Starling CEO: Building a $1.5 Billion Business Against The Odds: Anne Boden | E107

Anne Boden recounts her journey from a humble Welsh upbringing as the daughter of a steelworker to a 30-year corporate banking career, then quitting at 54 to start her own bank. She describes the prejudice she faced as a short Welsh woman pitching a bank in a world that expects young Silicon Valley men, and the extreme difficulty of raising money. She gives her account of co-founding Starling with Tom Blomfield, their culture clash and fallout, his departure with 16 staff who went on to found Monzo, and how she rebuilt the company alone. The episode covers her pivotal Bahamas yacht meeting where investor Harold McPike offered her 48 million pounds for 66% of the company, her philosophy on raising investment, and how her father taught her to cultivate gratitude as a mental coping mechanism.

• Boden quit a 30-year corporate banking career at age 54 to become a first-time entrepreneur and start a bank.
  00:11:58
• She volunteered to resign from Starling for the good of the business, a decision she now deeply regrets.
  00:36:28
• A chance conversation with a tech entrepreneur in a Starbucks convinced her to go back and take Starling back rather than start over.
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• After Tom and the team left, Boden was completely alone in the office with no staff and almost no technology built.
  00:45:26
• A total of 16 people left with Tom Blomfield to eventually found Monzo.
  00:46:58
• Investor Harold McPike offered her 48 million pounds for 66% of Starling at 11:15pm on his yacht after three days of interrogation.
  00:58:28
• She accepted the 48 million pound offer in about 30 seconds, valuing what was essentially a 16-page deck at 72 million.
  01:00:00
• Boden openly discusses never marrying or having children, saying the right man never came along and then it was too late.
  01:19:27

• She was one of the first children from her area to go to university and faced stigma for coming from a poor council estate school.
  00:03:41
• Her parents bought her a 24-volume Encyclopedia Britannica, but it was a 1953 edition so her knowledge was outdated.
  00:06:16
• An early boss told her to tone down her aspirations or she would get frustrated, which only made her more determined.
  00:08:52
• Her career spanned Lloyds, Standard Chartered, Price Waterhouse, UBS, ABN AMRO and Allied Irish Banks across countries from Kazakhstan to Uzbekistan.
  00:09:55
• Her friend Alan Chandler turned up two days after the team left and worked for no salary for nearly a year.
  00:48:32
• Boden says only 1% of venture capital funding goes to women founders.
  01:05:52
• Starling reportedly has 1,600 people and 2.5 million accounts.
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• Starling has raised roughly 600-700 million pounds in total.
  01:03:46
• Her grandfather returned from the First World War with what would now be called PTSD, then called shell shock.
  01:13:11
• Boden compares founding Starling to a 300-year bank at the start of its life rather than the end.
  01:27:15

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