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Nektarios Liolios

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22
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2015-03-05
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2015-03-05
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1
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  1. “Personally, actually, I haven't invested in a company since I burnt my fingers in the dot-com area, so ERA in 2000. So I will be disappointed in that. Looking at the teams that we had in the program, there's been a few teams that I would actually consider putting my own money in that's because I think there's a lot of potential. One of them is InvestUp, a crowdfunding aggregator. They've just launched a great bunch of guys. They are going to go very far.”

    2015-03-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 017: Nektarios Liolios of Startupbootcamp on Fintech, Pitching and London's Tech Scene · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Working with the startups is very full on. So it has its hyden, it has its lows. Sometimes you have to be very paternal to put it very carefully and very directive and firm and sometimes you just get inspired by the spirit and the flexibility and the creativity and the ingenuity of the people you work with. So definitely. But also I have to say one of the things, and it was funny because after review in last year's program with my team, we sat down and everybody in the team agreed that one of the highlights was actually the selection weekend where we have the 20 teams that made it to the end in London for three days. And out of the 20 with the help of our partners and the mentors, we picked the 10 that actually make it into the program. It's such an intense three days. But that experience was quite magical. So the selection process is also very exciting.”

    2015-03-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 017: Nektarios Liolios of Startupbootcamp on Fintech, Pitching and London's Tech Scene · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “A very varied kind of day because it touches upon the different constituents pretty much every day. And on top of that, we've got different phases. So at the moment, the program in London is quiet, but we're in recruiting mode for our program in Singapore. Once we've closed the applications, it's all about selecting. Once we've closed the selection process, it's all about actually working with the startup. So every kind of month or every quarter has a very different focus area and that makes it for a very exciting, a very varied kind of day.”

    2015-03-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 017: Nektarios Liolios of Startupbootcamp on Fintech, Pitching and London's Tech Scene · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “The great thing about this job is that there is no such thing. There is no template. I can give you some snippets. So sort of insights. One of the great things is that when I come into the work and into the office in the morning, I don't really know how many decisions I will have taken by the end of the day. But when I finish, I usually have done something that has made an impact, smaller impact, bigger impact, but some decision that actually has changed something. And when you work in the corporate world, even the smallest decision sometimes takes weeks, and this is really frustrating. The other thing that's exciting is that running a program like ours runs on multiple layers, so we need to manage our corporate industry partners. We need to manage our investors, the mentor community, but also then work with the startups hands-on. And all these things have very different requirements.”

    2015-03-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 017: Nektarios Liolios of Startupbootcamp on Fintech, Pitching and London's Tech Scene · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “That's since I've joined Startup Bootcamp, and it sounds a bit corny, but it's actually true because I've spent nearly 18 years of my life in the corporate world in various guises. And the excitement and the inspiration and the immediate satisfaction I get out of working with entrepreneurs, but also working in a startup myself. So ultimately a startup bootcamp operates very leanly. It runs like a startup. So it's been a tremendous ride over the last 14 months and I wouldn't change a thing.”

    2015-03-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 017: Nektarios Liolios of Startupbootcamp on Fintech, Pitching and London's Tech Scene · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “My favorite entrepreneur is not a specific person, but somebody with a vision, somebody who listens, somebody who has the drive to give up some of the comforts of his life just because or her life, just because they want to do something great and is not deterred by the naysayers and the people who think he will not succeed. So it would be easy to say, I don't know, Richard Branson, not all the names, but in the end there's so many people who do exciting things that don't get the same level of praise. But I have a lot of respect for people who give up stuff just because they want to follow their dream.”

    2015-03-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 017: Nektarios Liolios of Startupbootcamp on Fintech, Pitching and London's Tech Scene · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “My thoughts are that we should separate the discussion to some extent between the currencies and the underlying technology, so between the coins of this world and the blockchain technology that these coins are built on. You cannot take them completely apart, but I think that the key technological advancement here is the blockchain and everything that is going to be built on it rather than the very populist headline generating Bitcoin and currency related things we've seen in the past.”

