The b Interview

Finding finance for SMEs

Andrea Reynolds, Founder & CEO, Swoop

Talk us through your career and what has led you to this point?

I began my professional career as a chartered accountant with KPMG Dublin and then moved to the London office with my main focus on financial services. I had a longing to do something more entrepreneurial so I set up my own Corporate Finance firm. My first clients were from the McLaren F1 team Spin Out programme, which meant raising finance for innovative pre-revenue businesses. McLaren drove me to learn about how to navigate the entire funding landscape for a business, from pre-revenue, start-up to exit. I discovered the world of grants, R&D credits and lending, as well as equity investment; in short, this was the embryo of what was to become Swoop.

What do you enjoy about your current role?

The best part of my role is seeing and hearing from business owners that we have helped survive and grow – whether it’s finding a way to help them through a cash crunch to make payroll, or to get the capital they need to execute their expansion plans. I walk into stores and see products on shelves where we helped those businesses get their start-up funding. It is so rewarding.

Tell us about Swoop and how it came to fruition?

I had a corporate finance firm but because of the nature of my clients I needed to focus on all areas of the funding lifecycle. I quickly realised how fragmented and time consuming it was to understand what finance was available, let alone manually building applications for that funding, and working out the eligibility criteria. Sourcing funding felt like it was a job in itself and a high proportion of business owners were not as financially literate as they needed to be, or too disconnected from their numbers to make the right funding decisions. I started out with two excel spreadsheets. The first one I called “The FitBit for your business” where I created colour-coded performance metrics for the business owner. I would tell them to move something from amber to green by the time I saw them next, such as cutting costs or increasing prices. It always worked and they didn’t have to understand the accounting terms so long as they followed the indicators. The second sheet was for me to list all of the eligibility criteria and document the requirements of funders. That became ridiculously unwieldy, so I decided it was time to convert these two spreadsheets into a piece of tech that I could make available as a free-to-use platform for all SMEs and their advisors. I always thought that if SMEs could have the same level of service when it comes to finance as larger enterprises then we would have a lot more success stories and greater economic growth. If SMEs could have the same level of service when it comes to finance....a lot more success stories and greater economic growth.

What can we expect from Swoop over the next few years?

Our vision is for every small and medium business owner to easily access the right finance products at the right price. We want to help them make the best money decisions every day. We will continue to build on our current offering, where businesses can bring all of their accounts into one place, including accounting, banking, CRO filings, online revenue data and more. We give customers insights and show them what funding they can get so that they can focus on building their business while we do the work of making the application. As we continue to develop our customer experience, our offering will become even more efficient and intelligent.

We are also originating our own loans where we see gaps in the market. And we are going global as SMEs are global and trading in different currencies. SME finance is becoming borderless as data becomes the main driver of credit decisions which will lead to much greater choice for Irish businesses.

SME finance is becoming borderless as data becomes the main driver of credit decisions…

How can Swoop support SMEs to source finance and what are the benefits?

Access to finance and access to skills are the two most cited challenges SMEs face when it comes to growth. Swoop solves access to finance. It eliminates time wasted on searching and applying to lenders for products that an underwriter couldn’t approve even if they wanted to, due to the SME not meeting pre-requisites. It also empowers business owners to see the metrics that lenders see when they are evaluating an application. Swoop opens up access to the UK investment market too, where Irish SMEs are eligible to raise under the UK version of EIIS, with far greater ease and success than the Irish equivalent. Going international does not have to be such an expensive step now, as we found when Swoop launched in Australia and Canada during lockdown. We were on a level playing field to competitors because everyone was virtual. Before COVID, we would have been flying out to in-person meetings before we had made a single cent. Now we can launch and test market appetite before making large investments of time and money. Other changes are hybrid working, which is here to stay. For business leaders, we need to figure out how to lead our teams in this new world and ensure that culture does not get lost along the way. The biggest challenge is how businesses trade their way out of the pandemic and how do they access the finance they need, not only to overcome their period of survival but to be able to recover. Swoop’s reason for being has been magnified since COVID.

Every crisis brings opportunities and challenges.

From you experience, what are the major business challenges you have overcome?

There are so many, I don’t know where to begin! I think it is like that for all entrepreneurs as they scale. If I was to pick one, it was overcoming my lack of tech experience when I started out. I would consider myself a domain expert when it comes to raising finance for SMEs but I had to learn how to evaluate good versus bad tech, and how to speak the language of engineers. So, I went down quite a few expensive dead ends until I got that right.

Do you have a business mentor? What business advice was crucial to your success?

I don’t have a specific mentor but I do have people that I admire and learn from in business who are always so generous with their time. In addition to Swoop I’m also on the board of Berkshire Hathaway European Insurance and the best advice hands down was from Warren Buffet on hiring decisions. He said that you should look for three things: intelligence, initiative and integrity. He says if a candidate doesn’t have the latter the first two will kill you. As Swoop has grown to a team of 75, I fully appreciate that advice. People will always be your differentiator and it is also the hardest nut to crack.

The Swoop Team

The financial sector is very competitive, in your opinion what makes a brand/product stand out in this busy space?

It’s very simple. Ask if you are adding value to your customer’s life. If the answer is a resounding yes, then your customer will not only return but they will tell others. Brand is how others talk about you when you’re not in the room.

What do you think will be the long-lasting impact of COVID for Irish business?

Every crisis brings opportunities and challenges. On the opportunity side, there has been an acceleration to online, opening up new sales channels and ways of doing business.

Passion, planning and people are the three ‘Ps’ that many business owners attribute their success to. Would you agree with this mantra and/or what else makes a business successful?

I agree 100%. If there was one more I would add, it is without doubt integrity. You have to be able to look yourself in the mirror and know that you’ve done the right thing.

To find our more about Swoop, visit swoopfunding.ie