The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Starling Bank: Building a $1.5 Billion Business Against The Odds: Anne Boden

Episode Date: November 22, 2021

The story of how Anne built her business is a genuine blockbuster of entrepreneurship and perseverance. Starling is one of the biggest FinTech companies in the world, with billions in deposits, but after listening to this you’ll be amazed how it was possible. When her co-founder walked out of the company, and took the funding with him, Anne walked in to an office where she was the only employee on the books, and had to start the company she’d built all over again. Little by little, she came back, and a year later landed a mega investment deal in one of the most incredible stories we’ve ever had on this podcast. What really shines about Anne is the clear sense of mission she’s infused her company with. Anne really cares about doing right by the customer, and cleaning up an industry that historically doesn’t have a record of giving people a fair shake. Anne is in business to make the world a better place, and we think after listening to this you’ll agree that Anne’s story shows business success can come from the most unlikely places. Follow Anne: Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/anneboden Twitter - https://twitter.com/anneboden Anne's book: https://amzn.eu/d/hrt2QoX Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo

Quick one. Just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio. And thirdly to to Amazon Music, who when they heard that we were expanding to the United States, and I'd be recording a lot more over in the States, they put a massive billboard in Times Square for the show. So thank you so much, Amazon Music. Thank you to our team. And

thank you to all of you that listened to this podcast for a while, you would have heard the episode I did with Tom Blomfield. He was the former CEO and founder of Monzo Bank, one of the big fintech disruptor banks here in the UK. And during that episode, he also tells us the story of his time at Starling Bank, the rival bank that he co-founded with Anne Bowden. And that episode is dramatic. It should be a movie.

They talk about their fallout. In the episode, Tom claims that Anne fired 16 members of staff in the same day. So in this episode, Anne wanted to come in to tell her side of the story, but also to tell her story. And it's an incredible story. It's an inspiring story. It's a story that doesn't quite make sense in the fact that she's achieved so much in an industry where she was an underdog at an age when she also admits she is an underdog, confronting stereotypes that make her an underdog. And despite the odds being stacked against her, she's built a multi-billion dollar bank here in the UK. It really is a crazy story, one that I believe one day will be a Netflix show. Think about that. Two people came together

to take on the banking world. They came together and founded a bank called Starling Bank. They had this major blow up. They separated and starts again. And they both build incredibly successful multi-billion dollar banks individually. It is one hell of a story. It twists, it turns, and it inspires you. So without further ado, I'm Stephen Bartlett, and this is the Diary of a CEO. I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself. Anne, humble beginnings. Do you think that's an accurate phrase to describe the start of your life? Yeah, it was humble. My father worked in the steelworks. My father came home from work with newspapers under his arm, all greasy from, you know, sort of doing hard work. My mum worked in the local department store. And we were happy. Brothers and sisters?

No, only child. My parents married late. My father came back from the Second World War, found his dream wife and they had a really, really happy marriage. And school life? I went to local comprehensive school. It's a very, very new school. I was brought up in my grandmother's house, my parents, my grandmother,

in an older house on the edge of a big, big council estate. And in the middle of this huge council estate, they built this new comprehensive school. And it was not a very good school. It was very new. I was one of the first children to go to university and to be honest there was a bit of a stigma from coming from that area and that school and you were you were smart right because I know you went on to do computer science and I know people that do computer science are smart arses so So you're definitely smart, right? Yeah. I think I did most of my studying myself. The school couldn't do a lot to help, to be honest.

When I had my O-levels, I think everybody was quite shocked by how well I'd done. But I did most of my studying by, you know, buying my own textbooks and reading myself. And the house wasn't a an academic home my father left school at 15 at 14 my mother at 15 and there were no books at home except holiday brochures we lived to go on holiday we were a very very happy family we had a touring caravan and we went all over Europe um but it was very unusual for um a daughter of that home to be interested in studying why um why I was studying or why

it was unusual why was it unusual for yeah I think the um my parents didn't push me. My parents believed we're very liberal. You know, all the kids of the neighbourhood sort of hung out in our house. It was a very happy home. We were very, very fortunate to have just probably a little bit more money than everybody living around us. But there was no emphasis on education. That was something I did. You know, I went to the local academic bookshop and I remember sort of taking a book off the shelf, you know, what you do at 14, you know, what subjects do

you choose? This was all much, this was me choosing these things, not my parents. And you were choosing those subjects because you, you enjoyed, you intrinsically enjoyed learning or because you wanted to become super wildly successful as a mega entrepreneur? a briefcase. I wanted a job in an office. I didn't actually know anybody that worked in an office. My inspiration was from television. It is very much seeing people on television and seeing that people had jobs in London, in glamorous places, were doing interesting things. And I could do that. And my parents were very very supportive they gave me as much money as I wanted to spend in the bookshop um yeah and they you know went out and bought me it bought me a 24 volume set of Excitepede Britannica the only problem was it was 1953 edition right so all my knowledge was somewhat sort of outdated but it was a great

home and we did interesting things and I did well in school and I went to university. And at that point I'm guessing you didn't have a huge from what you've said a desire to become an entrepreneur. I never thought I'd ever be an entrepreneur. is something which is quite recent you know coming out of school it was very much I wanted a job that was scientific or um or interesting where I could I actually wanted to be a scientist I actually wanted to be doing something with chemistry and computers whatever and my mum said to me you're going to try for one normal job, you know, apply for a job in a bank. And I did.

And the competition for the job was huge. There were thousands of people applying for a job at Lloyds Bank to be a computer specialist, as a graduate computer specialist. And I got the job. So when I got the job I had to take it this is post-university yeah why did you choose computer science at university and am I right in thinking because it's still kind of the case now that that was a very male-dominated subject to choose yeah um it was almost all men um my father thought i could possibly be a metallurgist at the steelworks what's a metallurgist for someone you know studies metals

metals are made right um yeah um but there was no there was no concept of home, of jobs for women or jobs for men. That didn't really exist. I came from a home where my mother was very capable and my grandmother was very capable. So me becoming a computer scientist and going to Swansea University to study where there were all men wasn't something that really fazed me. And you go off to the to university you study computer science you do pretty well at university I'm guessing yeah okay yeah you did

great I'm sure uh and then you get this job at Lloyds Bank in the graduate program and you're there for how long uh four and a half years I do four and a half years before I quit oh really is that yeah I had a four and a half year thing going on right so I was four and a half years before I quit. Oh, really? Yeah, I had a four and a half year thing going on. Right. So I was four and a half years at Loin's Bank. You know, great job. You know, so, you know, did the branch thing, did all the jobs. And then my first boss told me, you better tone down your aspirations.

