Interviews with Leaders in Fintech & Web3
Interviews with Leaders in Fintech & Web3
Building Fintech Success: Christian Faes Shares Insights on Entrepreneurship, Technology, and Resilience
In this episode of Interviews with Leaders in Fintech & Web3, we sit down with serial entrepreneur Christian Faes, Co-Founder and Chairman of LendInvest and Founder of Faes & Co, to explore his remarkable journey from lawyer to fintech leader.
Christian recounts his transition from practicing law in Australia to becoming a major player in the fintech industry. He shares how he built LendInvest into a market leader, tackled the challenges of scaling the business, and the hard-earned lessons from taking the company public. Now launching a new venture in the US, Christian provides invaluable insights on entrepreneurship, the importance of resilience, and the ongoing disruption of financial services through technology.
In this conversation, he debunks misconceptions about entrepreneurship, reflects on the realities of IPOs, compares the UK and US fintech markets, and highlights the supportive ecosystem in London. He also stresses the importance of building a profitable business while enjoying the journey along the way.
Whether you're a fintech enthusiast or an aspiring entrepreneur, this episode is filled with practical advice for building a sustainable business in a rapidly evolving industry.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/christianfaes/
https://x.com/ChristianFaes
https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewcheung50/
Chapters
00:00 From Law to FinTech: Christian's Journey
03:45 Building LendInvest: Challenges and Successes
08:08 The Reality of Entrepreneurship: Misconceptions and Hard Work
12:37 IPO Insights: The Holy Grail of Entrepreneurship
17:27 Navigating Market Perceptions: UK vs US FinTech
20:29 Supporting FinTech: The Founders Group Initiative
24:15 Political Climate and Its Impact on FinTech
27:55 Why the US? Christian's Move and New Ventures
30:42 Building a New Lending Business: Strategies and Focus
34:02 The Ideal Founding Team: Traits and Dynamics
36:08 Breaking into FinTech: No Prerequisites Needed
37:54 Reflections on Career Choices: Learning from Mistakes
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https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdS4bYoCXaHVgfVm6syUrDw
Matt (00:01.404)
This is Matt from Work in Fintech and in today's interview with Leaders in Fintech podcast we're delighted to be joined by Christian Faes who has a really interesting record I think we're going to learn a lot today. He's currently CEO and founder of Faes & Co out in the west coast of the USA but probably one of his claims to fame is he's CEO of Lend Invest and also co-founder which IPO'd here in the UK.
Also co-founder of Onate, which is Ireland's largest bridging finance company, as well as creating the Fintech Founders Group in the UK, and has also advised the UK government and the city of London. So a real Fintech heavyweight here today. So welcome, Christian.
Christian (00:45.521)
Thanks, Matt. I appreciate the intro and I appreciate the invite to be on the podcast.
Matt (00:50.674)
You're welcome. So I guess let's go back to the beginning. You cut your teeth being a lawyer in Australia, then you moved to the UK and then you moved into Fintech. So how did all of that happen?
Christian (01:03.338)
Yeah, so I was, yeah, I grew up in Australia. And I think as many entrepreneurs often are kind of pretty restless growing up. And in the early parts of my career, so I studied law and practice as a lawyer in Australia for for a few years in my early 20s. And then I moved to move to London and practice law there at a big city law firm and then went in house with an investment bank.
but I was always sort of keen to start my own business. And as a lawyer, kind of, it felt like the only really only real business that I knew was the business of law. So I wanted, so I thought I'd go and start a law firm. and so I moved back to Australia and set up a small boutique law firm, doing kind of real estate. mean, I went from sort of big city practice, both in Australia and in London, then back to Australia doing very small mundane kind of like, you know, property conveyancing and
sort of, yes, small legal matters, I guess. But actually through the course of that stumbled upon acting for a couple of mortgage lending businesses and got quite interested in that business. through that, you know, acting for these guys, getting to know the mortgage business pretty well and sort of bridging finance was kind of the specialty. And so I
thought I'd prefer to be on that side of the table doing the deals rather than the lawyers sort of putting together all the documentation kind of after the deal's done. So jumped across and set up a small mortgage lending business in Australia and then wanted to sort of move back to London. I've sort of always loved London as a city. It's kind of, you know, the vibrancy of it and all the rest of it. So moved back to London to set up what became LendInvest and that was in 2008, which kind of
was probably the worst timing in the world to be setting up a mortgage lending business, totally naive and no appreciation of kind of the challenge that would laid ahead. it was in some respects a good time as well. It's kind of a time of disruption and perhaps a time of opportunity. yeah, sort of spent the better part of 12, 13 years building Lend Invest, became a very sort of scaled successful business and we IPO'd it.
