Albany Group
In this episode, we talk to Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products.
We discuss why you should not create a product to solve a problem that doesn’t exist, when to seek harsh counsel when developing a company, what an ‘anchor client’ is and why they’re important, why getting investment can affect your ability to adapt, and when to ignore small fires.
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00:00:01 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Hi, I'm Chris, brand director at Hiatus.Design, a website design and branding studio that does incredible brands once the document, innovative, disruptive ideas for a successful company helps startups get a strong market position as quickly as possible. In this episode, we'll talk to Stuart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves as banking.
00:00:20 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Billing insurance sectors and innovative risk and total products. We discussed why we should not create a product to solve a problem that doesn't exist when sick, harsh Council when developing a company, we're getting investment can affect your ability to adapt and when to ignore those small fires.
00:00:49 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Hey, Stew, mate, it's good to catch up. You're.
00:00:50 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Looking pretty bronze there in some Gibraltar right now.
00:00:53 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Mate, how's it?
00:00:54 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Yeah, the sunshine is not something that one.
00:00:58 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Get break from the rain in the UK.
00:01:01 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Mel was make it jealous and he said when he said you were gonna do it from Gibraltar, I was like, I'm here in like like winter in northern Europe right now. It's about 5° like goes below below freezing at midnight. I was like, I'm pretty sure it's only summer like 3 weeks ago though.
00:01:13 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
And I and I, I just feel it's just been continuously raining in the UK. It hasn't stopped. It's either been drizzling rain and so it's nice to get out here and a little bit of sunshine.
00:01:24 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Ohh mate. What? Well what? What essence places to do. And I'm now. I'm presuming that before the podcast obviously took yourself for the obligatory rock run just to kind of like, you know, blow the cobwebs out of the cracks and fizz.
00:01:35 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Yeah, this I'll have it staying out.
00:01:40 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
And more what?
00:01:41 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
More than Rockport these days, mate.
00:01:46 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
That's it doesn't count unless you're like you still half cut as well. The only way you can do a rock run from from my memories.
00:01:51 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Yeah. So.
00:01:53 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Where you're basically gonna have a late night loads around there, no sleep doing what? It's really handy as well you.
00:02:01 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Use a kebab as yeah the compass just from Wendy the route up to the top. You know PTS and zipped off for like 5 minutes.
00:02:07 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Beforehand and you're like.
00:02:08 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Where where's everyone? Where's the? Where's the company?
00:02:16 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Just can I get you on to share more about the company? So that's kind of just just to kick it off. Can you tell us a bit?
00:02:22 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
More about Albany group and kind of how it can.
00:02:24 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
To be.
00:02:24 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Yeah, sure. So my business part where I am always joke, we are the longest ever start up.
00:02:31 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
You seem to be in the start of.
00:02:33 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Play still even.
00:02:35 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Sort of 15 years later, but yeah, even in basically technology driven company we specialise in providing risk management solutions to companies, particularly around compliance, automating business processes, our flagship products.
00:02:50 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Connect and that's really where to automate complex workflows, help you engage with suppliers and customers and and just really take.
00:03:00 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
All.
00:03:00 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
The administrative burden out of processing and managing customers and suppliers essentially.
00:03:08 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Yeah, yeah. So I.
00:03:08 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Guess.
00:03:09 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
It it it?
00:03:11 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
I kind of like, have you pigeonholed as like a a fintech company, but actually doing more than that, aren't you? You're more like a I was gonna say kind of like.
00:03:18 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Risk, risk banking. There's an element of Fintech in there, I guess. Like what? How do you label yourselves? You know the brand.
00:03:25 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Yeah, sure. So I.
00:03:26 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Mean we started out primarily in the insurance sector. That's really where we cut our teeth. So due diligence, due diligence process around claims and customers and then moving into.
00:03:37 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Suppliers and suppliers that engage and deliver back for the insurer to the customer and we create a piece of technology connect for that. But I'd say over the last five years, we've really kind of grown in transition and we're now in different markets. We're now in legal. So we've got some law firms that are working with around their compliance and process.
00:03:56 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Is shipping now made into shipping industry helping other tech lands with their critical supplies as well? So we're really moved across the whole sort.
00:04:06 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Of we had of.
00:04:07 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Different businesses, lines of businesses now.
00:04:11 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Fascinating. I mean, you you you want without the really interesting clients. Like we've worked with over the last last kind of five years. So because I think.
00:04:18 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Because you're you're.
00:04:20 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Like you like you say, you you're you work across a lot of different markets. So it's kind of it's more challenging I'd say to to capture your your spirit, you know the spirit of the company and absolutely and and then communicate that visually without kind of tying you to a particular market you know like like insurance like the like financial sector or like the like the other ones so it's.
00:04:40 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
And it's yeah, it's been it's been, it's been great fun kind of working on on your, on your brand over the last few months. So yeah, cheese the cheese the the the come and join us.
00:04:52 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Like I said it it must. Presumably it must make it quite hard to.
00:04:56 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
You.
