Starling Bank: Building a $1.5 Billion Business Against The Odds: Anne Boden

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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:07Steven Bartlett?

  If you've been listening 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 cofounded with Anne Boden. 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

• 0:51Steven Bartlett?

  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. Anne starts again. And they both build incredibly successful, multi-billion dollar banks individually. It is

• 1:36Steven Bartlett?

  one hell of a story. It twists, it turns, and it inspires you. So without further ado, I'm Stephen Butler, and this is the Diary of a CEO. I hope nobody's listening. But if you are, then please keep this to yourself.

• 1:57Steven Bartlett?

  And humble beginnings. Do you think that's an accurate phrase to describe the start of your life?

• 2:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was humble. My, 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.

• 2:25Steven Bartlett?

  Brothers and sisters?

• 2:26Speaker 01

  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.

• 2:40Steven Bartlett?

  And school life and?

• 2:41Speaker 01

  I went to a local comprehensive school. It's a very, very new school. I was brought up in my grandmother's house, my parents, my grandmother, in a older house on the edge of a big, big council estate. And in the middle of this huge council estate, they'd 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.

• 3:15Steven Bartlett?

  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 you're definitely smart, right?

• 3:24Speaker 01

  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, by my own textbooks and reading myself. And the house wasn't a, an academic home. My father left school at fifteen, at fourteen, my mother at fifteen. 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.

• 4:04Speaker 01

  But it was very unusual for a daughter of that home to be interested in studying.

• 4:13Steven Bartlett?

  Why?

• 4:15Speaker 01

  Um, why I was studying or why it was unusual.

• 4:18Steven Bartlett?

  Why was it unusual for?

• 4:20Speaker 01

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

• 5:01Speaker 01

  This was all much, this was me choosing these things, not my parents.

• 5:06Steven Bartlett?

  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?

• 5:19Speaker 01

  I wanted a job with a briefcase. I wanted a job in an office. I didn't actually know anybody that worked in an office. Um, my inspiration was from television. It was very much seeing people on television and seeing that people had jobs in in London, in glamorous places, were doing interesting things. And I could do that. And my parents are 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 twenty four volume set of Encyclopedia Britannica. The only problem was it was nineteen fifty three edition.

• 6:02Speaker 01

  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.

• 6:12Steven Bartlett?

  And at that point, I'm guessing you didn't have a huge, from what you've said, a desire to become an entrepreneur.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  I never thought I'd ever be an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship is something which is quite recent. You know, coming out of school, it was very much, I wanted a job that was scientific or

• 6:33Speaker 01

  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.

• 7:07Steven Bartlett?

  This is post-university.

• 7:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:09Steven Bartlett?

  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?

• 7:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was almost all men. My father thought I could possibly be a metallurgist at the steelworks.

• 7:33Steven Bartlett?

  What's a metallurgist for someone?

• 7:35Speaker 01

  You know, studies metals, metals are made.

• 7:38Steven Bartlett?

  Right.

• 7:38Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, but there was no, there was no concept of home, of jobs for women or jobs for men. Um, 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 they were all men, wasn't something that really phased me.

• 8:04Steven Bartlett?

  And you go off to university, you study computer science, you do pretty well at university, I'm guessing.

• 8:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay.

• 8:10Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, you did great, I'm sure. And then you get this job at Lloyds Bank in the graduate programme and you're there for how long?

• 8:17Speaker 01

  Four and a half years. I do four and a half years before I quit.

• 8:21Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, really?

• 8:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I had a four and a half year thing going on.

• 8:26Steven Bartlett?

  Right.

• 8:26Speaker 01

  So I was four and a half years at Lloyds 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'd better tone down your aspirations, otherwise you'd get very, very frustrated.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  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, A B Amro. Worked in all sorts of places from Kazakhstan to Uzbekistan to all the places around the world. I quit again.

• 9:31Speaker 01

  Spent some time in fintech before going into Alad Irish Banks as Chief Operating Officer.

• 9:38Steven Bartlett?

  So that stint across all of those different banks that you worked in, across all of these different territories, how long was that in total?

• 9:46Speaker 01

  Oh, thirty odd years. So I did, yeah, yeah, I started in 1981. And I quit to become an entrepreneur in 2014.

• 10:01Steven Bartlett?

  That's very atypical.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, it's very, very unusual. I've also done different things in the jobs. I keep meeting people and people go, I know an Anne Boden, she worked in insurance. And I go, that's me. And they go, no, no, no, no, there's Anne Boden and she worked in, she's a computer scientist, she did computing things. No, that's me. 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.

• 10:41Steven Bartlett?

  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?

• 10:54Speaker 01

  Fifty four.

• 10:55Steven Bartlett?

  At fifty four years old, you decide that you want to go it alone and give up all of that corporate stuff and all the perks, you can say perks, all the perks, the stability, the security of the corporate world and.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  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. 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 realised I know nothing about fashion. I know a lot about banking and what I should do is start a bank.

• 11:57Speaker 01

  And, but nobody ever starts banks.

• 11:59Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, no one goes from, I'll do a dress shop, maybe a bank. Black people don't.

