London, Berlin, Paris, and Amsterdam might be the cities that most people think of as hotbeds of European startup culture.
But how about Belfast? Well, according to one fintech founder, Belfast is a “hidden gem” for startups and scaleups.
London-headquartered 9fin, which has recently opened an office in Belfast, provides financial services businesses with debt market data and analytics and says its services are used by nine of the top ten investment banks in Europe.
Its backers include Redalpine, the backers of US trading platform Robinhood and German digital bank N26.
In 2022, it raised a $23 million Series A+ round, which was led by new investor Spark Capital with participation from existing investors Redalpine, AI Seed, Seedcamp, 500 Startups, and Ilavska Vuillermoz Capital.
9fin now has offices in London, New York and Belfast, which is the nearest city to where its co-founder Stephen Hunter originates.
Hunter says Belfast is a “hidden gem’ and has fallen under the radar of many startups.
He points to the quality of Belfast’s universities and the availability of top legal, finance and engineering talent, as key selling points.
Hunter says:
“In places like London and New York, you have hundreds of startups, you have tonnes of different big investment banks, law firms and funds.
“And here there is a lot of talent, it is just under-tapped I think historically.
“And people haven’t really thought about it much. There are a couple of companies now here scaling up.
“Obviously, we had some historical troubles in this part of the world which kind of held back some investment.
“I think there is quite a big opportunity where you can be differentiated as an employer, get access to some really good talent, and help scale the business.
“The government are supportive as well, there are schemes to encourage people to invest in the region.
"I think Belfast is a little bit of a hidden gem in context of the UK, when people are thinking about 'do I want to open a second office in the UK where do I want to open it?' I think this is not a bad choice.
“It is obviously where I am from so you want to pay it back too.”
9fin now employs around 230 staff, the bulk in London, with around 60 in New York and 25 in Belfast.
Hunter says it is unlikely that 9fin will be fundraising soon.
Regarding its 2022 funding round, Hunter says that “most of the money is still in the bank We don’t need to go and fundraise”.
Supporting this argument, he points out that 9fin’s contracts are multi-year contracts with asset managers and investment banks.
He adds:
"For us, whenever we are thinking about raising, it is like ‘what is the money going to unlock? Is it going to unlock more aggressive expansion or more aggressive hiring?’ But at the moment we are not in a position where we need to fundraise.”
He says 9fin’s focus, for now, is not on profitability, but still on growth, saying the business is doubling revenues every year.
On the UK’s new Labour government, he says that Labour "seems keen to support the startup ecosystem”.
He says: “I think entrepreneurs adapt to whatever kind of political environment there is, they are very flexible."
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