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Ezechi Britton MBE
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- 42
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- 1
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“People can't see the wood for the trees at the moment. There are opportunities here. Let's take advantage of that and play to those strengths. Was it something like 70% of jobs in the next 10, 20 years haven't even been created yet, haven't been imagined yet? We can't predict what the future is going to look like. Your part of creating that future, so get out and do it, right? Don't wait for us to take you forward. You've got to stand on our shoulders and drive it forwards, right? That's your job. So believe in yourself, keep climbing. For”
undated · Off The Agenda · Ezechi Britton MBE: FinTech, Social Impact & the Future of Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You fall, you try again, and you keep climbing because it's the fool that stops people. It's the fool that breaks people or the fear of falling that breaks people. People who succeed are those who can fall and start climbing again and keep climbing. And that ability to take chaos and create opportunity because that is where opportunity comes from. It is being able to step in, go,”
undated · Off The Agenda · Ezechi Britton MBE: FinTech, Social Impact & the Future of Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I think this is a brilliant question, and it really comes down to the core of how I believe and how I behave. One thing I say to everyone is believe in yourself. Right, because ultimately you're in charge of your own destiny. No one else will be able to drive you forwards apart from you. So you've got to back yourself and don't be afraid to do that. But also, as you say, these are really uncertain times. There's a lot of chaos. There's a lot going on, positive and negative. But my favourite quotes from Game of Thrones was chaos is a ladder. And I love that. The idea is...”
undated · Off The Agenda · Ezechi Britton MBE: FinTech, Social Impact & the Future of Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But one that always sticks in my mind was when my MBA was announced in the New Year's Honours list and I was in bed New Year's Day, 10 o'clock, phone rings. A good friend of mine, black man in his 50s who I've known for a very long time now. And he was crying. On the phone to me, right? And I was like, What's going on? And he goes, Ez, I just wanted to call you to say congratulations. And in his words, he said, man like us don't get awards like this. And he goes, you don't understand the impact. You acknowledging this. And so, whenever I get asked about why you accept it, because obviously there's some contention around that. That's why, right”
undated · Off The Agenda · Ezechi Britton MBE: FinTech, Social Impact & the Future of Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, and if you think about that, just the change you can drive just by generating income. So there's that. But ultimately, the thing for me that measures success is the impact on other people. And there's a number of stories I've got. One, just being on the train, subway and a black male founder walks up to me. I didn't even recognize him. And he's like, Ez, how are you doing? And I meet a lot of people, so please don't take offense. And I just said, yep, yeah, I'm great. You know, lovely to meet you. Lovely to see you again. And he goes, I just want to say thank you so much for the advice you gave me. We had a meeting about a year ago. You gave me some pointers and it's completely transformed everything I'm doing. And I can't even remember who this guy was, right? But that really touched me. The ability to impact other people's lives positively is a big thing.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Ezechi Britton MBE: FinTech, Social Impact & the Future of Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Always got to aim higher, right? Is it money? Yes, I want to make money. I'm commercially driven and I value that. But not for just money's sake. I believe having money allows you to do more. There are some extraordinarily wealthy people on the planet who I'd love to see them do a lot more to support and a little less to drive division, right? Imagine if all of those people actually did something that helped actually funded some proper activities. I think I did the maths on Amazon and I've worked out they could fund, Jeff Bezos could fund four impact X's before he's had breakfast.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Ezechi Britton MBE: FinTech, Social Impact & the Future of Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think few key things that do stand out for me though is one I like a bit of personal recognition everyone does but you know I've I've received now I've had awards VC of the year by the ITA Freedom of the City from the City of London I've been on the Black Power list twice in a row and I got an MBE for service diverse and young how many more accolades do I need so I think I'm okay from an accolade perspective maybe a knighthood”
undated · Off The Agenda · Ezechi Britton MBE: FinTech, Social Impact & the Future of Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that is such a hard question. I'm glad. We were joking about this earlier because my fianc ⁇ says the same thing to me. She goes, when will you ever be satisfied? You know, just like the song in Hamilton. And I genuinely don't know.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Ezechi Britton MBE: FinTech, Social Impact & the Future of Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that's the way I look at it. It's really if you're looking for a net gain, that's the number one way that you can actually drive that forwards.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Ezechi Britton MBE: FinTech, Social Impact & the Future of Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People who've got the broader shoulders right now because we haven't got enough people able to pay into the system, so let's enhance that. Let's build that out. So I always find these kind of diversity challenges really interesting where people go, why should I help? So, well, surely you want more people around the table helping you. It benefits you to do this.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Ezechi Britton MBE: FinTech, Social Impact & the Future of Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, the way I look at it is positive social movement, social outcomes benefit everybody, right? Because it's all about making the pie bigger. That's ultimately what it comes down to. And one of the things we see, so we're doing an exercise with a number of charitable bodies around collaboration and data sharing. And one things we're exploring is the word social return on investment almost as it is. Now what is the impact the benefit of the charity doing this type of work, for example? One of those is if you take people homeless, take them off the streets, put them in a house, get them into a job, they start paying taxes. What you've now done is you've created a net benefit for the UK in the long term because that is now helping to actually feed back into the system. And so when you start to think about that, people talk about it and go, why should I support this? Go, well, surely you want more people paying into the tax system because that reduces the burden on you in the long term. Why are we having to lean on?”
