Tony Hsieh, who sold Zappos to Amazon for $1.2BB, was recently interviewed by Henry Blodget of Silicon Alley Insider. It is an excellent and revealing interview that delivers some useful insights into the importance of company culture, and how Zappos is working to ensure that what makes them special will persist even after the acquisition by Amazon ... well worth watching.
Mark Ruddock
Personal blog of an international FinTech executive.
Thoughts of an internationally experienced growth stage CEO and Board Member
Mark Ruddock
Personal blog of an international FinTech executive.
I'm an experienced international CEO with two successful exits and over 20 years of experience at the helm of VC backed technology and fintech startups.
I've both founded companies, and come in as a later stage CEO to help existing companies scale. My experience spans multi-country online financial services, mission critical enterprise software and consumer-focused mobile applications.
I've recently returned to the supervisory board of 4finance, after completing a year as interim CEO. At 4finance, we are leveraging deep technology and data science to build a mobile-first, customer focused business that delivers compelling financial products and services to those underserved by traditional financial institutions. Today, we are Europe’s largest online consumer lender, with over $500MM in revenue and 3,500 employees serving customers across 17 countries. The company is a proven and trusted alternative to conventional bank lending. With half the world's adult population still financially underserved, the potential is significant.
Previously I was Chairman of Finstar Labs. Our mission at Finstar Labs is to identify, invest in and help create the cutting edge user experiences, enabling technologies, and data science that will lay the foundation for the next generation of alternative financial services.
Prior to that I was Managing Director, International at Wonga, responsible for overseeing all businesses outside of the UK, including consumer lending businesses in Canada, Spain, Poland and South Africa and our eCommerce and product financing business BillPay in Germany.
Prior to that I was the CEO of Viigo, which became one of the most highly downloaded Blackberry apps of all time before being acquired by RIM (Blackberry) in 2010.
Before that I was the founder & CEO of INEA, an enterprise software company focused on the financial services industry, which was acquired by Cartesis in 2005, and is now part of SAP.
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