Otherwise, you'd get very, very frustrated. Oh. Oh. And that didn't work with me. I was really, really determined that I was going to get on. So I did four and a half years at Lloyds Bank. I did five years at Standard Chartered Bank. I did three and a half years at Pricewaterhouse,

studying banks and advising banks. And I went to UBS in the city and then out to Switzerland, five years out in Switzerland, working for a big bank, joined a big insurance company, worked all over the world, worked in Chicago a bit, and then joined a bank in Amsterdam, ABN AMRO, worked in all sorts of places from Kazakhstan to Uzbekistan to all the places around the world. I quit again. Spent some time in fintech before going into Allied Irish Banks as chief operating officer. So that stint across all of those different banks that you worked in, across all of these different territories, how that in total uh oh before you came on yeah so I did yeah yeah I started in 1981 and I I quit to become an entrepreneur um in 2014.

That's very atypical. Oh yeah it's very very very unusual i've also done different things in the jobs i keep meeting people and people go i know an boden she worked in insurance and i go that's me and they go no no no no there's all there's an boden and she worked in in she's a computer scientist she did computing things uh no no that's me um so i've had a long career doing lots of different things in different companies but i was a corporate person when i quit to become an entrepreneur that was something i'd never done and did you consciously make the decision that I don't want to do the corporate life stuff anymore I want to start my own business and give it a shot and when you did that what age

were you 54 at 54 years old you decide that you want to go it alone and give up all of that corporate stuff and all the the perks you can say all the perks the stability the security of the corporate world and yeah well I was getting up every morning thinking somebody has to do something about this banking industry I was sort of ashamed to be a banker I wasn't quite comfortable with it and the banking industry was you know hadn't hadn't embraced tech you know everything was changing and the banking industry was looking backwards rather than forwards and I started thinking look you know I've got a bit of independence now I can do whatever I want I really like to do my own business and perhaps I'll start a dress shop, right? You know, I quite like fashion, you know,

plus I'll do a dress shop. And I realized I know nothing about fashion. I know a lot about banking and what I should do is start a bank. And, but nobody ever starts banks. Yeah, I was going to say, no one goes from, I'll do a dress shop, maybe a bank. Black people don't.

Yeah, the only thing I knew about was banks and how banks are run. And, you know, people who start banks, well, they don't start banks. People don't start banks. And if they do start a bank, they are probably a billionaire. And therefore, you know, I was very different. You know, and when I started talking to people about, you know I was very different you know and when I started talking to people about you know I'm going to start a bank you know I could see people thinking I was totally crazy of course you know first of all people don't start banks and a five foot tall Welsh woman

definitely doesn't start a bank yes I mean like I hate to support the stereotypes but I wouldn't start a bank like if if I was a you know 40 year old billionaire white male that was six foot ten let alone yeah a slightly shorter Welsh woman so you just want to be because I really this is purely for my curiosity here because i'm trying to understand how you like you know because yeah i don't have the guts so um you're 50 50 odd years old you're currently in your corporate job yeah and and whilst you're at the job you start thinking about starting the bank okay and at some point you hand in your resignation at what point did you hand in the resignation was it while you were still in the job and the bank had started moving or did you leave and then start start putting in the foundations no I I decided very quickly I left um and within weeks I was working on the

new proposition um it's only last weekend I started unpacking the boxes. I came back from Ireland. I was in Ireland. And I decided, you know, get my notice in, started the whole proposition, booked the removal vans to bring me back over and then put them in the house and immediately went out knocking on doors.

It's only now I'm finding some time to unpack those boxes wow how many years later seven years crikey so you you leave you start knocking on doors how did you feel emotionally when you leave the corporate system and you hand in your resignation and you know you're going but you don't have your next move like solidified yet you're still building resignation and you know you're going but you don't have your next move like solidified yet you're still building that thing you know they describe entrepreneurship as throwing yourself off the cliff and like building the paraglider as you fall how did you feel emotionally at that phase I think you have to cope with the fact that you no longer have that that business card you no longer longer have a title um and you know I it's going to be relatively easy to raise money for Starling Bank.

You know, sort of, yes. And, you know, sort of I raised money in a job before. I could knock on a four doors and they would give me the money I needed. It was incredibly difficult. I, you know, going into lots of offices, basically saying I have this great idea okay it's an awesome idea I'm going to build a bank like no other bank I'll be going to build the technology from scratch it's going to be really fair to customers you're going to have a whole new way of engaging with the people that it served and I'm going to take market share of Barclays and HSBC and Lloyds. That's all I need is some money. People would, some people would tell me to my face that I was never going to do it.

You know, the people who thought they were being kind would say, no, you've never been an entrepreneur and you've never run a bank as a CEO before. And those two things are things you can't, you know, raise money for. So it's tough. And yeah, there was a lot and lots of knocking on doors, lots of people telling me it was impossible. And in some cases, it was really hard to carry on, you know, sort of sending the emails. But I was determined. And even a glimpse of people, somebody telling me something positive was enough to drive me on to the next meeting. And was there a blow at that time that felt the hardest?

An email, a meeting uh yeah I think that there was one meeting with a with a set of investors where I just didn't have any of the answers you know you've been there you're an entrepreneur okay they ask you all these questions um and I didn't have any of the answers you know hadn't got as far as you know coming up with that part of the plan and that felt you know that felt awful but you you pick yourself up and you figure out how you're going to find the answers and you find the answers by asking people for help you ask people for help that have that are in the industry you ask people that help it for help that you've worked with in the past. There's a stereotype that have that are in the industry you ask people that help it for help that you've worked

with in the past there's a stereotype that people that build technology are from silicon valley they're like young white men um you know that probably went to harvard or something like that yeah um you buck that trend yeah when you were walking into those rooms and having those conversations were you aware that there was a certain prejudice probably acting against you? Oh, definitely. People assume that I'm not technical. People assume that I'm not capable of coding. There's code running in banks, big banks today that I wrote.

People assume that you have to be from Silicon Valley, you have to be in your 20s or your 30s and look and sound a certain way to build a tech company. You don't look like me or sound like me. But I was determined to build a tech company. And that was very, very hard for people to to appreciate what was your what was the driving force that spurred you on regardless of the resistance that you clearly encountered then what was it that made you you know I'm going to keep going I'm going to carry on knocking I think that at that time I was talking to venture capitalists and investors about this concept of a new bank. Yeah, it is possible to build a new bank.

It is possible to be a bank that actually has a lower cost base, has a different way of relating to customers. It is possible to do this. And I kept hearing those same statements replayed in different ways to different routes. You know, occasionally I'd go onto a VC sort of website from Silicon Valley, and somebody'd say roughly the same thing. There weren't any new banks at that stage. There wasn't anybody else doing it. But I felt that there was, whether it was an echo chamber,

whether I was hearing my own ideas back to me, or other people were thinking the same way, I whether I was hearing my own ideas back to me or other people were thinking the same way I felt I was on to something I felt that it was possible for people to create an organizations that are going to change things and you'd never done it before so would you describe yourself as someone that has a high level of self-belief at that point? I've managed to pull off things throughout my career where people thought I couldn't go to the next stage. Throughout my career, people have looked at me and thought, hmm, you're okay, she'll probably get one promotion.