undated · Off The Agenda · Ezechi Britton MBE: FinTech, Social Impact & the Future of Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And let's lease them ethically. Let them ethically to people so that we can start to solve this problem. They've created an ethical lettings agency in partnership with Lloyds Bank. So I think being able to bring that innovative entrepreneurial flair and energy to the charitable sector is absolutely fantastic.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Ezechi Britton MBE: FinTech, Social Impact & the Future of Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But actually, utilise innovation to help solve some of these problems, which the charities themselves can't do. And there are some amazing organizations doing exactly this. Macmillan, for example, they have a venture arm that is putting a lot of money into investing in cancer research solutions. From a pure technology perspective. So I think certain charitable sectors lend themselves better to this particular approach, but I think it's a really crucial and super fascinating approach to things. A great example of how this is starting to transform crisis, though, for example, is they've now taken a step forward to say, you know what, let's take this entrepreneurial energy, let's do something a little bit different. We're not seeing the housing problem ending. We know there's the number one way to solve this problem for homeless people is to put them in houses. So let's go buy up some houses.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Ezechi Britton MBE: FinTech, Social Impact & the Future of Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or philanthropic venture. It's a really interesting approach, and it is challenging for investors because it's, well, what's the ROI for them? Is it the impact? Is it the money? So it creates an interesting dynamic. But I feel what's most valuable about that is bringing that entrepreneurial energy to the charitable sector, which I think the great thing about the charity sector is you've got so many capable, passionate, enthusiastic people. But because of their structures, it's not easy to compensate people financially at market rates for these organizations. So by getting involved in the venture side, you can actually take a far more commercial approach to supporting the charitable sector. Also create a return, create opportunity.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Ezechi Britton MBE: FinTech, Social Impact & the Future of Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Fear and doubt about the space at the moment. There's a lot of misinformation as well. And, you know, it suits a certain agenda, unfortunately. But from the perspective of... Are we going to see these programs and these activities go back? I don't think we actually will. I think it will just be under a different brand, different name. And it's on us to continue to drive these activities forward.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Ezechi Britton MBE: FinTech, Social Impact & the Future of Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that's really interesting because I think publicly a lot of organizations say they're not doing DEI anymore, but actually when you look underneath the hood, they've just rebranded, right? They've renamed, they've changed strategy, they've changed approach. Very few have gone out on the record and said, we're carrying on, we're going to keep doing this. But I see, interestingly, no shortage now of accelerators and incubators for first time diverse fund managers, for example. So we're actually seeing an acceleration in some of these processes. So I actually don't think what we're seeing around that space is going to cause huge amount of issues. I do believe there's a lot of...”
undated · Off The Agenda · Ezechi Britton MBE: FinTech, Social Impact & the Future of Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The chances of them being successful as the founder drop dramatically, so that then leads to this large pool of very, very enthusiastic, highly capable founders who have a real lack of depth when it comes to their networks and their expertise. And that's a problem. So how do we solve for that? And either it's we start to really coach these founders, give them more support, or we still have a lot of work to do to help some of these black execs really succeed in their role so that when they take that step out, they can take that expertise and those skills into the startups and start building them.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Ezechi Britton MBE: FinTech, Social Impact & the Future of Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now, when I did some analysis on our portfolio at ImpactX and who was successful in our portfolio, there were some very clear commonalities, right? It was individuals who had either built startups before or had held very senior roles in organizations and had developed a significant network understanding and ability to sell their product. Now, to be frank, those are the same metrics that you see in any other non-diverse startup that is also successful. But that points through some of the systemic issues that you then have, because if you've got black entrepreneurs who haven't been able to break through those glass ceilings in their businesses to get that level of experience or haven't had the ability to launch a startup before,”
undated · Off The Agenda · Ezechi Britton MBE: FinTech, Social Impact & the Future of Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so this is a really interesting problem, and I'd say things have gotten worse, actually, for most underrepresented founders. Not better. And as ImpactX, we helped fund the research by Extend Ventures that demonstrated that lesson 0.24% of VC capital historically has gone to black entrepreneurs. I think it was 0.02% goes to black female founders. And that hasn't improved, right?”
