numbers of millions of people to open your account. Actually what you’re saying. If you don’t, then need to change the banking model because you’ve acquired the customers, which was the hardest thing today. And then it’s known as the service stays the same on the financial side, the facilities that they’ve got, they just fell close to high to that bank because you’re giving them or someone of all peer group would expect digitally says it is a new standard.

Julian Sawyer: It is. And I’m not here to represent Starling. So it’s more of an observer in the marketplace. But I think if you look back, I think the interesting point is for 12 months ago, people were saying from “I wonder whether these will survive” to now “Which ones are going to succeed?”. And I think that pivot point is undeniable as Monzo, Starling, Revolut have moved into the mass market and it is incredibly clear that the incumbents are all trying strategies to address that market, to address the customer experience, address the ways of working. They’re doing in different ways. This is now a market that’s here to stay. This is not a dot.com that we’re going to be acquired. There will be some challenger banks that I think will be acquired. I think those are the ones that haven’t pivoted. Those that have great products, have got a fantastic business model or they specialize in a particular area and they will be acquired because they will not have got that pivot. But I think the three I’ve mentioned very much on the global expansion.

Lloyd Wahed: So Julian, Valentina was on Episode 1, I’m sure you enjoyed. She said that it’s been a really exciting five years in fintech. In London and globally as well. And I asked her, what do you think the next five years is about? And she said, “It’s about bringing home the bacon”. How is the pivot you talked about with the big three gonna bring home the bacon?

Julian Sawyer: I think they’re going to. If you look at the three organizations I mentioned, they are actually, from an outsider’s perspective, all addressing things very differently. And so, yes, they probably are bringing the bacon home. But what does that actually mean? So, you know, again, as a third party looking at the marketplace, you know, Monzo are going into America. That is not a way of getting profitability in the short term because of the cost of customer acquisition and entering a new market. What Revolut to doing is looking at regulatory provisions in Estonia. I think it is. And also Ireland and also the UK. Starling is growing. It’s SMEs proposition and its retail proposition and it’s heading over to Ireland as well. So all going in different places and some of this goes back to the investors needs and wants. What are they? How deep are their pockets? What is the market for further investment? What is the CEO’s vision? And how are their ability to scale?. So my understanding is Starling and Monzo both have got a single platform which they are using. You know, I believe that Revolut has got different platforms and different countries. That then creates different opportunities, but also some constraints. So I think one of the things that is probably super interesting is when we all started, everybody called us all the same. And at the time there was Tandem, Atom, Monzo and Starling and they were the four amigos. And the CEOs were very often on panels together and working that through.

Julian Sawyer: But over the last four years, that has actually split out an awful lot. And so while Monzo and Starling competing on the consumer side, Starling on the SME side, which is a huge growth, is competing against a number of different players who aren’t in the consumer side. You know, Atom is doing a huge amount in the mortgage side and Tandem has been doing credit cards and stuff. And so actually what you’ve got is they’re not all the same. And I think a lot of people from the outside of the fintech community will look at us and go, oh, these challenges are all the same. No, they’re not. Some of them are banks, some of them e-money institutions. What fundamentally changes is the economics that they can use: the cost base, the time to go to market, a whole range of different dynamics, pros and cons there. And I think you’ve got to get under the covers, too. So what is this organization about? Almost DNA. And it would be like comparing Barclays with the Coventry Building Society. Yes, they do all the same products brought landfill, but they’re fundamentally different and for different reasons they exist and they have different scale and infrastructure. And I think the key is having the leadership in any of these organizations understanding their assets and then understanding how they can deploy those assets, whether they’re financial assets, technology or execution assets.

Lloyd Wahed: So that makes sense in some places.

Julian Sawyer: Thank you. I am pleased that made sense.

Lloyd Wahed: A number of a lot of things done to me, so I appreciate that, layman view. They started in a similar place, so it was easy to confuse them, but of course, their philosophies, their culture, and now that their business lines most mature.

Julian Sawyer: And the customers they’re attracting are different. So, you know, a typical Monzo customer is not a typical Starling customer, you know. And again, there’s pros and cons on all of those things. At the end of the day, it goes back to what we talked about earlier, which is disrupting the economic model or the business model. And if you’re north, then you’ve got to get to lending. You’ve got to have deposits, you’ve got to have net interest margin. You’ve got to have interchange and you’ve got to have some fees.

Lloyd Wahed: Okay. So just one more question, because I know you’re not here as a spokesperson for Starling. Sasha, who’s another guest in Searching for Mana, suggested that there might have been some press that they were looking to IPO in the coming year or two. So if that was the case now taking it back, take it to my vantage point, as a headhunter thinking about your career and legacy, really enjoyed that journey. As you said, you were a builder. So I understand now there are a hundred staff and the numbers, I’m sure are really exciting over the next couple of years. Wasn’t there some type of year that you wanted to be there for the journey in the business until an event happened?

Julian Sawyer: I am a shareholder of Starling and I think they are doing an amazing with the market. I think they really disrupted the market. But I have an equally amazing opportunity at Gemini. And so for me, this was the right thing to do for all parties. And you are right. Anne Boden, the CEO has gone into the public domain to say, an IPO. I think by 2022, something like that. And yeah, it will be good when that happens.

