The Role of Banking: We all need a place to call home

By Theodora Lau and Bradley Leimer of Unconventional Ventures 

The financial services model has been in flux for several decades, none more acute than since the Great Recession. Who is best to lead the charge for change? The entrepreneur or the intrapreneur? With an army of financial technology startups addressing customer needs in new and innovative ways, one might wonder how banking as an industry will persist — at least in its current form.

Who is the best to lead what is next for banking, you might ask? 

There are deeper questions we must consider. 

When you think about your purpose in life, what do you ponder? 

And if your work happens to fall into an industry like banking, this is often a metaphorical journey into the unknown at best, and a very quick lesson in morality at worst. 

This is most often due to the duality of our own personal mission for the world and the lure of what can be best described as personal profitability. 

This is a conundrum. And we love conundrums. 

It’s where morals meet choices — where dilemma meets certainty. 

Life is all about choices. 

But it’s more often about something much, much more. 

And that some of us have choices at all is a miracle indeed. 

Life beyond choices is also a journey — or a series of journeys.

We have an unusual amount of paths we can take, with many of them being determined by luck of birth and chance of time. The where, when, and to whom we are born sets the wheel in motion. And if you are ‘lucky’ enough to fall into banking, well, then, you have stumbled across a lottery in a lot of ways compared to your peers. 

But, at what cost, you might ask? 

This is where this journey becomes interesting. In the context of what financial services have become — the root of everything we do centers around money and in it the extraction of value from our customers — in the spirit of improving their lives. 

Now, who does this best? Who goes through this journey into the heart of the darkness of banking and lives to tell the tale? The idealist, who defines life’s journey as one of discovery toward a common good and a society that will never be? The realist that helps bend the arc toward the common good through multiple arrows in their quiver yet realizes they can only do so much? Or the selfist, who stands by themselves and their own needs beyond others? 

In the end, those that survive get to tell the tales. 

But who gets to choose and why?

There are more options, or so it seems. 

Enter the entrepreneur. The one that creates, drives, and delivers. 

The one that hopes. 

"Hope is an emotion we need to make the best of life, and it is accompanied by great happiness. If hopes begin to fail us we are in danger of losing all feelings of hopefulness. Hope turns to despair. And so, there must remain always something to hope for." (C.R.Milne)

It’s so much more than a job 

What does entrepreneurship mean to you?

A glorified job that chases after a dream that may or may not exist? 

A journey in search of value creation? 

A pursuit of purpose?

To many, entrepreneurship isn’t a career choice. 

It’s a calling. Maybe much simpler than that. 

It’s a coffee. A moment of serendipity at a conference. 

It’s a recommendation from a friend of a friend. 

It’s taking a deep dive on a new subject and simply getting lost in words. 

Just like dominos, decisions that we make in our everyday lives can take us through unexpected turns. Yet, real entrepreneurship is a privilege not available to many. 

Consider this:

While venture capital funding has grown tremendously in recent years, the same cannot be said for funding for female founders. 

According to Pitchbook, “companies founded solely by women garnered 2.8% of the total capital invested in venture-backed startups in the US. last year.”

The business benefits of having a diverse team — regardless of if you are in a startup or big corporate environment — have been extensively discussed. 

“Startups with a female founder generated 78 cents of revenue for every $1 of funding, while male-founded startups generated 31 cents,” according to a Boston Consulting Group (BCG) study of 350 startups. Women-led private technology companies also demonstrate higher capital efficiency, according to the Kauffman Foundation. 

And the benefits go beyond initial ROI. 

Women founders tend to hire more women in their teams, which can have a ripple effect on the startup ecosystem that is greatly lacking in diversity. 

Yet, the fact remains: The innovation economy is still largely homogeneous. 

During these past few months of trying times, black businesses in the U.S. face an attrition rate of 41%, twice the rate of white businesses. It would appear that the pandemic has brought out in full display, the inequalities that many in our society face on a daily basis.

Where can we go from here? 

Creating opportunities for growth

Local communities and businesses are the cornerstone of our society. 

It is no secret that the majority of venture capital flows to the three major coastal cities. While efforts such as Rise of the Rest aims to redistribute startup funding to more local cities, we need to take extra steps to strengthen the local ecosystem. 

As we have witnessed from the pandemic, broadband connectivity is a must-have to support remote work and virtual learning. Yet, it is a privilege not available to almost 40 million Americans. Closing the digital divide, from building the infrastructure to providing affordable services, must be one of the top priorities in the digital era.

We must invest in emerging technologies and sustainability, fields that are crucial for our economic viability going forward. We must invest in education, to better prepare our next generation for challenges to come. We must strengthen local universities and power local centers of innovation across the heartland and beyond, to create local talent pools and new job opportunities for the future.

And we must look after those who are displaced; provide returnship and new training opportunities to re-integrate them into the workforce.

A wake up call

If you were to bestow your wisdom to your younger self, what will that be?

If there were one thing you could change, what would it be?

Would you have picked a different path? A different destination perhaps?

What would that be, indeed? 

For those of you who are trying to change an industry, you will need to tap into the power of more than just yourself. A mouse may tame an elephant, but not one the size of banking. 

This is why we must connect to the best of what our community has to offer, and start to be more realistic about how we create real, lasting change. 

We must seek to inject an antidote into our workplace to fight against the day to day, the way of doing business that resulted in disparate outcomes for far too many for far too long. 

As we challenge the status quo, we must enable those that make necessary change. 

As we dream for a better world, we must empower those that are a catalyst to others. 

This is the change we are seeking. This is the superpower we all have within us. 

When we dare to dream and look for something beyond good. 

That’s when we know we are truly on to something. 

Something beyond ourselves. 

And that alone is good.

Maybe even good enough. 

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There are many ways to create meaningful impact. Some choose to start their own endeavor, attempting to change the existing paradigm from the outside. Others choose an often more arduous route to create change from within. Regardless of which path you take, the journey can be treacherous and full of surprises. The best stories often come from those who have chosen to embark on multiple expeditions — and lived to tell us their tales. 

In this episode of One Vision, Bradley and Theo chat with Drew Graham, Director of Digital Strategy at Barclays, as he walks us through his journey into the heart of darkness as he nudges the industry toward the arc of the common good. Listen in via iTunes or Spotify and be sure to subscribe so you won't miss our future episodes.

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Unconventional Ventures helps drive innovation to improve systematic financial wellness. We connect founders to funders, provide mentorship to entrepreneurs, strategic advisory services to a broad set of corporates, and broaden opportunities for diversity within the ecosystem. Our belief is that anyone with great ideas should have a chance to succeed and every voice should be heard. Visit unconventionalventures.com to learn how you can partner with us today.