This week Eric talks to Deniz Güven, CEO & Co-founder of PlatformXIT. Deniz talks about his background in banking, working in emerging markets, building a digital bank, and why he doesn’t like the term “challenger bank.”
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Transcript
Deniz: I wake up every morning with the numbers, this is okay, but if you are a new brand, I mean you have to think about other things. First of all, what will be your hard share and how are you going to get that hard share? What will be the standards? What will be the rules to reach that kind of a hard share in UK or whatever the market? And if you can reach now, this kind of a hard share, believe me or not, market share will follow.
Eric: I'm Eric Fulwiler and this is Scratch Bringing You Marketing Lessons from the leading brands and brains rewriting the rule book from scratch for the world of today.
Hey everyone, my guest today, Deniz Güven, currently CEO of PlatformXIT. Many of you will know him or recognize the name from the work that he did when he was at Standard Charter launching and running Mox, their challenger bank out in Hong Kong. So it's fascinating to get Deniz's perspective. He is not a traditional marketer, he is not a cmo, but he's someone who has been a very successful operator in the challenger FinTech financial services space for a while. And a lot of that of course comes down to the products that he's built, the teams he's built, but also his perspective on marketing. And so it was really interesting to hear that. I really liked his framework, his philosophy of how heart share leads to market share. And you can definitely see and hear the correlations of what that means in terms of how you build brand and how you build marketing. And then the other thing for me that I'm always interested to get perspectives and advice on from people like Deniz when I talk to them is how do you drive change? How do you drive innovation? How do you drive a challenger mindset and model within a big established incumbent organization like Standard Charter? So hope you enjoy this conversation with Deniz. I know I really did enjoy. Hey Deniz, how you doing?
Deniz: Very good, Eric. Good to see you.
Eric" Really good to see you too. Good to reconnect after all these years. How are things in Istanbul these days?
Deniz: Everything is great in Istanbul. Unfortunately we couldn't catch up in 2020 in Amsterdam, but in right now I'm in Istanbul. The weather is great. Lovely. Everything is beautiful here.
Eric" I can't wait to, I actually have been to Istanbul, but it was a very quick trip. It was like a two or three day trip a bunch of years ago, but I was saying before we press record, I think our first rival retreat, our team getaway that we're going to be doing twice a year. I think we'll be somewhere in Turkey. So maybe I'll see you when I come down in October.
Deniz: Great idea. I will be with you guys.
Eric: All right, Deniz, let's get into it. I mean, I wish we had recorded the first 20 minutes of this before we actually started the episode, but we'll be able to cover a lot of that ground again. So why don't we just start with a quick introduction. Obviously I will have introduced you to the guest with the intro that I'll record after our chat, but why don't you tell our guests your story in your own words because it's a very path what you've done. It's very interesting and like I was saying, you're not a cmo, but I think your experience and what you have to share is incredibly relevant and valuable to our audience. So who is DenizGüven?