Lloyd Wahed: Ok. Say so. So now the MD of Europe for Gemini. In America. It’s at 250 or so cyber staff. Yes. And then is just right now they’ve hired you and Halliday, a very senior compliance employee. So, what’s the set up? What’s the opportunity that you’ve come into at Gemini?

Julian Sawyer: So the opportunity is to bring Crypto to Europe, to bring the Gemini Exchange and custody solutions that we’ve got into the European market. And that is really interesting because if you look at a lot of the predictions that were happening in early this year when we started a new decade, a lot of people say this is going to be the decade for Crypto. And I think what is interesting is this is moving from being that niche, geeky, very technical, not very well understood, a lot of cynics to being a case of the regulatory are now spending a lot of time on this topic. And that is not just a local level, but the European Central Bank. Christine Lagarde has openly spoken about that several times. Regulators across the world are looking at this and actively doing things. You’ve then got the big institutions, actively looking things. And I think this is the pivot point for them is they’ve moved the blockchain or crypto project from the corner in an I.T. shop, probably in a basement somewhere to now being into a business conversation. And for instance, we just announced in December last year a partnership with State Street. That’s taken quite a long time. But they’ve been in the market. They’ve looked they want to go with a partner that was right, that was safe, secure, compliant, highly regulated in New York and they chose us to head to help them bring cryptos to their customers. Now, that will become really interesting when you have organizations like that, that top-tier Wall Street banks going “We’re not doing something. We’re taking our first step”. That’s taking it out of that dark room corner where some geeks are doing some amazing stuff with blockchain to now, how do we make money? How do we help our customers? So I think there’s a real pivot.

Julian Sawyer: You’ve got also the pivot in the consumer side where people are going, okay. So I think the statistics is the highest performing asset in the last 10 years. Was Bitcoin across any category? Now, what I think now getting is consumers going ” Oh, I missed that one. Why am I not doing this one? Why don’t I putting a small proportion of my savings. I wanted to be investing in cryptos. Do I understand it enough?”. And so for us, a Gemini is all about providing that highly secure, very, very compliance first approach to the crypto world over a fantastic custody solution as well, which is sort of leading the debate in terms of how to do this. And that is really something that we are very passionate about. For us, that passion goes to that we think we need to educate the market. We need to be talking, not just on behalf of Gemini, but in the market and moving it from being going back to what we were talking about with the Challenger banks, but moving it from the innovators to the early adopters to make this becoming something that people understand and they don’t need to understand all the technology is behind this thing. They just need to understand enough to make a sound decision about how they want to invest, how they want to trade, or how they use it for payments in one form or another.

Lloyd Wahed: Say the why that this has a place in the market and a more prominent place moving forward is if you want to spread some investment from your portfolio and say, let’s say you are with State Street and you want to put a percentage of this into what might be perceived as a high-risk investment. Do you see that there are actual uses for crypto moving forward? So obviously we had when Bitcoin originally came out, a philosophy around decentralisation, which is quite a manifesto.

Lloyd Wahed: And then we had 10 years of, like you say, a journey to somewhere around the end of 2017 where a lot of people make quite a lot of money if they’d bought a bitcoin coined in Old Street station, in a vending machine. Yes. Which I sat next to when I was having soup in the cafe that sold them and I didn’t buy any.

Julian Sawyer: Because you’re buying your soup instead

Lloyd Wahed: And people were buying their pizzas with guess all of this type. It has been an amazing journey that went through to then that that kind of period of FOMO akin to tulips going off. And, you know, people like J.P. Morgan said we’re not going to go near this right now.

Julian Sawyer: And then it wasn’t the week after they went, oh, yes, here’s the gist. JP Morgan coin doesn’t it, I think. I think that’s a good idea.

Lloyd Wahed: Say it’s a distraction from that, perhaps. And then, you know, we’re in 2020 now. And we’ve seen a kid who still has some fundamentals and there is still all of that opportunity. There’s a number of cryptocurrencies, exchanges and consultancies in this space. And it looked like they have incredibly talented individuals. That’s one of the main things obviously the talents flocking to these businesses, starting with hackers and devs. And now actually you’ve got this tier perhaps more like Gemini, whereas individuals coming from investment banks, we’re going to find us regulatory and operation. So all the things make it like it’s got the maturity, but the why still beyond my very layman’s understanding is for you, what we are we moving on to a different currency, a digital currency and your belief. So you got such an interesting view here because you’re the guy who has co-founded a Starling and moved, you know, a traditional incumbent bank methodology to a digital bank with no branches. And then now you’re looking at Gemini, but also the space, of course, and you believe in it. And he took us through that philosophy and your vision.

Julian Sawyer: So I think there’s a number of different ways to look at this. And I think a lot of people put everything into the same melting pot. So if you look at blockchain or DLT, then I think there are very, very few people in financial service who goes, that’s not the future. So as a technology that is there, that is proven, that is working. The use cases for that have not all been determined and discovered yet. And that is exciting. Yeah. Okay. So we have a number of currencies that are being used at the moment for a range of different reasons that say there could be an investment portfolio that could be trading on them, just like you can trade on oil or wheat or whatever you wish. You’ve also got things like stable coin, so stable coin is matched to a U.S. dollar. So the Gemini dollar has got a pound sitting in State Street.

