Starling Bank: Building a $1.5 Billion Business Against The Odds: Anne Boden

**Anne Boden** (0:00)
It was humiliating reading in the press what had happened. I got fired twice in six months. unless we could raise funding.

**Steven Bartlett** (0:07)
I was never paid.

**Anne Boden** (0:08)
There weren't going to be any jobs.

**Steven Bartlett** (0:09)
And after six months, I just thought I can't work with this person.

**Anne Boden** (0:11)
He had a tough time.

**Steven Bartlett** (0:12)
It really damaging to me and my mental health.

**Anne Boden** (0:14)
Tom didn't think I was capable.

**Steven Bartlett** (0:16)
And so I resigned.

**Anne Boden** (0:17)
Nothing was going to stop Starling succeeding. People don't start banks, and if they do start a bank, they are probably a billionaire. When I started talking to people about, I am going to start a bank. You know, I could see people thinking I was totally crazy. I hadn't raised a penny. The only money that had gone into the business was my money. And he said, no, I'm not going to give you 3 million. I'm going to give you 48 I have the privilege of running Starling. And it is a privilege, and there's lots of things going wrong, and lots of pressures on me. But it's a great privilege to have.

**Steven Bartlett** (1:03)
If you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you would have heard the episode I did with Tom Blomfield. He was the former CEO and founder of Monzo Bank, one of the big FinTech disruptor banks here in the UK. And during that episode, he also tells us the story of his time at Starling Bank, the rival bank that he co-founded with Anne Boden. And that episode is dramatic, it should be a movie. They talk about their fallout. In the episode, Tom claims that Anne fired 16 members of staff in the same day. So in this episode, Anne wanted to come in to tell her side of the story, but also to tell her story. And it's an incredible story. It's an inspiring story. It's a story that doesn't quite make sense in the fact that she's achieved so much in an industry where she was an underdog, at an age when she also admits she is an underdog, confronting stereotypes that make her an underdog. And despite the odds being stacked against her, she's built a multi-billion-dollar bank here in the UK. It really is a crazy story. One that I believe one day will be a Netflix show. Think about that. Two people came together to take on the banking world. They came together and founded a bank called Starling Bank. They had this major blow up. They separated and starts again and they both build incredibly successful multi-billion-dollar banks individually. It is one hell of a story. It twists, it turns and it inspires you. So without further ado, I'm Steven Bartlett and this is The Diary Of A CEO. I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself.
‎Humble beginnings. Do you think that's an accurate phrase to describe the start of your life?

**Anne Boden** (3:01)
‎Yeah, it was humble. My father worked in the steelworks. My father came home from work with newspapers under his arm, all greasy from, you know, sort of doing hard work. My mum worked in the local department store. And we were happy.

**Steven Bartlett** (3:21)
‎Friends and sisters?

**Anne Boden** (3:22)
‎No, only child. My parents married late. My father came back from the Second World War, found his dream wife, and they had a really, really happy marriage.

**Steven Bartlett** (3:36)
‎And school life?

**Anne Boden** (3:37)
‎I went to the local comprehensive school. It's a very, very new school. I was brought up in my grandmother's house, my parents, my grandmother, in a older house on the edge of a big, big council estate.
And in the middle of this huge council estate, they'd built this new comprehensive school. And it was not a very good school. It was very new. I was one of the first children to go to university. And to be honest, there was a bit of a stigma from coming from that area and that school.

**Steven Bartlett** (4:11)
‎And you were smart, right? Because I know you went on to do computer science and I know people that do computer science are smartasses. So you were definitely smart, right?

**Anne Boden** (4:21)
I think I did most of my studying myself. The school couldn't do a lot to help, to be honest. When I had my own levels, I think everybody was quite shocked by how well I'd done. But I did most of my study in buying, you know, buying my own textbooks and reading myself. And the house wasn't an academic home. My father left school at 14, my mother at 15 There were no books at home except holiday brochures. We lived to go on holiday. We were a very, very happy family. We had a touring caravan and we went all over Europe. But it was very unusual for a daughter of that home to be interested in studying. Why? Why I was studying or why it was unusual?