Deniz: Yeah, yeah. Okay, Eric, first of all, thank you very much for having me today. I think having this kind of a conversation with you, it's always great for me because I remember our really early days, which we didn't have mocks at that time. I'm talking about Hong Kong Times, you know, helped me a lot and we talk about a lot of marketing ideas together. My background is most of the time people when they ask me dinners, who you are, what are I doing? Of course I had been in banking around 22 years and most of the time this question, sometimes it came to me from my father and whenever he asked me this is what are you doing in banking? Are you a branch manager? Are you in the treasury? Are you in the credit? What are you doing? Because he didn't figure out for many, many years because I remember early two thousands it was like a different story. We were like couple of guys and I was sitting at that corner and building couple of websites and suddenly everything changed. Mobile apps, mobile infrastructures, 4g, iPhone, everything changed. And suddenly this trend, these web managers, they became really know different revenue streamers for many businesses, not only in banking, my background is me in the banking but when my parents, they ask me know, my answer is, I'm in the trust business. I think this is the most important thing in this life because if whatever you are doing in the trust business, believe you know, are 51% no successful already. So I've worked for many banks in the past. I'm talking about HSBC, BB group and of course when I first moved to Asia, I was in Singapore and I was covering 32 different markets as a global head in standard charter, standard charter. It's a great place to work and covering all the emerging markets, I think I learned a lot from this experience. When I say emerging markets, I'm not only talking about Asia, Africa, middle East, there were a lot of opportunities and I experienced different markets, different jurisdictions to how to deal with different problems At the same time with a very, very difficult technology stack. Risk tech also know the marketing stack and if you want to deal with this many problems at the same time you have to know, organize your mind first and create a operating model to work in this kind of an environment. And it's helped me a lot and luckily I think in 2018 we decided to build a future operating model, which some of the people, they call them challenger banks or in a digital banks, which I don't like it because I don't want to label a bank with a license with this kind of a thing because is there any digital bank or there's do we believe that this is a digital bank is a normal bank? I think this kind of labeling is not working anymore. And so that's why I started to build that. You guys help me a lot, especially know starting from positioning I built a bank Mox, it was just a project with couple of people. We obtained the license, we got all the JV partners. We sold 34 point 34 9% of the company for 210 million to our JV partners in the beginning. They help us a lot to create the daily banking, especially in the region. We launched the bank with a entirely new technology stack with a new mentality with a lot of talents globally. I think first when I stepped on from my CEO role six, seven months ago there were 29 different nationalities, 19 different languages in Mox Bank. So that was that kind of a journey for me. Right now what I'm doing, we have a London based angel platform. It's not a font, it's not vc. We are helping especially on funding side, but at the same time we have three important muscles. One is technology, second one is of course service design and the third one is growth. When I say growth, I'm not only talking about growth marketing, Eric, I'm talking about growth and what I believe when we talk about growth, it's also connected with your balance, yet it's also connected with your cash flow. So that's my story in a nutshell.
Eric: So a couple quick questions based on that. So if you don't like the term challenger bank, what would you call it or what do you think people should be calling these startup challenger banks? I'm sorry, I can't think of a different word. So you tell me challenger something, right?
Deniz: I mean it's Challenges, something,
Eric: okay, yeah
Deniz: It could be bank could be if you are in FMCG now, how are you going to call it, right? My point is here, actually I remember our first meeting with the top management team, also the board of standard Charlotte, and I ask two main questions to these people sitting round to table. The first question is, can you defend yourself with your existing operating model from non-traditional players wherever you are. If you're in London, Paris, Amsterdam, Jakarta Toronto, it's not important. Can you do that? The second question is can you attack this market or any market with your existing operating model? If one of your answers <laugh> is no, you have a problem, you have a problem and you have to ask these two questions maybe every six months to yourself to understand what's going on in the market and also with your operating model. So that's why instead of saying, Hey, this is a digital bank, mail bank or virtual banks, okay, the different terms, what I'm saying is I will prefer to build and run future operating models and under the future operating models and the model could be where I of course you who you are, what you need, et cetera, etc. So you can build this future operating models and under that technology risk digital product customer, you should use them in a totally different way.
Eric: Yeah, it is interesting. Just building on that a little bit, because one of the things that we talk about a lot is how overused the term challenger actually is. It seems like mean certainly in the FinTech space, everything is a challenger. Even in the FMCG world, which we do a lot of work in as well. Cpg, everything's a challenger and even some of the traditional businesses out there are starting to call themselves challengers. And I think it's really interesting because the term challenger is actually a statement of intent, not accomplishment. You're saying that you want to do something, but what we're all about as rival and why it's interesting having conversations with people like you is what does it take to build a true successful challenger? Because at the end of the day, it all comes down to can you actually disrupt the industry that you're in? And ironically, if you're successful you become the new incumbent and then you need to keep yourself consistently evolving and innovating. And I really like that framework of can you defend yourself and can you attack the market? One of the ways that I think about it is, which I think gets you to the same place but is a little bit of a different prompt. If you were going to start things over again from scratch today, how would you do it differently? Because that shows you where the gaps are, where someone could attack you or you're not able to attack the market. Now obviously if you are a 10 person startup, we are, that's much easier because we literally did that exercise six months ago when we launched and that led us to things like being fully remote, being somewhere between a consultancy and an advertising agency focusing on the technology that we want to build as well as the services we were able to design it from scratch. If you're standard chartered, it's a lot harder, but actually I think you have a bigger opportunity if you get the right people, the right process and lastly the right technology in place by doing things like what you did at Mock. So it's really interesting to hear you think about it because think that I can see why that prompt and that question and obviously you and who you are and the team and business you were able to build, I can see how that unlocked the right conversations within Standard Charter.
