Moneyneversleeps

For the 100th episode of MoneyNeverSleeps, Eoin and Pete dive into their favorite topic – the challenges of challenger banks – and look back to the first 99 episodes to build out a list of their Top 10 episodes. This episode is kindly sponsored by Ireland’s fintech and financial services recruitment specialists, Top Tier Recruitment.  If you would like an intro to the team at Top Tier Recruitment, please click here. For insights delivered to your inbox beyond the spoken word, subscribe to our MoneyNeverSleeps newsletter right here on Substack. Before we started the episode, we were thrilled to announce our inclusion in FeedSpot’s Top 20 Entrepreneur Podcasts You Must Follow in 2020. Thank you FeedSpot! We start this week with the crossover of a few pieces of content from the past two weeks on challenger banks, in particular the Big 3 of Monzo, Starling and Revolut. Recent reports highlighted their financial results and compared and contrasted them, and one thought from Lex Sokolin of the Fintech Bluepr

This week, Eoin and Pete have the pleasure of talking to Peter Geoghegan about his book,  ‘Democracy for Sale: Dark Money and Dirty Politics’.  It is a fascinating story of how undisclosed donations have infiltrated British politics, undermining public faith in democracy and fuelling the rise of populism across the West. Pete and Peter also discuss their common love of baseball and cricket and Peter shares a fascinating story about emigration from Longford to Argentina! This episode is kindly sponsored by Ireland’s fintech and financial services recruitment specialists, Top Tier Recruitment.  If you would like an intro to the team at Top Tier Recruitment, please click here. For insights delivered to your inbox beyond the spoken word, subscribe to our MoneyNeverSleeps newsletter right here on Substack. Peter Geoghegan is an Irish writer, broadcaster and investigations editor at the award-winning news website openDemocracy. He led openDemocracy‘s investigations into dark money in British politics

Faye Walsh Drouillard from WakeUp Capital joins the show to talk about how her formative years and life experience drove her towards early stage impact investing, the two biggest challenegs we face as a global population and fuelling self confidence with humility, constant curiousity and a drive to do better. This episode is kindly sponsored by Ireland’s fintech and financial services recruitment specialists, Top Tier Recruitment.  If you would like an intro to the team at Top Tier Recruitment, please click here. For insights delivered to your inbox beyond the spoken word, subscribe to our MoneyNeverSleeps newsletter right here on Substack. Faye is the founder and principal of WakeUp Capital, an Ireland based early stage impact fund that backs European companies already shaping a better, brighter future for people and planet. Faye grew up and spent her formative years between Washington DC and the West Coast of the US, and she credits these early experiences in shaping her view of the world and her a

This week, Pete and Eoin dive into the curious deal brewing between Microsoft and TikTok, a crystal ball view into what's going on with the challenger bank Monzo, all topped off with the recent news on Square and piped-in crowd noise for Pete's beloved Boston Red Sox.. This episode is kindly sponsored by Ireland’s fintech and financial services recruitment specialists, Top Tier Recruitment.  If you would like an intro to the team at Top Tier Recruitment, please click here. For insights delivered to your inbox beyond the spoken word, subscribe to our MoneyNeverSleeps newsletter right here on Substack. Stories covered and and things we touched on this week include: The biggest problem with Microsoft’s fractured TikTok deal (The Verge, 4-Aug-20) Monzo sees losses double despite revenue bump (Sifted, Isabel Woodford, 30-Jul-20) Square’s Big Bitcoin Haul Is Good for Square but Better for Bitcoin (Barron's, 5-Aug-20) John Collison – Growing the Internet Economy  - do general accounting practices need

This week, we welcome Elaine Deehan from Starling Bank back to the show with a session recorded as part of a Virtual Meetup organised by FSCom for the European Women’s Payment Network last month.  Elaine was originally on episode 23 when she was the founder of Pocketwire, and we remastered that for episode 76 as it’s one of our most popular episodes. This episode is kindly sponsored by Ireland’s fintech and financial services recruitment specialists, Top Tier Recruitment.  If you would like an intro to the team at Top Tier Recruitment, please click here.   For insights delivered to your inbox beyond the spoken word, subscribe to our MoneyNeverSleeps newsletter right here on Substack. Top soundbites include: Pete's description of "the Trilogy" in the context of Elaine's career:  "Your experience with the innovation lab at Citi, then onto Currency Fair, and then starting PocketWire I likened to someone going from Cadbury, then onto Butler's and then Godiva on the path to a chocolate addict

