Anne Boden - Founder Starling Bank

Anne Boden from Starling Bank is different, very different.

As she describes herself in this interview.

She was in her 50s. She’s from Wales. She’s a woman in finance and technology. She’s only five-foot tall.

Since we recorded this interview ten days ago it was announced that Starling has taken £50 million in funding from Goldman Sachs, taking the total valuation of Starling to £1.1 billion and therefore proverbial unicorn status.

Her story of founding a bank in 2014 and growing it to the size it is today demonstrates that entrepreneurs can come in all shapes and sizes.

Starling now employs over 1,000 people across the UK, including setting up large hubs in Southampton and Cardiff. Anne talks us through why those places stood out as talent hubs.

She talks about how you don’t need a Financial Services background to work at Starling- they are hiring software engineers, Data analysts and graphic designers.

A big part of what drives this show is wanting to tell the brilliant entrepreneurial stories that are happening all across the UK. Each episode is full of entrepreneurs creating jobs- they don’t make headlines about creating hundreds or thousands because so often it is about the incremental steps along the way.

And of course, that is a reminder, that this podcast is making its own first foray as we are taking on our first employees to help power our next stage of growth, so if you are curious about the way our economy is growing, want to work on researching guests and helping us get it into more ears, please get in touch.

We have surpassed 100 reviews on iTunes, a big thank you to Eben Owen, a student at Cardiff University who left a six-word review - that is all it takes for me to think this show is worthwhile.

If you could leave a rating that would make a big difference and don’t forget to tell a friend or six about the show as that is the best way we can grow it.

Thanks to Octopus Group for their support in this second series.

A reminder that they are looking for new charity partners and are welcoming applications over the next month - the support offered includes £45,000 of unrestricted funding.