She won't get any more. Those people were normally, well, working in my department a few years later. So I've always managed to go one step beyond or a couple of steps beyond what people expected. When I started this venture, I was surrounded by people who knew how this new world worked. They knew how venture capital worked. They knew how you world, I was not used to overselling my ideas. You know, one of the things about Starling's whole journey is that we tend to overdeliver, because deep down, you tend to underplay your ideas or underplay your success. And therefore, you know, starling's consistently over delivered and surprised people over the years is that a typical stereotypical or typical feminine quality

this idea of like because people talk a lot about the reason why, some of the reason why women in business struggle to get promotions is they're less likely to look weight and oversell themselves and demand promotions in the same way that men do. So I'm wondering that like that conservatism and that over-delivering but not over-promising is something that's quite typical of women? Yeah, I think it's a question of, it's a very, very difficult balance. If you come over as arrogant, if you come over as demanding, you're not likeable. If you're too soft and underplay what you have or what you're doing you're too soft you know sort of you can't get it right um but

I had to learn how to sell the ideas and it took years it's interesting I don't like to dwell too much on like gender differences but I think I'm asking that question as well because i remember a vc friend of mine um and also a guy called i think it was chamath but a guy called chamath who's one of the big uh investors and he says that the female founded businesses in his portfolio always have when he kevin o'leary as well from shark tank he said the same thing he said his female founders um under promise and over deliver consistently like and he said when I looked at all of my portfolio companies I think he's got 40 or 50 the female-led businesses were outperforming

significantly because they were under under promising and over delivering so hiring those first few people Starling Bank what was that process like? And really sort of laying the foundations of that business? Well, it was all about sort of phoning up people I knew, explaining what I was going to do and the idea and really working with every organisation I knew, trying to get favours. The traditional venture capital route wasn't open to me. Actually going to VCs and saying, can I raise 50,000, 100,000, 300,000? It wasn't open to me because I wasn't like the other people in those schemes.

I had to really work with big consultancy firms and tell them that I had this idea to start a new bank and they were going to miss out if they didn't back me. Unfortunately, I didn't have any money to pay them. I would pay them once I raised the money, but would they help me? And some of those big firms decided to back me. And lots of people in those firms took big personal risk because

most people in those big consulting firms thought that this was just totally crazy idea. She wants to take on Barclays. Ha ha ha. It'll never happen. No, no, let's try it. You know, we may learn something on the way. You know, sort of, she got all these crazy ideas. You may be able to take them and sell them to other customers. You know, let's just help her. And I must admit, I hung out in their customer lounges for years. Really?

Yeah. Just chilling? Yeah. Okay, interesting. really yeah just chilling just yeah okay interesting so you you you raise money in a slightly unconventional way considering the industry then you start calling people that you want to hire from the banking world that you've met or yeah I phone them up I've always been quite an unusual boss I I've always been quite different to the people that I, you know, work with in other organisations. People tend to be quite loyal to me.

And I phone them up and say, yeah, I've got a great idea. We're going to start this bank. Do you fancy coming to work with me? And we'll raise some money, whatever. And that's how the team got together. So the who is in the core team yeah okay so there's there was a couple of core teams okay there was the the first core team was the bunch that eventually went to to found monzo tom's which you read about in the book and tom's been here yeah so that was the first cohort. Yeah. And then Tom left with the team and I started again.

I started again in exactly the same way, phoning people up and say, yep, I'm still trying to start this bank. Now, please, please come and help me. So Tom in particular, Tom obviously sat here. He did the podcast, which I'm sure you've heard. And you've about um tom in the book as well how did you come to meet tom i met tom at a dinner right i met tom at a dinner in 2011 uh when he was working the go-kart list and i i spotted I spotted him as being a very clever, funny, charismatic individual that was running a business. And we kept in touch.

So when you started styling, you needed, was there a CTO? He came on as a CTO? So, yeah, I needed a CTO. I'd been a bit of a mentor to Tom. Tom had gone to the States to work for Grupa. You know, we kept in touch. I'd met him for coffee once or twice. And when he was back coming to the UK, I phoned him up and said, or he contacted me, says he's back. And we, I hired him as CTO. So he hires a CTO. He then builds out the technical team, I'm guessing that's typically what CTOs do. Yeah, we started hiring developers, yeah. Okay. And was there, because obviously it's well written

that there was a bit of a fallout here. Yeah. Take me on that journey. When did that, how did the relationship start and when was there friction? It, one day Tom decides to go and fortunately

we were about to take funding which meant that the deal was not going to happen and basically at that particular point the funding and the team fell apart you know, looking back of what happened,

you know, Tom had a really, really, really tough time at Monzo. I feel for him. Perhaps that we could have stayed together as a team and I could have done what I'm good at and perhaps Tom could have done what he was good at but you know sort of you know that's history both Monzo and Starling have done really really well and having a bit of competition does actually lead to a probably a better industry. The Klarna founder that came on said that about after pay as well i i read that there was a funding deal um early on but you pulled out of the funding deal because one of the founders was involved in a crime yeah it was yeah so you starling bank was going to take funding and you pulled out of the deal because one of the founders of the firm investing was

involved in a serious crime or because starling was involved in a serious crime i couldn't quite no no starling was not you know this was this was um this was a fund we're going to take investment about from and one of the founders of that firm okay didn't have the reputation that we wanted. Starling is a very, very... Starling believes in something. We have a mission. We believe in doing the right thing. And I think it's very, very important that we, you know, especially in those early days, we maintain and are true to our vision.

And that caused a disagreement between yourself and them? No, it wasn't that. It wasn't that. There was a culture clash around a corny video I heard that was being produced. I'm trying to understand what, like, because I get, I understand a point where founders part ways,

but typically there's lots of small things that happen leading up into that point little points of friction or disagreements and what were those um points of disagreement i think tom and i have much more in common than people think um you know sort of tom and i often sit on panels now right so so it's a panel of four and you know and they go great idea we'll have starling and monzo on the panel and we'll have two traditional banks in the middle you know barclays and lloyds whatever and um and there's lots of questions and somebody asked the question and there's going to be two answers there's going to be one set of answers from Tom and myself who tend to have the same view on things

and then a different answer from the incumbent banks. And sometimes I can see, you know, I look across the panel, catch sort of Tom's eye and, you know, I answer, he answers. There's lots more we have in common. And it's a really, it's a real pity.

It, you know, it ended the way it did you know uh you know there's lots of places in the book where i talk about um you know sort of you know tom's intellect and and tom's energy um it's a real pity it ended the way it did there came a day where you you turned to tom and you knew there was something wrong and you you say to him you know tom is, Tom, you don't seem happy about something here. And he responds that he's sick of your knee-jerk behavior. How did that feel? What was he referring to when he says sick of your knee-jerk behavior?