    2015-03-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 017: Nektarios Liolios of Startupbootcamp on Fintech, Pitching and London's Tech Scene · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “There's a few. People, I mean, Internet of Things, IoT in any kind of guise is interesting. People use terminologies like smarter cities, smarter living. I think anything that will go onto the level of small data, not just big data, devices talking to each other, a lot of things that will automate various aspects of our lives are very exciting. I think what excites me more is to see how now we already see a little bit of a cross-industry tendency. So people take in technology out of one world like the fintech world and look into use it in other areas. So governments looking at blockchain technology, insurance companies are looking at devices and all these things. This is where I get excited.”

    2015-03-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 017: Nektarios Liolios of Startupbootcamp on Fintech, Pitching and London's Tech Scene · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Well, 500 startups have got a very good write-up that's probably about three or four years ago. But seriously, it's as simple as Googling perfect pitch and the amount of videos and blog posts you have on this is just ridiculous. So it's even more surprising why people are actually not using them.”

    2015-03-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 017: Nektarios Liolios of Startupbootcamp on Fintech, Pitching and London's Tech Scene · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Finish on an ask, tell people why you think you should be selected or why people should invest in you. People very often don't do that.”

    2015-03-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 017: Nektarios Liolios of Startupbootcamp on Fintech, Pitching and London's Tech Scene · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “First of all, there's a lot of research on what constitutes a good pitch. And people don't do that. It's YouTube clips, there's advice, there's blog posts, a pitch needs to have some key elements that everybody wants to hear. One of the things we see is that people don't do that. They don't really rehearse their pitches. The other thing that is interesting is that startups often or just generally people don't prepare for the audience that they have in front of them. One of the pieces of advice I give to anybody is before you go and present to an audience, think about who they are. And every pitch has to be different. Is it a competition? Slightly different slant. Is it an investor presentation? Again, a very different focus. If it's about being accepted in an accelerator, again, think about what are the messages you need to convey and also”

    2015-03-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 017: Nektarios Liolios of Startupbootcamp on Fintech, Pitching and London's Tech Scene · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “do everything and anything. Go out, go to meetups, go to conferences that are relevant for the industry you operate in. Also just expose yourself to the possibility of, I don't know, serendipitous moments are important. So sometimes it is luck, it is coincidence. But if you don't put yourself out there, if you don't go to any type of events and use as much network and opportunities as possible, you will never find these people. So yeah, put yourself out there. They're not going to come to you.”

    2015-03-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 017: Nektarios Liolios of Startupbootcamp on Fintech, Pitching and London's Tech Scene · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “But at the same time also being open to the feedback from the mentors, from us as an accelerator, but also from other advisors and investors. So those are probably the main reasons. Maybe a third one would be that very often what we see is a product that's already been built somewhere else, so people don't do the research, think they've come up with something unique. And in the end, it's not that unique. A good team can turn this around, but if the team's weak, then we have to say no.”

    2015-03-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 017: Nektarios Liolios of Startupbootcamp on Fintech, Pitching and London's Tech Scene · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “It's the most common. I'll give you a few. One of them is that the team is not complete or not existent. We get quite a few single founders who apply. We also need to have an element of humility. So people who are actually coachable and are interested in listening to the feedback and the advice that we can bring in. And it's a thin line between the confidence that you need to bring in as a founder, somebody who actually decides to maybe give up your day job and do something on a shoestring”

    2015-03-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 017: Nektarios Liolios of Startupbootcamp on Fintech, Pitching and London's Tech Scene · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “We need a team. And a team ideally should have at least three different profiles. We have taken teams in that were two founders who put something together, but very quickly you realize that the team needs to grow and it needs to have somebody who understands the product, somebody who can sell and somebody who's in charge of the technology.”