00:04:57 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
To cover you like find your clients and engage with them. Like how how did, how would you say that? They usually come and find you or get to hear about you. Is it like word of mouth? Is it you, you know? Do you do a lot of events?
00:05:11 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Yeah, it's a good question. And it's been a.
00:05:16 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
It's almost been the ultimate question from a normal perspective. You know, how do we define ourselves and how do we?
00:05:22 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
You target these markets because actually, if you look at what connect.
00:05:26 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Is at you.
00:05:27 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Know not to dump it down. It's essentially a bit of Lego at the Lego bricks allows. You can't change those Albanians and but you as a user or customer can go around, configure it to do whatever you want it to do. Really from, you know, managing a customer to.
00:05:42 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Building new customers to managing the supplier to just internal teams and getting internal teams to collaborate across multiple jurisdictions. But again mindful of the regulatory framework. So it's been you know what what actually do we do and that's been a tricky 1.
00:06:00 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
But to go back to your original question.
00:06:03 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Industry specific events really we we have to attend things like that. So we've got some, some ones that we kind of.
00:06:09 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Sponsor and work with.
00:06:10 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Digital marketing has been another the one which we've been working with you with, as you know. So we're branding the website, making the website more approachable and easier to read and understand because regulation, risk management.
00:06:24 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
This these can be complex topic.
00:06:27 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
And trying to break that down to the individual user as in what is my problem? What I care about because compliance and risk can cover multiple lines within a business, so everyone would care about it, but they only care about their tiny part of it. So IT will care about IT, security, IT, risk management.
00:06:46 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
You will care about legal listing contracts. OPS will care about suppliers and customers and how they're managing and bringing them on. So what what we have to do is break those individual messages down. So we we're talking the right language to each different user and what you'll find is well across insurance and banking although.
00:07:03 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
The regulatory requirements are the same. Consumer duty GDPR. All these things are all the same. What you actually get is completely different language. Even though the outcomes and the journey to get to that outcome will be very similar.
00:07:17
Yeah.
00:07:18 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
So yeah, so word of mouth is, is is also it's huge for us. We we've had a anchor client essentially called has got. We've been working there for 10 years and these guys have really enabled us to leverage our relationship with them to go into different areas and and and build trust and work with them. So where else?
00:07:37 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Go on digital marketing campaign now and now industry specific events. Yeah, that's right.
00:07:43
Yeah.
00:07:45 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
I mean it, it is getting into like a just a leaf background to win the questions again. So like where did the name for kind of Albany group come from like what's, what's kind of what's the genesis of kind of how that came together is that was that cause obviously got some connections to the Royal Marines. I wonder if it's the the, the kind of like the the.
00:08:02 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Background is obviously you and the and the co-founder.
00:08:06
Yes.
00:08:07 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Yeah. And also myself and Adam Richards were both in 40 Commando together. We left the Marines around about the same time and did the usual Phoenix Coast protection course. We'll go and do some high risk stuff, earn some decent money, and then figure out what we were doing life later on, so that that was kind of the journey we went on.
00:08:26 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Both of us worked in Afghanistan for a little bit and various piracy projects and so on. And when I came back to the UK and started doing quite a bit.
00:08:34 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Of science work.
00:08:36 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
For intelligence company.
00:08:39 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
I was like this to Adam. Robert, you couldn't do as well. It's it's. It's quite decent work. It's interesting work. So he came over. He came back to the UK and then we decided, you know, let's set up our own little business doing this, just focused on due diligence. Some of it's basically for wealth management funds for insurance companies have got quite complex claims.
00:08:59 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
And let's use our due diligence and surveillance work to try and help them with this. And while we're doing all of this, we basically came up with a concept of a product called Aura, which stood for online research analysis. Because before we go on the ground and do surveillance, we would always go to same websites, look at the same things.
00:09:21 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
To pull the same data every time.
00:09:23 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
We're actually honest about serving knowledge in a car park, and I can. I'm saying to Adam, no, it's got to be a way to automate this. Sure that he got I'm.
00:09:31 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Sick of doing this?
00:09:32 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
And then that was when the technology journey essentially began and we then work with apparently wise we still work with today to help build out the technology proposition.
00:09:42 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
And then from there we then go into connect and then connect into connect flow and so on the world.
00:09:48 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Today, so an interesting one. As for now, I'm sure you're aware the remains were formed from that you put your foot all. There's one of their tunics causing the tunics. So and always first in the in the alphabet so that we will always get searched first. So we'll just wait for everybody. That was it and having.
00:10:08 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Navy and gold is our colours in Albany as I know.
00:10:12 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
I mean I I too. I love it. There's there's. I think in we work with a lot of tech clients and kind of you know there's an in the financial sector and actually there's there's almost like a lean towards almost hiding away your kind of the personality of the company and like you know the capture of it and actually like I think it's the other way I think think things like that you know the the story of the genesis.