Christian (03:29.563)
in 2021 and then have now moved to the US to essentially try and do it again. Probably have learned a lot along the way and doing things differently now. But I guess that's a sort of quick synopsis of my journey to here.
Matt (03:45.408)
So as a classic, you saw a problem and wanted to solve for it. And also that property convincing and financing and mortgage lending is such an archaic process that's not changed in, well, in decades, right?
Christian (03:59.693)
Yeah, yeah, that's true. And I think that kind of that intimate working knowledge on the legal side actually was a good grounding to kind of see, well, you know, this is very backward way of doing things, you know, and certainly, it was the case in Australia, but certainly when I got to the UK, you know, it was even arguably more backward in terms of like just the time that it took to get a mortgage, you know, an average three to four months to get a mortgage was kind of
surreal amount of time to take just to do to purchase a property. So as we're building Lend Invest, initially, we just started as an offline short term mortgage lender didn't have sort of grand aspirations to where we were going to take it or to build technology and so on. But as we got into the weeds of it and building that business could really see that actually it was right for disruption in terms of like technology could actually make this a much better experience.
And yeah, and like you say, like that sort of background and kind of like working on the other side of the table actually was a really, really useful background to sort of be able to go on that journey.
Matt (05:10.016)
I think a lot of younger people see the likes of Mark Zuckerberg and famous billionaire tech founders who have become billionaires in a rapid, in a very quick and rapid way. And that's the, are the one in a billion, right? Rather than, know, and so you said about, it took you like 12, 13 years to kind of build up Lend Invest. And actually at the start you weren't even thinking about this kind of idea of IPOing.
Christian (05:28.023)
Yeah.
Matt (05:39.922)
had a problem, you're trying to solve it. Can you talk about that kind of lens as well? Because I think a lot of people have a misconception that technology is this, you can just kind of blow up overnight and become wildly successful, which obviously does happen for some people, but that's not common.
Christian (05:58.093)
No, I couldn't agree more. And I think it's a bit of a bugbear of mine because I think, you know, that this sort of common media perception around some of those huge success stories is that they were overnight successes and kind of like that's commonplace. Like you say, that's extremely rare to have those sort of outsized returns and sort of successes in short periods of time. And even if you look at Facebook, I think it took them, I can't remember what it was, like the 10 or 15 years for them to get to YPO as well. And you know, and that's kind of like,
deemed an overnight success and clearly, you know, no one's taking that away. mean, it's huge success. But the reality is that most successes are not overnight. They take a lot of work and grind and you just got to keep plugging ahead. And I think that is a bit of a misconception, certainly for entrepreneurs that kind of like read the popular narrative in the press about kind of...
you know, just the time it takes and kind of it can sometimes look easy from the outside. And I think that is that's a dangerous misconception because reality is for any journey is going to be very, very difficult. You've got to be extremely resilient and sort of be prepared to have ups and downs and, you know, sort of probably, you know, more downs and ups for a long period of time. So I think that the danger around that is that people sort of go on that journey, unexpected.
the sort of, you know, not fully prepared for what it's really going to take. And also, I think there's a real issue around people perhaps being, you know, not feeling like they are a success because it's not overnight, you know, like kind of, they're looking at others and thinking, you know, they're raising huge amounts of money and they're hugely successful and everyone, everything's going great over there and it's not for me. And the reality is,
it's probably tougher for most people and certainly those that reach those levels of success I'm sure they've had a very tough path to get there and so I think it is important for people to understand that there's very few overnight successes and it generally just takes a lot of bloody hard work.
Matt (08:08.458)
So I guess two questions. One is what made Lend Invest unique when you started to use technology? And then the second question, and probably quite related, is that journey, can you unpick that journey over the 12, 13 years? Because obviously you've done that. You IPO'd. And now you said you're looking to do it again. So what did you learn the first time around that is going to reduce those 12, 13 years to something else or maybe a different outcome altogether?