In this week's Money Talks segment, Pete Townsend and Eoin Fitzgerald dig into the recent Twitter Hack and how it might have been much worse, the Ant Group IPO and their status as the 'online mall for everything', Instagram's opportunity to become America's favorite shopping mall and Robinhood dropping out of the UK before launching. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/moneyneversleeps/support

Gene Murphy, co-founder of Startup Boost joins our first video edition of the podcast to talk about his earliest entreprenurial experiences, the overnight evolution of Startup Boost to the virtual world, the art of mentorship...and his short-lived reign as Ireland's number one Male Health and Beauty reporter! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/moneyneversleeps/support

Zac Liew, co-founder and CEO of Curlec joins the show to talk about the societal influences of what works well in fintech, how Curlec is enabling the subscription economy in Southeast Asia and getting comfortable being uncomfortable. This episode is kindly sponsored by Ireland’s fintech and financial services recruitment specialists, Top Tier Recruitment.  If you would like an intro to the team at Top Tier Recruitment, please click here. For insights delivered to your inbox beyond the spoken word, subscribe to our MoneyNeverSleeps newsletter right here on Substack. This week we talk to Zac Liew from Curlec, a fintech startup helping SMEs overlooked by traditional banks collect recurring payments with their automated platform, replacing manual methods like cash, checks and credit cards.  Zac and Pete connected through their respective networks recently from one of those conversations that Pete had that went like “based on what you just said, you need to meet Zac Liew.”  Being a trusting soul,

In this week's Money Talks segment, Pete Townsend and Eoin Fitzgerald look ahead to the impact of Wirecard on Banking-as-a-Service, how the Irish tech startup Circit could have prevented the Wirecard audit mess, and Diffuse's take on startups looking overseas for venture capital investors. This episode of MoneyNeverSleeps is kindly sponsored by Ireland’s fintech and financial services recruitment specialists, Top Tier Recruitment.  If you would like an intro to the team at Top Tier Recruitment, please click here. For insights delivered to your inbox beyond the spoken word, subscribe to our MoneyNeverSleeps newsletter right here on Substack. In this episode, Eoin and Pete dig into pieces of content from this week that are relevant to the cosmic cloud of startups, tech, venture deals and enterprise in which they live. The main stories stories covered in this week's episode include: · BaaS Works, it's the Regulations That Don't (Chris Skinner's blog, 30th June) · A special segment from David Heath,

This week we talk to David Vatchev, Venture Development Lead at R3, on what it takes to survive uncertainty, stay relevant to investors while the venture capital cycle slows down, and also understand, measure and speed up the enterprise sales cycle...a big ask for anyone! This episode is kindly sponsored by Ireland’s fintech and financial services recruitment specialists, Top Tier Recruitment.  If you would like an intro to the team at Top Tier Recruitment, please click here.  Also, watch for the first edition of the MoneyNeverSleeps newsletter that we're sending out before the end of this month! This week we talk to David Vatchev from R3 about his role as Venture Development Lead and we did a deep dive into how startups can come to grip with the enterprise sales cycle, which is so relevant right now with how much harder enterprise sales have become with the pandemic, especially for startups embracing newer technologies.  R3 is “an enterprise blockchain software firm working with a broad ecosy