• 12:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, 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'm going to start a bank. You know, I could see people thinking I was totally crazy.

• 12:34Steven Bartlett?

  Of course.

• 12:35Speaker 01

  You know, first of all, people don't start banks and a five foot tall Welsh woman definitely doesn't start a bank.

• 12:45Steven Bartlett?

  Yes. I hate to support the stereotypes, but I wouldn't start a bank like if, if, if I was a, you know, forty year old billionaire, white male that was six foot ten, let alone, you know, 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 you're fifty, fifty odd years old. You're currently in your corporate job.

• 13:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:14Steven Bartlett?

  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?

• 13:30Speaker 01

  No, I, I decided very quickly. I left.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  And within weeks, I was working on the new proposition.

• 13:43Speaker 01

  It's only last weekend I started unpacking the boxes. I came back from Ireland, I was in Ireland. And I decided, you know, you know, get my notice in, you know, started the whole proposition. You know, booked the removal vans to bring me back over. And then, you know, put them in the house and immediately went out knocking on doors. It's only now when finding some time to unpack those boxes.

• 14:07Steven Bartlett?

  Wow. How many years later?

• 14:09Speaker 01

  Seven years.

• 14:12Steven Bartlett?

  Crikey. So you you leave, you start knocking on doors. How did you feel emotionally when you leave the corporate system? 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 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?

• 14:35Speaker 01

  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. And, you know, I thought 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 in a job before. I could knock on a few 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. It's going to have a whole new way of engaging with the people that it's

• 15:20Speaker 01

  served. And I'm going to take market share of Barclays and HSBC and Lloyds. That's all I needed some money. People would, some people would tell me to my face that I was never going to do it.

• 15:35Speaker 01

  And other 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 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.

• 16:21Steven Bartlett?

  A blow at that time that felt the hardest?

• 16:24Speaker 01

  Um.

• 16:25Steven Bartlett?

  An email, a meeting, uh?

• 16:28Speaker 01

  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.

• 16:38Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, I know.

• 16:39Speaker 01

  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. Um, 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, for help that you've worked with in the past.

• 17:07Steven Bartlett?

  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.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:19Steven Bartlett?

  Um, you buck that trend.

• 17:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:21Steven Bartlett?

  When you were walking into those rooms and having those conversations, were you aware that there was a certain prejudice probably acting against you?

• 17:29Speaker 01

  Oh, definitely, you know, um, people assume that I'm not technical. People assume that I'm not, you know, capable of coding. You know, there's code running in banks, big banks today that I wrote. Uh, people assume that you have to be from Silicon Valley. You have to be in your twenties or your thirties, um, and look and sound a certain way to build a tech company. Um, you don't look like me or sound like me. Um, but I was determined to build a tech company. And that was very, very hard for people to, to appreciate.

• 18:07Steven Bartlett?

  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?

• 18:19Speaker 01

  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 on to 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 it was hearing my

• 19:03Speaker 01

  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 organisations that are going to change things.

• 19:18Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm. 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?

• 19:27Speaker 01

  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 behaved, how you talked, how

• 20:12Speaker 01

  you pitched your ideas. I had to learn that. And I was...

• 20:21Speaker 01

  As a woman and as somebody who'd come from the corporate 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 over deliver 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.

• 20:52Steven Bartlett?

  Is that a typical, stereotypical or typical feminine quality? This idea of like, because people talk a lot about the reason why, um, some of the reason why, um, uh, women in business, um, struggle to get promotions is they're less likely to lequate and oversell themselves and demand promotions in the same way that men do. So I'm wondering that like, that conservatism and that, um, over delivering, but not over promising is something that's quite typical of women?

• 21:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's a question of, it's a very, very difficult balance. If you, if you come over as arrogant, if you come over as demanding, you're not likeable. Um, if you, if you're too soft and to, and underplay what you have or what you're doing, you're too soft, you know, instead of, you, you can't get it right. Um, but I had to learn how to sell the ideas and it took years.

• 22:01Steven Bartlett?

  It's interesting. I don't like to dwell too much on like gender differences, but I, I think I'm asking that question as well because I remember a VC friend of mine and also a guy called, I think it was Chamath, but a guy called Chamath, who's one of the big investors. And he says that the female founded businesses in his portfolio always have, when he, oh, 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

• 22:43Steven Bartlett?

  was that process like? Um, and, and really sort of laying the foundations of that business?

• 22:49Speaker 01

  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, can I, can I raise fifty thousand, hundred thousand, three hundred thousand? It wasn't open to, to me because I, I wasn't like the other people and those schemes. I had to really work with big consultancy firms and tell them that I had this idea

• 23:33Speaker 01

  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, 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 a 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. She may be able to take them and sell them to other customers. You know, let, let's just, just help her. And I must admit, I hung out

• 24:16Speaker 01

  in their customer lounges for years.

• 24:21Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 24:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:23Steven Bartlett?

  Just chilling?

• 24:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:25Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, interesting. So you, 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?

• 24:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I phoned them up.

• 24:40Speaker 01

  I've always been quite an unusual boss. 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 phoned 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.

• 25:05Steven Bartlett?

  So the who is in the core team?