Christian (08:35.688)
Yeah, I mean, that's that's an interesting question. I mean, I think, I think as we were building LendInvest, like I said, we started as an offline mortgage lending business very sort of focused on that. In some respects, it was good timing, which actually coming back to the previous question around like overnight successes and so on. think sometimes it is a matter of timing as much as anything else and being in the right place at the right time.
And so for us, when we were building LendingBest, it was kind of in the early days of Fintech in the UK. mean, think, you know, people argue about when Fintech really started, but certainly, you know, the David Cameron, George Osborne government were very supportive of building a brand around Fintech and in the city of London. And we were there kind of with a sort of mortgage lending business that we could see was in a very
outdated backward industry and kind of like there was a lot of VC interest in investing in businesses that were trying to sort of disrupt financial services. So we were able to pivot the business, I guess, to be positioned as a Fintech, you know, hired an engineer. I mean, we did every mistake, you know, you could possibly imagine in terms of trying to build, build technology. mean, I've always been interested in technology was coding as a kid. But, you know, not didn't train as an engineer and was not
going to be able to build what we wanted to build. But we miss hired and we got things wrong and whatever. But we did eventually build a technology team. built some technology and we're able to successfully raise venture capital, which allowed us to really accelerate that pivot, I guess, to being a technology driven business. And those investors were very helpful in terms of
you know, helping us understand how to build a technology business, what good looks like, how to hire the right people and sort of really accelerate that growth. you know, it was seven years building that business before we raised outside capital. So we did very much bootstrap it. And I think in some respects, we were kind of fairly bratty founders, my co founder and I, you know, he would admit as well, we kind of thought we knew everything and didn't need outside help.
Christian (10:49.839)
didn't need VC capital and all the rest of it. when we did raise that capital, think we kind of, you know, you learn what you don't know. And that kind of did accelerate that journey. And then, yeah, I guess we kind of now where we are today with that business, I think it has the best mortgage technology in the country, you in the UK. And that's just not me as a sort of biased.
founder, know, shareholder in the business, but you know, there's external reports that validate that, you know, the technology that's being built there is superior to anything else that's in the market. But you know, at the end of the day, it's a lending business. So that has challenges as well around, you know, you can have the best hottest car, but if you know, the engine doesn't work, then you know, there's kind of, there's things that need to be sorted out there. So and you're subject to the market.
environment around you, you you are a risk taking business, there's a small sort of balance sheet component to that business. technology, it's not purely a technology business. In reality, it is it is a financial services business that's, you know, very technology driven. So yeah, I mean, I guess and then we in terms of the IPO, we always wanted to IPO that business. My co founder and I kind of
if someone had sat us down and said, is not going to be the best thing. And, know, all those sort of rational reasons why you should not be trying to do that. We would never have listened. And, know, a few people did, I guess, along the way. But yeah, we IPO the business and that was, I think, you know, as an entrepreneur, that's often put out there as kind of the ultimate success. It's the holy grail that you kind of strive for and
But to be able to achieve that was very gratifying. Would I do it again? Was it the best thing to do for the business and all the rest of it? I think they're kind of like, you know, we have a long hangover off the back of that and sort of working through a of those thoughts. in any event, was a good journey and it's a great business and there's great people in there. you know, it's great to see it sort of continue to go on as I've been able to sort of step back from the business.
Matt (13:09.112)
And how would you like talking about it as the Holy Grail? Obviously, you want to get an outcome and some sort of exit, you know, monetary fit for yourself, right? But how much of that was kind of did go back into the business as well as kind of people who are there from the start, you getting something in return. And obviously, that share price has come down a lot since since since those days. Why is that?
Christian (13:21.154)
Nah.
