Actinide is the trusted advisor & coach to entrepreneurs, management teams & investors
Appointed as business innovation coach by the EASME (Executive Agency for SMEs) set up by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 SME Instrument, to coach CEOs of EU grant supported companies.
Growth strategy, business planning optimising operations, restructuring activities, formulating company value, vision & mission, establishing customer value proposition and product-market fit and board strategic advisor.
Supporting investors & management teams, setting up streamlined financial processes, building robust financial models/ KPIs & management accounts, CxO on hire, end to end transaction support – investment or company sale.
Beyond generalist businesses, we have successfully completed specific assignments in areas such as: FinTech, SAAS, CleanTech/ Energy, AI-ML, Capital markets related & setting up FCA regulated businesses.
Below, in Q&A format, is an overview of the sectors that Actinide has recently been active in:
Coaching is about nurturing skills within a company as opposed to consulting that brings in skills that are thought to be lacking. A great coach doesn’t come with the right answers but comes with the right questions.
Innovation coaching involves nurturing the senior management of companies to progress over the life cycle of their innovation, from idea to proof of concept to first pilot application and finally upscaling and expansion and empowering these innovative companies to cope with challenges such as developing their strategy and organisation, identifying their market and improving ability to attract finance.
Actinide has been appointed as an innovation coach by the European Commission – Executive Agency for SMEs to support grant winning companies under the EU Horizon 2020 program.
Below are some of the Finance related projects undertaken by Actinide (please contact us for the long list and to discuss your needs).
Actinide has been involved in a number of Strategy projects such as:
One of the newer buzzwords conjured up by popular media. It is a portmanteau of Finance and Technology. FinTech companies are businesses that use new technology to create new and better financial services for both consumers and businesses. It includes a whole variety of companies that may operate in the areas of personal finance, insurance, payment, asset management, etc. Lately almost anybody who does Finance using Technology (so almost all Financial services companies & Technology providers to them) have started calling themselves FinTech!
Actinide has been supporting the leading Fintech’s in London – from UK’s first fully FCA regulated Peer to Peer lending platform to the first DLT based e-Money license holder.
CleanTech is another portmanteau from Clean Technology and is a buzzword that is somewhat out of favour these days (always hard to guess what is hot and what is not). Clean is often interchangeably used with the terms Green, Environmental and Sustainable and has emerged as an umbrella term encompassing the investment asset class, technology, and business sectors covering products and services in this area.
Actinide was involved in setting up one of the first specialist investment funds focusing on Clean Energy and lead the last pre IPO round investment into Tesla Motors, the electric car company.
Software As A Service. It is a new business model for delivering software over the internet.
I am assuming your business, like ours, has purchased a copy of Microsoft Office at some point in the past and then again a few years later and are probably on some version of Office365 today. Now, Office365 is a SAAS offering, which instead of the good old one off purchase price in the range of £/$/€ 100+ per computer every few years, has now become each £/$/€ 5-7 month. That in nutshell is an example of what is SAAS.
Some of the other terms associated with SAAS: LTV, CAC, Churn, MRR, ARR, Quick ratio.
Actinide supported the sale of UK’s leading accounting SAAS business to a large corporate and this involved getting knee deep into the company and running the finance function from within while managing the sale process.
AI is Artificial Intelligence, ML is Machine Learning.
Artificial Intelligence is the superset, Machine Learning is the subset, so all ML is AI but not all AI is ML.
In practical terms, try and do this in your browser. Open Google and type in USDGBP in the search bar and Go. You will see that the first result from the “search” engine is not a link to a website but a card with the current USDGBP fx rate, now this an example of an AI system that uses ML algorithms to provide the answer.
An aha moment recently was the realization that AI is actually quite unintelligent, i.e. the AI system has no clue what USD is or what GBP is (as yet). The operative word in AI is artificial and not intelligence! We expect well over 80% of AI in the near term in fact to be ML.
Actinide is working on a number of ML initiatives with some of the best engineers this side of the pond.
Capital Markets is that part of the financial system that deals with buying, selling and trading of stocks, shares, bonds, loans and their derivative products, typically the activities undertaken by the Sales & Trading division at Investment Banks (i.e. secondary trading) as also the IPO and Bond underwriting/Loan syndication work taken by the Investment Banking group (i.e. primary issuance)
Actinide has supported a few of startup companies launching products targeting Capital Markets institutions as customers.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) together with the Prudential Regulatory Authority (PRA) are the Financial Regulators in the UK and ensure that the financial markets operate well and that customers (both retail and business) get a fair deal from financial companies.
Most (but not all) businesses in the Financial industry are required to register and become regulated in some shape or form. Be it as investment advisor to investment funds or individual people.
Actinide has helped set up an FCA investment manager from scratch in London; has supported a P2P lending platform that is FCA authorized; an E-Money institutions and a PSD2 compliant AISP/PISP payment services provider.
PE stands for private equity and VC stands for Venture Capital.
In the past, they had very clear-cut definitions where PE got involved in larger and more established businesses with serious cashflow that allowed such businesses to take on debt, while VCs got involved in earlier stage businesses with little or scarce cashflow. These days however the terms have been used for all sorts of transactions, funds and investment strategies.
The basic difference to remember is that PE involves managing existing and established businesses and uses a lot of debt that is then paid off as the operations of the business improve. VCs, on the other hand, support younger businesses to reach a point of profitability or attaining the desired market share.
Actinide helped set up a specialist investment fund in London that invested in both PE and VC style transactions.
Our services range from being a coach who can also become a trusted "sounding board", to offering general business advice or to consult on specific sector specialism and on commercializing innovation
As a business owner or as an entrepreneur “the buck ultimately stops with you” - customers, employees, suppliers all look at you to be their problem solver and carrying this responsibility is not easy. You face challenging situations at all times. Some are relatively easy to deal with but others can be far more difficult to overcome - there is no fixed path and the commercial landscape is constantly changing.
We have been there ourselves and understand. No course or book can guide you in these matters but an experienced business coach often can.
Coaching (as we practice it) is to help business captains examine problems, challenges or opportunities while interacting with a trusted third person - the coach. The coaching sessions also help broaden your horizons and find the best way ahead in any given circumstance. The coach often becomes a business leader's sounding board & the second “pair of eyes” when making decisions in uncertain times.
Curious? Contact Actinide today.
Actinide provides tailored and hands-on consulting services for its clients covering the areas of strategy, finance and certain speciality sector focused services.
We support individual entrepreneurs, management teams and institutional investors portfolio companies on growth strategy, business planning and restructuring activities and also serve as board /strategic advisor to the business.
As part of our Financial consulting offering, we support companies in setting up streamlined financial processes, building robust financial models & KPIs and can provide a CxO on hire as also end to end transaction support (investment or company sale).
Our recent engagements have also covered specialist areas such as FinTech, SAAS, BlockChain, CleanTech / Clean Energy and Capital Markets / FCA regulated businesses.
Talk to us today.
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