Deniz: Yeah, my point here actually there are things, couple of things here. The first of all, I would hire a couple of roles earlier, okay, this role team is super important and to be honest, in my experience, yes, we build a bank from scratch, perfect, but I was think a bit late to hire couple of roles and the roles are not important, but I'm talking about critical journey partners. I mean I'm not talking about the seniority or gen junior people or the titles. The most important thing is you know, need some journey partners and this partners should be there starting from day one or at least 1.1. I'm not talking about data because sometimes you want to do many things, but if you can't hire the right talents it doesn't work properly and sometimes it takes more time and costly, this is the first thing and I would do something differently, which is actually sometimes what you feel, I mean you want to be in a super perfect before launch. I mean I'm not against it, don't take me wrong, but it is always a smarter MVP or we can call it most lovable product. I mean MVP is a bit dangerous and most lovable product. I always believe that the desirability part of the project or the platform or whatever the service, it's critical and if you feel that there is this desirability here, I mean you should launch it. And of course in banking I'm coming with a lot of DNA of how I can accept this risk, how I can accept this kind of stuff. This doesn't mean that you know can't launch it. So that's why the cost of time, the cost timing it is super important. I think these two things are I believe
Eric: Timing, I mean I would take it a step further. I think timing or speed, the ability to move quickly, the ability to get to market quickly because not only particularly in a space like challenger banking or whatever you want to call it in new markets, the ability to get there first is of course such a huge advantage. But more importantly the faster you can ship code, ship product, ship content marketing or anything about your brand, the faster and more often you're going to be able to get feedback from the people that you're actually building it for to figure out whether or not it's the right thing. And so I actually think that the calling, the strive for perfection actually gives it too much of a positive spin because I think having worked with a lot of businesses, it's not about that. It's about people trying sometimes to protect their turf or feel like they need to be involved in making a decision or subjectivity that doesn't actually have to do with what the audience and the customer actually thinks and needs. So I actually think if you trace, I don't think there's really a way to do this, but if you trace a lot of the vulnerabilities or inability of big incumbent organizations to capture new markets to defend themselves or attack like you talked about, I think a lot of it comes down to that.
Deniz: Well Eric, totally right, and what you mentioned for example the subjective objective things, there are a couple are some things super straightforward, but I mean if you're talking about design mean for example, in my experience what happened, we started with a huge ethnographic research and I never go somewhere with the board members or with someone, hey, I believe this should be like that mean this is the most dangerous thing for your business. There is me, you or someone, there's a target group that I know for your business and this is the research, this is all the continuous testing results and this is our target. Hey, hey is Deniz, I'm the c o, this is my experience and design know should be like that. I mean this is not a great touch. You are not helping your business. I mean of course I have my hands because of my experiences, but at the same time, you know, hope to be a bit objective and give the freedom to the team if you have the right team of course to run and proceed it. I think that is quite crucial.
Eric: So we've gotten through one question 15 minutes in, it's great. No, I think it's the sign of a good conversation. So I want to ask, and I like to ask this question of most guests, but I particularly want to ask it of you, which is what is a brand or business that you are really fascinated by or really into right now? And the reason I want to ask it of you is because you are involved in so many different businesses, not only through platform excite and the investment work that you're doing and you mentioned how many investments you've made in the nine months that it's been online, but also you go to your LinkedIn and you have to scroll a couple pages down to actually get to your full-time role because you're involved as a board advisor, as a strategic advisor, as a board member to so many different businesses. So you are one of the people that clearly has such a pulse on what's going on, especially in the FinTech world globally. If you had to pick a couple businesses that you're really excited about right now, what are they and why?
