Last Friday, our monthly meetup was held at the Amsterdam office of Loyens & Loeff. FiveDegrees, Global Business Academy, Nxchange, Firmhouse, Enterprise Bot and Kable pitched the 70-strong audience. We caught up with them during the meetup and asked them about their motivations to take the stage, and their businesses’ competitive advantages.
Reducing degrees of Separation
FiveDegrees’ Bruno Macedo aimed to spread the word about the company’s digital banking platform and digital banking solutions and connect to more partners, in addition to getting as much as he could from the Q&A session. He also aimed to see how the market is shifting, and gauge whether or not they were missing out on any updates. As FiveDegrees wants to expand their partnerships, he found the meetup a nice place to start making new connections.
And what makes FiveDegrees unique?
Macedo says that the company stands out because of their work in core banking’s middle front-end. “Instead of trying to solve everything by ourselves, we get the best in the market, and combine that with our own knowledge. That involves using metrics too. To use metrics, you do not need many people, but you have to have a good consultant, and that reduces cost a lot,” he notes.
Efficiently fighting financial crime 
Sjoerd Slot from Fraud Dynamics, which provides fraud detection and processing solutions to a clientele mainly consisting of banks and payment processors, aimed to take interesting conversations on innovation and payments from the meetup, in addition to getting informed about the developments in the fintech landscape.
When asked about that makes Fraud Dynamic’s advantaged over its competitors, Slot highlighted the company’s efficiency in combating financial crime. In addition to this, he noted that,“our product architecture allows us for an easy integration in legacy environments,” allowing enterprises to keep their often-expensive monitoring systems.
Building business skills
Sabine van Egeraat from Global Business Academy, a company helping businesses with Western and Indian teams increase their performance, wanted to network and meet with the attendees who might be involved in a business relationship in India, or doing business and producing in India.
In their work on enhancing performance, van Egeraat says they provide an entirely video-based learning platform and have a unique approach to bringing teams together. “We focus on skill building.” she says, “We think it is not cultural knowledge, but rather the understanding of Indian mindset, combined with the relevant skills, that helps you achieve your objectives about working in India.”
The future stock exchange
Marleen Evertsz of Nxchange, an enterprise delivering a next generation stock exchange for direct securities trading between companies and investors, sought potential collaborations and partners. Additionally, she also seemed to be interested in the communicative aspects of the event, as she stated her interest in sharing stories of her business experience and exchanging insights.
When asked about Nxchange’s added value, Evertsz pointed to the business’s ability to provide a full stock exchange to which many companies can integrate.
Focusing on the entrepreneur
Robbert van Geldrop from Firmhouse, an outfit that builds businesses, was present at the meeting to look for entrepreneurs who may be interested in joining their programme for start-ups, or any business related to fintech. “We think the fintech space contains ambitious and skillful entrepreneurs who can set up start-ups” he said. He also enjoyed receiving a lot of feedback on his pitch.
As its business is building businesses, Firmhouse sets itself apart by focusing on the entrepreneur instead of the start-up. He also notes that, “If an idea isn’t working in your current team, we encourage people to drop the idea and join another team.”
Better customer service
Enterprise Bot provides automated customer management solutions, and Hubb Ramakers from the company wanted to “showcase what Enterprise Bot is capable of to a wide audience within the fintech scene”, hoping to “find potential clients or investors”.
So what gives Enterprise Bot a leg up on their competitors?
Ramakers locates the company’s unique propositions in Enterprise Bot being cheaper, faster and more flexible than the large players in the market, thanks to their employment of techniques such as NLP, deep learning and neural networks to create virtual assistants.
“We are able to guarantee a go-live time of maximum 3 months, with an accuracy of at least 70%.” says Huub further. “These numbers are much better than competitors. In the past, we have even been able to go-live in just 3 weeks with SIX payments services. Our chatbots and e-mail bots take a lot of volume (60%) away from customer service agents or employees, who are able to focus on more important tasks.”
Ramakers also said he had a successful networking session at the meetup.