Authorisation? Rebrand? Completed it mate ✅

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Strap in folks because this week is a special edition for one reason and one reason only. Last week, on Wednesday the 28th of August 2024, The Central Bank of Ireland officially authorised PitchedIt Limited…

And as of yesterday, September 3rd, we’re no longer PitchedIt…We are Shuttle!

So, as you can see, there’s been quite a bit going on 😅

If you’re not already aware, getting authorised to provide financial services is a gruelling task even for the most well-funded institutions, let alone a two man startup on a shoestring budget. And by one of the most notoriously conservative regulators in the world, no less. This process took more than its pound of flesh from both of us and was by no means a linear journey. The peaks are high, but the troughs seemed almost infinite at times.

Below is the story of two naive best friends who dared to navigate the treacherous and lonely journey to becoming a regulated fintech startup…

After 20 years of friendship, August 2021 was the moment we decided that we’d try our hand at building a startup. Both of us had always wanted to create something of our own but neither of us truly knew it about the other person. It wasn’t until Scott mentioned he was toying with some ideas that Rob expressed his interest in building something together. Scott was working as the Head of Engineering at UNIT9, a digital agency in London where he led teams building consumer experiences for the likes of Nike, Google, Samsung, Verizon and more. Rob worked at Salesforce as an Account Executive, selling to SMB and mid-market tech companies across the UK.

Scott recognised some of the smaller clients he worked with often needed financing and access to additional services, while Rob was selling into a lot of VC backed startups and scaleups (Tractable, CarWow, WeFarm, Peakon, Consensys and more) and always took an interest in the journey these companies were on and how they scaled. After his client, Peakon, was acquired by Workday, Rob wondered if it was possible for someone like him to invest in a company like that.

At the time, we were retail investors attempting to build some financial resilience by investing in various stocks, funds and cryptocurrencies. And thankfully found some minor successes along the way. But when we looked into what other asset classes we could invest in, we learned that the highest performing investments were reserved for the wealthy, and people like us just couldn’t get access. There was always a barrier for the individual investor. And honestly, it left us fuming! It was an injustice we couldn’t let go of!

When this became a regular topic of conversation it was clear this was the problem we wanted to fix. A platform that enabled individuals to invest in private market assets without the complicated jargon and jam packed interfaces we saw on other platforms. And while we didn’t know much at the time, we knew that it meant getting authorised by a regulatory body. So, we engaged a solicitor in Jan 2022 to start the process of getting licensed by the Central Bank of Ireland.

We could have looked at getting authorised elsewhere in Europe, which we were told would have been easier and quicker but we wanted the CBI’s rubber stamp. It's well known that they’re the gold star when it comes to regulation in Europe, and we think it will help show just how dedicated we are to building a safe and trustworthy business. And if there’s one thing we know from our own experience, it's that trust is the most critical element of building a platform for investors.

2022 was a great year. We quit our jobs at UNIT9 and Salesforce in February and launched our beta that April. PitchedIt version 1 was a platform that allowed startups to access investors, advisors and mentors for feedback and support in getting investor-ready, and go on to raise their funding round, all on-platform. The aim was to help guarantee the quality of investment on the platform. But toward the end of 2022 we realised we had veered from what we originally wanted to build and were splitting our energy between two camps - startups and investors. More importantly, and frustratingly, we knew it wouldn’t scale, and we had to iterate and get back to the original goal.

What didn’t change was the need to get authorised! We had been working with our solicitor for the whole of 2022 who had assured us all was in order and they would draft our application to the CBI. They made us feel like all was under control. And then they went AWOL. A week passed with no response to any of our attempts to contact them. Then they reached out via their personal email to say they no longer worked at the firm and to contact the managing partner to discuss our file. When we did it turned out there was no work done on our application. Not a word. Now, while we had no reason not to trust them, that's on us. We should have been more hands on but we had no reason not to believe they were on top of it. Anyway, it was nearly a year of wasted time, not knowing that's how long it would take just to complete our application.