I think that, you know, are very very stressful i think tom you know is is an individual that sometimes has tough times and you know sort of every single conversation between founders on the wrong day about the wrong thing could possibly lead to that sort of breakup but um wow what a story eh how would you describe the differences in your personalities because it seems like that's probably at the heart of the clash i don't think different personalities lead the clashes. Interesting. I think that people who have different personalities working together can create great businesses. I think Tom, you know, went on, you know, to sort of lead a great group at Monzo and you know and I've listened to

his the show um where he talked to you and he had a tough time when you heard that how did you feel about the way that the events were recounted be honest with me yeah it's a very very difficult very difficult question to answer um i chose tom as a cto um i still believe he is an extremely talented individual and he has you know grown a great business. Of course, Starling is a better business. But isn't it great that what happened, you know, the story of, you know, it's a, yeah, you know, two individuals come across each other. They meet, you know, sort of one decides to start a bank, hires the other person. There's a falling out.

Both businesses going on to really change things. Well, it's the story of digital banking in the UK. I keep wondering if, you know, if that story never happened, would we've all got so much, you know, sort of inches in the press, to be honest. It was quite a story. How did you feel when you heard the way that he recounted the events? You're listening to it, it's coming through your ears and you're thinking?

It's the first time I'd heard it, but I knew that that story was being retold in places where I couldn't hear it. But I'm quite philosophical about this. We all see the world and a story in different ways. And yeah, you know, it's another piece in the story of the Starling Monzo journey. And at this time when you and Tom are having a fallout within Starling and you've realised, I guess, that you have different ideas and perspectives about how things should be done and where they should be going.

You hold a crisis meeting, you come together. I guess you have those meetings, I guess, because you're trying to discuss a way through, a way to a positive outcome. I think at some point you realise that there's not going to be a positive outcome and one of you is going to have to leave and then you offer up your resignation yeah so you offered to leave to quit Starling Bank yeah I you know and that's you've talked about you know how women act differently to men I was prepared to give up Starling I was prepared to give up my part in Starling for the good of Starling. And that was a very stupid thing to do. Why? Because it was my business, it was my idea.

I'd got the business to where it was, but I was volunteering to give up my role in Starling because I wanted Starling to succeed. Tom, I think, didn't think I was capable. Somebody that, like me, that has spent so many years in corporate life, that I wasn't capable of delivering and building a big tech company. And I built a big tech company. Yeah. So he didn't have that faith in me, but I realized that I could do it and made it happen. Specifically in those days, you decide that you're going to step away

for the greater good of the business. Admirable thing to do, some would say. It appears that it's one of the decisions you regret in hindsight, getting to that place. I was just gauging by your reaction, then it seems like it's something where you look back and think, why did I did I yeah I should never have volunteered to resign I should never have volunteered to go um that was me saying um that the survival of Starling was was more important

than me and both things are important my part in Starling and the survival of Starling. And what was it that changed your mind? Well, I think as I write in the book, I sort of retreated. I went to a coffee shop, went to Starbucks and met a guy that I'd seen in Starbucks every Sunday for the, you know, for the previous 10 years. And, you know, he's a tech entrepreneur. And he came to me and he sat opposite me and he said, you know, chatted about things. And I said that I'd stepped away from Starling because that was the only way the business would succeed. And he said to me, what are you going to do next I said I'm probably going to start another bank and he said well you don't have to start another bank you can go back in and

and take Starling back and I realized that I'd made a mistake that I needed, you know, I desperately wanted to create Starling. I desperately wanted to lead Starling. And I had to take Starling back. And I literally ran out of the coffee shop. And I can see the street in front of me now. And I got in the car, drove into London and took Starling back And what did that mean, taking it back?

It meant that I had to be you know, totally, I had to talk to people and say that I had a vision of creating something which is an organization that does things in a right sort of way.

You know, I'd been a banker for 30 odd years and I was ashamed to be a banker. And this idea of Starling was to do things my way. And I really wanted to lead the organization to where it is at the moment. So I had to make that clear, and I took backstalling. But the consequence was that I was on my own. I was on my own in the office. So you walk back in the office and say to the team, or say to Tom, that you're withdrawing your

resignation no um by then they'd refused to accept my resignation uh because um it's a long story i don't want to go into all the details but they refused to accept it because you know of certain things um so I stepped in and took control of Starling and so um I heard around this time you'd also been burgled at home and this kind of exacerbated I think some of the emotional components of decision making yeah is that accurate yeah so you know this you know this happened around the time of some burglaries. And, you know, and why, you know, why that's in the book is that we, you know, we're CEOs, we're leaders of businesses, we're entrepreneurs, but we're also human. And a burglary is quite personal. And how did that impact you and your decision making around that time?

I think it was tough around that time. But all issues and all things you do in a business are complex. And that was an added complication at that time. Just adds more to the mind and more things to think about and um makes you feel a little bit unstable i guess some burglar in your home i think has that kind of psychological destabilization um while you were away what you'd handed in your notice at starling and you'd left the office while you were away i guess tom's running the office per se is that accurate and um you know the way that it's framed

in press is that there's some kind of like coup that's gone on where you know control of the company has been seized from you in like a kind of low-key hostile manner is that at all accurate I think you have to read the book yeah you know there's a um you know I the book is the story of what happened um there were lots of notes and emails taken at the time and this was all written from my notes uh and emails written at the time and I think it's up to the readers to decide you know what really went on and you um you go in and you say you know I'm not gonna I'm not gonna resign um I want to lead this company I've got a vision for the company in its future and that means that you have to fire Tom essentially that's the decision you make you say I'm the CEO still of Starling Bank so I'm gonna

I'm gonna let you go and I'm gonna rebuild my own team and the way that you know when Tom sat here and spoke to me he he says that you fired the whole team is that accurate okay um the story is that um we lost the funding um you can't if you can't pay people it's very unfair to let them work um we were very very honest with the people that unless we could raise funding there weren't going to be any jobs and i think it's documented extremely well in the book about all the ins and outs and it's quite a story and so you lose funding because tom's quitting and obviously when people invest in companies they're investing in teams and peoples and cto is a critical role the person that's building the technology so that's why the funding goes through and you realize at this point i've got

to basically build this thing back from scratch um i'm guessing you had an inclination that there was a greater allegiance towards tom with the with the existing cohort of people no not really no no okay it was more just you basically weren't going to be able to pay for them because the funding had been pulled um yeah so that day so you you know tom leaves um the the team are are let go as well. And they go with Tom. And, you know, that starts the story of Monzo. And as he's described it, they start their own bank. And that's what we now call is Monzo.

