Successful fintech: UK has some, but it's not in Silicon Roundabout

Open up the business pages of any national newspaper and much of the coverage is focused on the latest fintech startup, the marvel that will transform the global financial system, backed – inevitably – by big name venture capital firms. But is this obsession with fintech deserved? A cool analysis of the phenomenon long term …

[John Smith 19]

Need? Perhaps not, Want? Depends if it's better/cheaper/faster than what's available.

Of course the classic issue is the UK fondness for amateur managers.

You can f**k up any good idea with bad enough management.

A subject the UK seems to manage very well indeed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Need? Perhaps not, Want? Depends if it's better/cheaper/faster than what's available.

A subject the UK seems to manage very well indeed.

I've worked for many organisations under many ownership and governance models. I currently work for a large German company, and I can assure you that German business managers are even worse than British managers. As engineers, great, but their ability to mess up any big ticket strategy decision is world class, along with their penchant to mire agile commercial decision making in corporate treacle. And it is not just my company - I know our German competitors are equally bureaucratic, parochial and strategically inept. Looking at the wider history of German M&A activity, and strategic management, it isn't just my own sector that this applies to.

That's not to say that the Germans are worse/worst - just that mismanagement is not a uniquely British

attribute,

[werdsmith]

Re: Need? Perhaps not, Want? Depends if it's better/cheaper/faster than what's available.

Interesting that despite having even worse managers than the UK, these German companies manage to be considerably more successful.

Good managers are rare, very rare. So rare that when you find a good one they really stand out and are quickly promoted off to some less effective higher role, so their previous position can be filled by yet another bell end.

I was shit manager myself once, but I at least had the sense not to persist.. In a long career I can think of maybe four or five good managers, at a push.

[Doctor Syntax]

2 years survival is a criterion for success?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't knock it. The NHS counts six months survival as success in situations like cancer treatment. Even if the patient never got strong enough to get out of bed. And spends billions on that success.

[Fazal Majid]

Silicon Roundabout is old news

The startups there have been displaced by the much more lucrative business of providing hostels for Chinese students:

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/mar/10/slow-death-of-silicon-roundabout

[sloefoxes]

Walter Herriot led the way at the St Johns Innovation Centre

Walter Herriot, who managed the St Johns Innovation Centre in Cambridge, for many years always aimed to make the starts up there into businesses with customers and cashflow. you can have the grooviest technology but if you can't persuade anyone to buy it, you're toast.