00:10:31 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Is of the brand actually makes him more memorable, you know? So as as soon as I heard you know, the Albany Group, I was like, oh, that's a connection to the Royal Marines, cause obviously, the, you know, the the name is is.
00:10:43 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
You know some of this with the with the with the core.
00:10:45 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
So I was.
00:10:45 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Like I'd love you know, I'd love to, like, really take this out of, you know, really expand this and see kind of like how much of the core kind of heritage I could kind of pull it, pull it into it. And. Yeah, but it it, it makes even more sense now that.
00:10:57 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
You're saying about the colour schemes I'm like.
00:10:59 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Oh yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah.
00:11:01 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Yes.
00:11:03 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Where's the background?
00:11:04 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Just went for that really. And that's what it's time it worked out well, because now we've just been nominated for a few.
00:11:09 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Goods and as they list them out, they always now going off better order, so they're always getting hit first. And it wasn't a great strategic decision. We just went out due your normally now to imagine thought that would do all really awful 1 you know. So yeah you I think you can ever think names sometimes you can really and also as well especially from a tech perspective.
00:11:30 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
You can really go into it, but no one gets it.
00:11:32 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
They're not in the tech world, so all we do is just nice. It's simple, it's easy and you know, we're we're known within our classes like you get all the boys to do that. They will just sort it out and that.
00:11:43 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Takes us back.
00:11:44 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
To that kind of rule as ethos of a bit of integrity, and we will, if we say we'll do something, we will do it and and you know that's it and it it's served us well.
00:11:54 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Yeah, 100%, I think. I think also as well like we, we've interviewed a lot of kind of veteran businesses over the last, the last kind of few years since we've been doing this and actually one of the the main kind of things that we've we've we've been able to pull out actually is the ability to to solve problems thinking on defeat you know like to to to see see solutions where other people.
00:12:14 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Would just see complexity and you know a whole lot of hurdles. And I'm actually kind of it's it's something which it really puts us kind of veterans in this in this good position to help other businesses and especially in tech as well where where decision making can be really slow and.
00:12:30 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
You know, really, really delayed. And the catch is there's a real a real gap in in sectors for for, you know, big necks and and and the veterans to get into this. But yeah, I love I love the when you when you do see kind of like a a subtle cool veteran thing particularly, you know cool one as like it's it's something you know I've I feel quite proud of it.
00:12:50 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Is.
00:12:50 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
It's.
00:12:50 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Yeah, sure. Yeah, I mean.
00:12:51 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
A big part of MyHeritage as well, so you know.
00:12:53 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
I think it's also done us a huge favour, some not coming from a finance background because.
00:12:59
Yeah.
00:12:59 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Sometimes, if you're, if you've got a problem and the actual background on how you do things, then you're going to think in that way and we've definitely come to the fore.
00:13:10 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
And I I.
00:13:10 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Don't really like the term, but thinking outside of the box. So where? Where do you want to be? What's the end state? Where do you need to be? What the regulators saying? What does the business need?
00:13:18 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
What the business demands, what's the problem? And then just work it through that way with a fresh set of eyes. And sometimes you can come up with completely different ways of thinking and faster ways to do things, you know, and we we've solved a lot of problems for our clients that way.
00:13:33 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Yeah, 100% and and and I like it in in particular as well because it's something that's, you know the name is obviously first the alphabet, it's memorable and also it's not a an acronym. I'm sure you you probably remember your time in the military just how difficult it was to remember these stupidly long acronyms that don't.
00:13:52 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Ohh yeah.
00:13:53 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Meaning them to be really anyone and I, and I still see the same. I see a lot of the the the thinking in.
00:14:00 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Defence, security, financial sector, some tech sectors who who? The first thing is just to lean towards using an acronym for the company name and I'm like no, please no, we did it. It's.
00:14:12 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Funny you said that he did actually lean towards that. So we were first things we came it.
00:14:16 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Was, you know, alpha?
00:14:17 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
And the reason we we can't reseal alpha is obviously in the military. That's the call.
00:14:20 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Line for the person that supports the boss. So the boss goes to 0 after and he hopes you really decision making, which was kind of a concept as what we're what we're gonna arm you with the right and.
00:14:29 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Agents to make real risk based decisions and then someone colleges and said to us, you know, life is a term for money in the finance world. So you're just basically saying got no money and we're OK. So so we went.
00:14:51
Yeah.
00:14:55 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
But I don't know.
00:14:55 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
I have like.
00:14:56 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Obviously the no, not not these finance guys themselves. We were just thinking about this is a brilliant name. You know, we're gonna give all our clients all the intelligence they need to make this face decisions. We're 0A and then it.
00:15:06 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Was like that was a rubbish idea. Well.
00:15:09 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Well, I mean it's it's it's it's basically the the brand.
00:15:12 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Equivalent of like checking your back blast is. It's basically like you know what? What's what's what does this mean to other people? You know what's gonna be knock on effects of choosing this, this decision, you know? Is it gonna, like blast the person behind us? And actually, you know, send the wrong signals to act to enter the market, but they are that's.
