Most founders talk about product-market fit. You started Prosper after losing money across your own pensions. That's an expensive way to validate a problem.

I realised I was basically employing someone on minimum wage for a year just to manage my pensions. Then I saw the Sunday Times quote about 1% fees equating to almost half of lifetime profits. Meeting financial advisors charging 3% annually – the maths made no sense. But it wasn't just cost. The largest source of wealth on the planet sits in pension funds, controls everything from infrastructure to climate investment, yet nobody knows where their money is. We're not even involved in decisions that literally control the world.

You've raised capital in a brutal market. What's your pitch to VCs when most fintech valuations have crashed?

We've built a revenue model where we only win when customers win. Traditional trading platforms have a perverse incentive – they make more money when customers trade more, which usually means customers lose more. Every panic sell, every FOMO buy, every overreaction to market noise generates revenue for them through spreads and fees.

Our model is the opposite. We charge a simple, transparent platform fee that doesn't increase with trading activity. When customers build wealth steadily over time, they stay longer, refer others, and increase their holdings. Our unit economics improve when customers succeed, not when they make costly mistakes.

When there's a market correction, companies with these extractive models see revenue spike from panic trading – right before customers realise they've destroyed their wealth and leave. We're building for the long game. Companies with aligned incentives and actual customer value will emerge stronger, just like Amazon and Google did from the dot-com bust.

You came from gaming where engagement is everything. Now you're actively discouraging daily engagement. How do you explain that behavioural mechanism to investors?

Look at Vanguard – they grew organically by putting customers first. My belief is this century's equivalent won't be an asset manager but a technology company. The user experience will be the differentiator. 

The FCA recently examined how gamification drives trading behaviour – they're concerned about design patterns borrowed from gaming. In fintech, if you show users something flashing red, they panic sell – probably the worst thing they could do (although that is how these apps then make money). The regulatory scrutiny is increasing. The challenge is using engagement mechanics responsibly. Instead of driving activity that generates fees, you can reward behaviours that create long-term wealth. That's how you align with both regulators and customer outcomes.

Private equity is rolling up advisory firms while costs remain high. Where does a startup founder find opportunity?

Those PE rollups are about extracting more profit through scale. They migrate assets to in-house products, internalise margins. But nobody's business case would happily state “we'll turn 3% fees into 0.5% through consolidation.” They're optimising for extraction, not customer outcomes. When people discover what they're actually paying, they'll leave.

This creates opportunity for ethical fintech. Our generations are sceptical of advisers who seem “on the make.” It's not an advice gap – it's a trust gap.

The ethical play is also the profitable one: radical transparency. Show fees in pounds, not percentages. Build trust through honesty. You don't need to extract value from customers when you can create it with them. That's a business model that survives generational change.

You employ zero analysts while established platforms have hundreds. Walk us through that strategic decision.

Traditional platforms employ analysts to create content – research on gold prices, market movements. It's a model inherited from their origins as media businesses – news is what makes people feel compelled to trade. But if you're an experienced investor, you'll read Morningstar or other specialised sources anyway. 

It's about focusing resources. Those analyst salaries ultimately come from customer fees. We'd rather keep costs low and direct users to best-in-class information that already exists. We want to focus our customer's attention on long term sensible information, rather than daily sensationalism that encourages a knee-jerk reaction.

You've built companies across gaming, education, and now finance. What would you tell founders considering fintech but worried about competing with incumbents?

The blindspots come from the industry being inward-looking. In investing for example, they've created this world of 6,000 funds with complex naming conventions, charts, and graphs with language that's hard to parse. Coming from outside finance gives you a fresh perspective on these absurdities.

The real advantage is you're not tied to legacy business models. Many platforms started as media businesses – they need trading activity because that's their revenue source. As a startup, you can design your revenue model to align with customer success from the start.

Find your own expensive problem. I lost too much money in old pensions – that personal pain gave me conviction when everyone said we couldn't compete. Being an outsider lets you see inefficiencies that insiders accept as normal. The industry assumes certain things must be complex. Sometimes the opportunity is just making them simple.