Alexander Simpson is a multifaceted entrepreneur with a proven track record of architecting successful businesses and driving growth as a mega-connector and growth catalyst. With a deep expertise in Financial Technology and a reputation for substantial deal-making in the Venture Capital and Private Equity space, Alex is highly regarded for his vision and drive.
Over the course of his career, Alex has created and executed growth and turnaround strategies for global companies, unlocking new potential revenue streams and producing 7-figure increases in monthly revenue. He has also played a key role in helping to raise over $400m in the FinTech space through his company Moonrise Fund.
As a firm believer in the power of collective collaboration and the creation of value through shared goals, Alex is passionate about using his expertise to drive economic sustainability, aid in financial efficiencies, reduce social wealth and access disparities, and decrease fraud and unnecessary operating expenses.
How did your background shape your vision for Moonrise Fund? What is the fundamental problem that you are solving?
- My upbringing through growing up with a single Mother who sacrificed a lot to ensure I had the right foundation, expedited my motivation to becoming self-sufficient and trying to help others gain access in doing so too. I had also lost my Dad to cancer which I believe was caused through stress. With this underlying base motivation as my foundation, we want to build and catalyze businesses which can enable the world to be more financially enabled and stress less.
What are the prominent challenges for a fintech startup in 2023?
- Regulatory alignment and foresight. Not speaking enough with regulators beforehand to mitigate roadblocks and expenses in the future.
- Following narratives of raising funding and not focusing on the barriers to entry, end customer needs and reading about how other companies in similar channels have done in their journeys.
What factors do you believe are responsible for the growth of fintech?
- Speaking with Banks particularly the heads of strategy, innovation, procurement, and compliance departments.
- Collaboration – more competitors finding ground to work with each other and collectively solve the greater problem better.
How has Moonrise fund, as an independent company, been able to bring together both the buyside and sellside (which is always a challenging proposition)?
- Having experience of entrepreneurs building companies from the ground up, to investing and working with financial institutions, it’s been easier to expedite the process and leverage the learnings.
- It’s key to get involved in the process by ensuring that there is experience from both sides when building and treating customers as partners in the company to ensure it’s built for their needs.
- Connecting with other co-investors on projects and hearing their learnings has been fundamental to expanding our outlook and inventory of experiences and skills to help support new businesses we get involved in.
What are the problems for big data in the fintech industry?
- Fintechs need to have the ability to connect to all customer applications directly. This impacts the whole user experience and the ability to offer the Fintech’s present products to the wider customer base. This can adversely affect their ability to partner with financial institutions the right way and overlook regulatory compliance needs.
- Quality assurance of the data is another issue. It is important to have processes in place to ensure the quality of the data is up to standard else this will affect the whole process of utilizing the data. Before trying to use data, fintechs need to have the tools in place which can ensure verification of data with trusted sources validating them.
What are the biggest challenges you face on a day-to-day basis running a fast-growing FinTech company? How has COVID impacted your plans?
- Being granular with the main tasks and not focusing on tasks that don’t have a predictable ROI.
- The perception of fast is perspective based. Sometimes moving slow and methodical is moving fast in terms of progress. Coming from a person with minimal patience, this has been a great lesson I have learnt personally.