Deniz: Yeah, sure. I think no, I'm not looking from a very traditional angle anymore and this last seven, eight months, that helped me a lot to understand what's going on outside because when I was in Mox of course my focus was entirely the bank running debt, building more services to make money also help the customers in Hong Kong and the region. But right now I think this period I met a lot of talented and different minds globally and I learn many new things. My approach to the businesses right now is a bit different. I can give you an example I think you mentioned about this, right? Did the timing, et cetera, everybody six months ago, everybody wants to wanted to launch a exchange platform and on the exchange platform, most of the time I'm talking about crypto, but different assets as well. But today just because of crypto, all the exchange players, they are thinking I mean it's not an easy time for everyone because of the markets and they have change the strategy and a lot of FinTech entrepreneurs right now or we can't launch it. So my point is what is the real wave that you have to follow off or you have to know jump on? Because I mean of obviously there was a huge no opportunity for exchange you of marketer exchange platforms to make money because of the commissions, but was that the real opportunity which is or will be know future proof or that the real opportunity is different? For example, what I'm focusing on right now, I'm focusing on fractional economy. So what is fractional economy? I mean instead of focusing on couple of assets or people or products, I would prefer to know understand what will happen in the next 24 to 36 months in the world in different markets with this kind of an inflation in this kind of an inflation environment. What will be the products and how the people will consume the things in a different way? Are they going to to know, consume the things today, Hey I want to get a mortgage. Why? Because I'm going to know buy this apartment which is 2 million pounds in Chelsea and I need 1 million mortgage or is it going to be something like, hey I don't have 2 million, but at the same time I want to know buy this in a fractional way and this fractional way with the help of this fractional way, there will be in a secondhand market with all liquid liquidity and whenever I want to go to liquidity site, I can sell or I can make money as an investment. So what I'm talking about fractional housing, fractional energy, fractional coffee beans, fractional everything, fractionalized fractionalized, any kind of assets globally, it's going to be extremely important and instead of thinking, hey, I'm a platform coming I can provide you for example five pounds in a fractional Google's stocks or whatever it is to be honest, you know, can't buy this Google fractional or whatever anywhere in the world right now almost right? It's becoming long tail. What I'm saying is these people globally, they want to know save and they want to know, invest in a different way and what will be the behavior behind it, what will be the need habits and how are you going to transform the financial products with the help of the technology, which sounds like for example, blockchain smart contracts will help a lot to fractionalize the things and all these notary system could be be easily change in the future with the help of the government, which will give a lot of liquidity for everyone and managing this kind of a system, liquidity plus the treasury systems globally 24/7 real time and people they can invest in a different shape and form. I think this is something which we have look at it and if you are talking about what I'm focusing on right now, this is one area that I'm focusing on but not with a traditional way because I don't want to be like a hey of course Eric, I can easily answer you.I really like decentralized projects and I want to invest in what is decentralized and how are you going to do that. I think we have to know start from the customer and behavioral changes are coming and will come in the next couple of years if we can understand what will happen here. Everybody's talking about big reset, what is big reset when we have big reset, how are we going to position our products and our platforms in a different way? This is quite critical. Other than that, I mean this is one area which I use it as an example right now, of course I believe embedded finance is going to be important. Eric, I'm sure you know, will ask some marketing questions to me. So embedded when I say embedded finance, I also believe that there will be no embedded marketing and what will be embedded marketing in the future and how are we going to position ourselves for the embedded marketing. It's going to be another topic for us, but these are the areas I don't want to give a really usual suspects like, hey, I'm on blockchain. Well I don't believe it. I still believe that all the innovations, all the new services will come from customer side, which we have to know. Understand quite carefully.
Eric: What do you think embedded marketing could look like?
Deniz: Oh, Such a lovely question.