00:15:14 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:15:31 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
I I hope that ends up in that if I kept.
00:15:33 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
My podcast because it was brilliant.
00:15:34 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Yeah, I mean we, we we often joke, you know we for every sort of 10 decisions made, probably four of them are really, really good ones. 6 don't work out that great and you know you've gotta try to test, adjust or reevaluate them. And so yeah, that was that was one of those.
00:15:53 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
That wasn't a great idea.
00:15:56 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Yeah, I mean, it does get me into my next question like I guess, how is your, how's your brand adapter just kind of standing out and changing marketplaces like the last 15 years have seen, you know, rise of social media, LinkedIn really taking off you like you know YouTube but also conventional marketing, there's also change.
00:16:16 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
As well, you know from from print to mortals digital, you know websites kind of out. How's how's Albany? Kind of said that test.
00:16:25 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
It's a really it's a really interesting conversation because in those early days is you, you are everything right in a business. So Adam and I would be would be marketing accounts, graphic designers, contractors, we would be everything. And I'd say it's only really been the last.
00:16:44 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Probably 7 or so years that we've been able to start looking at marketing, having a proper marketing budget, being able to utilise marketing firms to get us into industry specific stuff. We do the website with you guys, we've now got fantastic Martin Girl on board. Now that's pushing out all our content for.
00:17:02 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Us and wearing our.
00:17:04 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Folks, and it's just it does work. It it really does work, but it is it takes a long time to see the reward of it. It's not something you get straight away. It is something that you have to continually revisit. So you can't just do your website, do your branding. That's you. It's something that.
00:17:24 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Needs to be adapting all the time, constantly changing.
00:17:28 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
And and so it's something that's that's on our high on our agenda now. So that's a big focus of ours. You know, economic conditions are changing all the time. Who's a customer wasn't a customer yesterday, could be tomorrow. You don't know. You don't don't know how their business has been impacted by regulation and the economic economic environment.
00:17:48 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
More people are now.
00:17:49 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Warming up to the ideas of technology instead of additional spend on manpower. So it's it's hugely important to us to be seen to be commenting on these right things and in the right places.
00:18:01 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Yeah, yeah, 100% it's.
00:18:03 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
That that kind.
00:18:03 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Of like I think is when the conversations we have got often actually is like how brands evolve because it's they they never really stay the same over over time apart from you know a few brands I can think of like I think more the Tom's had the same logo for like 100 years or something like that. As you know even if you look at like the Nike and Google.
00:18:18
Yeah.
00:18:21 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
And Pringles, another one that stands out. They've all kind of had to come slowly up their their logos and their branding and the messaging to to basically fit with the times because it's.
00:18:30 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Let's say times change and so brands have to kind of change to to fit them as well and and stand out rather than kind of like blending into them so.
00:18:38 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
I mean we.
00:18:39 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
We started out as ordinary risk, so we started out as ordinary risk because this takes us.
00:18:44 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Back to our.
00:18:45 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Our physical surveillance days, and we had surveillance teams, and we're doing security projects and and due diligence and so on.
00:18:52 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
And then we were part of a much larger group at the time, which was a great move at the time, but things didn't quite work out. So we decided to do a management buyout really and transition back to, you know, an entity which was a really good learning curve for us that going through that whole management process and and then we decided to rerun this organic group and within a week group we got all new.
00:19:12 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Risk and we've got all the technologies and we've got all the analytics. Now the three companies and they will operate under the one banned.
00:19:18 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Which is great. There will be this side of stuff is pretty much legacy stuff that we service a couple of small clients now, but not much at all. And the ordinary technology and all the analytics. So the the data collection that we're doing now through our platform and the technology business is our key focus, our key drivers.
00:19:38
Yeah.
00:19:39 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
So yeah.
00:19:41 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
We we can have like a very similar story, but almost in reverse as and we we went 2 two boards you know, just just as hiatus and then we're like actually no one knows what that that means. You know height is it's it's it's too abstract. So we're like saying OK we now have to got I just design highest media highest digital and actually kind of make it a bit more obvious as to what they were.
00:19:58 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Yeah.
00:20:00 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Because it was it just it was too hard for people to say. Well, what do?
00:20:04 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
You.
00:20:04 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Do you know?
00:20:05 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Yeah.
00:20:05 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
We're like.
00:20:07 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Basically, anything creative.
00:20:08
Yes.
00:20:08 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Yeah.
00:20:10 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Yeah, can fits. It makes it a lot easier to communicate when you kind of put it into some, some some pots, but not not making those pots too specific like you say, which can then hold you to running to ransom with, you know, risk or technology or.
00:20:22 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Yeah.
00:20:22 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
The.
00:20:23 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
You know the the.
00:20:24 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Other it's we we also didn't want to contaminate the businesses because we're aware that we are.
00:20:29 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Our core customer base now generally a regular.
00:20:32 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Related, they've got to radiator reporting to do and and we as they've provided to them have a duty to.
00:20:39 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Be you know.
