COVID-19

We made it, folks! It’s been a tough year for all of us. One where both our professional and personal lives have been impacted in a big way.

Businesses are slowly awakening to the idea that it's time to consider new sources of growth when it comes to securing their futures. They’ve realised that, sometimes, designing the most engaging customer value propositions requires leaning on the brand strength of other players outside of your domain.

This is the second instalment of a 6 part series that explores the Jobs to be Done (JTBD) for US SMBs that we identified in our recent research. Each blog post explores one of the jobs and how we examined it with a JTBD canvas. If you missed the first post that explains JTBD and the canvas, check it out before reading this.

Richard Brown, CTO at R3, says that blockchain allows us to, for the first time, build systems and technologies that run between different organisations that don’t trust each other and bring them to consensus. This means potentially significant savings for financial services, especially in file reconciliation and manual activity. For blockchain to succeed in finance, multiple firms must work together, and Corda is helping to do just that.

Back at the end of 2019, we dived into the perfect fintech storm that was brewing in the Middle East. Diversification had already started in the region, but financial inclusion was reluctant to follow. So where are we now? It’s 2020, and things have been hotting up in the region with opportunities continuing to surface. But what does the region hold for fintech and why is the Middle East where the real gold lies?

RegTech. Regulatory Technology. When most people hear ‘RegTech’ they think it means automating compliance processes – you’d be forgiven if that doesn’t get you excited.

Every Thursday, Leda Glyptis, 11:FS Chief of Staff creates #LedaWrites. This week she recounts tales of bad bosses and the lessons learned.

At the beginning of 2022, many early-stage investors looked ahead with optimism as we emerged from the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic, and global economies started to show signs of growth again.

Never did I imagine 3 months ago that we’d be dealing with such an unprecedented global crisis as we have done with COVID-19.

In the first part of this series I introduced the story of Frederic Tudor, the American Ice-Block King; and discussed lessons learned from his then new product offering as it relates to blockchain technology. Tudor was able to successfully corner the ice-block shipping market and eventually was shipping blocks of ice to as far away as Calcutta from his home in Boston.

How can community banks remain competitive as large financial institutions gobble up more and more of the market?

How successful have government loan schemes in the UK and US been so far and what’s next?

Guest author Richard Davies gives his thoughts on the importance of scaling agile to all functions of an organisation, and some key factors on how to get there.

A banker keen to stay under the radar has written us an insider’s perspective on the TSB scandal. Going by the topical pseudonym of ‘The Stigcumbent’, who you may remember from this piece, they’ve written about the ups and downs of legacy banking and why TSB had to make its move. Read on to learn the full glory of legacy banking and where the future lies…

In part one of this series I pointed out that things look very, very bad for the insurance industry right now. In this blog post I will explore what might happen next.