“People will try to put you in a box. But it’s important to break out of it”
You can’t take on a much bigger project than trying to start your own bank. Entrepreneur Anne Boden tells Andreina Cordani about the life lessons she’s learned along the way
Many of us get to the point in life where we want to create something new, start a business of our own. When Anne Boden grew frustrated with the corporate world, she dreamed about walking away from it all and starting a little fashion boutique. “But it’s scary opening a dress shop, it meant moving into an area of business I knew nothing about. I needed to work with
what I know.” And so, instead of opening a fashion outlet on her local high street in Marlow, Buckinghamshire, Anne started an online bank. From scratch.
Raised in Swansea, West Glamorgan, Anne has an infectious laugh, a naturally engaging personality and a serious shoe addiction – she’s about as far from the
‘starchy banker’ stereotype as you can get. And it’s that refusal to be pigeonholed that is the secret to her success – as well as utter determination. “I think I succeeded in banking because I was always reinventing myself,” she says. She’d jumped from computer programming to management consultancy and then into the corporate side of banking. “I’d been quite senior in my old job, I had an office and an assistant. Suddenly, I was a consultant who didn’t even have a desk. People try to put you in a box, and it’s easy to keep doing what they expect. But I did my best to break out and do other things.” Six years after she founded it, Starling Bank is a trusted company, with over 1.8 million accounts, and has won the Best British Bank award three years running. But it nearly didn’t happen. Anne’s story is one of hardship, perseverance and a loss which nearly left her with nothing at all.
THINK BIG, BEGIN SMALL
By 2012, like many in banking, Anne was picking up the pieces after the credit crunch. As Chief Operating Officer at one of Ireland’s biggest banks, it was a soul-destroying task, and got Anne thinking about how banks needed to change. “I got into banking because I like people – talking, sharing ideas, but I realised that the people who were putting all the systems in place never heard the real stories from customers – it never really touches their heart.” While the way we were shopping and holidaying was being transformed by technology, banks were too set in their ways to adapt to what we now value; transparent communications and to be able to sort our finances quickly rather than queuing at a branch. The more Anne thought about it, the more the idea of losing all the old systems and processes appealed to her. “All of a sudden I was a person who was going to start a bank.”
To launch a bank there are two main things you need: a banking licence… and at least £300m. Anne set about trying to secure both. Even in banking circles, this was a tad unusual. “A lot of people thought I’d lost the plot! I started writing emails – it helped that I was ready to be humble, to ask for help.” Most of the people she contacted didn’t reply, refused to get involved, even laughed. As a way to cope with rejections, Anne would arrange meetings with friends in the industry who’d never invest but who would lift her spirits and encourage her. Slowly, she started getting positive responses.
STARTING FROM SCRATCH
Based in a tiny London office, Anne began to gather a team around her, including business partner Tom
Blomfield and a crowd of young techies. Anne sat at the centre of the lively room, but often ducked out of the team’s lunches and bar trips. Never one for getting work and life evenly balanced, she was totally focused on the business. “I wasn’t expecting what happened later, I wasn’t on my guard.”
She and Tom made the rounds of investors and nearly got funding – until Anne discovered one of the fund’s founders had pleaded guilty to sexual assault and pulled out of talks. “For me, reputation is everything and creating safe places for women really matters. But it
was the fact that nobody told me about it, like it didn’t matter.” Banks still weren’t trusted and Anne wanted Starling to be above reproach. Today, Starling is unusual in that over 40% of its senior roles are held by women. “The elephant in the room when I started the bank was that I was a 54-year-old woman,” she says, “in a sector dominated by younger men.” Just 1% of venture capital funding in the UK goes to all-female founded teams.
As the business started to run out of money, she and
Tom began to clash. He resigned and, because she could no longer afford to pay the team and Tom was linking up with the investor she’d rejected, they went with him. Anne was left with mountains of debt, no funding and hope draining away. “I was stunned,” she says. “Most of all I was incredibly sad about losing Starling.”
Pressure was now mounting on Anne to resign and to hand the company over to Tom, who might be able to save it. She started thinking it was the right thing to do. “I decided to give up Starling in order to save it.” She was preparing to walk away when she bumped into an entrepreneur friend in Starbucks. “He told me I was crazy. Why should I be the one to go?” Anne thought she was making a selfless sacrifice, but her friend saw it differently – as a perfectly capable woman being forced out of the company she’d created. “Within an hour I was dashing to London to take Starling back.” And so while Tom set up a rival bank, Anne started again, from scratch. She had to find inspiration after this setback: “I immersed myself in books by other entrepreneurs. It was a comfort to know they had experienced exactly the same emotions that I was going through.”
STYLE IT OUT
In the midst of all this mayhem, Anne had to attend an industry dinner. Walking into a room full of gossiping
colleagues was a potential nightmare “It was tough – the story in the City was that 11 people had walked out on me, with the inference being that there was something wrong with me. But once I stepped into that room I was in role. I was the CEO of Starling: the show must go on.” And, in
“If you make a mistake it doesn't matter. The world is a huge, huge place. You can try, you can fail, and nobody will notice”
reality, did anyone bring the subject up? “Not one.” The message is clear – to worry less what other people think of you. “People join Twitter and agonise over their first tweet. They’re worried about saying something wrong, but nobody’s following you! Just tweet – if you make a mistake it doesn’t matter. The world is a huge, huge place. None of us are significant enough for people to notice. You can try, you can fail, and nobody will notice.”
What happened in the following weeks was like something from a Hollywood film. Gradually, people just started to show up at the office and work. The first was her friend Alan Chandler. “What I can’t get over, even now, is that Alan worked for over a year for no money. He believed in the idea, believed in me.” Two programming experts followed, both also frustrated with the way current banks worked. “The idea attracted them, they had faith in Starling. But the more people who turned up, the more pressure was on me to make this work.”
After a surreal three-day grilling by a billionaire on a luxury yacht in the Bahamas, she got the funding she needed. Then, in July 2016, Starling finally got its banking licence. “I was in a taxi on the way to the dentist when I found out and I burst into tears! The driver must have thought I was mad.” She test-ran Starling’s first debit card herself, buying a brownie then jumping around the café squealing when it worked.
Four years on, Starling is the first digital bank to become profitable. And one of the most valuable things Anne learned? “I came to the conclusion that no one can label you a failure when what you are trying to do is audacious. Botching something easy is a failure. Failing in an attempt to achieve something huge is just courageous.”