This week’s Startup for 10 features Tumelo, a fintech company founded in 2018. Tumelo now employs 12 people to help with its mission to create a world where investors have transparency over the companies they own and a shareholder voice.
Here to answer out 10 questions is Georgia Stewart, co-founder of Tumelo.
1. In your own words – what do you do?
Tumelo is a purpose-led financial technology company. We help personal and pension investors to have a positive impact with their investments by giving them transparency and a shareholder voice.
Our white-labelled software allows people to see exactly which companies they own through their pension and personal investments and to have their shareholder voice heard by their fund manager on topics such as climate change at Shell or gender equality at Microsoft. This allows investment firms (our clients) to reach and engage millions of their customers on issues they care about at companies they actually own – generating revenue and moving us closer to our end vision: an investment system that serves people & planet, where shareholders are connected to the companies they own.
2. What’s the most exciting thing about what you’re doing?
It’s new. As with most start-ups, it’s taken us a while to find our niche. I guess what is most exciting is that we have come full circle and are re-focusing on the issue that I was most passionate about at university – getting shareholder voices heard by global corporates.
3. What are you most proud of so far?
Team, team, team. They are all amazing individuals and even more impressive when working together. I’m proud of myself for finding them (have learnt it’s no small feat to find incredible people) but mostly I’m proud, and grateful, that they give their all every day to make Tumelo happen!
4. What have you found most difficult about being a startup?
Possibly recruiting? I think we are smashing it, but it’s a long, intense process. And I’m not sure how easy it will be to scale! The other thing that’s hard is working out what to say yes to. Time is so limited, and it feels like every opportunity is valuable, but you just can’t be everywhere all the time!
5. What would you do differently if you started now?
Not sure to be honest. We’ve made mistakes but the learnings have been useful so I wouldn’t take them back if it meant sacrificing what I learnt. I guess I would just say that we should have had more confidence in ourselves from the outset. I had many doubts when we started out but they are gone now!
6. Where do you think you’ll be in 12 months?
Bristol! And flying hopefully… we should have converted our commercial pilots into commercial contracts, and be focusing on scaling our sales & impact.
7. What tools/people/services/organisations from the cluster have helped you most?
Everyone I meet in the South West is awesome. People always have time for you (something I don’t find in London). NatWest’s Andy Jackson has always been a great support, as has Rosie from SETsquared. Mayden Academy has given us a fantastic software engineer; SR2 recruitment has supported us loads and TechSPARK (Ben & Briony) of course is always at the centre of everything. We also have some great angel investors from the region. I probably missed tonnes of people, but that is a brief summary of all the amazing support out there!
8. What’s the best thing about the Bristol & Bath tech cluster?
See above!
9. Who will you be nominating for a SPARKie next year?
Mmm, a good question that I have not yet thought about. Matt Franklin, CEO of Payaca. Always been there for us, and he’s so impressive!
10. Where can we find out more about you?
Go to Tumelo to check out our products & team. We also have a medium blog account if you want to read my rants on sustainable investment!
If you enjoyed Startup for 10: Tumelo
- You may like: Startup for 10: Vitamica