Christian (13:35.563)
Yeah. Thanks for pointing that out, Matt. Yeah, why is that? Look, there's a number of reasons in terms of why the lead of our share prices had a tough time. I I think at the time when we IPO'd, there was a, it's an interesting journey. So you go through, I think,
Matt (13:39.584)
Hahaha
Christian (13:58.556)
You raise VC capital, you have a team around you, you have shareholders and you have expectations around what that end value is going to be. The overwhelming thought when we IPO the business was, it was one of like kind of, you know, being proud and like, you know, happy that we'd sort of achieved that milestone. But there was also an undertone of we just think this is way too cheap. You know, we've sold too early. We've sort of, haven't achieved the true aspirations of the value of the business. And so then to see it
fall from that position, you know, over the course of time to now where we would kind of, you know, you know, there's more cash in that business than the share price, you know, the market cap. So it's just like a ludicrous position to define the business in. And so I think some of that is just like the market environment, you know, we had the sort of the gift of list list trusts and kind of like, you know, sort of
interest rates coming up and it's kind of it's been quite a dramatic couple of years, I guess, for a business that's lending and has exposure to just the wider macro market, you know, sentiment around the property market, interest rates coming up pretty quickly, and so on. So that has been a real challenge for the business and but which has been a challenge for the business, but as much as anything, it's been a challenge for the perception of the business. And so I think that it's a
you know, it's a hidden gem in the market. And you know, in due course, that that value will be realized again, in my view, because, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, I said, it's got the best technology, it's got a great team. And it's, it's a really good business, it's got a long pedigree in the market, and great products and all the rest of it. So I think in due course, that comes back and there's kind of renewed excitement around around the
the company in that sort of external perception side of things. yeah, I mean, why do you IPO? I mean, I think ultimately it is about liquidity. And it's trying to sort of unlock value for shareholders. And it's kind of like, it was always kind of for us, for me, was seen as a way to sort of assign of a business being a very mature business and kind of like graduating, I guess, from being a startup to being a real business.
Christian (16:21.504)
whether that's actually right or not. mean, don't know. I mean, I think there's a lot of great businesses that are private and actually a lot of great businesses that should definitely remain private because actually, you know, I think that it's a huge distraction being a listed business. You know, you've got sort of regular reporting, you've got analysts that are all over you.
you've got, you know, audit requirements and all the rest of it, like there's a huge cost and friction that gets imported to the business. And I think you have to really question whether that is the best thing for a business and at what stage it, which it's at. I think, I think like the honest thing is that it's been hard to build a business in the UK, the last sort of four or five years, and I know it's sort of almost cliche to sort of pull it back to Brexit. But I think that has made things, the business environment very difficult and
I think we've kind of been in the the crosshairs of a bit of that as well. yeah, look, it is what it is. It's a great business. And like I say, I would do it all again anyway. It's kind of how could you not?
Matt (17:26.836)
Well, I guess that point about perception, right? That value is in the eye of the beholder, isn't it? It's what someone's prepared to pay for it. And going back to perception as well, I guess there's two bits. One is the subset of another. But in the UK, people's perception of technology and risk seems to be quite different than where you are now in the US. And similarly, with AIM, where you listed, AIM is an exchange that's just dying right now.
Christian (17:52.594)
Yeah.
Matt (17:57.088)
and people are setting up shop elsewhere like you've done actually.
Christian (17:57.181)
Yeah.
Christian (18:02.236)
Yeah, I mean, look, I mean, the UK has been good to me and I've built a great business in that market. And, you know, I love London and there's, you know, it's been like I say, there's a lot of positives there. But, but I think the the the public markets, they're very challenged, you know, it's kind of that, you know, and you read about in the press and so on, but it's very real and I've lived it. You go from building a scale up
technology driven business that has VC backers, know, it's a lot. In some respects, it's kind of easier to raise money in the private markets than it is in the public markets. And some of that is that private market investors are very prepared to look into the future and sort of, you know, look you in the eyes and understand your vision and kind of like what it's going to take to achieve that vision. And I was on the roadshow when you do the IPO and you then you get in front of like, you know, old school crusty sort of aging
white males in the city that kind of they don't really care about technology. They just kind of like, what's this year's profits and how believable are next year's profits and what's the growth rate and kind of like you get comped as a you you can say we'll build the best technology and we're doing things very differently and in a very lazy way to say yeah, but you're kind of just like a bank, you know, so banks are valued at X multiple of profit and that's kind of where you end up. And there's a huge disconnect there.
