Sebastian Diemer on FinTech, Bitcoin and taking risks as an entrepreneur

Sebastian Diemer is one of the rockstars within the European startup scene. As one of the founders of Kreditech, he helped to shape the continent’s FinTech scene for years to come by creating a real-time scoring technology that enables 100% automatized, scaleable and big data-based scoring decisions worldwide and 24/7. After leaving the company in 2015, he went on to found his next FinTech startup Finiata, which is an automated European lending platform with the purpose to finance small businesses and freelancers. Supported by leading VCs (Point9, DN Capital, Fly Ventures and RedAlpine), the startup is currently growing at a monthly rate of 80%. With Kreditech’s latest financing round of 110m EUR in May 2017, Sebastian eventually also made his personal exit as a shareholder from the company. Being a true entrepreneur by passion, he is using his personal success also to support other founders. As Founding Investor, he helps to build up Digitalkasten - a niche SaaS business that digitalises physical mail and quickly became profitable. Business school-trained, he also invests into cryptos and bricks. In this episode, Sebastian discusses ‘everything FinTech’ from founding Kreditech to Bitcoin, explains why speed in execution matters, gives tons of advice for aspiring founders and describes why he wishes he would have read the book ‘The Lean Startup’ earlier. Here is the full list of topics that we cover with FinTech and execution expert Sebastian Diemer: [00:29 – 05:56] On the different stages of his career so far [05:57 – 12:14] His learnings from Kreditech and what he is doing differently now with Finiata [12:15 – 15:46] On Finiata’s service and its vision [15:47 – 22:15] The impact that a ‘AAA’-rated investor like Peter Thiel has on a startup [22:16 – 27:36] On the importance of execution skills and ways how to improve them [27:37 – 31:25] Best practices to structure early operations in a startup [31:26 – 36:52] On Bitcoin and Blockchain [36:53 – 41:10] Sebastian’s advice for taking risks as an entrepreneur when you are looking for growth opportunities [41:11 – 44:50] Open job positions at the companies that he is involved in