• 25:08Speaker 01

  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.

• 25:17Steven Bartlett?

  Tom's, which you read about in the book and Tom's been here.

• 25:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:20Steven Bartlett?

  So that was the first cohort.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:23Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  And then Tom left.

• 25:25Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 25:26Speaker 01

  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. No, please, please come and help me.

• 25:41Steven Bartlett?

  So Tom in particular, Tom obviously sat here, he did the podcast, which I'm sure you've heard. And you've written about Tom in the book as well. How did you come to meet Tom?

• 25:50Speaker 01

  I met Tom at a dinner.

• 25:52Steven Bartlett?

  Right.

• 25:52Speaker 01

  I, I'd met Tom at a dinner in two thousand and eleven when he was working with Go Cardless. And I, I spotted him as being a very clever, funny, charismatic individual that was running a business and we kept in touch.

• 26:12Steven Bartlett?

  So when you started starting, you needed, was there a CTO? He came on as a CTO?

• 26:17Speaker 01

  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 Grouper. 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.

• 26:38Steven Bartlett?

  So he hires a CTO, he then builds out the technical team, I'm guessing that's typically what CTOs do.

• 26:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, we started hiring developers, yeah.

• 26:46Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, and was there, because obviously it's well written that there was a bit of a fallout here.

• 26:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:55Steven Bartlett?

  Take me on that journey, when did that, how did the relationship start and when was there friction?

• 27:02Speaker 01

  It, one day Tom decides to go, unfortunately, 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. Looking back of what happened, Tom had a 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

• 27:44Speaker 01

  done what he was good at. But that's history, both Monzo and Starling have done really, really well. And having a bit of competition does actually lead to probably a better industry.

• 28:01Steven Bartlett?

  The Klarna founder that came and said that about Afterpay as well. I read that there was a funding deal early on, but you pulled out of the funding deal because one of the founders was involved in a crime?

• 28:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, yeah.

• 28:17Steven Bartlett?

  So Starling Bank was going to take funding?

• 28:22Steven Bartlett?

  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.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  No, Starling was not, you know, this was a fund, we're going to take investment about from, and one of the founders of that firm 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.

• 29:02Steven Bartlett?

  And that caused a disagreement between yourself and Tom.

• 29:05Speaker 01

  It wasn't that.

• 29:06Steven Bartlett?

  It wasn't that. There was a, a culture clash around a corny video I heard that was being produced.

• 29:15Steven Bartlett?

  I'm trying to understand what like, because I get, I get, I understand a point where founders part ways, but typically that 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?

• 29:32Speaker 01

  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, 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, from the incumbent banks. And sometimes I can see, you know, I look across the panel, catch sort of Tom's eye

• 30:16Speaker 01

  and he, 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.

• 30:40Steven Bartlett?

  There, there came a day where you, you turned to, to Tom and you knew there was something wrong. And you, you say to him, you know, Tom is there, is there, you don't seem happy about something here. And, um, and he, he responds that he's sick of your knee jerk behaviour.

• 30:56Steven Bartlett?

  How did that feel? What was, what was he referring to when he says sick of your knee jerk behaviour?

• 31:01Speaker 01

  I think that, you know, businesses 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 wow, what a story, eh?

• 31:34Steven Bartlett?

  How would you describe the differences in your personalities? Because it seems like that's probably at the heart of the clash.

• 31:41Speaker 01

  I don't think different personalities lead to clashes.

• 31:45Steven Bartlett?

  Interesting.

• 31:46Speaker 01

  I think that people who have different personalities, working together can create great businesses.

• 31:57Speaker 01

  I think Tom, you know, went on, you know, to, to, you know, sort of lead a great group at Monzo. And, you know, and I've listened to his, the show, where he talked to you. And he had a tough time.

• 32:15Steven Bartlett?

  When you heard that, how did you feel about the way that the events were recounted?

• 32:23Steven Bartlett?

  Be honest with me. I want to know that.

• 32:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a very, very difficult, very difficult question to answer. And I chose Tom as a CTO. 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

• 33:09Speaker 01

  on to really change things. Well, it's, it's, 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.

• 33:27Steven Bartlett?

  How did you feel when you heard the way that he recounted the events? You, you're listening to it, it's coming through your ears, you're thinking?

• 33:34Speaker 01

  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 a, it's, it's another piece in the story of the Starling Monzo journey.

• 34:00Steven Bartlett?

  And at this time, when you and Tom are having a fallout within Starling, and you're, you've realised, I guess, that, you know, 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, 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.

• 34:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:29Steven Bartlett?

  So you offered to, to leave, to quit Starling Bank?

• 34:32Speaker 01

  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.

• 34:53Steven Bartlett?

  Why?

• 34:55Speaker 01

  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. Um, yeah. So he didn't have that faith in me.

• 35:37Speaker 01

  But I realised that I could do it and made it happen.

• 35:45Steven Bartlett?

  Specifically, in those days, you you decide that you're gonna step away for the greater good of the business.

• 35:50Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 35:51Steven Bartlett?

  Admirable thing to do, some would say. Um, 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, ah, why did I?

• 36:07Speaker 01

  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.

