What is the Advice Gap? To set the context, let’s briefly compare the financial affairs of a typical Baby Boomer vs a typical Millennial, both with average-good salaries: Boomer: Defined Benefit pension from their employer guaranteeing a retirement income of 60% of their final salary. Relationship with an IFA (Independent Financial…

I met a friend who works at a traditional UK insurer for a beer last night. He has spent the last few years telling me that insurtech was overhyped and overvalued. So he was fairly smug that his predictions have been “proven right”. The share prices of the first wave…

January has been a long month but we still have 11 months ahead of us so it is hopefully not too late to write about the year ahead. Particularly as the correction in public tech company valuations over the last few weeks may have changed this outlook. It has been…

Following on from the great coverage elsewhere, a few personal words on why Balderton chose to invest in Numeral. From our side, this was a “no brainer” investment: a clear pain point for any business doing payments operations; a product-first founding team with strong relevant startup experience; shipping fast with…

We are delighted today to announce Balderton’s strategic partnership with Premialab. As always a huge reason for our partnership is the founders. Adrien and Pierre are incredibly deep in this sector, having worked at pioneers in systematic investing such as Societe Generale and Julius Baer. Both are super-smart and well-connected…

For most of the time I have been a VC the prevailing wisdom has been that companies, whether B2B or B2C, should aim for a 12 month payback of CAC. To be clear on definitions here: CAC = fully-loaded Customer Acquisition Cost (marketing, sales, onboarding) Monthly contribution margin CM =…

Following on from the great article in Techcrunch just a few notes from Balderton perspective on why we invested in Primer. First off, this isn’t our usual Series A investment. The vast majority of our investments from our venture fund Balderton are at Series A. However we can make the…

What I learned in fintech and insurtech in 2019. Opinionated and probably 50% wrong: The average person is still struggling to make ends meet, ten years after the last recession. This has a few consequences: Employers are taking more responsibility for the financial wellness of their employees. The feature that…

Fifty billion pounds. This is how much the UK workforce is lending to their employer by the 25th of each month, just before they get paid at month end*. And they are lending this money to their employer at zero interest. Many of these employees are struggling to make ends…