Eric: You kind of teed me up for it. I couldn't not engage <laugh>.
Deniz: So embedded marketing, so what is embedded finance, first of all, right? There are a lot of SU or buzz players like bank as a service, open banking, APIs, all these open API platforms. We have been talking about these things since 2015, 16 and some of the governments, some of the markets they opened this platforms UK is a great example. I'm not saying that super successful, but at least there are a lot of tries in the market coming from both sides. But what I see actually embedded finance, it's all about me as a part of no standard charter in the past. I'm also a big fan of Liverpool and this Liverpool thing. There's one rule in Liverpool, never walk alone. And as a part of never walk alone, I think this is quite critical. You need to understand how you position yourself. When I say embedded marketing, embedded finance, you have to go with some people, whatever, however you want to define your JV structure. When I say jv, because I really believe that JVs will be the main differentiators in the future and it's not like, hey, I have an ecosystem and these guys are helping me on marketing, these guys are helping me and we are marketing partners. I don't believe this is working. But JV structure, if you have the right construct with the right people, I believe that this is the killer thing. While you are doing this in this kind of a structure, how are you position your data and data embedded marketing? These are connected. It's super easy enough to use your first part data most of the time Eric. But the problem is I know many organizations, I'm not only talking about startups, even big organizations, they don't know how to use their first party data, but at the same time ambitiously, they want to use the third party data, which could be anything outside.
Perfect. It's a great ambition. Why don't you, I mean to do that they want focus on the technology and marketing tech. Does marketing tech solve all the problems or you know, have a right marketing operating model to connect this data and how you are going to use and build the services on top of it. That's a question mark, but my point is embedded finance is all about second part data and how you connected with your first part data. Second part data is mainly coming from your partners and real partners and how you are going to know, positioning yourself in the middle of all these things connected the customer lifecycle with the right services and products. This is embedded finance. I'm not talking about hyperlinks or some connections between this platform and that platform. Sister apps, these are easy, I'm sure there are tons of marketers outside, but the idea is connecting to this kind of a second party, third party, first part, data together. Just an example I'm sure you know are using some of the best challenger banks in UK right now and they have great platforms. Interface is great, which I'm also their users. And when I look at it look at them, most of probably they know which iPhone model that I'm using right now, but I have never seen something that they're offering to me directly. Hey Dennis, you are using iPhone 11, whatever and there's a new offer, iPhone 14, why don't get this from us? It's kind of a link and you do not need to go outside our app, you know, can't purchase it directly. There's also a great cash flow. I mean there's a second party data, first party data all together, totally targeted. Just an example. And we try similar things in Mox in Hong Kong with Hong Kong telecom and it's all about embedded your marketing, innovate with the right data.
Eric: So embedded marketing, if I was going to summarize that, is about collecting and storing the right data in a customer-centric way to deliver a better, more effective experience. And it sounded like part of that was also making sure you have the right partners around you and it's embedded within the organization.
Deniz: You explained much better than me.
Eric: Okay, cool. Well, I mean you explained it, I just had to try to synthesize. It's interesting, I haven't heard anybody talk about that, but it's catchy. I like it. We'll see if it catches on. So why don't we use that to springboard into obviously you don't come from a traditional marketing background, you haven't had a CMO role, but obviously you understand marketing and from an outsider's perspective, it seems like it played a big role in the success of Mox. Thinking about the brand of course where we cross paths originally, so maybe I'm a little bit biased, but as a banker or someone who comes from banking as a product guy, as the c e O of an initiative like Mox and within an organization like Standard Charter, how did you think about marketing to make it successful with Mox or any other project? If you want to talk about that?
