Bristol's buzzing for startups

Bristolian business and entrepreneurs came together to hear from Basekit - the website building ex-startup - which has its roots in Bristol. Supported by Seedcamp in their growth - they came back to Bristol to lend some words of advice to budding talent.  

Financing is too slow; startups will beat banks

Ryan Caldbeck (who is concidentally CEO of crowdfunding firm, CircleUp) contributed a post to Forbes explaining that banks must be wary of agile, young upstarts in the financing sector. He names OnDeck and Lending Club as two examples of startups ready to change the way businesses finance themselves.

Financial services is in a funding tsunami

Data compiled by CrunchBase shows the financial services sector has had a wave of funding in its direction. The data looks into the July market momentum, the percentage change in funding over a six-month moving average, and FS is up 30%.

Finovate blog - the latest startups getting funding

A blog from Friday reveals that 15 startups have received $265 million in funding this week. AvantCredit, a near-prime lender startup, received a fair chunk of that in the form of $200m worth of debt funding. Chain, the outfit providing quick access to the block chain for devs, racked up $9.5m in funding in its latest round.

An interview with M-Pesa's founder

The announcement that M-Pesa was coming to Europe was made a few months ago. But last week M-Pesa's founder, Michael Joseph, sat down with RFI magazine. He reveals the Indian version was close to being named 'M-Paisa' but they U-turned when they took into account their global ambitions. He also reveals that the failure of the South African launch was down to a lack of focus on the 'bottom of the economic pyramid' i.e. people who don't have bank accounts.

Bank fintech funds: More than meets the eye?

Ron Shevin, senior analyst at Aite Group, wrote a blog picking apart the conundrum that lies in the recent spate of banking fintech ventures and funds. He takes a quote from a Wells Fargo bank exec in which this exec claims the ventures are intended to spur growth within the bank. Ron argues that if said ventures went on to make large amounts of money, they'd most likely sell off and keep the profits - rather than incorporate the tech into their business.