• 36:29Steven Bartlett?

  And what was it that changed your mind?

• 36:32Speaker 01

  Well, I think as I write in the book, I'd sort of retreated. I went to a coffee shop, went to Starbucks and um, 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 gonna do next? And I said, I'm probably gonna start another bank. And he said, well.

• 37:09Speaker 01

  You don't have to start another bank. You can go back in and and take Starling back.

• 37:17Speaker 01

  And I realised 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 to the coffee shop and I can I can see I can see I can see the street in front of me now. And I got in the car, drove into London.

• 37:46Speaker 01

  And took Starling back.

• 37:50Steven Bartlett?

  And what did that mean, taking it back?

• 37:53Speaker 01

  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

• 38:07Speaker 01

  an organisation that does things in a right sort of way. You know, I'd been a banker for thirty 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 organisation to where it is at the moment. So I had to make that clear. And I took back Starling. But the consequence was that I was on my own. I was on my own in the office.

• 38:41Steven Bartlett?

  So you walked back in the office and say to the team, or say to Tom, that you're withdrawing your resignation?

• 38:49Speaker 01

  No, by then they'd refused to accept my resignation. Because

• 38:58Speaker 01

  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. So I stepped in and took control of Starling.

• 39:08Steven Bartlett?

  And so 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.

• 39:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:18Steven Bartlett?

  Is that accurate?

• 39:19Speaker 01

  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.

• 39:40Steven Bartlett?

  And how did how did that impact you and your decision making around that time? That bad though?

• 39:46Speaker 01

  I think it was tough around that time, but all issues and all things you do in a business

• 39:58Speaker 01

  are complex and that was an added complication at that time.

• 40:02Steven Bartlett?

  Just adds more to the the mind and more things to think about and

• 40:08Steven Bartlett?

  makes you feel a little bit unstable, I guess. A burglar in your home, I think, has that kind of psychological destabilization. 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, 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?

• 40:39Speaker 01

  I think you have to read the book. You know, there's a, you know, I

• 40:46Speaker 01

  the book is the story of what happened. There were lots of notes and emails taken at the time. And this was all written from my notes and emails written at the time. And I think it's up to the readers to decide, you know, what really went on.

• 41:08Steven Bartlett?

  And you were you go in and you say, you know, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna resign. I wanna 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?

• 41:36Speaker 01

  Okay, the the story is that we lost the funding. You can't, if you can't pay people, it's very unfair to let them work. We were very, very honest with the people that.

• 41:54Speaker 01

  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.

• 42:05Steven Bartlett?

  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 realise at this point, I've got to basically build this thing back from scratch. I'm guessing you had an inclination that there was a greater allegiance towards Tom with the with the existing cohort of people.

• 42:28Speaker 01

  No, not really.

• 42:29Steven Bartlett?

  No.

• 42:30Speaker 01

  No.

• 42:30Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, it was more just you you you basically weren't going to be able to pay for them because the funding had been pulled. Yeah, so that day, so you, you know, Tom leaves, 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 installing as an employee at this point?

• 43:07Speaker 01

  This is me.

• 43:07Steven Bartlett?

  Just you. And how did that feel going from, you know, the climb, climb, we're building something here to grand zero.

• 43:15Speaker 01

  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 responsibility now of of having to raise money to pay these people. I can take my time now to find a new investor, or I can build a new team. And it didn't take long before I was. Well, is it gentleman called Alan Chandler?

• 43:43Steven Bartlett?

  Friend of yours.

• 43:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, who turned up two days later.

• 43:46Steven Bartlett?

  At your office.

• 43:47Speaker 01

  And stayed and stayed working for no salary at all for nearly a year.

• 43:54Steven Bartlett?

  What was, what had you built at that point in terms of on the day when Tom and the the new Monzo crowd had left, what had you actually achieved as a company? What was their technology? Was there?

• 44:05Speaker 01

  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.

• 44:15Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 44:16Speaker 01

  And it was in boxes. So, you know, so we had a banking application. We didn't really have much tech.

• 44:21Steven Bartlett?

  Okay. So your friend comes in, he offers to do the P45s for the staff that have just left and just to sort of give you a hand. 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?

• 44:40Speaker 01

  Sixteen.

• 44:41Steven Bartlett?

  Sixteen people. That's a pretty significant blow to, you know, might be time to go back to the corporate world now. Did that not crush your mind?

• 44:50Speaker 01

  Uh, not really. Um, I, I got to a state of having, almost having a banking licence. I had the idea. I'd learnt a lot. I knew what we needed to do. It didn't take me long and I was starting again.

• 45:10Steven Bartlett?

  You say that like it's so easy, like it's just so effortless. And I know it's not.

• 45:14Speaker 01

  It was humiliating. Okay. It was humiliating reading in the press what had happened because the story has been told in the press and the story has been told now and not actually what happened. Um, 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.

• 45:39Steven Bartlett?

  You seem reluctant to correct false stories here.

• 45:45Steven Bartlett?

  That's clearly a decision you've made.

• 45:47Speaker 01

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

• 46:15Steven Bartlett?

  Your friend that stopped by the office.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:18Steven Bartlett?

