In the previous post, I listed some of the bumps we could have avoided. In this second part, I’ve summarized some of the lessons that, while easy to dismiss as common sense, would need to have been experienced one way or another.
Unanticipated, Harder to Avoid Lessons
1. Immunity to Change: This is always the hardest to assess. Have spent the last 18 months trying to create the confluence where actions overcome inertia. Conversations with over 1500 SMEs and accountant/bookkeepers in 5 countries have kept me trying to find the right formula. Getting people to invest 30 minutes to save hours and negative bank balances was much harder than we ever expected! The book Immunity to Change by Kegan and Lahey quotes an alarming study: only 1 in 7 at-risk heart patients were able to change behaviour when warned that they would “literally die if they do not make changes to their personal lives-diet, exercise… The doctors made sure they knew just what they needed to do. Still they just couldn’t do it” – 6 out of 7 couldn’t change!
2.Remember the cartoon of the guys with the square wheel too busy to look at the round one? We’d seen people come every 3 months for a year to try out one of our core modules. Or the accounting firm with a really bad collections problem but was always too busy to use our automation to tackle that very malaise! The partners were always really friendly and candid and provided tons of useful feedback that helped us benefit other firms. Sadly, coming on and off for almost two years they could never quite get in gear and were ‘desperate’ to activate the very week we decided to discontinue!
3. Timing: “Right place, right time – still drives the world”. Looking at the number of alternative lenders and fintech ventures and accelerators today, we were too early. It’s disappointing to see many who said there wasn’t a market and customer acquisition would be too hard, now back other start-up’s to acquire customers in the same markets.
Timing!
We launched our first product in the time of banker-bashing, with alternative lenders seemingly used as blunt instruments by the politicians, especially in the UK. The speed of market education can get a huge bump when the political machine raises awareness. The past two years have seen an explosion of P2P, crowdfunding and supplier financing awareness globally. Other geographies without the same catalysts in the UK have had a different trajectory but are now picking up speed and heading in a similar direction.
As fintech matures, the distinction between disrupters and enablers has become clearer, with a critical mass of startups with boath approaches. At the time, we came out wanting to fix existing commercial lending, no one was really interested in our story. Tactically, it’s hard to stand out as an enabler when the attention is focused on disrupting banks – anyone helping those with their heads in the sand is pretty much grounded. In hindsight, being a disrupter may have been better for us at that time.