    2015-03-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 017: Nektarios Liolios of Startupbootcamp on Fintech, Pitching and London's Tech Scene · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “We do this in different ways. And it's interesting what you're saying about a competitive environment for startups to get accepted and accelerators, but at the same time there is a proliferation of accelerators. So we also need to be quite clear about the value that we articulate towards the startups. We operate on multiple ways. So we run pitch days in all locations where we know that there's fintech activity. So we do this all the way from the US through multiple locations in Europe and Asia. So this year for 2015 we've also gone into the Middle East and we're going to Africa because we think that startups have to come to know us and we want the opportunity to get engaged with them quite early on face to face rather than rely purely on an online application. Another thing we do is we actually”

    2015-03-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 017: Nektarios Liolios of Startupbootcamp on Fintech, Pitching and London's Tech Scene · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “For a good pitch, I mean, so some people are natural presenters, but there doesn't necessarily translate into a good pitch. You need to have a solid product. You need to have a reason why you're doing this, and you need to be convincing. You need to be able also to show during the pitch that you know your metrics, you know where you're heading with this, you're not trying to boil the ocean, but you're very specifically focused on the next stage of your journey and you're trying to get investors to get excited by you, by your team, which is also important, and by the vision that you have, but also being realistic about what you can achieve and what time frame.”

    2015-03-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 017: Nektarios Liolios of Startupbootcamp on Fintech, Pitching and London's Tech Scene · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Yes, we do. We had our first demo day for the FinTech program in London last year, November. We experimented a little bit with a model. So usually demo days, I think there's a template format for that, which is you have the teams, they've got five, six, seven minutes, however long for their killer pitch and on stage. A lot of pressure, they have to deliver, and then hopefully they will get some conversations afterwards. So we changed it a little bit. So we actually didn't have the startups pitch on stage. We had for each startup a mini-stage where they had to pitch five times consecutively, and the investors in the room had to pick five out of the ten startups that they really wanted to talk to, but they had a much more intimate environment because each startup had every time, every rotation, only an audience from 20 to 30 people.”

    2015-03-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 017: Nektarios Liolios of Startupbootcamp on Fintech, Pitching and London's Tech Scene · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Is another angle to what we do. So we don't fund startups ourselves. We don't have a fund behind. We don't put any money into the startups. But when they are selected into the program, we help them through our network of angel investors and VCs to get funded. So it's a slightly different model than some of the other accelerator programs are running.”

    2015-03-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 017: Nektarios Liolios of Startupbootcamp on Fintech, Pitching and London's Tech Scene · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Set up with confintec specifically, and this is something that we might need to kind of point out in our conversation here. is an accelerator at the core of something bigger, which is ultimately an innovation program for large corporates, for the banks. So we see ourselves as a tool that allows on the one side banks and other players in that space to access innovation, to look at trends, to see what's coming through and work with the startups. And on the other side, it's an opportunity for startups to find customers really quickly and be able to run experiments in proofs of concept and pilots with organizations that usually would have a problem connecting with because they are too early stage or they're not mature enough or they don't have any traction. So it has both angles. Ultimately the investor side, the investment side, you draw the comparison with the VC.”

    2015-03-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 017: Nektarios Liolios of Startupbootcamp on Fintech, Pitching and London's Tech Scene · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Started while I joined at the end of 2010. And my role within Intertribe evolved into managing something called the Intertribe Startup Challenge. So I was running a competition, a global competition, that was looking to bridge between the bankers on the one side and the interesting fintech startups on the other side. And this is how I got into the technology space within the banking world. At the end of 2013, I decided to switch sides and actually get a lot more hands-on involved with startups by looking at the same environment, but from a startup support perspective, and this is where startup bootcamp Finter comes in.”

    2015-03-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 017: Nektarios Liolios of Startupbootcamp on Fintech, Pitching and London's Tech Scene · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “I can. It's a funny one because for somebody who runs a fintech accelerator, I have no background in financial services, technology or entrepreneurship. That is always one of those kind of anecdotes. No, I started off at university something completely different, political science, media, sociology, French. And just through a zigzag of possibilities and a few coincidental moments, I ended up working for a central securities depository here in London in the late 90s. That was my first kind of tow in the water with the financial industry. Then I worked with SWIFT for a few years. SWIFT being the network that the banks use for transactions of all kind. And SWIFT is a cooperative. And within SWIFT, after the crisis in 2008, some of my colleagues there founded something called Innotripe, which was an initiative to bring innovation into the financial industry and explain to the members of SWIFT, to the banks and the other financial institutions what they need to be aware of and what it should”

    2015-03-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 017: Nektarios Liolios of Startupbootcamp on Fintech, Pitching and London's Tech Scene · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source