IBS Journal March 2016
Backchat
Red faces all round when crowdfunding platform Crowdcube crashed at the tail end of February, unable to cope with the demand from people looking to invest in UK challenger bank Mondo. The digital-only venture had earlier in the month announced that it would be selling £1 million worth of equity in the business through crowdfund- ing. The campaign kicked off at 12pm GMT on 29th February but stuttered straight out of the gates.
6,000 people had pre-registered to take part, according to Mondo founder Tom
Blomfield. The startup had also emailed its customer waiting list, bringing the total number of notified users to 44,000. In a blog post, Blomfield apologised to those who had tried to get access to the
investment. He wrote: “I know it’s been a frustrating and confusing experience so far. Unfortunately, the level of demand to participate in Mondo’s crowdfunding has over- whelmed Crowdcube’s servers, and so we’ve taken the decision to temporarily pause the campaign. Once we’re happy that their servers are prepared to handle the load, we will restart the campaign and email you a private link before it goes live to the public.” Mondo has registered around 30,000 potential customers and has begun a testing
phase involving 1,500 individuals. The bank turned down offers ‘from notable interna- tional investors’ in order to reserve the £1 million figure for customers, it says. The latest set of funding, it reveals, will be used to enable new hires and a rapid deployment of its systems.
Beware all ye Unicorns who enter here; a cautionary tale from the UK, courtesy of mobile commerce venture Powa Technologies. The company, once a darling of the tech startup scene, has gone into administration after its largest investor, Wellington Man- agement, called in loans. Its technology pulled in some big name brands and retailers and won plaudits from the media, as it managed to raise around £120 million. But with only £175,000 in the bank at the start of February and debts totalling £11.5 million, the whole thing came crashing down faster than you can say ‘don’t believe the hype’. And it sparked a mass of employee accusations of bad management, unrealistic expansion and uncontrolled spending (sample quote: this company spends money like the world is coming to an end). Deloitte has been appointed to oversee a move into administration. Powa’s boss, the self-proclaimed serial entrepreneur Dan Wagner, boasted that his
company was positioning itself as a mobile payments leader. But now its legacy will be something quite different. To quote one of our Twitter followers, ‘this farrago will make it harder for good businesses. Much harder.’
Why is it taking Australia and New Zealand Banking Group so long to appoint a new Chief Financial Officer and find someone to take on a newly-created Digital Banking Head role? Could it be because the bank has been busy dealing with media allegations about cultural deficiencies in its global markets division? Whatever the reason, Chief Executive Officer Shayne Elliott insists that progress is being made. He recently com- mented: “We’re really excited to be able to have this new role of a new Digital Banking Head, I believe we’ll be able to announce that in the coming weeks. And obviously the search for a CFO continues and we’ve got some terrific internal candidates which is great to see, but obviously we’re also benchmarking that externally. That’s also likely to be announced in the coming weeks. So I’m really excited about both appointments, they’re really important to the team. But the team that’s already here is totally focused on execution and that’s what we’re going to be continuing to do for the balance of this year.”
In the next issue Big Data, data warehousing, analytics and emerging tech diary April
12-13: IFINTEC Finance Technologies Conference and Exhibition, Istanbul
www.ifintec.com/English.aspx
17-20: Payments 2016, Phoenix
www.payments.nacha.org
27-29: JAX Finance, London
www.finance.jaxlondon.com
May
4-5: Dot Finance Africa 2016, Nairobi
www.dotfinancelive.com
17-19: Temenos Community Forum, Barcelona
www.temenos.com
31 May-1 June: Cards & Payments Middle East 2016, Dubai
www.terrapinn.com
June
7-8: EBAday 2016, Milan
www.ebayday.com
7-8: PayExpo 2016, London
www.payexpo.com
For further information and a comprehensive listing of industry events, visit our website:
www.ibsintelligence.com
IBS Intelligence is a prominent media partner of many fintech industry events worldwide. If you are inter- ested in a media partnership with us and marketing opportunities, please contact: Abhijit Chakravarty, marketing manager: Email:
abhijitc@ibsintelligence.com
46 © IBS Intelligence 2016
www.ibsintelligence.com
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