That day after you walk into the office. So I'm guessing, I don't know whether it's a physical office or a metaphorical one, but you walk in, you're alone pretty much. Is there anyone else in the room? Is there anyone else in Starling as an employee at this point? That's me. Just you. And how did that feel going from, you know, the climb,

climb, we're building something here to ground zero? I'm very good at picking myself up. You know, sort of at that particular point, I was feeling, well, I haven't got the now of of having to raise money to pay these people um i can take my time now to find a new investor i can build a new team and it didn't take long before i was well there's a gentleman called alan chandler friend of yours yeah who turned up two days later and at your office and stayed and stayed working for no salary at all for nearly a year what was um what had you built at that point in terms of on the day when tom and the new monzo

crowd had left what had you actually achieved as a company what was their technology was there no nothing from the technology side had been really done we had a banking application so when you when you apply for a bank you have to have a banking application and it was in boxes so you know so we had a banking application we didn't really have much tech okay so your friend comes in he offers to do the p45s for the staff that just left and just to sort of give you a hand um and then you start hiring again a lot of people would quit at that point and a lot of people would give up that's a pretty significant blow as far as i'm concerned how many people had left in total 16 16 people that's a pretty significant blow to, you know,

might be time to go back to the corporate world now. Did that not cross your mind? Not really. I got to a state of having, almost having a banking license. I had the idea. I'd learned a lot. I knew what we needed to do. It didn't take me long. And I was a lot. I knew what we needed to do. It didn't take me long and I was starting again.

You say that like it's so easy, like it's just so effortless and I know it's not. It was humiliating, okay. It was humiliating reading in the press what had happened because the story's been told in the press and the story's been told now and not actually what happened. But, you know, that's history. You've got to get on and you've got to sort things out and you've got to move on. And I was, yeah, I was up for it. I was going to do it again. You seem reluctant to correct false stories here.

That's clearly a decision you've made. Yeah, I think that what I don't want to get into is he said that, you know, she said this. You know, I've written a book, which is, you know, which is a very accurate account of what happened and my side of the story. And people are allowed to have different sides of the same story.

That's okay. But I wanted to tell my story. Your friend that stopped by the office and gave you a hand, how emotionally important was that? And how grateful are you to them i will be forever ever grateful to alan uh i think that the one person to come in and and be somebody who said yep this happened but you yep, you're going to start again, that's fine. And I think one of the symbolic things that happened was that in the early weeks, you know, when they left, you know, Tom and the team had left all their debris behind,

you know, sort of, and they had a hell of a lot of debris. I went out one day to do some fundraising. And when I came back, Alan had collected all the all the mugs and the odd socks and you know the and you know all the various medications they were all taking and and it cleared it all up and thrown it all away and the office was clear of the old world and we could start again and that was quite symbolic and yeah it was I sometimes think if Alan had not come in you know would it have been so easy and I'll never know but that was the start of a new team and you know that team you know the the A team and the team that left with the b team um there she is

was you know we we attracted people that were sought out starling you know this this woman is going to build a bank and she's going to do all these things and they turned up and and they were awesome okay so the team have left alan's cleaned out the office is there is there not a moment in you where you you consider packing it in is there not a moment where you think you know what this is april the first april the first that's you know, that's when I accidentally had an email from the team that left. And that, that was difficult. You accidentally had an email?

Yeah. You weren't meant to be copied on it? I don't know. I never know whether I't meant to be copied on it? I don't know. I never know whether I was meant to be copied on it or not. But they were making fun of me. And I thought, well, is that the day I'm going to give up? But I said, nope, you know. And I went back in the office the following day and carried on.

Making fun of you in terms of your management skills, something you'd done or said or very personal things? No, it's a question of, you know, you have to read the book about it, but it was a prank about them being arrested. But you have to read the story to understand the nuance. But that was the only day that I thought you know can I carry on and that lasted an hour but I was absolutely determined were you upset reading that email I was panicking about them I was worried about them why um I was worried about the fact that they could be in real trouble.

And, yeah, I hired these people. They were friends for years. And I like them. You can't suddenly cut off all connection with people that you worked with, even though this thing had happened to me did it put a fire in your belly that wasn't there before because you know events like that can they can kind of send you one or two ways oh and they can kind of send you i guess they can also send you both ways at the same time but they typically if we're just kind of broad strokes they can they can devastate you to the point where you you know don't get out of bed or they can motivate you to the point that you

work two times as hard nothing was going to stop starlings succeeding after that happened so it's the work twice as hard yeah and did you did you really did you were there moments like where you you know you what you just put that extra effort in and you you know you became a little bit more determined because of that like moments you can think of because i know that i'm a human being and i don't care if i was in that situation i swear to god i'd have a picture of their face on the wall my team would be hearing about it every five seconds. That's the guy I am, like it or not, don't care. I do that about all the competition we have.

It motivates me and it is what it is. You don't have to like me. So I'm asking the question, did they become a real significant competitive driving force in your life? Okay, as a woman, you can't be bitter, okay? You can't show that bitterness. Why?

You can't. You have to be, you know, you have to internally put your energies into Starling. You know, Starling has succeeded. Starling is a successful business that I'm terribly proud of. And yes, I take a lot of inspiration from other people's books and whatever. Most businesses have had a near-death moment. It happens so often that the best businesses, the best entrepreneurs have had times when they lost it, they almost lost it, but they recovered. This was mine. And

it played out very publicly. And I learned a lot from it and I decided to continue and I think Starling and me are better for it. When you started to rehire the new team I'm guessing you made different hiring decisions in terms of because of what had happened did it influence the type of people that you brought into the business for their chapter two not necessarily I think that I didn't set out to get um a different set of personalities. I could focus on getting more qualified people and higher caliber people because I had a better business proposition. It was a year in, 18 months in, you know, it wasn't a blank sheet of paper. It was a fully formed proposition that had almost raised money, where we had an

application for the banking license that was almost fully formed. So it was less risk for those people coming in. And I also had spent 18 months figuring this thing out i was better than selling the idea so the second time around i could bring in a you know i don't want this to be derogatory on you know tom or whatever i hired a a higher caliber more appropriate set of people for the problem we had to solve okay yeah i think that's i think that's a natural thing i think i think even in you know monzo's business i'm pretty sure when i had the conversation with tom he he speaks about hiring and you know hiring a different caliber of person to meet an evolving business challenge especially as i know i know in particular monzo's case they did start bringing

in people from like the banking world and stuff like that. And even in my business, I talk a lot about how we did the exact same thing. I, at the very start, didn't quite know the caliber of talent that I needed or their experience. And in year three of my business, I realized that the first one or two years of hires that I'd made weren't adequately experienced

in solving the problem I had to solve. And also the type and scale of problem you have to solve evolves right when you're one two years old it's a different set of problems to when you're like a thousand employees right so that makes perfect sense pivotal moments then so chapter two of starling um funding yep what was the pivotal moment with getting getting the money in the door it was very very difficult again uh yeah it was um but two years in uh i was approached by um a family office and i wouldn't return the calls okay you know i was absolutely determined that i was going to have a vc these people i knew it's going to be these well-known firms or, you know, my investment bankers are going to find me this sort of investor. But I was approached by a family office

that had seen an article about Tom in Bloomberg and had investigated what's going on in the new bank scene in the UK and wanted to talk to me. And I started conversations with them and it took a while for me to actually engage with them. I'd never heard of them and I wasn't going to talk to people I didn't know. Anyway, I ended up going on, getting on a plane to the Bahamas. Oh oh that's when you know they're rich it was a yacht wasn't it it was a yacht and uh spent three days being interrogated by a gentleman called harold mcpike who's an algorithmic trader um and uh he He asked me the most complex questions that anybody had ever asked. He was really into the detail. And yes, at Harper's Four, I joined him on his yacht. How big was this yacht?

