You have to be innovative
To win it
25 February 2022
Open Up ChallengeInsights from Open Up winner, Fluidly
Author: Caroline Plumb, Founder and Chief Executive of Fluidly
Find out how Fluidly’s participation in the Open Up Challenge gave them credibility in the fledgling open banking sector, which allowed them to support thousands of small UK businesses.
It’s fashionable these days to talk about ‘solutions’ but sometimes it’s actually true: a start-up idea can offer a new and innovative way to address long-standing problems. And when that happens it can lead to almost instant recognition and a big push to become a force in the market. Thankfully that’s what happened to us.
Winning Challenge Works’ Open Up 2018 Challenge three years ago was a critical moment in Fluidly’s evolution. It didn’t just give us much-needed financial support at a crucial early stage, it also provided us with invaluable introductions and wider credibility in the nascent open banking sector.
The wider fintech ecosystem has come a long way in a short space of time and we’ve been able to evolve with it – and certainly a factor in that was Challenge Works putting us front and centre in an emerging sector. Taking part facilitated introductions to our open banking peers and to prospective investors so that growth possibilities expanded. It connected us with informed people in the open banking and fintech sector, with whom we could collaborate on mutual problems.
Challenge Works recognised that supporting Fluidly would indirectly help thousands of UK small businesses. Small business owners have many competing priorities to handle, often on their own. Delivering their service or product to their customers is the number one priority, and that means financial planning can often slip to the bottom of the to-do list. This leaves them vulnerable to financial shocks. Fluidly is an intelligent cashflow system that uses open banking, accounting data and AI to support SMEs in all aspects of cashflow management.
READ MORE ABOUT THE ROLE OF CHALLENGE PRIZES IN THE UK INNOVATION STRATEGY
Lessons from lockdown
We won the Open Up Challenge in 2018, but many doors have opened since then. Since that pre-seed stage when we had that critical Challenge Works recognition, Fluidly has achieved significant momentum. We have grown rapidly and secured investments that have supported us to become a fully functional service, delivering cashflow predictability to a constantly expanding pool of businesses.
Lockdown illustrated how the small business sector is crying out for help on cashflow: a recent study by Bloomberg found that some 700,000 UK SMEs experienced significant cashflow problems during the first quarter of 2021, up 15% from the end of 2020. In turn that has driven demand for Fluidly: 2020 saw an unprecedented surge in demand for our services – an extraordinary year-on-year bump.
This in turn gives us confidence to expand our offering. Since we can accurately predict cashflow, our next step is to help our customers take the next best action to support their business. To do this, Fluidly provides funding services to support business growth or to cover cash shortfalls – at no cost. We are now in a position to offer a holistic solution that addresses the ‘what’, ‘so what’ and ‘now what’ of cashflow.
Collaborative competition
As ever, the landscape of SME data technology continues to evolve and we’re grateful for the impact that Open Up 2018 had on our journey.
If you are a high-growth business – or even if you’re considering starting one – we’d recommend exploring taking part in a challenge prizes. Even as an established business or a foundation, challenge prizes may be able to help address the issues you are trying to resolve.
The advantages are enormous – not just the prize money, but the wider capacity building, through introductions, support and network. We met many people in similar ventures to our own, some who we would collaborate with, others who we’d be in competition with, but all were open to advancing the possibility of data-driven iterations, of comparing notes and open discussion; that mindset is part of the open banking culture.