Deniz: Yeah very nice question. Not an easy one. There's no one silver bullet to kill that. But I think there are a couple of things which we try to do that in Mox. First of all, I think that you are starting from, I mean you have to understand what are the real pains, what are the real motivations, positioning your brand properly and try to be a differentiator with your brand, brand essence. Plus with the product and the services, there's no product, there's no service or a bank can, Hey, my brand is super cool, but I don't have products. It doesn't work like that. I'm saying for example, many people, they come to me right now, Hey, we are a FinTech perfect, what are you doing? We will, but look at our entire phases. I mean this is not marketing, this is not branding. That's not enough. Because being a bank or being a strong brand, it's more than that. And the other part of it, of course when I tried to build the marketing and marketing team plus that the marketing part of mos, there were a couple of other things from day one we said everything will be 24 7 plus real time. And it was day one. I can't accept anything like, hey, this is going to be batch. And this is all about how you design your marketing system. Most of the time people, they ask me, Deniz, marketing is not the most important thing right now. You are building a bank, but from day one, maybe day zero, you have to think about how you are going, architectural part of your marketing. It's not only about offers, it's not about how you give the cash back. It's not only how you do your campaigns with a targeted phase. I'm not talking about it starting from data and what is data for you? I mean is it only a database or do you want to use all this in the first, second, third part data altogether, starting from that architecture and going forward, how you connect the data and your marketing to your products, to your services. It's not like, hey, I'm going to know, put this text to my mobile app so I can see any kind of funnels starting from onboarding to my products. Perfect, great idea. But I think everybody's trying to do this right now and shouldn't be a rocket science. But the most important thing is over the air, can you change it immediately? For example, can you deploy something if you see something in the production, which if you are seeing a couple of bottlenecks like hey, this product is not working because of this, we are losing at least 75 people or thousand people in the last three hours in this funnel, in this session. How can we change it over the air real time, deploy it, run it, test it. I mean this is marketing. I mean you have to build this kind of a stack and on top of this stack you have to put right people and this right people, they have to think out of the box and shouldn't be like Hey, we are going to use influencers really. But of course obvious everybody wants to use influencers, but these influencers, are they going to be connected with your product and how you are going to know, measure it in a different way. I'm not only talking about the connectors between, I think it's super important. This is all about how you position the marketing for your bank or your organization.
Eric: It's drawing out a bit of what you're talking about. And tell me if I'm not getting this right, but one of the conversations I have a lot, particularly with startups and scale-ups, not just within FinTech, but of course we do a lot in the FinTech world. A lot of those businesses don't have a lot of de marketing DNA in the early teams. And I think there's a lot of misperception about what marketing actually is. A lot of people think marketing is advertising. They think marketing is the billboards and the TV campaigns and the bus wraps and all that stuff. I don't know if you remember, but in the London FinTech scene maybe five, six years ago, there's a lot of conversations from the Monzos and the Revolute et cetera about we don't do marketing, they do marketing because marketing is anything that connects the product to the customer if you're thinking about it. And so I think what you're talking about of it's kind of my interpretation of it, which is how I think about it as well, is yes, there's a part of it that's the promotion, that's the communication to the market, but it's much more about how do you connect the product in the right way to the customer and their needs. Or actually I should put that the other way. How do you work backwards from the customer and their needs to connect them into the product that you're building? I want to you've talked about marketing stack a few times, so break that down. How do you think about the marketing stack? How did you go about building it at Mox? Or if you were advising a startup, how would you say, hey, here's what you should do to build your marketing stack.
Deniz: I mean, first look at your customer, look at the data. But especially if you're a startup, there's no data that's a critical part, but at least you know, need to understand your data structure and marketing stack. My other rule was if it is not, I mean measured, if it is not data or real time or performance space, that was not marketing for me and I separated them into two parts. I mean doing branding, it's a very important thing. If you're a new business and do branding, I'm not against it. But at the same time, if we are talking about real marketing, it should be measured performance based and you know, have to know, see all of these things from day one, as you said in America in the very beginning, you know, could be super busy and business in why? Because you are building tons of other things and marketing is the last thing shouldn't be. Now this is the biggest mistake. I mean you shouldn't do that. Why? I mean you should not design it from day one altogether. This doesn't mean that you know have to build it from day one. You can wait it, but at this architecturally your technology team, your product team, your marketing team should be all together. This is going to be the way we will go. But of course we can prioritize. There's a backlog certain and this backlog most of the time backlogs don't allow to do everything at the same time. But I mean design it, architect it earlier.