On this week's episode, Pete and Eoin dive into payments on WhatsApp, the paradox between investing in underrepresented founders and the current demographics of venture capital, and getting digitally closer to your spending through Revolut and Olivia. This episode is kindly sponsored by Ireland’s fintech and financial services recruitment specialists, Top Tier Recruitment.  If you would like an intro to the team at Top Tier Recruitment, please click here. In this episode, Eoin and Pete dig into pieces of content from this week that are relevant to the cosmic cloud of startups, tech, venture deals and enterprise in which they live and work. At the end of this episode, Eoin announced the big news on the first edition of the MoneyNeverSleeps newsletter on SubStack, more news to come! The stories covered in this week's episode include: Visa, Facebook Link Up For P2P Payments, eCommerce On WhatsApp (PYMNTS.com, 15th June 2020) -Beginning this week, Brazilian users will be able to pay for things through What

Garrett Cassidy, co-founder and CEO of Trezeo, joins the show to talk about making financial services accessible to independent workers, the snowball effect of impacting people's lives, mental health perspectives in the startup community....and the impact of scuba diving on his ability to communicate! This episode is kindly sponsored by Ireland’s fintech and financial services recruitment specialists, Top Tier Recruitment.  If you would like an intro to the team at Top Tier Recruitment, please click here. This week we talk to Garrett Cassidy from Trezeo, a fintech on a mission to help independent workers with their financial lives by providing them with a comprehensive safety net delivered 100% digitally. As Garrett said recently on a Future of Work interview series for Aperture, “Trezeo is not a social enterprise, it is a for-profit investor-backed enterprise. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t make money from doing the right thing, and that’s where technology changes things fundamentally.”  Pet

In this week's Money Talks segment, Pete Townsend and Eoin Fitzgerald dive into the difference between video and live interactions between startups and their investors, the role of Twitter and Facebook as arbiters of the truth, a look back at the demographics from the first two years of this podcast and the monumental inspiration from spaceflight. This episode is kindly sponsored by Ireland’s fintech and financial services recruitment specialists, Top Tier Recruitment.  If you would like an intro to the team at Top Tier Recruitment, please click here. In this episode, Eoin and Pete dig into pieces of content from this week that are relevant to the cosmic cloud of startups, tech, venture deals and enterprise in which they live. The stories covered in this week's episode include: ‘Video is fine’: venture capitalists find the benefits in digital due diligence (FT, 3rd June 2020, paywall) What is it about human nature that makes VCs want to meet someone face to face? Facial gestures?  The cut of their

Conor McGinn from Akara joins the show to talk about the human side of robotics, drawing motivation from skeptics, having all of the ingredients to scale a robotics and artificial intelligence business in Ireland....and how Akara are like a prize fighter in the best shape of their life just waiting to take on the world! This episode is kindly sponsored by Ireland’s fintech and financial services recruitment specialists, Top Tier Recruitment.  If you would like an intro to the team at Top Tier Recruitment, please click here. This week we talk to Conor McGinn from Akara Robotics, an Ireland based startup building robots that care.  Akara are currently engaged in their seed round to raise capital from investors to bring their innovations to market quicker, and Pete was introduced to Conor through Eamonn Carey's 'Sharing Dealflow' newsletter.  Given the direction that this podcast has gone in the past two years from its fintech roots into a few tech-driven human interest stories but then an explor

In this week's Money Talks segment, Pete Townsend and Eoin Fitzgerald dig into a slice of "Pizza Arbitrage" from the Margins blog by Ranjan Roy and Can Duruk on the Doordash, Uber and Grubhub strategies of growth at all costs, and delve into the importance of recharging yourself, work-life and pandemic-driven cultural changes and the staying power of massive retail brands. This episode is kindly sponsored by Ireland’s fintech and financial services recruitment specialists, Top Tier Recruitment.  If you would like an intro to the team at Top Tier Recruitment, please click here. In this episode, Eoin and Pete dig into pieces of content from this week that are relevant to the cosmic cloud of startups, tech, venture deals and enterprise in which they live. The stories covered in this week's episode include: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage - a story from the Margins blog by Ranjan Roy and Can Duruk on just how far Doordash is going to grab market share, and how one pizza shop owner literally flipped the dough t