Lloyd Wahed: Like a tether coin.

Julian Sawyer: But we have the asset in US dollars and it’s highly-regulated. So that is not that the value of the Gemini dollar is not going to change because it’s pegged to that. However, because you’ve now got a tokenized interpretation of the U.S. dollar. You can do things electronically that you can’t do with a dollar note.

Lloyd Wahed: Why is that again to a layman? Because it’s moving outside of that country’s regulation.

Julian Sawyer: No, it’s the use cases of how you transfer money and how you store value. So if we just take a UK example, if I want to make a payment to someone in the United States, it is going to have to do that over Swift currently. It’s going to cost me probably five or 10 pounds when one bank decides to charge me and it’s probably going to take me one to three days to get that.

Julian Sawyer: Why? I can download a movie from America in less than 30 seconds now. Why is it taking several days to move money? And that’s because you’ve got people who are running horses and trying to make those horses faster. And then you go, there’s a new technology here which does things, you know, in a matter of seconds at a fraction of the price. So the key thing I think is you’ve got this technology layer and then you’ve got a number of applications of which Bitcoin is one of those applications, but stable coin is another application. And there will be some really exciting and interesting ways that you can use that technology to help transform some inefficiencies within the markets. So, for instance, if you are doing remittance and you’re trying to send money back home to India or China or wherever sending money back to your family, you would go to a, you know, shop or a Western Union or whatever. You would spend quite a large proportion as a fee to send that money home, ok?

Julian Sawyer: And you may have sent a hundred pounds, but if only 80 gets to the, you know, to your family and then they’ve got to take that money and then transfer it to walk to or go to a post office or a local bank or telecoms company and then get that money. There are some very inefficient processes, very expensive. And so you’ve got people who are on low income or trying to help people in other countries through remittance processing. You’ve got B2B payments where actually if you can do things better, do things cheaper, do things faster, then that will transform the market. So I think what you’ve got is a common technology platform, which I think is indisputable is the MSA. And then we’re right at that pivot point where really exciting companies fintechs as an example, are going “Ahh, if I got that technology and I can use that exchange and I can use that stable coin or that custodian that is really secure and you’ve got all the regulations, etc. I can do something amazing things to move money or to store money, transfer money and that becomes exciting”. So I don’t think this is an industry which is, there is only one way or anyone knows what the answer is. We know we have got a very important part of the infrastructure and we are looking for customers and consumers and technologies and partners who are sitting there going “You’ve got that infrastructure. I’ve got a great idea. That could be amazing”.

Lloyd Wahed: Yeah. And for you, at Gemini Europe. What’re the key things that you’re looking to achieve moving forward?

Julian Sawyer: Well, we start off with regulation, compliance and security more than anything that we do. So we’re in the process
of applying for e-money within the UK and we’ll be doing something similar in Europe in due course that would
enable us to take GBP and be able to then be able to buy cryptos and store that through customs solution. So, the
first thing is, just getting the business up and running and operational. And then it really is kind of in three camps
that will be. The institutions that want to engage or are engaging perhaps with us in the US and want the European
part to play with us. You then go to the other end of the spectrum, consumers who go “I love the app. I want to be
able to buy in a secure way. I want to engage. How do I just put £100 away a month or fifty pounds a month?
Because I’d be stupid if I didn’t”. And the price was going up and going back to your soup and pizza days. If only
you bought one, you’d be a happier, happier guy than you are today. So does that snow. And the one in the
middle I think is where we look at partnerships, where we look at organisations that go doing something really
interesting.

Julian Sawyer: You need the bit that we do and we’re not in the same space as you. So we’ve got a partnership in the States with a company called Flexa. And what they do is to enable point of sale for you to spend your crypto asset. It may be a stable coin like Gemini Dollar, in other words, you’re actually paying just the dollars for that. It’s just a really easy, straightforward experience, which is what consumers will need. Or you can actually have your bitcoin used for that. Now, the interesting thing is that has got to match the custom experience that you and I use currently with our Visa or MasterCard. And if it is longer or it’s more expensive, then we’re not going to have that adoption. I’ve done some amazing stuff there, but they can also then go to the retailer and say this is cheaper than using Visa or MasterCard so you want to be promoting it because you’re getting some benefit. So you’re going to have companies like Flexa who are using our infrastructure to provide some really interesting use cases that haven’t been worked through. So I don’t have the answers. I don’t think anyone just has the answers. But I think there is that infrastructure is just there.

Lloyd Wahed: And in terms of the actual infrastructure of the team moving forward is obviously very unique because your day top-end strategy and like you say, putting a number of things in place to set everything in motion. How do you see that talent team building over the next few years? The infrastructure comes from America. So the dev and the tech has been built, I am sure it is getting iterated. You are not going to have tech in Europe. You guys will have to have. Business development partnerships.

Julian Sawyer: So it is the mana search sales pitch.

Lloyd Wahed: Absolutely.

Julian Sawyer: All the time. (Laugh) Yeah. I mean,.

Lloyd Wahed: I think we are adding set pieces.

