IBS Journal June 2015
Barclays/Techstar Accelerator: Squirrel
experience and what is it seeking to bring to market? One company to go through the Barclays/ Techstars Accelerator programme has been
planning for people who might otherwise turn to pay-day loan companies.
involves meeting at least 100 mentors. ‘They all question why you exist,’ says Squir- rel CEO and co-founder, Mutaz Qubbaj. This form of ‘mentor speed dating’ is centred on 20 minute meetings and proved insightful, he says, because it drills down to the core of the proposition, again and again. The mentors are drawn from Barclays itself, plus
and others. The second month is centred on devel-
oping the product, with Squirrel able to access Barclays’ resources and expertise. This included tapping into the bank’s ‘great
being, plus being able to access associates, such as developers, design specialists, tech- nology experts and contacts for user test- ing. It is a completely collaborative environ- ment, says Qubbaj. The third month is focused on mes-
saging to attract investors and partners, culminating in a ‘Demo Day’ along with others on the programme in front of 400 people from Barclays and Techstars. This is
-
ing to life the vision, including the ability to implement it and why it is an attractive investment, says Qubbaj. The Accelerator programme also
brings a limited amount of cash but the crux of it is really, ‘what large, unfair advan- tage can I pick up by being in this pro- gramme’, says Qubbaj. Squirrel was one of eleven start-ups out of 340 applicants in
in mid-2014. In fact, Squirrel has moved on from
42 © IBS Intelligence 2015
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the Demo Day on 30th September 2014 and subsequently won the Duke of York’s Pitch@Palace event and the Wired 2014 Startup Competition. It has also featured as one of the top 50 FinTech companies in Europe and has presented at a range of events around the world, including a Lon- don Entrepreneurial Showcase to the US led by London mayor, Boris Johnson. Since February, Squirrel joined the
Wayra UnLtd programme, the start-up accelerator of Spanish telco, Telefonica. The programme is partially funded by the UK
mainly on start-ups for positive social change. Companies here have up to eight months of work space and acceleration ser- vices in the lead up to a demo day at the
- rel coming out of the Wired and Pitch@Pal-
conversations that led to the company join- ing the programme. Squirrel’s attempts to attract inves-
tors at the end of 2014 raised £800,000. It has changed emphasis since it started out, -
erator experience. It began as ‘Wagevance’ centred on trying to address the problems of pay-day loans by allowing employers to provide advances on future wages to tide over their employees when needed. A key reason for this was the fact that 80 per cent of pay-day loan customers are in employ- ment. However, says Qubbaj, after testing this concept with hundreds of potential users and with HR departments, the feed- back was that this was still viewed as a means of credit. The more fundamental issue was that people struggled to save when they had access to their money. So Squirrel started to develop a solution to allow workers to start to save directly from their payroll, with
case study: squirrel
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