And so I do worry for lot of Fintech founders and people that are raising VC capital because they live in this world where it's kind of all about the future and building technology and all this kind of stuff. But at the end of the day, if you want to get an exit, you're to have to be able to transition into that market where you go in front of institutional investors that don't really have the desire to really care about a lot of that. And so that's a tough transition.
and it's not a particularly supportive environment for companies. There haven't been that many fintech, for a place like London that holds itself out as being the center of the universe for fintech. Transfer-wise, now wise, have done a great job. Obviously Revolut was kind of born out of there and there have been some huge success stories.
Christian (20:20.542)
There's not a huge amount, many of them, there's not many of them and there's not many that have been able to transition into the public market successfully.
Matt (20:28.768)
So talking about support for fintechs, when you were in the UK and presumably still now, you were very supportive of fintechs, both in terms of lobbying with government and being a platform and a voice, as well as setting up your own fintech founders group. Can you talk about that and the motivations behind it?
Christian (20:42.515)
Yeah.
Christian (20:50.206)
Yeah, I think so the original sort of background of Fintech Founders Group was look, you as far as kind of in the early days of the hype around Fintech, you would go to the conferences and they started off, you know, with 100 people and then like within a year or two, there's like thousands of people at these big Fintech conferences, you could see all the excitement around the sector. And there are whole bunch of founders that you would get to know almost on that conference circuit. You know, you got to lend it here in the US and in the UK and you sort of go around
see founders and I'd find it almost comical in some respect, because we'll all get on stage and sit on these panels and do fireside chats and all the rest of it. We're all just spinning the company line and kind of like, it's not, it wasn't really a genuine conversation. and I felt like I wanted to sort of just create an environment where founders could get together and just have an honest conversation around, you know, the challenges that they're having. And so it just started as doing some round table.
dinners in London, we'd invite a bunch of founders together. Chatham House rules, you know, everyone kind of talk about what challenges they've got or whatever the topic of the day was. It was quite interesting that, know, often some maybe slight competitors, but generally no one's really directly going head to head in terms of competitors. All got probably slightly different products and different verticals we're attacking, but we've all got very similar issues. You know, it's like, how do you hire good people?
How do you train people? How do you retain people? How do you develop the option schemes, shareholders and company employees and all this kind of stuff, often quite people related problems. But it was quite good to sort of get people around the table and just have a conversation around that. So that kind of got a bit of momentum. And through that, we found that we could actually invite pretty high profile speakers. And they were, we say we've got 20.
founders of pretty high profile fintechs and not always really made an effort for it not to be always high profile fintechs. You know, a good spread of guys who were just starting out and maybe some more mature ones, get them around the table. And we could, we found actually, you know, we could get government ministers and, know, we've had number of sessions with like the head of the FCA and so on, like really get some, some good access for, for that group. And so yeah, just put effort into.
Christian (23:11.852)
to building it, could see that people were getting a lot from it. And that was quite gratifying. And now we've got even now like a very active WhatsApp group, I think it's like 400 plus founders on there. And every day they're talking about, know, what do you think of this law firm? And I need help with this. And can someone get me an intro to the here, there, whatever. And it's just a really great supportive ecosystem. And I think that's definitely what London has, the UK has around Fintech. is a very kind of, there is a very real
supportive ecosystem around fintech. I think we've hopefully played a bit of a part in that. so yeah, so I think it's a great group. It continues today. I'm kind of like less involved with it now, but we've got sort of a professional secretariat that helps coordinate things and they still run events. I think it's fulfilled a role, an impartial role, and has been a voice for the industry and been a force for good, I guess.
without sort of wanting to glamorize it too much.
Matt (24:15.178)
You mentioned Liz Trust, which caused a lot of problems in the UK, and there's been lots of political roller coaster changes of government and what have you in the last year or so. And now we've got a new government in the UK.
Christian (24:17.239)
But
Matt (24:32.778)
We've got the budget coming out in just two weeks time or so, which a lot of people are very concerned about, particularly entrepreneurs, about some of the structures around risk taking and how tax efficient ways of doing that can make it interesting and people want to innovate and take a risk. That may change. How do you think that's going to impact the UK and Fintech in the UK?
Christian (24:49.879)
Mm.
