Daniel Lanyon started out as a journalist in Istanbul in 2010, joined The Times' foreign desk as a freelancer, and followed the money into financial journalism.
He went on to help build AltFi, a publication covering fintech, from around 2016 until it was bought by a family office. Along the way he met the early teams at Revolut and Monzo, when Revolut had just one product and a team of 10 or 20.
He is now Managing Director of Funds at Tramlines. In this episode of Track Record, Albert asks how that career shaped the way Daniel now thinks about founders, investing and AI. They cover how his years as a reporter taught Daniel to judge founders, why he thinks domain experts could overtake the 'Stanford dropout', and how to keep a clear head about AI.
Key Moments:
00:00 Introduction
01:43 Daniel's role at Tramlines
02:40 Istanbul, Tintin and becoming a journalist
05:28 The Times, The Grocer and following the money
06:31 From financial markets to fintech
08:19 Why UK Fintech took off
09:15 Branches: from moat to millstone
10:08 Revolut, Monzo and Starling in the early days
11:50 Three tracks: a business, a cycle and investors
13:28 A football hedge fund and a buoy on a beach
14:17 AltFi and learning to sell
16:49 Inside versus outside
17:18 The 2021 boom and the downturn
18:49 Deciding to become an investor
20:12 Meeting Albert
21:23 VC as a five-year-old's football match
22:24 Where the value lies now
23:31 Why the best founders are domain experts
25:12 When the big names caught on
25:53 "I will never have an app-only bank"
27:25 Scaling domain expertise with AI
28:52 Going earlier: meeting founders before they quit
31:10 Consultancy as a way in
32:59 What AI changes for investors
35:09 Everyone at Tramlines was at the front
36:19 Keeping two sets of books
38:29 Analog in an AI world
39:13 How to get to the front of AI
40:40 Think, plan, do
41:40 Three ways to use two sets of books
43:06 The £100m question
45:21 Advice for Albert
46:24 Closing remarks
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