Julian Sawyer: As well as passengers all over bitcoin as well. I think, you know, we’re building a global business. So clearly our exchange product, our engineers and a lot of the other functions that run the business all in New York, we’ve got Chicago and Portland office as well. So in year up, it’ll be our compliance function, comms and marketing clearly because we want to locally go to market for Europe and we would have business development where we need to be with our institutions and also our partners. But one of things we’re trying to do really cleverly is work as a global team. So as an example, with our presence in New York and our reputation in New York, it is very obvious that we need an integrated global sales team, because a lot of the people that we’re talking to in the UK will have relationships with subsidiaries or owners in the US, et cetera. So we need to work at this, not just creating a little empire in the UK and therefore Europe. It’s actually creating what is the right operating model. So we clearly believe that marketing should absolutely be local because that’s the only way we’re going to get that engagement and activities at the right level. We also recognize that we’re building a global product and so our product, our customer service, our operations are technical support are all done out of the US. And that becomes it becomes very obvious when you think through. Because that means we’ve got critical mass.

Julian Sawyer: We’ve got enough people, as you said, 250 people over there who can provide all the services that I need to run the business in Europe. So it’s having that local/global mix is being really key.

Lloyd Wahed: Say having more of it, some crypto companies over the last few years. What struck me is just how remote a lot of the work is. People are just based wherever they want to be. And I think this, again, might have been why the companies were at that technology and dev phase saying it didn’t really matter too much. But once you start getting to the scale you guys have at Gemini and you’ve got the global intentions and they need to put together this infrastructure intelligently.

Lloyd Wahed: What are some of the methods they’ve been with the firm briefly that you’re doing to feel like you’re still part of that American business? You know do you use Slack, Zoom or Skyping or something like that?. How are you collaborate in becoming part of the culture world based here?

Julian Sawyer: Yes, we use Slack. We use video conference. The culture has always been and generally in the US because there’s two other offices as well that every meeting has got a Google Hangout. So you just go and dial in because someone might have been there. So I’ve spent some time over there. We’ve sent the US products manager into the UK to help with that. And we’re really spending a lot of time with my colleagues making sure that we are building the right culture. This is the Gemini culture, not the London Gemini culture. And I think it is super important to do that.

Lloyd Wahed: What is that culture?

Julian Sawyer: That culture is I mean, goes back to what you said, some really, really smart people who are passionate about what we’re doing and where we want to get to as an organization and therefore, the vision that’s not a short term. We have traditionally done things the right way. That doesn’t always means that’s the quickest way or the most cost-effective way. It’s about doing it right. So for us in the states, to be a trust company isn’t a huge deal. For us to be stable core in being the first regulated stable coin company in the world is a big deal.

Julian Sawyer: We didn’t need to do that. We could have got round the regulations. We could have done. Absolutely. That is not on our agenda. So it’s about regulation, compliance, security. That is absolutely primary. It’s about a common passion and it’s very engaging, smart, friendly people. And as I went through the interview process, I had a number of video conference calls with my new peers. And after each one was like, that was really good call. And I think they found the same because they’ve hired me. So I’m not blowing my own trumpet. But, you know, you just get that level of energy, enthusiasm. They’re very passionate about what we’re doing in Europe. Incredibly supportive, but also just good people to do business with. And that’s why I joined because the chemistry was there as well as the vision. And we got it. We’ve got to instil that with our European operation. And we’ve got to make sure the communication is over slack, over a video conference call and in-person is absolutely supported them.

Lloyd Wahed: And if we just went for the Hollywood outcome over the next five years, where can we see Gemini?

Julian Sawyer: Oh, I think what you’ve got is a series of pressure. That’s probably the right word that is coming into the industry. So regulations in Europe, you’ve got the fifth money laundering directive. That means if you’re an exchange, you need to be regulated. That will mean there has already meant that some people are going to exit out of that. I think you would have. Customers and clients say on the institutional side, who will move money to where it is safe, where they are absolutely sure that it is 100 per cent secure. Things like that. So I think you’ll have a shake down, as you will, with any industry where some people have been in the industry has done well, they have done something kind of interesting. But I’ll be there for a long, long time. There is a lot of hyping in the crypto world, believe it or not. That was a shock to us as well. But I think what you will see is more people looking at those reliable organizations and go: ” Okay. So we only listed five coins at the moment. Why? Because those of the liquid ones, those are the staple ones, those are the most secure ones, etc..

Lloyd Wahed: What what are those coins?

Julian Sawyer: So Bitcoin, Bitcoin Lite, Bitcoin Cash, Ether and Ecash and then Gemini Coin after that? How does that so far?You didn’t even remember what they were. But you know, there were other exchanges that have 20/30, you know, currencies out there and that’s fine. That’s kind of their strategy. What we want to do is do the right things where they got a liquid market, where they are safe, secure and the right one. And we when we listed a new currency, we go to the Department of Financial Services, New York and get approval for that. That’s because it’s the right thing to do, the regulation requires us to do that. So I think there will be a shakedown. I think you’ll get more, it will become more of a standard way or standard part of your investment. And that’s a big word. And there are people who may just want to say fifty pounds a month or whatever, meaning those people as well. But wouldn’t part of the vocabulary, the acceptance that this is just one of the options that people have got to trade, to invest or to use it as payments?

