HiveMind Podcast
HiveMind Podcast
Podcast Description
Building sustainable Fintech companies isn’t easy. Selling is more complex and risk-driven, decision making is syndicated, and sales cycles are longer. Delivering product requires more resilient and expensive engineering, and the market it crowded.
I wanted to explore how to build a commercially successful Fintech from every perspective; from the buyer, through product and across sales and marketing. Revenue isn’t simply a ’sales’ challenge - it only happens when the entire machine is working perfectly. Let’s unlock the secrets together with my guests.
Podcast Insights
Content Themes
The podcast delves into significant areas such as customer retention, innovative marketing strategies, and the realities of launching and scaling fintech ventures. Episodes include discussions on leveraging LinkedIn for growth, the challenges of creating a new fintech category, and the ins and outs of fintech talent acquisition.
Having a good product and having a business are two different things.
Fintech HiveMind is a conversation with the founders, CEOs and revenue leaders building technology companies that sell into regulated markets — where your customer answers to a regulator, nothing is a quick yes, and the buying committee is bigger than the room you’re in.
We get into the commercial decisions behind the growth. How they price it and take it to market. When they hire, and when they deliberately don’t. What they’d build differently. The deals that taught them the most, including the ones they lost.
Past guests include Steve Lamb of Kyckr, James Bushby of Tuum, Matt Mills of Ripjar, David Brear of 11:FS, David Jarvis of Griffin and Simon Rogerson of Octopus.
Hosted by James Barker — 26 years in sales, 16 of them in fintech and enterprise technology, up to Chief Revenue Officer.
Olly Richards spent the best part of ten years at Barclays and Nordea before joining 10x Banking, where he now runs the commercial side. He tells James Barker why he once put every vendor in the same box, why what your existing customers say matters more than anything you close this quarter, and why AI accelerates bad commercial habits as fast as good ones. Plus why he thinks scaled outbound is losing value, and whether the SDR role survives.
What we get into
- Why he put every vendor in the same box as a banker, and what that cost him
- Why customer references matter more than closing this quarter
- How long a core banking deal really runs, from the waiting room to signature
- How the 10x product changed twice, and why it chose guardrails over infinite flexibility
- Why AI accelerates what you’re bad at as fast as what you’re good at
- Why a customer-hosted dinner did more for 10x than another Zoom call
- Whether the SDR role survives AI, and what it turns into
About the guest
Olly Richards is SVP Commercial & Strategy at 10x Banking, where he is responsible for sales, marketing, partnerships and accounts across the whole customer lifecycle. He spent the best part of ten years at Barclays and Nordea, and moved to the vendor side after realising he had no idea how to contribute to a technology conversation. He has been at 10x for nearly seven years.
Chapters
- 00:00 Episode teaser
- 02:06 Gamekeeper turned poacher, from Barclays and Nordea to 10x
- 03:29 What he got wrong about vendors as a banker
- 07:33 Why references matter more than this quarter’s number
- 09:05 How long a core banking deal really takes
- 11:43 How buying has changed, and why it’s now a social game
- 14:20 How the 10x product evolved twice
- 18:57 Guardrails, not infinite flexibility
- 20:44 Greenfield, transformation and implementation partners
- 27:11 AI in banks accelerates the good and the bad
- 33:04 What’s working in go-to-market in 2026
- 36:43 The AI content bar, and writing versus thinking
- 40:51 Does the SDR role survive?
- 45:00 Learning to love the process
More from GTM Hive
Watch the full Fintech HiveMind series and catch the next episode
More on 10x Banking: 10xbanking.com
Our sponsor
This series is sponsored by VC Innovations, who run the FTT Fintech Festival and the Future Identity Festival in London on 9 and 10 November. Find out more about the FTT Fintech Festival and Future Identity Festival
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