Business Growth Strategies for Fintech Startups

With the rise of cryptocurrencies and an evolving approach to retail investing, I spoke to Yorick Naeff to understand his business growth strategies as a fintech startup. The COO of Bux, founded in early 2014, he has scaled into 10 countries in Europe with more than 350,000 clients.

Fintech startups need a killer product or service

Differentiation is key if you’re looking to break into a busy industry with strong established competitors. After quickly outgrowing a partner, Yorick was convinced early on that Bux needed to build its own fully-fledged broker system from the ground up. This negated the dependency of legacy systems or being held up by partners who couldn’t move at the same speed.

The focus on the engineering, technology and systems that went into creating their product is what differentiated them from competitors in the fintech space. This was the key business growth strategy that helped Bux to be the first company in 10 years to build a full brokerage system end to end in continental Europe, scaling to five countries within the first year of launching.

Balance your core business with scaling as your business grows

Originating from Silicon Valley, are you familiar with the 70/20/10 split? The concept is that 70% of your budget is invested into your core innovation, 20% adjacent innovation and 10% disruptive innovation. Yorick adopted variants of this model at different stages of his growth lifecycle.

In the beginning, he recommends a 50/30/20 rule whereby there’s a need to focus on new initiatives and revenue streams to aid business growth. However, the business will get to a point where the 70/20/10 rule applies and you need to be optimising the core product such as the user experience or user interface.

Your team is the key to business growth

“If you’re looking for funding to grow significantly then people always think I need a very good idea, but what’s even more important is the team that’s behind all this... And people underestimate that.”- Yorick

Trust, communication and hiring from different industries, rather than people who have only worked in Fintech startups is what contributes to constant innovation and a strong management team. His advice is to take a deliberate approach as your startup grows to maintain a positive
vibe and tight-knit team.

Listen to the podcast to hear more about Yorick’s approach to decentralisation vs centralisation and why this was a key part of his business growth strategy. What do you think of the 70/20/10 approach?

Get in touch with me to have a conversation about what ScaleUp Consulting can do for your business.