Lloyd Wahed: Yeah, I think that is a really great outcome. You know, there was a lot of hype for the last 10 years, but certainly, the last few years and I think it was probably similar to the first five years of your Neo Banks or so in London and elsewhere that had big, big fintech hubs. You were trying to work through what’s an actual business case here? Because blockchain was just being strapped onto, you know, a nightclub event app and suddenly gang and ICO where they got a bunch of money. And I think people didn’t like that. That made people sceptical, probably rightly so. In terms of what you’re talking about, I am not familiar with all the exchanges. You’ve got Coinbase, Binance and they’ve got different mentalities. And so we’re looking at a similar thing as with the Neo Banks, which is to start with, perhaps they all looked relatively similar. But as we move forward, what will, you know, charge them into their own unique culture is, of course, the philosophies and the different product lines and the different level of sensibility within those businesses. So with Gemini specifically, it sounds like there is a long view here. Can you do everything with an absolute straight bat? Because the view is and it’s probably right that if people are going to trust their funds, then that’s one of the main things that they’ll be looking out for.

Lloyd Wahed: And then with the coins that, for instance, a one on one with the dollar, it can be used as a safe haven moving forward in your portfolio. It could also be used as, okay. What I think that xAB is going to be the way that banks are going to move payments around and therefore, I’m going to put a smallish percentage of my portfolio of investments into that. And perhaps over the next five years, I might make x7. It’s probably not going to be x10000 like it might have been in the previous decade, but who knows? Well, we’ll see. So it’s a slightly more mature, slightly more sensible market. But with if it’s got right, phenomenal opportunity, particularly if you’re an exchange. And there’s not many that is at the stage that Gemini at. So again, incredibly exciting. Say you should be a portfolio manager who predicts what the next company in the upcoming market it’s going to be. Which brings me onto the next point, looking at where you’ve landed. Now you’ve got this really exciting journey of Gemini. You’re also, I believe, on the board of another fintech business.

Julian Sawyer: So I’m an advisor to the board at Volt bank, which is the Australian Challenger Bank.

Lloyd Wahed: And why did you take that on you? Clearly, it’s a very full-time job. Well, you’ve got the Gemini, talk us through that.

Julian Sawyer: Yeah. I mean, I was in Australia in the last year and I had the opportunity of meeting Volt and Volt is. So the Australian Challenger bank market is about three years behind the UK. And so they are these challenges in this four or five just in the process of launching. So two or three of them, including Volt, have now launched their first product. And typically that’s been a savings product. And what I found was there was a huge amount of buzz at Volt. There was just a really strong culture. It was just a fantastic time when I was down there with them and they were all. “Can you come in? Can you just advise us?” Really what they’re looking for is a European perspective, where they just go, what’s happening in Europe? What should we be thinking about? What are the lessons that Europe has come up again in the past? And what should we do about that? Yeah, and some of that is around products. Some of that is about ways of execution going back to what we talked about right at the beginning. But you know, if you can execute in the appropriate way, then the incumbents are never going to catch up with you because you’re so far apart. And there’s a huge amount of synergies between what’s happening in the UK market and in the Australian markets. Australia is dominated by big four big banks. They’ve been had a royal commission in the last couple years, which is absolutely, it was incredibly negative to the banking industry about what they did in that and their practices, etc. So it’s a real opportunity to be fresh and be different in that market. And so they really just it’s sovereign and advisory, too, just to tell them what’s happening in Europe and they just come and challenge me and go” We’ve got this scenario. We’re doing these products. What would happen in that market?”

Lloyd Wahed: So if you that that’s an incredibly luxurious position to have you on on call for those type of decisions if the market is tracking in is three years behind. How big is that Australian market? It has a quite small population.

Julian Sawyer: So 20, 22 million and change.

Lloyd Wahed: So how did you get to meet those founders? Did you talking with them?.

Julian Sawyer: I knew them a couple of times. I’ve met them a couple of times before over the last few years at that sort of industry events and I was invited to talk at a banking conference in Sydney, where again, the UK is probably about two years ahead of Australian banking. Australians are going in a very different way. Open banks in the UK is just for banking and really from transaction banking and current accounts. When in Australia, utilities, telcos as well as banking is part of open banking world and finance is a very different type of challenge. So I was speaking, she chaired an open banking conference in Sydney and then because of that I was talking to folks and they said, oh, come and talk to us and spend some time with us. So I had the opportunity of doing that.

Lloyd Wahed: From the lessons that you had. And then in terms of what you’re imparting on them, is that is there something you like? Because I like this time, typically they’re going to be successful and ahead of the curve on this one.

Julian Sawyer: I wouldn’t be as I would going to say that. I would suggest that having a, you know, a pair of eyes that is just saying: ” Have you thought about this?”. I don’t know if this works in your market. I don’t know your market. I haven’t got an Australia account. I don’t know how the dynamics work, but things that I’ve seen, things that have worked, things that haven’t worked. Is it all just part of the value that you can bring. And, you know, some of the things, some of the conversations know you can be talking about some incredibly, what you might consider trivial. Um, the light bulb moment goes on. Know what I have said, but the thought process that the that someone, the voltage got up. So that we can do something very similar or different, we can’t do that because…, Let’s make sure we don’t fall into that trap, etc. And you know that you know, when you in these technology companies, you’ve got this huge appetite and hunger to do stuff. You’ve got a finite technical resource to do that. And as you get customers, you then spend more time looking after those customers. Make sure your systems are scalable, working with all your partners.