  Um, and gave you a hand. How emotionally important was that? And how grateful are you to them?

• 46:28Speaker 01

  I will be forever, ever grateful to Alan. I think that the one person to come in and

• 46:39Speaker 01

  and be somebody who said, yep, this happened, but you know, yeah, 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 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. Um, uh, 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.

• 47:24Speaker 01

  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.

• 47:49Steven Bartlett?

  There she is.

• 47:51Speaker 01

  Was, you know, we, we attracted people that were sort out, darling. 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.

• 48:08Steven Bartlett?

  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, do you know what?

• 48:20Speaker 01

  April the first.

• 48:21Steven Bartlett?

  April the first.

• 48:23Speaker 01

  That's when, you know, that's when I accidentally had an email from the team that left.

• 48:33Speaker 01

  And that

• 48:38Speaker 01

  that was difficult.

• 48:40Steven Bartlett?

  You accidentally had an email?

• 48:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:42Steven Bartlett?

  You weren't meant to be copied on it?

• 48:44Speaker 01

  Uh, 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.

• 49:03Steven Bartlett?

  Making fun of you in terms of your management skills, your, something you'd done or said, or very personal things?

• 49:11Speaker 01

  No, it's a question of, you know, you, you have to read the book about it, but there was a prank about them being arrested. Um, but you have to read the story to understand the, the, the nuance. But that was the only day that I thought, you know, can I carry on? And that lasted an hour.

• 49:30Speaker 01

  But I was absolutely determined.

• 49:32Steven Bartlett?

  Were you upset reading that email?

• 49:35Speaker 01

  I was panicking about them. I was worried about them.

• 49:38Steven Bartlett?

  Why?

• 49:40Speaker 01

  Um, I was worried about the fact that they could be in real trouble. And yeah, I, I hired these people. They were friends for years. Uh, the, and I like them. You can't suddenly, um.

• 50:00Speaker 01

  You can't suddenly cut off all connection with people that you worked with, even though this thing had happened to me.

• 50:09Steven Bartlett?

  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 of 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.

• 50:33Speaker 01

  Nothing was going to stop Starling succeeding after that happened.

• 50:41Steven Bartlett?

  So it's the, yeah, it's the work twice as hard.

• 50:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:45Steven Bartlett?

  And did you, did you really, did you, were there moments like where you, you know,

• 50:50Steven Bartlett?

  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? Cause 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. I, it motivates me and it is what it is. You don't have to like me. So I'm, I'm asking the question, like, did it, did they become a, a real significant competitive driving force in your life?

• 51:24Speaker 01

  Okay. As a woman, it can't be bitter. Okay. You can't show that bitterness.

• 51:29Steven Bartlett?

  Why?

• 51:30Speaker 01

  You can't. You, you have to be, you know, you, you have to internally put your energies into, into Starling. You know, Starling, Starling has succeeded. Starling is a successful business that I'm terribly proud of. And yes, when I, I take a lot of inspiration from other people's books and whatever. Most, most businesses have had a near death moment.

• 52:02Speaker 01

  It it it's 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.

• 52:23Speaker 01

  And I learnt a lot from it and I decided to continue. And I think Starling and me are better for it.

• 52:35Steven Bartlett?

  When you started to rehire the new team.

• 52:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:38Steven Bartlett?

  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 the chapter two?

• 52:51Speaker 01

  Not necessarily. I think that yeah, I I didn't set out to get 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, eighteen 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 licence that was almost fully formed. So it was less risk for those people coming in.

• 53:37Speaker 01

  And I also had spent eighteen months figuring this thing out.

• 53:44Speaker 01

  I was better at selling the idea.

• 53:48Speaker 01

  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 higher caliber, more appropriate set of people for the problem we had to solve.

• 54:03Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 54:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:04Steven Bartlett?

  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, 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 the, you know, their experience. And in year three of my business, I realized that the first two, 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?

• 54:48Steven Bartlett?

  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.

• 55:00Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 55:01Steven Bartlett?

  What was the pivotal moment with getting, getting the money in the door?

• 55:04Speaker 01

  It was very, very difficult.

• 55:05Steven Bartlett?

  Again?

• 55:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, but two years in, I was approached by 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 is going to be in 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.

• 55:48Speaker 01

  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 a, getting on a plane to the Bahamas.

• 56:03Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, that's when you know they're rich.

• 56:06Steven Bartlett?

  It was a yacht, wasn't it?

• 56:07Speaker 01

  It was a yacht and spent three days being interrogated by a gentleman called Harold McPike. He was an algorithmic trader. And he.

• 56:22Speaker 01

  He asked me the most complex questions that anybody had ever asked. He was really into the detail. And yes, at half of four, I joined him on his yacht.

• 56:39Steven Bartlett?

  How big was this yacht?

• 56:41Speaker 01

  It's a big yacht.

• 56:42Steven Bartlett?

  More of a ship.

• 56:43Speaker 01

  It was a big yacht.

• 56:45Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 56:45Speaker 01

  And yeah, he asked me lots and lots of questions about me, about the business. And he was very, very detailed. And at eleven fifteen in the evening, he offered me forty eight million pounds for sixty six percent of the company.