Christian (25:01.365)
Yeah, I think it's quite a precarious moment, actually, because I was back there a couple of weeks ago, and I was quite surprised at the anxiety around the upcoming budget and what the government is going to do. I mean, I think they have signaled some stuff that doesn't sound great. And maybe they're kind of like testing the waters, which seems to be the way governments do things. And then they're kind of like, maybe it gets a bit watered down, depending on how much sort of resistance there is to what's being suggested. But it doesn't feel
Great, I would say and certainly that uncertainty in itself is unhelpful, particularly at a time when, like I say, I think we're coming off the back of a number of years where it's just been a very difficult environment to build a business. Brexit, COVID, obviously everyone had to deal with COVID, but it wasn't helpful. Liz Truss, different prime ministers heading swapped in and out and then now a new government. In some respects, it's helpful because there's certainty, at least now, who the government's going to be, where I think Labour were kind of...
We knew they were probably going to win the election and so there was some uncertainty there and to have that done is positive. And I guess you can hold out hope that they've got sensible people there that are listening to the concerns around needing to really try and create the UK to continue to be a great place to build a business. I think it's...
Yeah, I guess we have to just wait and see, see what transpires there. But I'd say that generally speaking, sentiment is pretty poor. even, I've had, look, I moved to the US a couple of years ago now, but I've had so many founders and people from the UK call and meet with me over the last sort of year or so around, I'm leaving, how do I leave? How do you get a US visa? How do you set up here? Like, how do you, you know, what just sort of help with the process of that? And so
You're already seeing that, I think, particularly with the non-dom thing and people argue how popular or good that policy was, but a lot of people have just packed up and left. That wasn't a driver for me, but it is a driver for a lot of people. And I think the UK has already lost a lot of great talent from certain policies in the last couple of years. I really hope that that...
Christian (27:20.759)
can change in the near future and kind of reverse that trend. And there is an opportunity for the new government to really grab that opportunity and kind of like saying that we are about supporting businesses and startups and people who want to take a risk will be rewarded. But yeah, let's wait and see,
Matt (27:42.592)
So you have moved to the US and you've been there for a couple of years. Why the US and not back to Australia or Dubai or Singapore or somewhere else?
Christian (27:46.614)
Yeah.
Christian (27:53.207)
I've always been intrigued by the US market wanted to always wanted to build a business here. think that you know, reality was, you know, it came to that end of that lend invest journey and probably had a time to reflect and kind of felt like, you know, still had a chip on my shoulder hadn't really built the business I want to build, which you know, maybe a lot of people look at that. So what are you talking about? But
For me personally, it was kind of like, you know, I think I can do better in terms of like, not do better, can, I can probably get a bigger result from maybe similar sort of effort. And so the US market is kind of attracts me in that sense, in terms of the size of the market, the way it moves the pace and all the rest of it. And so, yeah, I guess I was sitting there for a while saying, well, if I, you know, if I'd built Lenevice in the US, it'd be so much bigger and better.
like, you know, it have been maybe a more successful outcome. And it's kind like, can't sit around and just move around saying that you got to go and do it. So that's really what that's about really. And kind of feeling that, yeah, like I say, the UK is very tough place to build a business for a long time. There's no perfect place. Certainly I'm realizing that and you know, the US has its own challenges here. If you want to talk about politics and all the rest of it here. It's not exactly
straightforward, but I've really enjoyed the challenge of starting again with a blank sheet of paper, kind of feel like I sort of know what I'm doing now. And it's exciting and interesting because it's a new market and it's a very big market. And so yeah, I'm really happy with where I'm at and sort of early success with what we're building here as well.
Matt (29:45.61)
So can you talk through exactly what you are building now and what is the company that you founded?
Christian (29:51.957)
Yeah, so our firm that we're building is essentially a business that builds lending businesses. Well, that's the of the broad overriding sort of goal to build lending businesses and businesses associated with lending. And then we've got a private credit fund that sits alongside that and provides the lending capital to the lending businesses that we build.
So if you play that out over a number of years, we'll be sort of a conglomerate of sort of lending businesses that we've built and then sort of a private credit fund or a number of private credit funds that kind of have been able to get access to the deal flow generated by the businesses that were built. Where we're at today is we've built a, started kind of with the domain I know best, so built a bridging lending business here called F2 Finance, which is our first lender.
