Insights 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.
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