Edition 37 - Venture Time 2022 wrapped.

Hey folks, ????

Welcome to the penultimate Double-click newsletter for 2022 - dang that went fast!! Thank you to everyone who has subscribed so far. As a Christmas wish I’d love to hear from you what topics you want to hear me get into going into 2023. Drop me a line [email protected] . That aside, let's dive into today…

When we talk about unleashing talent at 11:FS we don’t just mean internally. We are always looking for ways to use our internal expertise to support the wider industry, and to create platforms that give other people the spotlight or generally provide the community with value.??

So having just held the last Venture Time of the year this week’s edition I wanted to give a shout out to the folks who we spoke to doing super interesting things to shape the industry.?

Let’s double click. ????

Venture Time? Ain’t that a cartoon?!?

For around 4 years now I’ve been sporadically holding what we call “Venture Time” days, a nod to the classic early 00s Adventure Time series. Sadly this doesn’t mean leaving the 11:FS office to go on post-apocalyptic adventures with one of our office dogs (although I do have a dog called Jake the Dog - don't let kids name things is the lesson here!), but we do offer anyone from the community the chance to come and talk to us about any issues they are having, or any ideas they want to jam on.?

Me and my team, like so many others,? have been through the hardships of starting a business and we bare the scars of transitioning from corporate worlds to pastures new. But along the journey the one thing I wish I had when I was starting out was someone to share the holy shit moments!?

Am I on the right path? Should I give up? Is this normal to feel like this??

This is how Venture Time was born and since then we have had Lords from the House of Lords, BBC news presenters, founders of amazing businesses, people from regulators all around the world, students just getting into the game and a plethora of other awesome humans from all around the world.

A few of the people that we had this time are:

Monica Millares.

Super cool podcaster, and all around queen of product, Monica came with an ask around how best to grow listenership and any mistakes, that I have definitely already made, to avoid when producing content via audio medium.?

I won’t go into what she is cooking up but definitely check out what Monica’s up to HERE and you might be hearing her on a Fintech Insider pretty soon.

Harry Nijjar.?

In true Adventure Time style Harry came to us with the ambition of embarking on building a web3 marketplace which puts community and utility at the core.??

You can imagine how psyched we were when this one came in. No one was more excited than our crypto specialist Mauricio who joined me on this one.?

Connect with Harry HERE.

Flare.?

A familiar face graced the 11:FS office in the form of Alex Hooper who worked with us as an engineer in 11:FS Foundry. Alex always had an itch to start his own thing so it was super cool to have him and his co-founder Dan come back to speak to us about their new business Flare.?

Expect to see these folks on our podcast at some point next year but expect this startup to be a rocketship - Always back people and Alex is good people.

You can follow Alex HERE .

Prem Munday.

Serial fintech writer Prem has recently started a blog exploring the intersection of DeFi and Fintech. His ask from us was more on the content distribution side to which Mariette had the smarts to offer value.?

My tips are always add value and put in the reps - 6 years into our content journey and look at us for an example of patience - Also look at us for an example of “we were sh!t” and got so much better.

Prem's blog is killing it - Follow what he’s up to HERE and go read his blog HERE.

Vasilis Ilias.??

Vasilis started his request by complimenting me on my sneaker collection… so naturally I was already sold by whatever he had to say!?

For reals though Vasilis spent the last year working for a construction tech startup and now looking to build a B2B payments platform for the construction industry.?

Lived and breathed the industry, saw a problem to solve. Very much in line with why we started 11:FS so enjoyed sparring on this one. Finance is increasingly embedded and not industry, even construction, is immune to this.

Connect with Vasilis and follow his journey HERE .

Kamangu Samuel.?

Based in Zambia Kamangu came to us as a solo founder of Embedded Defi based startup with an aim to bring Decentralised Finance to the point of need with a B2B2C model for a global target market.?

Kamangu and his team are looking to raise pre-seed funding and potentially join an incubator to supercharge the work they are doing.?

You can find and connect with Kamangu HERE .

Until next quarter…?

These were but a few of what was an amazing day learning from amazing humans trying to do like we are and change the fabric of financial services.

I love these days. To all the people that spoke to us this month or indeed this year keep doing what you’re doing. With enough hard work and passion success will come.?

Next Venture Time will be early next year so watch out for the next post on Twitter and Linkedin and come jump in a slot for the next one!

That’s all for now. ????

D