We're in the process of building which we haven't talked about publicly yet, but we're building a mortgage servicing business as well which will be launching in the coming months and and then we've launched a private credit fund as well, which is Seated actually with a lot of UK kind of high net worth investors from my network there and and that allowed me to launch the fund here and and Yeah, that's kind of that's that's where we're at at the moment. So it's a
a lending business and a private credit fund based here in Los Angeles.
Matt (31:16.746)
So it's a few more different products and services than what you did previously. how have you, like you said, you've got a blank sheet of paper and you've got all the knowledge from doing it before. What are you doing different this time around execution and technology?
Christian (31:34.735)
Yeah, that's a really good question. I'm probably less focused on technology now. It's been one of the things that's been interesting is, and so it's sort of reflecting on the LenderBest journey as well. Like when we were back in like 2012, 13, when we were kind of like making that pivot to building technology and sort of going that route, we were doing that because there wasn't really any technology available. You know, there's nothing off the shelf that really worked. It kind of like, it felt like open space to
you had to go and build something. When I've come to the US market, I guess the technology transformation of financial services is a decade plus on. And there are a lot of off the shelf systems that you can get that can really kind of be customized, but you don't have to build a huge engineering team of 100 people kind of like building technology from scratch. I've really built
great systems actually with this business, but with a relatively small team, using a lot of off the shelf stuff and kind of like outsourced customization, but not really building the technology. guess, guess the takeaway in summary is I don't know how much value there is in the technology in the sense of, you know, I'm not trying to build a VC pipe dream business where it's kind of like going to be a unicorn because of all this amazing technology and data.
We're built and just going to build a real business that kind of like is profitable. you know, when in if we get to that period where we're sitting in front of, you know, old school fund managers, again, we will have a very decent profit for them to put a multiple on. And it won't be around or, you know, look at the technology we're built. It's I guess, in some respects, like great technology business don't sit there talking about their technology, right? They kind of it's the it's the business and the service that they provide and the technology in the background kind of
is pieced together however it is. And so yeah, so that's probably what I'm very focused on doing differently, differently this time.
Matt (33:40.096)
So you've grown Lend Invest and a few different businesses you've been involved in. You've grown them from presumably a small group of founders or co-founders. What would you say is a good mix and makeup of a founding team of people to then create a market-leading business?
Christian (34:02.606)
I think the, the, the, the number one, character trait that is required from founders and probably the early team as well as just resilience, and being able to, you know, maybe where we started this conversation, like to just understand that actually it is hard work. There's not going to be an overnight success to it. Definitely going to make mistakes. Actually was doing, was talking with one of the guys here earlier this week and he was, he had actually, which was
to this point actually was quite interesting. said the thing that he enjoys most about working here is we make mistakes, but we don't get too hung up on it. And we just kind of like, we're happy to very open minded to try different things. Some of them, which actually have been outsider came in, say, what the hell you doing? That's not going to work. And yeah, maybe it doesn't work, but you try it. It doesn't work. Move on. And so I think people that can be in that sort of uncomfortable environment and
not be sort of disturbed by that, actually able to thrive in that kind of, you know, like I said, be resilient. think that's probably the most important thing. It's also a very difficult thing to test and to understand. You know, you can't, when you're hiring someone and you, before this, we were chatting about like doing internships and things like that. I think that is a great way in actually, because you can sort of...
You get a feel for both sides, right? Sometimes it's chemistry, sometimes it's just the environment, sometimes there's like maybe not the interest in what you're doing or there's actually a really passionate interest in what you're doing and some of that kind of adds to being a good mix. But sometimes you just got to get involved to sort of understand if there is a fit there. yeah, but ultimately resilience is unquestionably the key trait.
Matt (35:48.604)
And would you say there's any prerequisites to kind of get involved in Fintech as an industry? Because there's a misconception that you need to be a developer, you need to be very tech savvy to be able to work in this industry, but you said you're not a coder, you're not an engineer, you were trained as a lawyer. What's your thoughts on that?