It's a big yacht. More of a ship. It was a big yacht. Okay. And yeah, he asked me lots and lots of questions about me, about the business. And it was very, very detailed. And at 11.15 in the evening, he offered me 48 million pounds for 66% of the company. 66%.

I read that he said, he said something to you like, I'm not going to give you the 3 million. Yeah. I was trying to raise 3 million. Okay. I was trying to raise 3 million. That's all I needed was 3 million to get to getting the the banking license so the idea was to raise 3 million and then 15 million and 30 million I only wanted the 3 million I hadn't raised a penny the only money that gone into the business was my money so it was impossible

to raise money uh and he said yeah so he said no I'm not going to give you 3 million. I'm going to give you 48. Christ, that's like Chris Tarrant from He Wants to Be a Millionaire. That's mad. 40. And how did you feel? So there's two real things here. That's a huge amount of money, but that's also 66% of your business. Tough.

And at that particular point, you know, that all the other things that you're working on all the other leads are gonna gonna go yeah you may have 40 50 different leads you're working on you're gonna accept this offer and sort of somebody else now controls the company but with 48 million you have a situation where you can build the best tech in the world so now I've been doing this for two years and it was really difficult and I had somebody who really understood what I was going to do was super intelligent that actually believed in my conviction I could do this. But I was having to give up 66%. But it would mean that I could build something

that nobody else had ever built. I mean, in that moment, he's valuing what is is and correct me if I'm wrong here essentially an idea yeah it was a 16 page deck he's valuing a 16 page deck at 72 million how long did you have to think about that decision probably about 30 seconds really and how do you feel about it because a lot of people that look back on those fundraising decisions it seems that every startup entrepreneur regrets how they value their business at the start because they always especially when it becomes a multi-billion dollar company they feel like they sold themselves short how do you feel about it he's not listening he's too busy in the bahamas on this massive yacht

i think that it is more and more important to actually create this vision i was so excited that i could now start and we eventually signed the deal on the 21st of December and submitted the banking license on the 22nd of December. It was finally, you know, we could start. It was hugely exciting. Did you celebrate? Well, I couldn't actually celebrate but we didn't actually have a term sheet for another three days so you know it was on the saturday night i was flying back and i had the term sheet an hour before picking up the flight

but once you'd signed the term sheet it was all signed off no you never you never celebrate term sheets uh you celebrate getting the money in the it was all signed off. You never celebrate term sheets. You celebrate getting the money in the bank. When the money came in the bank, did you celebrate? Yeah. How did that look? How did it look? You open up your app, Barclays, whatever.

Oh, 48 million. It was very exciting. Back to the Bahamas. It was very exciting. It's very exciting. And it allows you to do so much bahamas it was very exciting it's very exciting and it allows you to do so much was it terrifying as well was it scary it's a lot of responsibilities 48 million pounds of someone else's money yeah and that's why entrepreneurs that take external funding

are so committed to do a good job there's a huge amount of responsibility to deliver you can't just um you can't walk away from it once you got that investment you have to deliver it's so important and how much money have you raised in total now 600 700 600 700 million pounds wow i could have done so much with that so what have you learned about raising investment well that if you were you know there'll be a lot of entrepreneurs listening to this um who have a lot of like unhelpful stereotypes or thoughts about raising investment god some of them will think the only way to do it's like dragon's den right um what would what would you tell them now having gone through this process so many times take the money okay so there's a huge amount of written huge amount written about you know you need to go for

these sort of investors or those sort of investors and you need to pick your investor whatever the vast majority of people can't pick where the investment's coming from. You know, only 1% of venture capital funding goes to women founders, right? So, you know, if somebody offers you the money, you got to take it because it comes around so, so rarely. And a lot of people worry about valuation not relevant you know most businesses fail most entrepreneurs don't get their businesses off the ground not because they don't have good ideas not because they're not good people but they couldn't get the funding and do you think it's hard to raise money yeah very hard venture capitalists tend to invest in

um businesses that look very very similar you know if you look at if you if you read paul graham's works oh yeah yeah you know he talks about really that teams need to look like this and things are done in this sort of way. You know, I would have never got any Y Combinator VC Paul Graham funding because I'm not that sort of entrepreneur. And a lot of investing by VCs, they're looking for carbon copies of businesses they've invested in in the past. And the really great ideas don't get that investment. And real great ideas from women founders don't get significant investment. Interesting. But there's a lot of money out there, isn't there? Yeah. That's what I've come to learn is there is a lot of money out there, isn't there? Yeah. That's what I've come to learn is there is a lot of money out there.

There's a lot of money out there when you're successful. Right. Starling now is a big business, 1,600 people, two and a half million accounts, doing interesting things. We have a reputation. But the fact that, you know, and occasionally, you know, they publish how much money in the UK has gone to women founders. And it's a lot of it's gone to me. So, so I think we have to be very realistic that you get to a point where you're a success and people then want to invest but the majority of the time at Starling it's been really tough it's been really tough so what when you reflect on your corporate career and you contrast it and compare it to your entrepreneurial career, what was the really surprising tough part on a personal level?

And this is really why I started this podcast. All jobs are tough. A corporate job is very tough. I think that being an entrepreneur, it's far more personal responsibility. As an entrepreneur, there's nobody that, you know, all the hiring decisions somehow ended up with you making that first hiring decision. You know, we have 1,600 people, but those, you know, somewhere up in the chain, I hired one of those people, right? That made that hiring choice. Anything that goes wrong is my responsibility. And all mistakes are probably down to me. Okay. So there's a lot of personal responsibility. And that responsibility gets more and more as more and more people depend on it. But isn't it fantastic?

Isn't it a wonderful buzz? Isn't it? Isn't it wonderful to have a platform, really? I fundamentally believe that financial institutions lost their way and Starling is doing the right thing. And somehow people have said to me that I've created the organization that I wanted to run because I quite like running organizations. And I wanted to do things in a different sort of way. So finally, I'm running the organization that I've been wanting to run for the last 35 years. And that you wished existed as a customer. Yeah. I think that, you know, I've been very lucky.

