Wealth Wizards
Wealth Wizards is a FinTech start-up providing automated,
regulated, pensions and financial advice to individuals and
companies. It used the IconicShift architecture to make sure it
built the right foundations for its business.
Getting it right - right at the start
Wealth Wizards wants to make financial advice affordable and
accessible to everyone. It does this by putting together the
best-in-class software engineering with technical expertise to
create its unique automated or robo-advice platform.
But, when the company was formed in 2009, founder and chief
executive Andrew Firth knew they needed the right foundations: "We
had learnt from previous start-ups that getting the fundamentals
right early on was very important. And I think Mike is world class
at starting with an idea and knowing what to do to turn that into a
business.
"It's that really early stage, when you say 'this a brilliant
idea and there's a market opportunity' - how do you create the
company that can take advantage of that? Mike almost makes it feel
likes its intuition but it isn't - there are literally thousands of
start-ups up and down this country and across the world that don't
have the knowledge or processes to turn a good idea into a
business."
Attention to detail
The four founders of Wealth Wizards worked intensively with
IconicShift for a year as part of a group mentoring programme and
the company now schedules customised workshops as and when they are
needed.
"One of the most powerful things in IconicShift is that it
forces you to put the design work in at the start. People think a
start-up is a bit more loose, a bit more out there in the wild
west, but the reality is you have to be really precise in the
design and what you are trying to do.
"Because you've only got so much money - if you spend too much
on stuff taking you in the wrong direction you might not get a
second chance. And IconicShift makes you work through that detail
and that is such an important discipline."
The market leader
Wealth Wizards now has 60 employees, a turnover of £2.5 million
and is established as the market leader of robo-advice in the
UK.
"We have a vision, a purpose, a game and the whole IconicShift
business architecture. But for us, one of the most powerful aspects
was getting the purpose and our values clear. I think you don't
realise how important these are going to be until you recruit
people. When you go from 10 people to 60, and that's still a small
company, it is fundamental to aligning people to the business.
Because if you want the right people it's not enough to tell people
who you are, you need to say why you are doing it, what you want
them to do and how you want them to behave."