undated · Off The Agenda · Ezechi Britton MBE: FinTech, Social Impact & the Future of Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So being able to solve for that problem, so it's those two issues three, frankly, really embrace those future technologies. Two, let's figure out a way to unlock that capital from the big funds. Let's get those big funds moving and let's utilize BBB and UKRI to lead the way. But then finally, let's solve some of these procurement challenges that we have for small businesses, small startups in the UK so that they can start to lock in those big investors as they go forward.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Ezechi Britton MBE: FinTech, Social Impact & the Future of Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What's the word conservative investment environment in the UK? Less so than other countries, but the thing that you still see is that needs to see traction. But the problem is, is for a startup to gain traction, they have to sell. And we don't have a huge consumer base in the UK. We've got 66 million people. That's about 30 million adults. That is not huge, right? In terms of population size. But we've got some of the biggest businesses in the on the planet in our country. So the best place to target as a startup is B2B. But if you're trying to sell to a bank, good luck. It's going to take you two years to close that deal. So you now need two years worth of runway to be able to close that. So how are you getting that traction to grow? And those goalposts have moved. It used to be a million pounds in pipeline. Now it's three million pounds in annual revenue to close a series.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Ezechi Britton MBE: FinTech, Social Impact & the Future of Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Round anchor it, go we will put 5 to 10 million into this company because we believe in the direction of travel is a real, real challenge. And part of the problem is we need to get to a point where we're just saying we are going to unlock some of these future innovation technologies, things like if we're going to go into digital assets, let's do it. If we're going to do AI, let's go, right? We've put in place the basics. Now let's actually supercharge this. Let's support it. Let's ensure government services are getting involved in these types of processes, particularly from a procurement angle. Because the challenge we also have is we have a very...”
undated · Off The Agenda · Ezechi Britton MBE: FinTech, Social Impact & the Future of Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Mean there is a tiny amount of capital, and I know a number of your forebears, I don't want to name any names, have talked a lot about this. But until we can really solve this issue, unlock that capital. And I think the BBB UKRI and Innovate UK have a massive part to play in this. Organisations like Patient Capital as well, British Patient Capital have a big role to play in starting to see and anchor these larger rounds because the number one problem I see from UK founders is I've got, all these investors want to invest in me. Great, what's going on? I can't find a lead. And that's where the whole thing falls down. Because they'll go, yeah, I'll invest, I'll invest, find the lead investor. And trying to find someone who will lead that.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Ezechi Britton MBE: FinTech, Social Impact & the Future of Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Funding circle, all these other startups came out. But until we do something about the scale up capital problem in this country, and I know we hear about the Mansion House Accords, I was in the room when Jeremy Hunt signed the original ones over at Mansion House. Rachel Reeves has been very much pushing that agenda, and I think it's the right thing to do. It's a challenge because there are hurdles for pension funds to invest in venture-type instruments, particularly around fee structures.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Ezechi Britton MBE: FinTech, Social Impact & the Future of Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Come here, and it was fascinating. I always remember this conversation in the teams we were in, and we'd always go, you hear about the US and all these massive tech companies, but when we look at the banking world, why is it that our tech teams in the UK are so much better than the tech teams in the US? And it's just because that's where the money is. If you're in the US and you're a technologist and you want to be successful, you go to Silicon Valley. If you're a technologist in the UK, you go to the banking sector, right? So our banking sector way, way, way, way, way, way punched above its weight when it came to technology. And that's why there was this absolute explosion in fintech in the UK once the financial crisis hit because new regulations are introduced, clawbacks, et cetera, became less attractive to work in the financial services sector. Everyone migrated out to the next big thing, which was fintech. And that was roughly when we launched NABR back in 2014, same time as Starling, Monzo.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Ezechi Britton MBE: FinTech, Social Impact & the Future of Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, firstly, I just want to touch on that. I love what you said there because you keep hearing this nonsense that we don't have enough innovators in this country, we don't have great technology. I can tell you, I was in the banking sector for over 10 years. We had the best technologists, 100%, right?”