I've always had a great relationship with money. But the vast majority of people in this world have a bad relationship with money. It doesn't go well for them. And, you know, they deserve a better bank. I went into banking, you know, because I wanted to do interesting things. I wanted to come to London and I wanted to be in tech. But I also wanted to do something that was respectable, worthwhile, doing the right thing by people. And banks stopped doing that. And I'm much more comfortable being accountable for the organisation that is Starling. and it helped you to i guess alleviate that taxi cab shame you reference where a taxi driver asks you what you do and you don't want to say banker because there's so much stigma and shame around

the sector you're proud to talk about yeah i'm proud of talk what i do i'm proud to talk about yeah i'm proud to talk about what I do and what I stand for and having a bit of a platform to nudge things in the right way. You know, I'm only a small cog in this whole world, but if I can do my bit to make things fairer in a couple of segments, you know, I should do that that and I'm enjoying doing it you talked about the buck stopping with you all problems are your problems or hiring decisions are ultimately lead back to you by x degrees of separation when you're and especially you know the other part is the industry you're in it's not an easy an easy industry customers you have

millions of like customers that are you're dealing with their money which is the one of the most emotional sensitive things you can deal with with any customer um the the emotional toll must be extreme i mean tom sat here and it was the first window i'd had into how brutal, emotionally brutal fintech and managing a bank can be. Yeah. Managing a bank, you know, so yeah, I listened to what Tom said. And all the things that Tom said happen in all banks, right? That is what happens. But it's my job. it's what I do um it's what the people I work with do and sometimes it's sometimes you read emails of people that have been scammed out of their life savings you have emails and you have cases where, you know,

gamblers have lost all their money. You have to deal with people who have lost their son in some tragic circumstances. We have a window on people's lives in all sorts of circumstances. And we have to be responsible, We have to be empathetic. And we have to guard ourselves from the bad guys out there. What we do means that we touch people in all sorts of ways when they're most vulnerable. Whether they've lost somebody, whether they have, you know, they gambled all their money away or whether they've been scammed that's a responsibility but it's not just me that has to take that responsibility we have

we have hundreds of people that talk to customers every day that see customers when things are going well and things are going badly um it takes a huge amount of energy and sometimes they're listening to calls and it really impresses me how young people you know who are new to their careers who are so empathetic so in touch with real people and really helping them you know I take my hat off to them what do you do to protect yourself mentally from the chaos of running such a big business that has such a you know is dealing with such a sensitive topic for people what do you how do you protect yourself from not losing your sanity yeah I had a great mentor in this, my father. My father was brought up in a home where his father was in the First World War. And he came back from the First World War with what you now call post-traumatic stress syndrome. And they didn't call it that then.

They called it, you know, shell shock. And he was brought up in that home where his father was had good days and bad days and things were quite fragile but he had my father had a great way of talking about feelings and emotions and what you do to talk yourself up and and how you make yourself happy. And we had a home where we talked about this and how you counted your blessings. We weren't religious at all, but how you took energy from what's going right rather than what's going wrong.

And he was a great mentor. He taught me this. And I think the dedication in my book is all about, you know, thanking my parents for teaching me that happiness is something that you can cultivate and treasure because not everybody has it. And I think when I am in a sort of situation where things are tough you can do things to change the chatter in your head to realize that you're not the center of attention you know sometimes you know it's not about me you know not not everybody's looking at me everybody's looking at me. Everybody's looking at their own life and thinking about their own problems.

And I am very, very fortunate. I have a huge number of things that are going right for me. And I have the privilege of running Starling. And it is a privilege. And there's lots of things going wrong and lots of pressures on me. But it's a great privilege to have so do you see that as a your sort of coping mechanism there is a almost like a almost like a childhood disposition that was taught to you like it's a perspective that kind of defaults

to optimism seeing the glasses are full defaulting to gratitude that's kind of acted as a protective yeah I think it is I'm still quite excited by it all right so coming here today I was excited but this is this is something which is look I am ever so fortunate to be a person who's doing what I'm doing to talking to you that's going to be broadcast. This is exciting. When I come back into London, you know, I'm driving back into London late at night and, you know, and I'm going through the city, I'm still excited. I'm like a kid that's coming to London for the first time. This is an exciting thing to do. I'm, yeah, I'm loving it all such a strange question to ask but um

that is somewhat unusual it feels it feels like well is it maybe it's just because the conversation I had previously was so you know like the red phone by the bed tom described you know yeah i have a phone by the bed and it never leaves the the yeah the phone is by the bed all the time and that's the like the emergency call me if there's a crisis phone yeah but that's the job i get paid for but there's a huge thing there's a there's a huge amount of things that come with this job. You know, I appear in front of the Treasury Select Committee and get grilled. You know, I have this sort of grilling from you. I can talk to interesting people.

I have the opportunity of building something I've always wanted. That's a huge, huge privilege. I really think that's a really underestimated defence mechanism against life, is if your default position is to view the, you know, to count your blessings, as you say, and view the half as glass full, then it's harder to slip into the trap of my expectations are being unmet because of the difficulties of my life and a lot of what we've discovered from this talking to guests on this podcast are when your expectations of how the world is meant to be going go unmet then you slip away into unhappiness and

misery and yeah you seem to have a default to gratitude essentially which is causing a very mentally sort of protective have you ever been to therapy have you ever had like any professional support in that regard no no I read a lot I read um I read I read hundreds of books I read you know I read every self-help book I get my hands on i read every single banking strategy book i've always done it i i love understanding things the the personal so this is interesting one of the things that um you said well kind of two points is that you don't have work-life balance it's all it's just all work

yeah when people hear that they go they sympathy like you know they think they think you're like I feel a similar way to some degree maybe it's changed recently but I that was my life and I don't want sympathy for it because I actually love what I'm doing every day but then you know I read into your story and there's sort of connected points there where you say about how women are sort of conditioned in our society to think happiness equals having 17 kids and a husband and how you would like to do, you know, buck that narrative. Yeah. Can you talk to me about that? So like the personal, I don't want to call it sacrifice because that's the loss of something, but personal balance you have in your life and also you know you talk openly about not having kids yeah um look you know sort of um you know the right man never came along

uh it wasn't something that I decided against but there was never any assumption in the family home that I would get married or whatever, but the right man never came along. And as far as children, I never made the decision not to have children, justic state of marriage and two children and them all living in a wonderful home and everything being fantasized life of a family. The majority of families are not like that. I have, I am really, really happy that I've made the right decisions. And yes, it's a, I get asked about it occasionally and brave people ask me about it. You know, people who are not brave trying to go round it. Yeah, you know, but but one day perhaps they will marry you never know you know the right man may come along um it's unlikely to happen with children