Julian Sawyer: You even get a little bit more inward focus rather than take outward focus. And if you’ve got someone that goes ” By the way, round the corner, there’s a pothole. So just slow down a little bit more.” That helps them. And just giving them a little bit of thought process. And, you know, I guess if you think about most athletes in the world, you know, they have a coach, there’re coaches. Coaches can’t run as fast as you say, Botkin, but they just know how to. In fact, a few little things will give him guidance or give them support, etc. So, you know, I spent some time with Steve Weston, who’s their CEO, plus also them the leadership team, and they can ask me questions. And so it’s not just about me talking about them, it’s about them going “What do you think?”. I think that’s a pretty good idea. I’m saying that all that was really good in this bank did this in Germany or in France or it has happened in the U.K. We were looking at this and it didn’t seem to have to move them.

Julian Sawyer: That seems to be one of the most important things. Suddenly I come across with successful entrepreneurs, business leaders are, of course, that they’ve got the right type of mentors. And typically those mentors go for a walk or have a call with them. And it’s a sounding board. It’s not dictated. Because more often than not, entrepreneurs don’t want to be told direct to do that. That’s not the joy in the whole process. But to be able to say this one, thinking someone else to reflect on it. He’s been there. Yeah. Has more of a coach is a great way to put it. So there’s this thing to pass to your career. Forgive me if I’m wrong, but there’s.

Julian Sawyer: There’s paperboy side. When I was 13. Yeah. And then after that the financial services, I was going with it.

Lloyd Wahed: And then that then you’re advising on the boards of the paper and say, yes, that’s it. The first part, as far as I briefly know, you were a consultant.

Julian Sawyer: I was, yes.

Lloyd Wahed: With the big four.

Julian Sawyer: Yup. I did Accenture for four and a half years and E&Y for four and a half years then started.

Lloyd Wahed: What type of consulting?

Julian Sawyer: More technology, program management in financial services. So very much technology program. And then in a vertical of financial services, not exclusive to FX but that.

Lloyd Wahed: And the type of clients who are big banks.

Julian Sawyer: Big banks and yeah, insurance companies, all kinds of clients.

Lloyd Wahed: And you were a program manager, in essence, very large scale project management with business analysis in it. You’d be looking at the infrastructure of the technology in those in those banks, insurers say that if we understand what allowed you to have the correct or incorrect view in challenger banks because you are really looking at them. How are they made up?. Yeah, because I think that’s one of the things that Anne Boden and Starling was certainly, maybe where she had a different perspective to some of the others is she wants to build it from the tech up. What’s right is, you know, their own technology. And say I’m assuming that was absolutely your view too. And had that view come from that consulting group, if you look back at that now, are you some type of outlier because of that exposure you had in the back?

Julian Sawyer: No, I think I had, without a doubt, the vision of what you want to do with Starling, knew that it was a technology company doing banking, in that particular words, that we use an awful lot of it Starling over the years because that man gets the culture right. That gets about how we execute, how we would deliver software, etc.. So without a doubt, her vision was a technology company. Therefore, you own the tech because that’s the differentiator if you’re going to manage the customer experience. I think the I guess the two things that come out of being a consultant, apart from doing PowerPoint is you have a lot of exposure and a lot of different things, lots of different companies and cultures. You also have a very wide network. And so I know in the first year when we were designing the bank and working how to do credit risk, customer service, etc., you know, quite a bit of the time was like, ” Oh, I know a person, I know a person, I can get you. You want to have a chat to someone about how we do this? Oh, yeah, we can.” And is getting that outward-facing industry, facing conversations, which I think personally is incredibly important in terms of : – A. Finding great talents, but also just getting knowledge in particular areas, getting funding options around suppliers, etc. So I think that is what I was able to bring to that table in the early stage.

Lloyd Wahed: So you set up a firm after consulting.

Julian Sawyer: So I set a management consultancy, which is called Bluerock Consulting, which was FS in 1999 and ran that for 13
years and then sold it. Then I started consulting again and then I realized actually I was too old for this. And then
had the opportunity of meeting Anne, which was absolutely brilliant. And it was abs, from a career perspective, it
was absolutely the right time to move to climb. That was my first proper job because, you know, you do everything
in your own what you do and you don’t do PowerPoint.

Lloyd Wahed: And you loved that.

Julian Sawyer: I Loved it.

Lloyd Wahed: So a lot of entrepreneurs seem to go get two years of consultancy on their CV. They may be a strategic consultancy, say some of the things you just discussed, they’d be exposed to more quickly and they go and raise money and they take a business concept down the embassy funding and can be very successful or not. It’s a high-risk approach, whereas your experience was having a longer career, several years he finds in consulting and then having your own firm for over a decade and then being the co-founder and business which has been quite successful. So, is that actually something that again, with this. Let’s take a long view . Let’s build our experience before we be entrepreneurial. That kind of paygrade is coming for you now. Perhaps consider more than they might be able to finish off the question. I see an awful lot of people in their 20s watching a Mark Zuckerberg type of examples.He got deep programming skills and his company popping. But if you’re looking at something that’s a professional service or it’s regulated, then isn’t there a lot of sense and kind of cutting your teeth? Learning the market. Taking your time. Realizing you’ve got a long career and going about it that way?