undated · Off The Agenda · Ezechi Britton MBE: FinTech, Social Impact & the Future of Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In this country, you're almost certainly going to US or Eastern investors. It's just not coming from the UK. We've got too many small funds, not enough large funds being able to invest.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Ezechi Britton MBE: FinTech, Social Impact & the Future of Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Out next year that will facilitate the secondary legislation needed to actually take some of this stuff forward from a data perspective. There are a number of other bills and regulations have been placed. I've also facilitated this new wave of activity. So we've had to wait for all of that to happen. Now we're in a position to go right no more excuses. Let's get on with it, please. And I think that's where we are. Now the challenge we now have then is, well, where's the capital coming from, right? And we have the scale up capital problem in the UK. I think we've got fantastic pre-seed seed environment in this country. We talk about it a lot. Don't get me wrong. There are certain demographics that still struggle to access that funding, but there is a lot of that funding available in this country. If you're looking to raise more than 10, 20 million.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Ezechi Britton MBE: FinTech, Social Impact & the Future of Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Be fair A lot of work that's had to be done in the UK to facilitate some of this, right? We have a very strong regulatory framework in the UK, which is actually very much a superpower for us. I'm a massive believer in this. At CFIT, we work very closely with the FCA, the PSR, and a number of the regulatory bodies. So I'm not anti-regulation. I think it's important. The purpose of regulations is to create a level playing field so that all the players know the rules and can play the game and also to protect the bystanders. So it's absolutely crucial. But we've needed new statutory instruments to deal with this wave of new innovation, particularly around data, particularly around AI, particularly around digital assets and what financial services can and can't do. And it has taken a long time to get to a position where actually those instruments are in place. There was a lot of time spent trying to get the data usage and actage act in place, which is now going through. There should be some statutory instruments coming.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Ezechi Britton MBE: FinTech, Social Impact & the Future of Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“AI in the US, and it dwarfs anything that we've got in the UK. I think I read there is more investment in AI currently than there has been in the entirety of VC, right? It is a colossal amount of investment that's going on, and we're just nowhere near that in the UK at the moment. Whether it's in data centres, whether it's power, whether it's water, whether it's sovereign data, whether it's the cloud-based services that we need to run it, whether it's the digital wallets, whether it's the tokenization, stablecoins, all of these new things are happening. And at the moment, we're just not there. And we need to accelerate.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Ezechi Britton MBE: FinTech, Social Impact & the Future of Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Amazon, Google, they own the digital wallets on all of our devices, on all of our smart devices, and increasingly what you're seeing is that infrastructure is being disintermediated away from us. Yes, we still have Swift networks, we've got backs, we've got all this stuff, open banking is helping with a lot of this work as well. But increasingly there's a real risk that we just lose control over those infrastructure plays. And I think that's an opportunity to really start building out in the UK. I'd love to see more deep tech digital infrastructure players in the UK rebuilding these layers up, thinking about the future of financial services around digital wallets, around digital identity, around digital assets as well, and how AI and big data starts to flow into those conversations. And what are we doing to take this forward? At the moment, there is a huge amount of investment.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Ezechi Britton MBE: FinTech, Social Impact & the Future of Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I'm on the record talking a lot about this at the moment. I do believe there's a real challenge in UK financial services at the moment. And that's where's the next wave of innovation in financial service infrastructure coming from because we're at real risk of outsourcing a lot of that to the US currently. And I don't have a problem with the US. Fantastic, fantastic companies. But you hear a lot about sovereign data, digital sovereignty, and the rest. We have a real issue right now where currently Apple”
undated · Off The Agenda · Ezechi Britton MBE: FinTech, Social Impact & the Future of Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A lot of fake showmanship where it's a case of I need to pretend that I know what I'm doing so that everyone else believes that I'm doing what I'm doing. And it's that kind of sense of this is what I think a CEO needs to be. This is what I believe a founder needs to be. And that's real toxic mix in those early days when really what you need to be doing is you need to be Open to the experience you need to go, I know what I know, but I don't know what I don't know. And I'm going to help people to help me with those elements so that I can move forward positively.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Ezechi Britton MBE: FinTech, Social Impact & the Future of Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Belief that they have to have all the answers, right? And boards are really, they have a real responsibility in this as well, especially when supporting first-time entrepreneurs. They can put a lot of pressure on the founder and the CEO to try and have all the answers across. Is there a bit of founder? Absolutely. And to be honest Certain elements that founder will have most of the answers because they've got the view, they've got the vision, they know what they want to achieve. They may not know how to do it. They may not have done it before. And sometimes it's going, right, I might not have the answers, but I have the will to find the answers and I've got the right people around me to help me get those answers so we can take things forward.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Ezechi Britton MBE: FinTech, Social Impact & the Future of Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Often see people still get lost in that mindset we're agile, we're agile, we don't need a plan, we're just gonna figure it out as we go and you go, well, good luck with that. Let me know how that works out for you because the reality is you still have to have a North Star. You still have to go, this is where we're going to go to. You may flex on that pathway, but if you don't know where you're going, you're just going to chop and change and you're going to lose direction. And so that's absolutely crucial. That ability to take a step back, have a look at your plan. Sometimes that means you need to bring in some outside support, some outside advice. You can't solve everything by yourself. I think that's probably the other piece to it. Don't think you have to. And I find this a lot in founders and first-time CEOs is that there's a real strong...”