00:20:41 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Almost. We run ourselves as if we're regulated and we're not. We don't need to be, but we kind of hold ourselves to those same moral standards. Our customer base, because we feel that if that's the way they've got to be, then we should be mirroring their operations.
00:20:54 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
And by having a security risk side of the business all under one umbrella, potentially it could have been damaging across it. So that's all going to wind that side down and just become technology driven.
00:21:05 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah, that's that's a great lesson as well for for kind of other people who are thinking about kind of such our own businesses. You know, those those startups who think the semi think two or three steps down the line, but it it does remind me of a a podcast we did. I think about six months ago with the Redeployable guys who who kind of said.
00:21:25 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
You start off with one thing you know. Maybe you're an app, maybe you're a.
00:21:30 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
I don't know website and they said and then two or three years online, you found it. Actually a bank. You know you've.
00:21:34 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
You've walked over those few.
00:21:35 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Yes.
00:21:36 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Years and you become a completely different entity to what yourself to be. So I think it's it's a good lesson to kind of definitely get up to startups is, you know, thinking, thinking kind of, you know, up to five years out, I guess.
00:21:39
Yeah.
00:21:47 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
When you start to, yeah.
00:21:49 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
And that's really true. And it's an interesting one for us as well because some of the stuff we're looking at now in the future definitely relies on the data that we're collecting. You know, every second.
00:21:57 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Of every day.
00:21:58 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
And we are we collect everything now from sanctions data to company data, all a whole new our regulatory data we're capturing.
00:22:08 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Contracts, contract clauses. We're capturing KPI's, performance indicators, audit, audit reports, audit results, compliance workflows. We're we're capturing a lot of stuff that's really quite interesting that we're looking at being able to anonymise and then push back into the marketplace to enable quicker onboarding faster.
00:22:28 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Intelligence, all those kind of things. So yeah, the data is.
00:22:32 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Big.
00:22:33 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
And like that, adaptability to change is is massive.
00:22:37 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Yeah. So it almost kind of, I guess there's always like a visual representation here, like being like extra like you're an extra engine, an extra kind of like, like, you know, excellent of horsepower behind the business, actually helps them get go faster and actually further as well. So everything is visible.
00:22:53 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
And there's still a lot.
00:22:58 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
It is like.
00:22:59 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Business I'm going to store.
00:23:02 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Yeah.
00:23:10 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
This is.
00:23:10 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
The business.
00:23:12 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Yeah.
00:23:13 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
I mean, yeah, I think it's, you know the the as I'll say like, you know, cognitive horsepower or what's the weather can be the variation of horsepower. But yeah, I think I think there's there's definitely like a something in maybe F1 that kind of I can see fits with Albany Group pretty well and you can say we're you know with the with the.
00:23:31 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Mechanics that that tweak, you know give you that extra horsepower your business needs.
00:23:35 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:23:36 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Anyway, that's the. Yeah, that's that's your thing.
00:23:44 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Something else? Some pictures of F1 cars now.
00:23:49 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
UM.
00:23:51 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
So it does get me into the next question. So now how how's the the changing business landscape pushed Albany to experiment with new approaches to raise its profile. Like is there something you tried when you when you first started?
00:24:03 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
To that you.
00:24:05 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Realised didn't work and you now doing something entirely different or what kind of what? What experiments you tried, we've done.
00:24:11 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
And work.
00:24:13 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
There's lots of things we we do differently now, but I mean the landscape, especially the digital environment has changed so much, hasn't over the last three years, 5 means 10 years. You can't even recognise it, so.
00:24:21
Very.
00:24:24 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Podcasts are really big for us now. Webinars, interactive sessions with clients. So like Q&A's we do like like host roundtables with them, things like that. And we are working at the moment on a product pool to connect community. So essentially all connect users can get together and we're going to do.
00:24:44 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Sort of. Probably buy only feedback sessions where we're going to host them at a venue in London and we get them all in. We're gonna talk about what all is doing, what our updates are, what to look forward to and then gather feedbacks if things they like don't like where we can improve. Any ideas, any problems, those kind of things.
00:25:02 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
And found that those kind of personal.
00:25:05 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Sessions work really, really well for us, far better than kind of cold calling or sending emails like kind of stuff.
00:25:13
You know.
00:25:13 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Yeah, it's almost like community driven marketing away is it? If you can get bring, bring people together like a a call venue or something where actually they they want to be in the 1st place and.
00:25:17
Yeah.
00:25:25 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
They they can give you give you that feedback, the user experience, the, the, the kind of like the user interface.
00:25:32 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Challenges and then actually also got the the Russell's getting the benefit of actually engaging with other people who are in the same or different or or parallel communities and and figuring out how they're doing it as well. So there's there's kind of like a 2224 approach to that. So yeah that's that's.
00:25:42 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Yeah.
00:25:47 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Good. We've also got some some really strong strategic partnerships now. So with the likes of.
00:25:53 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Davies group, so PwC DAC Beachcroft, which is a law firm, we work.
