Around 15 months ago Victor Cruz had an idea. That was FinTECHTalents. The idea was that this event would bring together, not only FinTech innovators from startups, growth companies and incumbent financial institutions, but also computer science students from the UK and Europe’s top universities. This event would not be an event at all, but a Festival – a festival with craft beer and live music and a digital forest – where all that came would be able to see the future of financial services and find their own place within it.
Day One for FinTECHTalents was 456 Days ago.
However, that was not the Day One – it was simply a Day One. Lisa Moyle had her Day One – 274 days ago (or nine months). My own Day happened late in June this year – that’s almost 153 days.
Over these past 456 days many other people started their own Day One at FinTECHTalents. They all worked to take this ‘idea’ and make it real – the ever tenacious Marius Dinca, the bubbly and hard working Anna Jackson, our master of social media cards Jake Dhaliwal, operations queen Marisa Beckman, the patient and diligent Alex Green.
There are many, multiple and memorable Day Ones.
The day each member of our Steering Committee made the choice to believe in the ‘idea’ and had faith in its creation and execution. A signed contract from a sponsor, or an agreement from a media partner, the moment when one of our myriad of fans and friends and colleagues decide to ‘like’ a LinkedIn post or share a Tweet – all of these become ‘Day One’ of FinTECHTalents.
Day One is Every Day.
Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, coined the phrase ‘every day is Day One’. For Bezos the arrival of Day Two is stasis “…followed by irrelevance.” (He eventually gets to ‘death’)
For me Day One is more about hope – than fear of the next day. Day One is birth, it is the start of something new and exciting. Day One is the first step towards changing the status quo and pushing against boundaries. Without Day One there would be no Day Two (or day 14 or day 573 or day 5,276 etc…)
On October 30th and 31st, over 300 young people – all working on their degrees and planning the future – will arrive HereEast at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in East London. For many this will be the first time they will experience this ever growing, sometimes frustrating, always interesting world of FinTech.
Come join us – be a part of someone’s first day in FinTech. Forget about what ‘Day’ you are on with your own FinTech journey – the launch of FinTECHTalents, the Ultimate FinTech Festival will be Day One for everyone, every day.
In the words of someone much cleverer than me.
“If you are a dreamer come in
If you are a dreamer a wisher a liar
A hoper a pray-er a magic-bean-buyer
If you’re a pretender com sit by my fire
For we have some flax golden tales to spin
Come in!
Come in!”
Shel Silverstein
