What Issue Led Christoph Rieche And James Dear To Become Successful Entrepreneurs?

Christoph Riecheand James Dear Quit Their Jobs, And Built iwoca Company, supporting 50,000 businesses.

About Christoph Rieche and James Dear:

Meet Christoph Rieche, CEO and co-founder of iwoca. Prior to iwoca, he worked as a vice president for fixed income, currencies, and commodities at Goldman Sachs. Christoph received his management degree from the London School of Economics and HEC Lausanne.

Meet James Dear, co-founder of iwoca. Prior to iwoca, James worked as a vice president at Deutsche Bank. James completed a B.Sc. in theoretical physics from Imperial College London and a PhD in stochastic calculus and theoretical physics from King's College London.

What inspired them to do something of their own?

The struggle of SMEs.

There was a global financial crisis in 2007–2008. At that time, Christoph and James were working in finance companies, and they both realised that small businesses were struggling in accessing finance. They knew that the problem could be resolved by making greater use of data and technology. They determined that now we would solve those challenges. They took a big step.

Both Christoph and James quit their jobs and, in October 2011, launched their startup, iwoca.

What does iwoca do?

Christoph and James founded iwoca, a UK-based company, with the goal of supporting and funding one million small enterprises. In the UK and Germany, iwoca provides loan facilities to small enterprises.

Do you know?

Recently, iwoca secured debt funding of £150m from Citibank and Insight Investment for their German expansion and an additional £120m from Barclays and Värde Partners for the UK in order to fulfill the increasing demand from small businesses for their Flexi-Loan product.

The achievements of both entrepreneurs:

They are National Association of Commercial Finance Brokers (NACFB) Lender of the year.

They have made funding available to over 50,000 businesses, from cafés to car dealers, salons to solicitors.

They have lent over £3bn in loans to SMEs since 2012. In addition to, they are winner of the £10m Banking Competition Remedies grant.

Both Christoph and James looked for opportunities rather than problems, as on 31 December 2021, both have generated $94.2M revenue.