• 57:08Steven Bartlett?

  Sixty six percent?

• 57:09Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 57:12Steven Bartlett?

  I read that he said, he said something to you like, I'm not going to give you the three million.

• 57:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was trying to raise three million, okay?

• 57:19Steven Bartlett?

  Right.

• 57:19Speaker 01

  I was trying to raise three million. That's all I needed, the three million to get to getting the banking licence. So the idea was to raise three million and then fifteen million and thirty million. I only wanted the three million. I hadn't raised a penny. The only money that had gone into the business was my money. So it was impossible to raise money. And he said, yeah, so he said, no, I'm not going to give you three million. I'm going to give you forty eight.

• 57:46Steven Bartlett?

  Christ, that's like Chris Tarrant from He Wants to be Millionaire. That's mad. Forty, and how did you feel? So there's two real things here. That's a huge amount of money, but that's also sixty six percent of your business.

• 57:58Speaker 01

  Hmm. 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.

• 58:10Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 58:10Speaker 01

  You may have forty, fifty different leads you're working on. You're going to accept this offer and sort of somebody else now controls the company. But with forty eight million, you have a situation where you can build the best tech in the world. So, you know, I'd 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 have to give up sixty six percent.

• 58:54Speaker 01

  But it would mean that I could build something that nobody else had ever built.

• 59:02Steven Bartlett?

  I mean, in that moment, he's valuing what is, and correct me if I'm wrong here, essentially an idea.

• 59:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was a sixteen page deck.

• 59:15Steven Bartlett?

  He's valuing a sixteen page deck at seventy two million.

• 59:22Steven Bartlett?

  How long did you have to think about that decision?

• 59:28Speaker 01

  Probably about thirty seconds.

• 59:29Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 59:32Steven Bartlett?

  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.

• 59:50Steven Bartlett?

  He's too busy in the palms on this massive yacht.

• 59:54Speaker 01

  I think that it is more and more important to actually create this vision.

• 1:00:00Speaker 01

  I was so excited that I could now start. And we eventually signed the deal on the twenty first of December and submitted the banking license on the twenty second of December. It was finally, you know, we could, we could start. It was hugely exciting.

• 1:00:23Steven Bartlett?

  Did you celebrate?

• 1:00:26Speaker 01

  Well, I couldn't actually celebrate because 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.

• 1:00:40Steven Bartlett?

  But once you'd signed the term sheet, it was all signed off, did you celebrate?

• 1:00:43Speaker 01

  You never celebrate term sheets. You celebrate getting the money in the bank.

• 1:00:48Steven Bartlett?

  When the money came in the bank, did you celebrate?

• 1:00:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:51Steven Bartlett?

  And wow, how did that, how did that look?

• 1:00:53Speaker 01

  Uh, how did it look?

• 1:00:54Steven Bartlett?

  You look at, you open up your app, Barclays, whatever. Oh, forty eight million. Yeah.

• 1:01:01Speaker 01

  It's, it was very exciting.

• 1:01:01Steven Bartlett?

  Back to the Bahamas.

• 1:01:02Speaker 01

  It was very exciting, it was very exciting. And it, it allows you to do so much.

• 1:01:08Steven Bartlett?

  Was it terrifying as well? Was it scary? It's a lot of responsibilities, forty eight million pounds of someone else's money.

• 1:01:15Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:01:37Steven Bartlett?

  And how much money have you raised in total now?

• 1:01:40Speaker 01

  Oh, six hundred, seven hundred.

• 1:01:42Steven Bartlett?

  Six hundred, seven hundred million pounds. Wow. I could have done so much with that. So what have you learnt about raising investment? Well, that if you were, you know, there'll be a lot of entrepreneurs listening to this, 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 is like Dragon's Den, right? What would, what would you tell them now, having gone through this process so many times?

• 1:02:09Speaker 01

  Take the money. Okay, so there's a huge amount of, 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 one percent of venture capital funding goes to women founders. Right, so, you know, if somebody offers you the money, you gotta 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.

• 1:02:52Speaker 01

  Not because they don't have good ideas, not because they're not good people, but they couldn't get the funding.

• 1:03:02Steven Bartlett?

  And do you think it's hard to raise money?

• 1:03:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, very hard.

• 1:03:06Speaker 01

  Venture capitalists tend to invest in

• 1:03:12Speaker 01

  businesses that look very, very similar. You know, if you look at, if you, if you read Paul Graham's works.

• 1:03:18Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:03:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. You know, he talks about really that teams need to look like this and, and things are done in this sort of way. You know, I would have never got any wide combination to 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 great, don't get significant investment.

• 1:04:02Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm, interesting. But there's a lot of money out there, isn't there?

• 1:04:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:07Steven Bartlett?

  That's what I've come to learn is there is a lot of money out there.

• 1:04:09Speaker 01

  There's a lot of money out there when you're successful.

• 1:04:12Steven Bartlett?

  Right.

• 1:04:12Speaker 01

  Starling now is, is a big business, sixteen hundred people, two and a half million accounts, um, doing interesting things, uh, we have a reputation. Um, 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.