I always struggled in when I was running my business to have any kind of relationship with anybody I was a total failure because I was obsessed as you say like work-life balance it was just all work I was in the office sat in Sunday and I found it incredibly hard to find someone that understood the peculiarity of my life dynamic. It was only upon leaving that business that I actually managed to like, you know, like pickle something together, like higgled, you know, like put some pieces together, which is probably resembles a relationship now. But, um, it's very difficult finding a man who's prepared to listen to me going on about my career for three hours. We've had, it's not, no, we've had a lot of guests come here that are, you know, female founders that have said a very similar thing yeah and also an interesting narrative which I want to talk about which is like men can be emasculated is this true Chrissy came here and she's a she's a successful fan and she said that yeah like men can be

emasculated by the success of a a woman if she's like bringing home the bacon or if she's you know the career driven one do you find this to be true well i you know i've had a lot of coaching from friends before going out on a date and going for goodness sake and don't ask for the bill okay for goodness sake and don't you know don't leave the table to answer a call right so goodness yeah but i got a really really good deal coming up no no no no this is how it works and okay you go on a date and you pretend he's he's awesome and you don't go off and answer your phone and you don't try and pay the bill okay that's how it works that's how it works for most people but you know sometimes work is more important wow oh god and you i i read somewhere as well that you said that you could write a separate

book about your dating yeah yeah dating uh experiences yeah i've done a lot of that yeah a lot of dating um doesn't work doesn't work doesn't work. And you pinpoint the way that you are in terms of your like, your focuses, your ambitions, your, you know, all of that stuff as making it difficult. That's the thing that makes it difficult. Look, if I put a lot of effort into it, I would have probably made something work. The trouble is I put a lot of effort into my job and my career. And I probably get a huge amount of satisfaction with that. And it's sort of taken priority. But that's great.

You know, I've got a great job. You know, I'm doing this sort of stuff. You know, what could be better, you know, sort of being in the situation where you can talk about things and you, and you have success. Yeah. It's, it's good. As you reflect back on, you know, the, the, the Anne that started her career as an entrepreneur and the naivety that she must've undoubtedly had going, you know, what would you, what was, this is some of the key sort of pieces of advice you would impart on her and say, I just wish you knew this and be careful

of this? And I think it's the, the question that people always give you the wrong sort of advice. What I, what I caution about is that there's a lot of people out there giving bad advice. Because when you ask somebody about what you should do or how you raise fundraising or whatever you do about your business, they haven't got a good idea. So they give you something because they feel as they can't say, I don't know. So be cautious of those mentors that actually don't know anything. And there's so many people who have, you know, the VC world is full of people who are, you know,

finish their careers, that are wandering around VC land trying to tell you what things work and how things work. They've never run a business. A lot of that is absolute rubbish and you have to just stop it. One of the biggest lessons I learned is a lot of the things that I knew what I was absolutely 100% certain of was actually wrong. Right. So forget about it. the world's move on be relevant and do you want to sell starling bank what's the plan do you want to you know you want to list it on the stock exchange do you want a big incumbent bank to come along and buy the company so you can sail off to the bahamas with that guy on the boat or no i think that're probably less than a couple of years time You know, I wanted to be

I wanted to be important I want Starling to be something That changes financial services forever I'm enjoying myself You know, I'm I'm not ready to quit This is I'm on a roll

And you must have had some offers, right? This is, I'm on a roll. And you must have had some offers, right? Because, you know, a couple of people coming along saying, brown envelope, 100 mil, see you later. It's, look, it's a unique opportunity. You know, imagine, put yourself in my shoes. 1981, I came to London to start my career in banking and rocked up at lloyd's bank as a graduate trainee nowadays you know i'm i'm running an important bank in the uk and i founded this bank and it's much better than the incumbent banks.

And it's a start of it's sort of 300 years rather than at the end of it. Yeah, it's incredibly exciting. Yeah, I have to pinch myself. It's really happening. Yeah, you know, it's truly remarkable. And you're right, I did give you a grilling there a bit on a lot of the key points, because there is, you know, there is such a interesting banking narrative, banking war narrative going on in the fintech space at the moment. And, but, you know, the overarching thing is just, you know, I find your story to be just so incredible. And I find it to be like genuinely unbelievable, because you say it in such an effortless way. You say you talk about these events, and even the fundraising stuff, stuff and you know the stereotypes of being a female founder um that doesn't fit the existing stereotypes of tech bros out in silicon valley that are all like 21 from harvard and they're all dropouts and to persevere against it all i suspect is significantly maybe 10x harder than you actually

make out because like i know how hard it is anyway but then when the the deck is stacked against you and the ways that i i know it it is because i i understand stereotypes and the climate and especially in the banking world like what kind of lunatic starts a bank right and i i was i was fortunate enough to be slightly privy to some of the early processes of like getting a banking application because we had a lot of fintech startups, including banks like Monza approach us very early and ask us to help with the marketing. So, and when I was sitting in the rooms, maybe five, six years ago, they're all talking about eventually getting their banking licenses or something. And that corner was turned eventually, but it's just remarkable and it's unbelievable. And there's very few entrepreneurs in the UK

or really anywhere in the world that I've encountered that really managed to take on a really stubborn incumbent as it relates to the banking industry here. Spotify is one of the examples I sometimes think of. Because there was no way you could make, you know, move away the rights and the music rights and move it to digital and then charge people. Like, so that again, I consider Daniel Ek to be a lunatic.

Yeah, incredible. Yeah, I consider this to be the same. So yeah, thank you for the inspiration. Thank you for the courage. And I think your story is one of, you know, it's one in, you know, a a hundred million i do have one request though and this is where the diary comes in okay okay so um so what we do with all of our guests when they come on the show is they all write a question in the diary for the next guest right so our last guest wrote a question for you

do you really understand the purpose of your life here on earth no i don't i think that i've nobody ever sort of discovers their purpose until probably too late. And I think thinking about that question too hard is probably too difficult. I think the purpose of your life will only be discovered once it's too late. You don't think it's what you're doing now? I think I'm on the start of a journey rather than the end. I think I want to do more than just make Starling the best bank in the world. I think Starling will do its bit to help people with their financial health.

But I think it's also important to nudge society in the right direction. And I can do that with a platform of Starling. Nudging society in the right direction in terms of what? Yeah, fairness. Fairness, equality. Yes. I think the world is very unfair in lots of different ways. And it's not just fair between countries. There's very, very, you know, different people have different experiences this life. You know, I have been extremely fortunate, but the girl growing up next door had probably had a very, very different life to me.

And by an accident of birth, we experience a very, very different life. I'm getting prime minister vibes. I have no, no intention of becoming a politician. It's far too hard. Okay. But you can, as you say, you refer to Starling as a platform

and that's, you know, being able to influence the electorate is equally important as being the puppet in charge. So I'm going to ask you to write a question in the book. Thank you so much for coming today. It's been a wonderful conversation. Thank you very much for inviting me. I've really enjoyed it. Thank you so much for coming today. It's been a wonderful conversation. Thank you very much for inviting me. I really enjoyed it.

Thank you very much. Bye.