00:25:58 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
And these relationships have enabled us to do round tables within their client base as well. So we can look to give them a value. I think those they've been you know quite game changing force really in terms of exposure.
00:26:12 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Yeah, yeah. Fascinating.
00:26:15 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
All right, well.
00:26:17 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
I can't wait to see the photos of the these these kind of community events.
00:26:22 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
But on the website and on the on the the LinkedIn page because yeah, we know you guys are a lot of people say like go with the bike shed in in Old Street, but it's like.
00:26:31 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
I mean there.
00:26:32 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
There's, there's been some great events I've been to in in the arches there, which I think would be, yeah.
00:26:41 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
All right.
00:26:43 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
I've I've I've been the.
00:26:44 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Being the cameras long, I literally just say she's she's invented all of you as well.
00:26:49
So.
00:26:51 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
And if you don't mind you ask the next question. So do you see the business launching any new products or services over the next the next like three to five years that you mind sharing with us and there's no pressure to you know to do so if you want to?
00:27:05 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Well, if you're prepared to talk about it, then it's it's really too late to catch up. So look, we're we're always adapting to to market conditions and regulatory needs and clients needs and economic conditions and so on.
00:27:21 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
And we have to consistently look at our road map. We have to look at consistently being able to expand our our capabilities. That is what will keep connect ahead of our competition.
00:27:33 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
And and I obviously great buzzword at the minute we're playing with a couple of tools there that that will genuinely be enable users to interact with, CONNECT and ask connect questions in real time around their data and what their data is telling them which is going to be really powerful. We are just releasing.
00:27:53 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
We've seen on on LinkedIn, we've just released a table building now we've nicknamed.
00:27:57 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
It we called it pulse.
00:27:59 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
As in kind of like the heartbeat of connect and this table builder, it allows users to completely configure all their own Q&A, allocate with scores to rate schools, set all sorts of different permissions and levels with it, which means they don't need to keep coming back to us as a tech firm, it's very much self-service.
00:28:17 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
And that can be.
00:28:19 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Define right down to the user as well, so really quite a powerful tool.
00:28:23 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Yeah, well, incredible. I love the just how much every time we we talk, how much new kind of products and services you guys are bringing out because it's I think like like you say like AI has become like a very big buzzword and you know for a long time everyone was saying it's gonna kill. It's gonna kill the creative industry. But actually the the creative industry, you know from my side.
00:28:43 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
She's just seeing, actually, we we've found better ways to use it at all and pass on those savings to our customers like I know we're not the only people you know, we'll be using it, you know, to actually to, to push us in the right direction faster and and some people were just actually enlisting it and.
00:28:48 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Yeah.
00:28:57 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
And just finding it, they're getting steam. All of it. So yeah, it's good.
00:29:00 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
It's it's funny really, because if I was to go back, probably even only 5-6 years ago, there was a real reluctance within compliance and audit teams to embrace technology. They had a very traditional way of doing things. They were comfortable with that.
00:29:19 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
I think as.
00:29:21 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Marketing conditions have changed as businesses grow. They see a need that actually compliance instead of it being a business stopper, can actually if we get it right, be a business enabler so it can enable people to engage faster. And we've seen a huge shift now towards our technology, which automates a lot of the data collection.
00:29:41 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
So what happens is is you've got all these people that are working in these companies that are bogged down in admin.
00:29:48 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
And what it's.
00:29:48 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Actually doing is is it's not getting.
00:29:50 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
For them, it's actually freeing them up to do their job properly, which is make risk based decisions and enable the business to grow and and we've we've definitely seen a change in mindsets there where before there was reluctance technology, but now they're definitely embracing it, especially insurance sector insurers generally sometimes.
00:30:09 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Get a bit bad.
00:30:10 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Yes, which I think is unfair because all of the guys we've worked with over the years have been very innovative, very forward thinking very on top of the regulation and actually you get a lot of tech firms that go into the market and tries to tell them what.
00:30:25 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
To do and the reality is they know what to do and they're very, very good at it. What we she actually doing it as technologists, as it were, is just helping them to do it better and faster and smarter, but not telling them because they're great. So the the compliance teams you work with, you know, the customer journeys they put together for their customers and where they capture that dating.
00:30:47 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
The way they manage their claims operations, the way they manage their supplier base on paper, it's on point. It's just that they could do a bit of automation to speed it up.
00:30:58
Yeah, yeah.
00:30:59 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
And that's that's kind of kind of our job really just to assist them to do that smarter.
00:31:04 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Yeah. Well, I think I think like.
00:31:07 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
People would, I think anyone would be happy just to get rid of some of those those routine tasks and that that great work, I think 2:00.
00:31:13
Yeah.
00:31:13 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Hours, you know that.
00:31:14 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Doesn't doesn't necessarily show any any tangible physical results, but actually takes a lot of time and effort and and that that thinking ability so.
00:31:23 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
See, I can definitely.