• 1:04:42Speaker 01

  So, so I, 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.

• 1:04:58Steven Bartlett?

  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?

• 1:05:12Steven Bartlett?

  And this is really why I started this podcast.

• 1:05:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:16Speaker 01

  They, 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, all the hiring decisions somehow ended up with you making that first hiring decision. Now, we have sixteen hundred 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.

• 1:05:59Speaker 01

  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, to have a platform, really?

• 1:06:19Speaker 01

  I, 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 organisation that I wanted to run, because I quite like running organisations and I wanted to do things in a different sort of way. So finally, I'm running the organisation that I've been wanting to run for the last thirty five years.

• 1:06:50Steven Bartlett?

  And that you wished existed as a customer?

• 1:06:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that, you know, I've been very lucky. I, I've always had a great relationship with money. I, 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

• 1:07:30Speaker 01

  doing that. And I'm much more comfortable being accountable for the organisation that is Starling.

• 1:07:42Steven Bartlett?

  And it helped you to, I guess, alleviate that taxi cab shame you

• 1:07:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:48Steven Bartlett?

  referenced 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?

• 1:07:59Speaker 01

  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

• 1:08:15Speaker 01

  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 and I'm enjoying doing it.

• 1:08:28Steven Bartlett?

  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 is not an easy, an easy industry. Customers, you have millions of like customers that are, you're dealing with their money. Which is one of the most emotional sensitive things you can deal with, with any customer. 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.

• 1:09:08Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:09:24Speaker 01

  It's what I do.

• 1:09:28Speaker 01

  It's what the people I work with do.

• 1:09:33Speaker 01

  And sometimes it's yeah, sometimes you read emails of people that have been scammed out of their life savings.

• 1:09:44Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:10:28Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:11:01Steven Bartlett?

  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?

• 1:11:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:21Speaker 01

  I had a great mentor in this, my father. My father was brought up in a home where, um, 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, he was brought up in that home where his father was, had good days and bad days and things were quite fragile.

• 1:11:51Speaker 01

  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, how you, 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

• 1:12:32Speaker 01

  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 realise that you're not the centre of attention. You know, sometimes, no, it's not about me. You know, not, not 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

• 1:13:16Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:13:27Steven Bartlett?

  So do you see that as a, your, your sort of coping mechanism there as a, almost like a, almost like a childhood disposition that was taught to you? Like it's a, a perspective that kind of defaults to optimism, seeing the glasses are full, defaulting to gratitude? That's kind of acted as a protective?

• 1:13:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it is. I'm still quite excited by it all. I started coming here today, I was excited. 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, I'm still excited. I'm like a kid that's coming to London for the first time. This is an exciting things to do. I'm, yeah, I'm loving it all.

• 1:14:30Steven Bartlett?

  Such a strange question to ask, but um, that is somewhat unusual, it feels. It feels like,

• 1:14:39Steven Bartlett?

  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.

• 1:14:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I have a phone by the bed and it never leaves the, the, yeah, the phone is by the bed all the time.

• 1:14:53Steven Bartlett?

  And that's the like, the emergency call me if there's a crisis phone.

• 1:14:56Speaker 01

  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, you know, I appear in front of the Treasury Select Committee and get grilled. I, you know, I have this sort of grilling from you. I, I, I, I can talk to interesting people. I have the opportunity of building something I've always wanted. That's a huge, huge privilege.

• 1:15:28Steven Bartlett?

  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, it's harder to slip into the trap of um, 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, 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?

• 1:16:09Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:16:10Steven Bartlett?

  No?

• 1:16:11Speaker 01

  I read a lot. I read, 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.

• 1:16:33Steven Bartlett?

  The the personal. So this is interesting. One of the things that you said, well, kind of two points is that you don't have work-life balance.

• 1:16:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:43Steven Bartlett?

  It's all, it's just all work.

• 1:16:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:46Steven Bartlett?

  When people hear that, they go, they've 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 seventeen kids and a husband, and how you would like to do, you know, buck that narrative.

• 1:17:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:18Steven Bartlett?

  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 the personal balance you have in your life. And also, you know, you talk openly about not having kids.

• 1:17:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. Look, you know, it's sort of, you know, the right man never came along. 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. Just that, sort of, I was busy and then it was too late.

• 1:18:00Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm.

• 1:18:01Speaker 01

  But I think that people compare to quite an idyllic state of, you know, marriage and two children and they're all living in a wonderful home and, you know, sort of everything being fantasized life of a family. Majority of families are not like that. I have.

• 1:18:26Speaker 01

  I am really, really happy that I've made the right decisions.

• 1:18:32Speaker 01

  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. Um, yeah, you know, but one day, plus I will marry, you never know. You know, the right man may come along. Um, it's unlikely to happen with children.

• 1:18:54Steven Bartlett?

  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 higgle the, you know, like put some pieces together, which is probably resembles a relationship now, but um.

• 1:19:27Speaker 01

  It's very difficult finding a man who's prepared to listen to me going on about my career for three hours.

• 1:19:35Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm. 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.

• 1:19:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:42Steven Bartlett?

  And also an interesting narrative, which I, 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?