Finn Murphy from Frontline Ventures joins the show to talk about a people-centric view to investing in early stage startups, what it takes to scale Irish startups to nine-figure revenue levels, what typically lures Irish startups to the UK, US or Continental Europe, and how his own competitive drive works well in venture capital. This episode is kindly sponsored by Ireland’s fintech and financial services recruitment specialists, Top Tier Recruitment.  If you would like an intro to the team at Top Tier Recruitment, please click here. In this episode, Pete Townsend talks to Finn Murphy from Frontline Ventures, a Dublin-based B2B SaaS venture firm investing in Europe and the US.  Finn is a board member or observer on Frontline investments such as Pathfinder, Umba, Cloudsmith, Modulz, Swyg and Evervault, among others. In a country of five million people like Ireland, the venture capital community is about the size you would expect - relatively modest.  However, with multinational finance, pharm

In this Money Talks segment, Pete and Eoin riff on the shutdown of the RBS challenger bank brand 'Bo', Revolut's M&A ambitions, what N26's latest fundraising means in the great universe of challenger banks.... and their latest reads! This episode is kindly sponsored by Ireland's fintech and financial services recruitment specialists, Top Tier Recruitment. If you would like an intro to the team at Top Tier Recruitment, please click here. In this episode, Eoin Fitzgerald and Pete Townsend dig into three pieces of content from this week that are relevant to the cosmic cloud of startups and enterprise in which they live, with a focus on the latest news from challenger bank brands. The stories covered in this week's episode include: RBS axes digital bank Bo' (TechCrunch, 01-May-20) - Bo, the digital bank developed by RBS-owned Natwest, is to shutter, just 6 months after launching publicly and gathering 11,000 customers. Revolut on the hunt for acquisitions (FT, 06-May-20) - Revolut is looking to use some of

Ash Quinn from VideoRankMe joins the show to talk about her journey from a law degree to digital startups, the benefits of over-communication when you have distributed teams around the world....and being a Gaeilgeoir! (go ahead, google it!) This episode is kindly sponsored by Ireland's fintech and financial services recruitment specialists, Top Tier Recruitment. If you would like an intro to the team at Top Tier Recruitment, please click here. This week we talk to Ash Quinn from VideoRankMe, an Ireland-based early-stage tech company doing some amazing things with online video and search engine optimization (SEO). VideoRankMe is the first Google-approved video ranking technology for immediate 'Page One' results on Google and YouTube. Ash has a really interesting background with her soul-searching pivot away from her law degree in 2018 and her re-entry into the professional world driving digital businesses forward. She also operates in a similar role with MoShoppa, a turnkey e-commerce platform and recently sp

In another edition of our Money Talks segment, Pete Townsend and Eoin Fitzgerald air their thoughts on the startup support plan announced in the UK, Marc Andreessen's 'Build' essay, and NFX's recent post on how startups can survive a downturn. This episode is kindly sponsored by Ireland's fintech and financial services recruitment specialists, Top Tier Recruitment. If you would like an intro to the team at Top Tier Recruitment, please click here. In this episode, the comeback kid, Eoin Fitzgerald, finally rejoins Pete Townsend as they dig into a few of the things that happened in the past week in tech, venture deals, and the topics that they generally cover in their day jobs. The stories covered in this week's episode include: UK Government launches £1.25bn plan to help struggling UK start-ups - How high (or low) does the investment committee making these decisions set the bar? Andreessen Horowitz's (a16z) Marc Andreessen and his "It's Time to Build" essay - There is a widespread inability to build and the p

In a special replay episode from Season 1 that we just couldn't resist bringing back with everyone around the world working from home of late, we talk to Vanessa Tierney, co-founder and CEO of Abodoo, the fastest growing SaaS platform for people and companies embracing 'Smart Working'. This episode of Money Never Sleeps is kindly sponsored by Possible.ie, an Executive and Personal Coaching practice who partner with their clients to realize their full potential. The team at Possible.ie work with entrepreneurs, emerging talent and senior leadership in a collaborative way to improve business performance, retain and develop key staff and improve leadership effectiveness.  Check them out online on Possible.ie, and tell 'em we sent you! What we're all going through right now would make you think that remote working is the new normal, but Aboodo's mission is to convert this into "smart working" - i.e., whatever combination of remote, in-office, flexible hours and co-working is the most effective for people and