Opening the final day of Money 20/20 Europe was a session exploring whether treasury management is broken.
Melissa Donohoe, VP, Notion Capital moderated the panel with speakers Pac O’Shea, CEO and co-founder, Round Treasury and Seth Phillips, founder and CEO, Bound.
Regarding why they moved into this space, O’Shea said: “We started a couple of months before SVB crashed and what we saw was a concentration risk on the money side, but also founders have to sacrifice liquidity for yield with traditional banking products as well as user experience for trusts.”
Phillips said his experience in software development for the gold market made him realise they could “automate a lot of best practice”.
Looking to why there has been an increased interest in the treasury space, Phillips commented: “Venture backed companies have $10, $50 or $100 million in the bank and all of a sudden interest rates are not zero and so it matters where you keep that where you keep that money.”
O’Shea added his perspective: “People are now looking at Treasury and innovating in that space and that’s why founders and entrepreneurs are looking at opportunities in this space now. I guess on the VC side, why it’s getting quite hyped, is because it’s essentially net new money for these businesses, it’s an expenditure that they weren’t looking at before.”
Phillips said that both his and O’Shea’s companies are about “being responsible with your cash, and the value passing in and out of the business. That wasn’t very cool a few years ago, and now all of a sudden people are realising that there’s real money to be made or to be saved in the way a company manages its finances.”