Then, through a serendipitous introduction, we engaged our new (and current) solicitors, Hogan Lovells, who were instrumental in getting us authorised. They made us realise that what our previous solicitor told us made no sense and they had completely underplayed how big of an undertaking this actually was. We were under the impression that the application would be quick and then it would be a few months to get a licence. How naive we were!

(We also had zero reason to believe it would only take a few months. We were basing that off of absolutely nothing. Ignorance is bliss, as they say.)

Hogan Lovells quickly put us in our place. They asked us to draft up our application and they’d review it. This is when we realised how full of sh!t our first solicitor was because when we got into the weeds of this incredibly long application form we realised they would have never been able to write the application themselves and it could have only ever been us. Anyway, we put in what we thought was a huge effort with this first draft and were very proud of the level of detail. Until we handed it over to Hogan Lovells and they all but laughed at us. That was a scary moment! Realising that even our gretest effort was far from the mark. Were we in over our heads? Could we really produce what was required to get authorised?

It took us a full 12 months from that moment until we submitted our application. It was the most stressful and mentally challenging year of our lives. We had to rise to the occasion and the standard expected of us. It wasn’t even two steps forward, one step back. Often it just felt like we were standing still regardless of the work we were putting in. It was constant battling, many losses, few wins and constant frustration.

When we started this journey in August 2021 both of us had a son. Scott's son Felix had just turned one and Rob's son Jack was eleven months. Then Rob added a second son, George, in May 2022 and last year Scott's daughter Phoebe was born. So, it wasn’t just the crushing pressure of building a business that wasn’t allowed to operate, but also raising VERY young families. The candle was getting blow-torched at both ends.

That application phase included many ups and downs. Mostly down if we’re being honest. Including not one but two payment service providers reneging on us. Our first PSP, after we got it fully set up and embedded in our platform, decided they couldn't support our use case and dropped us as a client. There was no explanation as to why. Hard luck, bye! Then, after evaluating 15, yes 15!!! other PSPs, we found another who was a perfect fit. They said they would support us and we started implementing. 3 months in they went back on what they had said and decided they wouldn’t support us. So, we reached out to the CEO who told us we had nothing to worry about and all was ok. They would continue working with us….phew. Two months after that, their compliance team reached back out to say they were again going back on what was said. We threw the kitchen sink at them in terms of giving them all the assurances and answering every question they had. In the end, it meant nothing. They had made up their mind. The problem seemed to be that we weren't authorised yet and they didn’t want the risk. We were never going to be able to operate until we got our licence so the risk was actually zero, but it didn’t seem to matter. It was another 6 months down the drain.

We finally found a payment service provider that was a great fit and keen to work with us. We got our application finished in December and with Hogan Lovells supporting throughout the year, it was finally ready to submit just before Christmas 2023. Once again our ignorance led us to believe we’d be authorised in a few months and yet here we are in September, over 8 months later having just received our licence. To be fair, plenty of people told us it would take this long but I guess we just didn’t want to believe it. 

Either way, none of it matters now. Sure, we wish we had been authorised sooner. Much sooner. But we couldn’t control it then and we certainly can’t do anything about it now. We’ve aged at a rate of about 10x but we are authorised and it’s an incredible feeling after all the hard work.

Of course, this is just the beginning. As big of a win as this feels, it just gives us an opportunity to compete. A ticket to the start line. Now the real fun starts.

The most exciting part is the idea of actually operating. Building a real community. Creating simple and unintimidating access to wealth building opportunities and inspiring a generation to build their financial future. That's what gets us going!

And we hope you’ll join us and make that journey part of your own.

Here’s to your future and ours!

What we’ve been working on at PitchedIt

This last couple of weeks we’ve been focusing on finalising two huge milestones and planning for the future

• Being authorised by the Central Bank of Ireland

• Rebranding the business and going from PitchedIt to Shuttle

• Planning the redesign of the platform and website

The Unsophisticated Investor is brought to you by Scott & Rob, the founders of PitchedIt. We’re both sick of private markets being a playground exclusive to the ultra-wealthy so we started a company to challenge the status-quo. PitchedIt’s singular focus is to unlock private markets for Millennial and Gen Z retail investors and help them build wealth through the highest performing private market opportunities.

Scott & Rob
PitchedIt Co-Founders