Eric: So before we wrap up, cause we're almost up on time at the very beginning when you were introducing yourself, you said, I'm in the trust business. What does that mean? How do you think about that and what advice would you give to people listening if that's been a key part of your success?
Deniz:I mean trust business mainly. No, I don't want to label the banking, like banking, right? Because people, they always ask me know, Denise, are you a technologist? I'm not a technologist. I understand technological as well. I'm not a marketer, I'm not a banker entirely, but I know banking in and out. The thing is I position, I try to not see myself as a trusted partner and doing a trust business for everyone wherever I am. And most of the time I'm doing FinTech businesses or financial institutions. And this is the most important thing because if you don't believe that you know are doing a trust business, if you believe that hey, technology with the help of technology, I'm going to know kill this market. I mean you have to think about the trust first. Who is going to use you? Why are they going to know, use you, your platform, and what is the trust element there that people, they will understand and they will see perceptionally, they will perceive it. It's going to be important. In Mox Bank for example, we try to focus on this most of the time. I mean give the trust first and then give the other things after that. And I think it works. And most of the time I'm using this, I know mean this is just an important thing to explain, think the experience, trust. I think that's all about having to getting to the highest hard share instead of market share. And I remember starting from our first board meeting in mos, they ask me now this, what will be our market share? When will we see break you on operational profit? I mean, very normal. I wake up every morning with the numbers, this is okay. But if you are a new brand, I mean you have to think about other things. First of all, what will be your hard share and how are you going to get that hard share? What will be the standards? What will be the rules to reach that kind of a hard share in UK or whatever the market? And if you can reach this kind of a hard share, believe me or not market share will follow. It is easy to create the market share, but if you don't have the desirability, if you don't have the right market share hard share enough skills in the bank, in the organization, in your talent pool, in your marketing team, in your product team. I don't believe that, you know can get enough market share from that market.
Eric: I love it. All right, Deniz, we are going to wrap things up. I know we only got two minutes, so three quick questions. The first is, what is one thing people should do differently after listening to this conversation?
Deniz: That's tough, Eric. I think, well, I can't say something like this, but please now I really want back to the listeners. Please look at the markets and the changing habits and motivations on the consumer side instead of just following couple of not sustainable waves or trends.
Eric: Second question, if people want to find out more about what you're up to or connect with you, we'll drop a link to platform excite in the show notes. But anything else that they should look up?
Deniz: I mean LinkedIn, my LinkedIn profile, I always know answer. Don't worry, I'm 24/7. I will answer your inquiries from that.
Eric: Great. And last question, who should we have on the show? Who would you recommend as a future guest? Because of course you are, I mean we were trading messages and I've been wanting to get you on the show for a while, but David Brier recommended when I saw him in Amsterdam that we get you on. But who would you recommend that we look up?
Eric: I mean, I, I have you because there's one I don't want to know, pass it back to Jason Bates, but I really enjoy listening to
Deniz: He, Jason, we're emailing with him as well. Yeah, Yeah, I think bait, Mr. Bates. He's doing great. Whenever he explains something, I'm getting to know a lot of articulation on my side, so that's fine. That will be lovely. And the other thing is I don't want to know, share a name, but I really want to, would love to know, listen someone from Asia directly because there are a lot of things happening there, especially in Singapore right now. There will be a couple of banks, Neve operating models. I think that will be lovely to hear their experiences as well.
Eric: Great. All right, Deniz, thank you so much. I really enjoyed this conversation. I'm sure my pleasure. Our audience did too, and it was great to see you again.
Deniz: Thank you very much.
Eric: Scratch is a production of Rival. We are a growth consultancy that builds challenger brands, strategies and capabilities to disrupt categories. If you want to learn more about us, check out we are rival.com. If you want to connect with me, email me at eric@wearerival.com or find me on LinkedIn. If you enjoyed today's show, please subscribe, share with anyone you think might enjoy it and leave us a review. Thanks for listening and see you next week.