undated · Off The Agenda · Ezechi Britton MBE: FinTech, Social Impact & the Future of Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A big thing that just being able to stop for a moment, take a step back and actually go, what is our plan? What is our strategy? What is our goal? What is our mission? And just reassessing that, reasserting that and going, right, what are the concrete steps we can take forward over the next month, next quarter, next six months that then lead to our long-term goal? And too often that piece gets lost. And as an ex-technologist, well, you know. I still see myself as a technologist, but as a software engineer for over 10 years.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Ezechi Britton MBE: FinTech, Social Impact & the Future of Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So As you said, I've been a founder, I've been a funder, I've been a CEO, I've been a banking technologist. And the work that we're doing today as collectively better is very much focused around supporting startups, scale-ups, corporates on driving forwards innovation. How do you go from here to there? What got you here won't get you there? What are the key things you should focus on? And it is interesting. We see the same patterns over and over and over. Everyone is so focused on I've just got to get ahead. I've got to get ahead. I've got to do this job. And an inability to see the wood for the trees.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Ezechi Britton MBE: FinTech, Social Impact & the Future of Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you know, you learn far more from a no than you do from a yes. Yeses feel great. They give you that little sugar buzz and they take you forwards. But you're preying on getting another yes through doing the exact same thing. Whereas when you get a no, you know you've got to change something. And it's that change that then leads to success. So I've had successes, I've had failures. You can look at my CV, my background, and you can see success, success. Well, you can look at it and go, well, that didn't work, that didn't work, that didn't work. And it's really how do those things thread together to create positive outcomes, not for myself, but for other people around me. And that's always the thing that I'm focused on.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Ezechi Britton MBE: FinTech, Social Impact & the Future of Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'd say Failure is the best teacher, right? Think about success is you really know why you are successful. You always know why you failed”
undated · Off The Agenda · Ezechi Britton MBE: FinTech, Social Impact & the Future of Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know. Maybe always. I still remember. I think I started the troublemaking quite early. I grew up in the church as a kid. And I still remember being in Sunday school being taught about Noah's Ark and the animals went in two by two and asking the question, what about the dinosaurs? And they just looked at me blankly and moved swiftly on, at which point I kind of went, okay. Not sure this is for me. that real interest in how do we take things forward. And I think if you look at my squiggly career, as they refer to it, that thread of innovation and drive has always been in there.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Ezechi Britton MBE: FinTech, Social Impact & the Future of Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of all places working for Credit Suisse. And then whilst they had a fantastic time. But again, still had that desire to create and to build something and started tinkering with a few ideas, again, a few entrepreneurial concepts. And then another friend of mine reached out to me and said, look, let's build a startup. And that kind of led me then firmly onto that journey of being a founder. But I think like most founders, it always comes from that itch to create, itch to build, itch to be in control of your own destiny and being fundamentally unemployable in many ways.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Ezechi Britton MBE: FinTech, Social Impact & the Future of Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, firstly, thank you for having me. It's a real pleasure and an honour to be here. I've never heard it quite described that way before, the man behind the entrepreneur. I guess I've always wanted to build businesses. I've always wanted to be in control of my own destiny. From a young age, actually, before I even got into fintech, I wanted to be in video games, just like everyone else did. And that's what got me into software engineering in the first place. But didn't quite work out that way, went through an interesting journey into the banking world. And I had an opportunity after Lehman Brothers went bust to actually try and build something. So I spent some time at that point trying to build a protein shake vending machine startup during the middle of a financial crisis, which is probably the worst time to do this as a first-time entrepreneur. But it taught me a lot about what I really wanted to do. But ultimately led to me ending up in Switzerland.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Ezechi Britton MBE: FinTech, Social Impact & the Future of Finance | Off The Agenda | OTA Media · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source