00:31:23 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
See if you talk to the other supplier. Relationships are basically especially in regulatory framework question and answer evidence. So are you this do you have that, do you compare with this do you do that?
00:31:25 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Benefits.
00:31:35 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Yes. Now, yes, now, now evidence it to me, please. And then I want to be able to demonstrate to regulator, but I can order all of this and I can prove it, you know.
00:31:43 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
And and it's.
00:31:44 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Putting up his technology to do that will really speeds all that kind.
00:31:47 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Of stuff up.
00:31:48 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Because otherwise it's just spreadsheets and emails, right? Which is crazy. And the thing that we've really noticed the most is.
00:31:55 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Our customers have moved in.
00:31:56 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
To connect and away from spreadsheets and emails, they're discovering so much in the data.
00:32:01 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Now.
00:32:02 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
That we're actually now can probably impact the front end so they can start looking at actually we could move into these lines of business. We could start challenging in those areas because we've got a supplier base here now to manage it. And so it's it's really quite interesting.
00:32:17 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Where reviewing it all and using it.
00:32:21 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
I'll tell you what you really got me thinking around now. Like you guys definitely like the pit crew that helps F1 teams race faster, faster. Now I'm like I can't shake that that visual idea now I'm.
00:32:32 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Now thinking like you.
00:32:33 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Know the we're the ones who give the the the extra horsepower to the the business into the, to the car.
00:32:39 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
So I think.
00:32:40 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
I I've dropped into an e-mail on notice, went out and just just saying I think this this is a a visual.
00:32:46
Hmm.
00:32:47 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
You know a visual representation of maybe Albany and like, over the next few years, it might be useful to to know. So yeah.
00:32:52 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Yeah, sure. I mean you, you and I always look and they would work on the slide, right, which shows that you know X amount supplies X amount customers. If you deploy connect, this is your time saving, this is your cost saving. These are these are tangible metrics we can now pull out and give to a potential customer or a customer.
00:33:12 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
So yeah, good stuff.
00:33:16 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
So it is going to my my second last question.
00:33:19 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
What?
00:33:20 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
What do you see? The main challenges are to startups and kind of stuff that's trying to grow and stand out in the current current economic climate. You know, if you guys started the game today, what, what kind of challenges do you think?
00:33:31 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
You'd be facing right now.
00:33:34 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Trust is a big warning. Also crowded market space. I mean there's.
00:33:38 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Technology of everything now, right?
00:33:40 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
You can get. You can now get technology to make technology better. It it it's it's it's huge. You know, I think.
00:33:49 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
I think some of the challenges now is building those relationships will be quite difficult. I think without having some kind of background or probably I think the ability to remain agile is also quite difficult now because the cost to deliver is is quite high and what is expected is.
00:34:08 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
You know what customers now expect back to be done for what they're spending is is high.
00:34:16 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
There's a million. There's a million problems out there that these guys could could look to fix, but I think no ones really is, is that, that building, that confidence in your brand, in your ability, getting your network to trust you getting that anchor client, that kind of thing really that that's where I see them having problems now. We were quite lucky with regulation was really coming to the fore.
00:34:37 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
It's.
00:34:37 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Then we kind of jumped off the back of that whole regulatory theme to to build ourselves out. We're very fortunate to get the anchor client which was his Cox and then we could really build our company and brand off the back of that and and the the HISCOCKS team were really quite supportive of that as well. They were very open to introducing us to their customers.
00:34:57 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
To their clients and so on. So that for me, I think is, I think it's a must for anybody that's kind of starting up now. If you're in that business to business world.
00:35:08 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Yeah, yeah, but yes, you probably just just kind of brings us back around to that previous point, doesn't it? That's that you always have to say. So agile in the early days that actually you're you're prepared to change very quickly with the the market needs and demand because they say you could, you could invent a piece of technology that actually doesn't have any market.
00:35:22 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Yeah.
00:35:27 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Action.
00:35:28 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
And then have to pivot pivot a lot quicker. But you know like I think like to that there's.
00:35:34 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
A. There's a a real.
00:35:35 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
You you guys noticed the opportunities with the regulation and the compliance and things actually like you know we we we make solutions that can solve this. Yeah. Yeah. It's a great great example for kind of other other startups to to follow.
00:35:48 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Sorry, 4 startups to follow.
00:35:50 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
And and and I would say.
00:35:52 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Jason.
00:35:52 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Don't. Don't be so ready to your idea as well, because it it will change a million times for your your your invoicing, you know. Don't don't.
00:36:00 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Their flight change.
00:36:02 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Yeah. Yeah. Well, that, that, that's one to my, my final question actually, I was gonna say any any words of advice for startups is starting in the current climate.
00:36:11 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Yeah. So firstly off off the back of this, if any veterans ever get in touch with me, I'll help them the best I can let it go or.
00:36:21 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Marines or Navy or whatever.
00:36:22 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
If if they they contact us and come through you guys or whoever, I'll help them out and and give them their advice. But we do get a lot of people that approach.
00:36:31 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
As a for capital to or for technology support or to help them with their ideas and and the key things that I'd say.