• 1:20:05Speaker 01

  Well, I, you know, I had a lot of coaching from friends before going out on a date and going, for goodness sake, Anne, don't ask for the bill, okay? For goodness sake, Anne, don't, you know, don't leave the table to answer a call, right?

• 1:20:18Steven Bartlett?

  Goodness sake.

• 1:20:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, but like a really, really good deal coming up. No, no, no, no, this is how it works, Anne, okay? You go on a date and you pretend he's, 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.

• 1:20:41Steven Bartlett?

  Wow.

• 1:20:46Speaker 01

  Oh God.

• 1:20:48Steven Bartlett?

  And I read somewhere as well that you said that you could write a separate book about your dating.

• 1:20:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:20:53Steven Bartlett?

  Dating experiences.

• 1:20:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've done a lot of that.

• 1:20:56Steven Bartlett?

  Done a lot of dating.

• 1:20:58Speaker 01

  Doesn't work.

• 1:20:59Steven Bartlett?

  Doesn't work.

• 1:21:00Speaker 01

  Doesn't work.

• 1:21:01Steven Bartlett?

  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.

• 1:21:15Speaker 01

  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 about with that. And it's sort of taken priority. But that's great, you know, you know, I've, I've got a great job.

• 1:21:39Speaker 01

  You know, I'm doing this sort of stuff.

• 1:21:41Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:21:41Speaker 01

  You know, 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.

• 1:21:53Steven Bartlett?

  As you reflect back on, you know, the, the Anne that started her career as an entrepreneur and the naivety that she must have undoubtedly had going, you know, what would you, what was, is this some of the keys sort of pieces of advice you would impart on her and say, I just wish you knew this and be careful of this and.

• 1:22:13Speaker 01

  I, 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.

• 1:22:31Speaker 01

  Because when you ask somebody about what you should do or how you raise fundraising or, you know, 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 have, you know, the, the VC world is full of people who are, you know.

• 1:22:59Speaker 01

  You know, finish their careers, they're wandering around VC land trying to tell you what things work and how things work.

• 1:23:08Steven Bartlett?

  They've never run a business.

• 1:23:09Speaker 01

  A lot of that is absolute rubbish and you have to just stop it. Um. One of the biggest lessons I learnt is a lot of the things that I knew, what I was absolutely hundred percent certain of was actually wrong. Right. So forget about it. The world's move on. Be relevant.

• 1:23:28Steven Bartlett?

  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?

• 1:23:40Speaker 01

  No, I think that we'll probably list in a couple of years' time. Um, you know, I wanted to be, I want 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.

• 1:24:06Steven Bartlett?

  And you must have had some offers, right? Because, you know, a couple of people coming along saying, yeah, yeah, brown envelope, hundred mil, see you later, no?

• 1:24:15Speaker 01

  It's, look, it's a unique opportunity. You know, imagine, put yourself in my shoes. Nineteen eighty one, I came to London to start my career in banking and rocked up at Lloyds 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 its sort of three hundred years rather than the end of it. Yeah, it's incredibly exciting. Um, yeah, I have to pinch myself. It's really happening.

• 1:25:00Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, 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 an 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 and, you know, the stereotypes of being a female founder. 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.

• 1:25:44Steven Bartlett?

  Because like, I know how hard it is anyway, but then when the deck is stacked against you and the ways that I, I know it is. Because I understand stereotypes and the climate, and especially in the banking world, like what kind of lunatic starts a bank, right? And 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 approached us very early and asked us to help with the marketing. So, and then, 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.

• 1:26:27Steven Bartlett?

  And there's very few entrepreneurs in the UK, or really anywhere in the world that I've encountered, that really managed to

• 1:26:36Steven Bartlett?

  take on a really stubborn incumbent in, 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, move away the rights and the music rights and move it to digital and then charge people like, so that again, I consider Daniel Act to be a lunatic, but.

• 1:26:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, incredible.

• 1:26:57Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, it's, 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, 100 million. I do have one request though, and this is where the diary comes in.

• 1:27:10Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:27:11Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, so.

• 1:27:14Steven Bartlett?

  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.

• 1:27:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:27:22Steven Bartlett?

  So our last guest wrote a question for you. Do you really understand the purpose of your life here on earth?

• 1:27:37Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:28:06Steven Bartlett?

  You don't think it's what you're doing now?

• 1:28:11Steven Bartlett?

  Would you suspect?

• 1:28:12Speaker 01

  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 the platform of Starling.

• 1:28:43Steven Bartlett?

  Nudging society in the right direction in terms of?

• 1:28:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, fairness.

• 1:28:48Steven Bartlett?

  Fairness, equality?

• 1:28:49Speaker 01

  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 of 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.

• 1:29:20Steven Bartlett?

  I'm getting Prime Minister vibes.

• 1:29:22Speaker 01

  I have no, no intention of becoming a politician. It's far too hard.

• 1:29:29Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, but you can, as you say, you refer to Stalings as a platform and that's, you know, being able to influence the electorate.

• 1:29:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:35Steven Bartlett?

  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.

• 1:29:43Speaker 01

  Thank you very much for inviting me. I really enjoyed it. Thank you very much.