Christian (36:08.842)
I think you can come from any industry actually. And certainly when we were building LendInvest and even now I'm doing it again, think it's people bringing a different perspective to things adds a lot of value. So coming from outside the industry or a different background or a different kind of like domain expertise or kind of whatever it may be can actually come in with a different lens and actually, like say when we're building LendInvest and it was
becoming quite a scale business, we would hire senior people that would be from outside the mortgage industry. Because they would often come in and say, well, you know, like, look, this is how I've seen it done in another industry. And have you thought about that? And they can they can bring a different perspective, which actually can add a lot of value. So don't think you have to, you know, like you say, you don't have to be an engineer to sort of work in fintech, I think you can probably come from any, any industry, obviously, an interest in financial services and
I think some domain knowledge is good. A lot of people talk about disrupting financial services, but they haven't necessarily, they haven't worked in it or they're not familiar enough with the domain to really understand how they could disrupt it. But yeah, think generally speaking, if you want to get involved in the sector, I don't think there's any kind of prerequisite actually. The right business should probably be willing to look at what perspective you can bring and assess whether that adds value to what they're trying to achieve.
Matt (37:40.032)
So final question, if you were to go back, back when you were 18 and you're back in Australia and you're starting out your career or at university, what would you have done differently?
Christian (37:53.543)
what would I've done differently? mean, I think it's a tough one because I don't think I would have done anything differently in the sense of, I've definitely made mistakes along the way. and, but pretty pigheaded and kind of like someone explaining a mistake or kind of like for seeing a mistake you're going to make and telling you, wouldn't probably have listened so much. So, I think,
There's not a lot I would have changed. I think, I mean, I guess if I look back, I would like to have done everything quicker than what I have, but that's kind of, that's not maybe reality. It's not like I wasn't working hard enough, but you kind of like, I guess you would have tried to find ways to shortcut the journey to get to where you're going. But yeah, no, I think, yeah, I think well-placed for, I'm just getting started as well, if that's the other thing. Okay, I don't feel like it's kind of.
any sort of juncture in my career in the sense of just kind of like just just starting off really.
Matt (38:58.184)
Another parting note is that piece about in hindsight, through learning through your mistakes, you can do stuff quicker and take some shortcuts rather than going the long way. Is there any of those shortcuts you could share for people early on in their careers now?
Christian (39:17.286)
Shortcuts, mean, I think one takeaway actually, if there was something I would do differently in that sense would be, think it's very easy to get caught up in this whole like perception thing that we were talking about earlier around your business and raising capital and kind of like going to conferences and kind of like always trying to.
do PR and kind of like, you know, there's a lot of energy and resources that go into that stuff that you think adds value. And I think it probably does add some value, but I think it can also be hugely distracting. We're actually, at the end of the day, it's about building the business and focusing on the bottom line of the business and sort of building a profitable business and getting caught up around.
that kind of like, you know, ex companies raised about money, and I need to speak to that VC. And you know, you get all these inbounds from VCs, which I think is like quite flattering, and you sit with them and you share all your information, you just totally wasting time actually, in hindsight, like, thousands of hours wasted, sort of like talking with investors and chasing opportunities that kind of like, didn't you didn't need that weren't didn't
matter other than kind of like maybe ego driven in some respects, where you should just put that aside and actually just focus on what you're doing. But again, I think that's that's a hard thing to do. And look, you've got to enjoy the journey as well. I think that's kind of an interesting thing. Actually, I found it that I know from the UK, but he's a very sort of high profile founder that I talked to occasionally. He's he started another business as well. And he sent me a message a couple of months ago. And he said, you know, saying
excuse my language, I won't swear but yeah, it's tough. Like it's kind of like you're starting with a blank sheet of paper, but you still got to bloody do it. And you say, yeah, but you know, the journey is the reward. And I kind of think that, you know, have to remind yourself of that and actually try and have fun as you're going along and look, you make mistakes, it's not the end of the world. And yeah, don't get caught up in the hype if it makes you happy, but also, you know, you've got to stay focused and get on with it ultimately.
Matt (41:26.184)
Yeah, so keep focused but have fun along the way. Great advice. So Christian, how can people kind of follow you or get in contact with you?
Christian (41:29.454)
Yeah. Yeah.
Christian (41:36.514)
Yeah, sure. So I'm pretty active on Twitter. at Christian phase, you can subscribe to our newsletter or follow us on LinkedIn phase and co it's phase FAES.co. And, you know, on follow me on LinkedIn and so on. pretty active on social media and responsive and accessible.
Matt (41:59.961)
Well, best of luck in your new venture and thanks for joining us today.
Christian (42:04.245)
Yeah, thank you for having me. I've enjoyed the chat.