As we come to the end of 2020, we at VC Innovations have decided to look back on this very strange year. Like many of you, we started 2020 with plans, hopes, dreams and desires – many of which had to be rethought, scaled differently and even abandoned. However, this great reset that is 2020 is not all doom and gloom. We have found new ways of working that may represent a healthier balance between our work life and/or home life. We have found new tools – online, virtual, connected to a web cam – that allow us easier access to colleagues, experts and friends all over the world. As we have all been encouraged to mask-up and socially distance – we have found the tools to make that separation and distance irrelevant.
We thought to ourselves:
What have we lost and What have we gained in 2020 – this year of global lockdowns, and dealing with COVID-19?
Our good friend Theo Lau, Founder and CEO of Unconventional Ventures missed human interactions, but welcomes perspective.
What have I lost?
What I’ve lost in 2020, and what I miss the most, is in-person interactions: The freedom to grab a cup of coffee and meet someone face-to-face; the serendipity moments of running into someone unexpectedly at a conference; the adrenaline rush of meeting someone new. And that’s the one goal that I have – if/when it becomes safe to travel again … is to visit people in person; take that meeting that I’ve procrastinated and pushed out for far too long. We miss people … we are humans after all.
What have I gained?
What I’ve ginned in 2020: Perspectives. 2020 is anything but normal. Aside from the pandemic, we have experienced increased inequality and injustice, but we have witnessed how society prevails, against all odds. We’ve learned to not take things for granted. We have learned to fight hard for what we truly believe. And we have – hopefully – gained the perspective of what is important to us.
The lovely Deanna Fernandez, business development director, Marqeta offers hope and and a continuation of innovation.
What have I lost?
As a team, we thrive on getting out and about and travelling around Europe to meet other experts in the payments ecosystem as well as spending important quality time with our colleagues. Business mobility is so important because it’s often the case that casual conversations during a coffee break, or at an event lead to long-term meaningful relationships and cooperation with brilliant innovators. Not being able to do this has been a loss for us during Covid-19. We might be digital-first but we thrive on seeing people face-to-face and we can’t wait for that to happen again. The other thing we seem to have lost is the art of the phone call, thanks to all the video conferencing. Sometimes it’s just good to talk by phone. Let’s do more of that in 2021 and play less conference call bingo! (You’re on mute, I have a hard stop or can you share your screen!)
What have I gained?
Three things really stand out. Firstly, innovation has continued. It’s been incredibly rewarding to be able to demonstrate that despite having to work remotely, we’ve successfully supported a range of partners to deliver new card programmes and expand into new markets. Secondly, the confidence to speak openly about feelings. The team has worked incredibly hard this year and achieved a great deal against the backdrop of uncertainty. At Marqeta, everybody from the top down seems to be instinctively attuned to our personal challenges and we’re all taking care of each other. Spending more time with family has been great, but our fellow Marqetans have welcomed the chance to chat with each other during virtual coffee breaks, team catch-ups, book club and our up and coming inaugural virtual wine tasting event! Finally, FinTECHTalents has offered a blueprint for digital networking and we’re absolutely certain this will continue to be part of the mix even when the pandemic is over.
Lisa Moyle, Director, VC Innovations looks back at isolating with a house full of teenagers and the ‘me time’ of the morning commute.
What have I lost?
There have been many challenges and lost opportunities over 2020. From the simple pleasure of chatting over coffee in the office to the more difficult reality of not being able to see family and friends for long stretches of time. Missed celebrations and missed chances to offer support when it would have been so welcome have affected all of us during the pandemic.
Although we work in an increasingly digital industry, many in our community rely on the face-to-face contact that our work enables. We, as a team, rely on that interaction as well. Although we have the tools and technologies to overcome the barriers that virus mitigation measures have put in front of us, the experience of ‘remote everything’ has made it clear to me that physical interaction is irreplaceable. I even (although with less intensity) miss my bus ride to work. It was when I read my book or even just stared out of the window. Those solitary moments are missed when self-isolating with a houseful of teenagers.
In other words, I will be first in line and rolling up my sleeve for the vaccine when it is offered to me!
What have I gained?
There is no doubt that we, as a team, have not only gained new skills but also become far more flexible in the face of the challenges that we have faced. We have pivoted and adapted quickly to working remotely and new formats. We have learned what we need to do differently in the virtual world and we are far more open-minded about making changes quickly.
We also gained new communities and reached out well beyond our well understood physical borders. Our virtual activity has brought so many new people and institutions into our FinTECHTalents community and that has been a very welcome addition.
We will move ahead into what will hopefully be a brighter 2021 with some scars but also a whole host of new ideas, plans and a much greater understanding of what good WiFi really means.
Laura Camplisson, product and content manager, VC Innovations lost a ‘feeling of security’ but gained greater resilience.
What have I lost?
In the pre-COVID era, or March 2020, I was yet to join the VC Innovations team. Just one-week prior to the UK lockdown, I found myself walking out of a Washington DC conference centre, as the doors were locked behind us. News of the pandemic meant the venue was to be closed indefinitely, bringing with it the untimely ending of an event I had spent over a year putting together.
Back in the UK, furloughed and of course Staying Home, I remember reflecting. Just a few weeks before, my biggest concern was predicting any of the regular event mishaps that might occur on the day. But this was a ‘mishap’ no one could have predicted.
I think that feeling of security has been the biggest loss for me in 2020. Of course, the future is never certain, but events is an industry that functions entirely around advance arrangement. We have lost the ability to predict even the bare minimum, to know a project will go ahead in the way you’ve planned and that the job you depend on will still exist.
What have I gained?
What I’ve gained and seen in so many of the people around me, is greater resilience in the face of this uncertainty. I have learned to embrace all the new opportunities that can come from unexpected change. Sometimes taking a project in a direction you hadn’t previously considered can open a door to possibilities you wouldn’t have known existed.
I have also been lucky enough to join the VC Innovations team! They have welcomed me warmly, even through the struggles of a fully remote onboarding. Together we have expanded our skillsets and worked on a host of rewarding new projects, appreciating each of the small successes along the way. 2020 has certainly been a year of becoming less weighed down by things we can’t control and more appreciative of what we took for granted.
I hope we will keep this new perspective as we move into 2021, when I might even be able to work with my team face-to-face! Hopefully one day soon, “does anyone want a coffee”, will become a more commonly used phrase than “your microphone is on mute.”
And finally, here is Liz Lumley, Director, VC Innovations, who missed her Post-Its 😉
What have I lost?
When I left the VC Innovations office in March 2020, I left a wall dotted with Post-Its laying out our most ambitious Festival agenda to date. Five stages were due to take 3,000 delegates through a FinTech journey full of questions, debates and actionable advice from those who are building a new financial services ecosystem every day. This year’s FinTECHTalents Festival didn’t happen – the Brewery in London did not host our live stages and our community did not commence the event with drinks in the courtyard. Those Post-its were abandoned and left to fall off the painted walls on a tiny office in Bloomsbury one by one.
What have I gained?
Denied the joys of booking a venue – we as a team learned new skills. Instead of five stages running within the rabbit warren that is The Brewery, we ran our stages on a webcam. We learned how to navigate a virtual, online platform that offered our community much more than a series of passive webinars. We looked at Open Finance, Building Societies, North America and the Nordics – and we will continue next year as we focus on Identity, North America (again), Lending and Digital Builders at the start of the year. In 2020 we lost the ability to travel to a stage. What we gained turned into many stages, created and curated by our expert team, delivered straight to our community with nothing more than a webcam and (reliable 😉 ) WiFi.