Julian Sawyer: Yes. And certainly, you need grey hair and you need to have a particular view in the regulatory space, then you need to be able to prove that you are fit and capable of those role. So, without a doubt, that’s true. I think there’s a you know, there’s, you know, a different definition of entrepreneur. So you’ve got the different types of people. So there will people like Anne Boden, who has got the idea, has got the vision and invited a number of people to be co-founders to drive the business forward. My role really goes back to that. Consulting experience was getting things done, was building, was working out how we did things from now, how do we do HR, even how we get an office, how do we do customer service? How do you do AML and forward? What’s the culture like? How do we recruit senior people? How do we recruit junior people? What’s our intern program like? Dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. But that is sitting behind as a COO should do, sitting behind a desk. The visionary founder and Gemini. We’ve got two visionary founders with Cameron and Tyler. They have got their ideas about what they’re trying to do. We love that. I love that. My job is to execute against that. So it’s an entrepreneur, but perhaps with a smaller role than the capital, really, in terms of great idea, we need someone who is entrepreneurial and entrepreneurial skills. But that means about how how to execute that.

Lloyd Wahed: And at this point and at this time in the business, did the founders, they’re still in it on a daily basis. They’re still trying to scale this to his next several years. Or does there come a time where they need to look for senior management and then more advisory?

Julian Sawyer: No. So they are CEO and president? Absolutely. Hundred and twenty per cent engaged in the business. They have brought in and this is where I think it’s really interesting. And one of the things that really resonated with me is they brought in people from banking, OK? So myself, they could have gone and found someone who had worked at an exchange. They don’t want that. They want someone who the FCA knows, the industry knows, that is connected in the fintech payments world because we can learn about the crypto piece. We can’t have that credibility in the marketplace. And that goes from, you know, managing a team to financial operations, operations MD, chief compliance officer, CTO, are all people who have come from the Nasdaq’s of this world. Morgan Stanley’s even the standing banks of this world. That is that credibility.

Julian Sawyer: So you’ve got people around the table who “I’ve been used to work in these institutions. I know how these people work and know what they’re going to be worried about. I know how we need to respond to that. I know how the market operates.” And I think having that maturity is super, super important. Goes back to what you were saying earlier. And I think if you if you look at the parallels here, you know what undid it, Starling was bring in senior people, as the F.T., as the chief compliance officers, the COO or people who’d been there and done it and having the right mix. And this is the key thing, the right mix of fintech. So fintech is a bit of fin and a bit of tech. So actually, you should give all the roles that require financial responsibility, compliance, security, etc. coming from the financial industry. The people who are doing technology and perhaps product don’t need to come from it. And a lot of players have the fin wrong. You know, HSBC is great at Fin, but not great at tech. Discuss. And you’ve got other fintechs who are great at technology. But I actually haven’t a clue about compliance and regulations and controls and risk management and second line of defence, all those other things that we all know and love. And actually the key in these in all of these organizations, no matter what products you’re saying, is have you got a fintech with enough control and enough of the technology magic that we need? And that becomes really interesting.

Lloyd Wahed: Yeah. Over a long time that’s getting that balance right. T clearly plays pretty successfully, but like you say, sometimes the tech-leading can get acquisition because of it. You’re leading the way of the platform and sometimes the finance can the regulation first. To balance it is key. If we were to look at fintech, the space now possibly in London because of knowledge in the London and Australia market, then what’s an area in fintech that you see providing a genuine solution that you’re excited about?

Julian Sawyer: Apart from Gemini?.

Lloyd Wahed: Apart from Gemini.

Julian Sawyer: I think SME banking is one that is.

Lloyd Wahed: So you got like Tide it.

Julian Sawyer: Yes. I think that is an area which is underserved. And I think of all the players that are in that SME banking and invoice financing, all the servicing the fintechs in there, they haven’t yet got scale yet. And when they break for that scale point, that will revolutionize because a lot of banks, traditional banks has a lot of money on SME banking, on FX, etc. And to get into that market will be great.

Lloyd Wahed: So on every tube, taxi or bus I’m on at the moment, one of these companies are advertising. So the market, the companies are in this space, are in some type of race just like five years ago will say yes to the consumer-focused digital banks said a number of names going after it. But there’s also a number of different tiers of business that they’re servicing say. I’m certainly aware this is space is booming. If you have a marathon, you’ve got companies like Brax that just come out of nowhere yet with Y Combinator and got valued at 2.8 billion or something mad. So you think that that’ll be the next chunk that fintech takes from the incumbents over the next few years. And it’s the right thing to do. It’s a huge market.

Julian Sawyer: It’s a huge market. We in the UK are very entrepreneurial. I think there were more businesses created today than babies born. I’ve certainly heard that’s really interesting. So you can do a fact check on that one to make sure that’s true. But something like that is is is is phenomenal in the UK. And I guess, yeah. With that fintech view and centre of the universe in Europe, at least, one of three universes in Europe. You know what I mean I think is really, really important. I think one of things is what does SME mean? So it could be a sole trader. It could be someone doing a secondary job as a Uber driver or selling some craft or whatever they want to do, all the way through to an end, which is 100 million pounds, 500 people working in a factory. Those are fundamentally different businesses. And I think what you’re starting to see is organizations saying we’re very good at the small part of the sole trader, then you know, the the the person doing a second job or whatever all the way through to people who’ve got, you know, 10 employees that will probably go to an accountant, probably go to a bookkeeper. Therefore have different needs and wants from the sole trader. And that’s just between one person and ten people. If you go from 10 to 100, 100 to 500, you got a fundamentally different needs and requirements in that market.

