The latest episode of Builders.
In this episode, I sit down with Mark Beeston and Alexander Ross, founder and general partner at Illuminate financial. You can take a look at a short clip from the video, and here the link to the full episode:
Youtube - here
Spotify - here
Mark Beeston is a 30 year+ veteran of financial markets and is Managing Partner and founder of Illuminate Financial Management, a venture capital firm focussed on financial services technology currently investing from its third fund and which currently lists nine strategic partner LP’s drawn from the largest global names in banking, finance and markets infrastructure.
Mark launched the firm in 2014 following a long career in capital markets where he had been both the consumer of financial markets technology as well as the entrepreneur (T-Zero / Creditex), operator (ICAP), and early stage funder of capital markets businesses.
Prior to founding Illuminate, Mark was the CEO for the Post Trade Risk and Information business and Exco Member at ICAP (now Osttra, a CME and S&P Global JV) where he also oversaw the creation of ICAP’s own investment subsidiary. Before ICAP Mark was President of T-Zero, a credit derivatives trade processing platform (now ICELink) launched during his time on the Exco of Creditex resulting in the successful acquisition of the group by ICE in 2008.
Alexander Ross, joined Illuminate early-on to help set-up and launch the first fund. Alexander joined from Bain & Company where he advised Top Tier private equity funds on acquisitions of TMT & Fintech companies, he also worked on fund strategy and bank restructuring projects. Alexander worked in the Technology division at JPMorgan, an Agri-food social enterprise in Ghana, and co-founded the online booking system provider, Teamup.
With them, we talked about launching a fund from scratch, what can an investor bring to the table in terms of value and network, but also what to look for in fintech founders and their vision on the market itself.
