In conversation with Ramin Niroumand

Read time: 2:30 Minutes

Ramin Niroumand, Partner at Motive Partners, attended a Fireside Chat on our Festival Stage. He the stayed on to answer more questions.

You founded finleap in 2014 – one of Europe's first fintech company builders – and have since moved into investing with Motive Partners. How have fintech founders evolved over that decade?

Ramin Niroumand: The biggest change is that the quality of founders in fintech has risen to a much higher level. 

The founders you find today have experience from other fintechs, they have already worked with and scaled with. And fintech founders today understand not just the technology, but also the regulatory know-how. That combination is something that has really changed over the last few years.

Looking at your recent posts I noticed you've mentioned the importance of speed and product velocity several times. Is venture capital in Europe fast and big enough support that velocity?

Niroumand: Good product velocity means being able to deliver products and features on a constant basis, which attracts both existing and new customers. 

If you look at what Claude does right now, they ship a new feature almost on a daily basis. That creates trust with buyers and users of your product, because they know that you will be able to help them in their journey. Since no product and no startup is complete or perfect from the beginning you always need to adapt.

So product velocity – like the Revolut Trade Republic have shown – is what really sets companies apart. Is it a question of venture capital? I think less so. We have enough capital in Europe to support product velocity. 

Though, it’s important to highlight that product velocity is not marketing velocity.

Marketing velocity is where you need to spend hundreds of millions to acquire customers – that is a different game. 

So, yes, there is enough venture capital for product velocity in Europe.

Speaking of velocity, I saw that you recently invested in an AI startup working in the fintech space, Obin AI. Given the speed at which AI is evolving – everything seems to change daily, things become obsolete, commoditised – how do you evaluate a company at pre-seed or seed stage when there's so much uncertainty?

Niroumand: Ultimately, you underwrite the team. 

The Obin AI team are ex-Google people who really know what they're talking about. The CEO was Head of AI at JP Morgan.He leveraged the underlying frontier models, Google, OpenAI, Claude, applied them to workflows very specific to the financial services industry and helps enterprises build a new set of agents to help the firm – so applying proprietary data, applying proprietary resources and applying to the processes.

Think of a frontier model out of the box as a very good Stanford or Harvard student. Obin AI trainsthose students to be subject matter experts in whatever field you need in back office, mid office or front office. It also arranges and orchestrates a set of agents to work best for the firm. That's why we call it AI for the workforce in financial services.

Bit of a subject change: regarding Motive Partners collaborating with ABN AMRO. Is the model of a VC fund partnering with a bank something you see becoming more common, or was this a specific opportunity for a strategic relationship?

Niroumand: The ABN AMRO partnership worked well because both firms have a lot of respect for each other. We knew the people, we had co-invested with them before. It was a deal built on trust and know-how. And it’s an excellent partnership and we are very happy with it.

There are deals happening right now - not with us, but with others. We will see more of these bank-VC partnerships going forward.

Disclaimer: This interview does not constitute investment advice, a recommendation, or a solicitation to invest in any fund or security managed or advised by Motive. The views expressed herein personal beliefs and are subject to change without notice; they do not represent the views of Motive or its affiliates as a whole, nor do they constitute a representation regarding the future performance or strategy of any Motive managed investment vehicle. Certain statements in this interview constitute forward-looking statements, which can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "will," "expect," "believe," "see," or comparable terminology. Due to various risks and uncertainties, actual events or results may differ materially from those reflected or contemplated in such forward-looking statements. Nothing contained herein should be deemed to be a prediction or projection of future performance of any Motive managed investment vehicle. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

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