Lloyd Wahed: And you’re not concerned that the companies that are hitting their business plan from the capital they raised by lending out the SMEs creating some type of bubble here.

Julian Sawyer: I can’t come into next. I have no experience in that space at all. I think one of the things that I’ve been challenged when I was at Starling a few times as you’re so agile, you haven’t got proper controls in place. And It was just like, no, you’ve got absolutely the right controls in place. You do things the right way. You just do it smartly. So as an example, and I always use that, you know, if you want. Don’t exactly risk committee to be able to make a decision on something. You could have one that day if there was a need to have it. If you go into Lloyds and you have one at the end of probably next month and the agenda is already full. So what are you taking out of your agenda? That doesn’t mean it’s any less robust. You know, it has got Corum, it’s got minutes, it’s got actions, it’s got papers, papers, etc. It’s just a different way of working. So what you’ve got to be careful when you look at the lending side is: Are you lending because anybody can lend? It’s collecting, which is the challenge. So are you lending and therefore collecting in the appropriate risk-averse way? And I’m sure that there are some people who are probably going after market share and just… And there were a lot of people who are saying, no, we’re going to do it slowly and we’re going to do it right. And we’re going to lend and work out what our scorecard is, what our methodologies are. Make sure that we can collect on the repayments. We know how we can recover money if that collection doesn’t work and do it in a controlled way, the way that it has been done for decades, if not hundreds of years. And I think that is the challenge to what people are talking about, lending they like. Are you talking about lending how we all know that lending should be run? Why are you changing the business model lending in a fundamentally different way? And if you look at, you know, the Starling of this world is absolutely doing it the right way.

Lloyd Wahed: Yeah. No, I get that. So what will happen is indeed is that but overall, a big opportunity, it is someone with somewhere on the S and it is a business than it does and it needs to improve. And I feel like the service offerings that are out there today are a few years away from having got to where then they would grab someone like mine or that the type of businesses you’re talking about attention because the pace, agility and experience need to be way better. What are you doing outside of work to try and stay as productive and successful as you?

Julian Sawyer: Well, obviously, working at a bank in an exchange is a full-time job. So family, we bought a house about seven years ago. I’m in Kent and I also do cycling indoor cycling before you ask. So not quite a peloton, but based on its products.

Lloyd Wahed: How did it go?

Julian Sawyer: It’s super addictive actually. Yeah, it’s one of the strange things that you can always use to find an excuse of not going out on my bike because of potholes or cold or there’ll be a puncture or which can be asked now is just a bike set up in a room with a TV screen and I sit on it for my cycling.

Lloyd Wahed: Do you watch an instructor? Who is there?.

Julian Sawyer: No, it’s an avatar of this is where I guess you may have to cut this at. Yes, it is an avatar of me. And I cycled against other real people’s avatars in races, etc.? And he’s very, very addictive.

Lloyd Wahed: Yeah. How are you doing? I did in those races.

Julian Sawyer: I’m doing better than I was last week and I am doing better than that.

Lloyd Wahed: And how many times you did that?

Julian Sawyer: Twice a week. So Saturday and Sunday mornings. Just go down there, go on the bike for an hour and a half. And it is really, really addictive. Cycling all around the world on different routes, virtual roads. But you know, that becomes less fun.

Lloyd Wahed: We’ll have to get some type of fintech virtual cycling club together. We should. Yeah, sure. Yeah.

Julian Sawyer: Well, then we can organise our own race and then you’ll beat me to figure out, well, you’ve got 30 years away.

Lloyd Wahed: So I don’t think I will replace it. I’ve got a Peloton where you don’t get that because that would make me competitive. Yes. You get some ex-professional sports person shouting at you. Which I don’t like being told what to do. And say I just, you know, do really badly. And you’ve just got on the side some type of like order of where you are. And I just try and get and you know, top 90 per cent. I probably lose it now. I’m sure.

Julian Sawyer: But it just gets addictive, doesn’t it? I think or you need to reinvent or different technology.

Lloyd Wahed: Yeah. Now I think I think it’s that gaming way a kind of racing and you can see yourself that here.

Julian Sawyer: And if you go into a little peloton yourself, if you go to a little group, you’ve got the advantage of being behind someone. Oh, wow. So you can cycle then this real person and you can see what power they’re putting in and you can actually find out what their age is.

Lloyd Wahed: And how do you think this will ever get you back out into the range of the potholes?

Julian Sawyer: That’s not what’s the point?

Lloyd Wahed: Say, say, say you’re now working at a utopian in a house you made and your virtual race against others.

Julian Sawyer: I do have a virtual life, and let’s be honest on that note.

Lloyd Wahed: Thank you so much. What an exciting career and still incredible times at Gemini. Well, we’ll kind of watch out for this success, I’m sure.

Julian Sawyer: Thank you very much

Lloyd Wahed: Thank you. Cheers.


Also published on Medium.