00:36:41 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
And it's something that we've learned over the years. It's you, you. You've got to make sure that you're not creating a piece of technology to solve a problem that doesn't exist because so many times we've seen our from a technology perspective, it's a fantastic idea.
00:37:00 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
But.
00:37:00 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
On a customer operation perspective, it's just not that big a deal and that really is something that startups need to focus on. So does the actual need for this piece of technology really exist or are your family that's so ready to your idea that you're creating a niche for it?
00:37:21 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Without there being one.
00:37:23 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Seek harsh council, so go to people in those areas, in those markets and say to them, do you think it's a good idea if they're saying no and they're consistently saying no, then listen to them. Don't keep forging on. You know, there is a bit of kind of belligerence. We do have to keep going. But what I mean is really look at your idea.
00:37:42 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
And make sure you're not just.
00:37:44 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Trying to cure a problem with something, it doesn't really exist, but it looks like everyone would say.
00:37:49 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Just don't be so hasty to raise. Raising money isn't always the way forward. Exhaust every opportunity you come first. So we're very fortunate in Albany. We've we've only taken a very turn in our small shareholders that are not that family and friends not.
00:38:10 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Fund and the reason we're doing that, the reason I'd say that is because when you do take in that money, it comes with obligations and you will lose your.
00:38:21 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Flexibility to adapt to a degree. And so I'd always say there's nothing wrong with taking money, but make sure it's the right money.
00:38:29 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
And make sure that you're not going to be pigeonholed into something because what you can actually see is just slowly overtime. The sound is getting so diluted the company accumulating more and more debt.
00:38:41 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
And then eventually you'll see it. Within times you'll see competitors of ours now that have have gone because they had a big raise.
00:38:49 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
15 million, 20 million or whatever. And now they're so leveraging debt they can't operate all the capital funds are saying we want delivery, deliver, deliver, deliver and the management of choked. So just really think about those kind of things and and seek some good counsel around it get some good people around you to that have been through those journeys so getting a product into the market.
00:39:10 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Testing the market, raising capital, looking at the advantages and disadvantages of capital, they're they're probably more two more 2 main points really for any start up.
00:39:20 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
You know, there's a brilliant piece of advice. It it's it wasn't it wasn't a really good podcast anyway, but put it really quite eloquently in that they said, well, like, don't try and put up small fires. Was this, you know, and that's kind of like what you're saying about. The first one is actually seek, you know, seeking market confirmation that you're you're fixing the right problem.
00:39:42 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Is it? It is put a sense.
00:39:44 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
But you know, if it's a lot of businesses will let those small fires burn in the background because it's not important, not big fires are not important fires. Yeah, there's such a such a good way of putting it. And like, you just brought out them as well as, like, making sure that you're not trying to solve a problem or, you know, quench a fire that doesn't actually bother anymore or or have any need to be.
00:40:05 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
To be solved. Yeah. Which is, you know, and and I'm. I'm the same mindset when it comes to investment as well. I'd like I'd much rather bootstrap the hell out of our business and an idea, you know, get that market confirmation and actually just try and throw, you know, have a lot of kind of idea and and push behind something which may not be getting.
00:40:06
Yeah.
00:40:25 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
It may not be the right problem to solve, so yeah they are.
00:40:28 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Wish I had a second to.
00:40:29 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Hear from somebody else. I I also really believe as well bootstrapped founders and are make way Better Business leaders at a later date when they do eventually race because they they understand the power of the pound and they're they're very full where you put it out and now bootstrap the hell out of all me to get it where it is today.
00:40:48 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
The technology that's been built off projects in our own reinvestment back into it continually, so salary sacrifice.
00:40:54
Yeah.
00:40:55 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Mortgages, whatever we have to do to keep.
00:40:57 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Going to get.
00:40:57 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
There. And So what it does is it makes you way grounded because you're always looking at your spend.
00:41:02 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
You know and and we've seen lots of towns businesses that have been involved with that have a big influx of capital and the money just disappears slowly just disappears, you know, into expensive advisory boards into events that don't really deliver real value and and what it does is it helps you take a step back and go if we're going to run this marketing campaign.
00:41:23 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
What is the outcome and what do you expect for that cost and and it really makes you question this and and and look after the pound note, which is hugely important for every founder. Really, really important because without any cash they're gonna be straight away.
00:41:35
It's.
00:41:37 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Yeah, 100%. Yeah, like same mindset as as a they they they kind of teach you about kind of like fixing the leaky bucket before you try and scale it and and again on the you know the same mindset or rather rather get that that bucket without any holes and then try and make it a massive bucket that's.
00:41:54 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Full of holes. Yeah, so very brilliant.
00:41:55 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
And.
00:41:57 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Another thing is what I would say is is find time for yourself because especially come from the military, you get into a mindset I should be working 18 hours a day, seven days a week and I've gotta do this and and you almost grind yourself into a hole.
00:42:10 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
But actually, you know, by taking a morning off, just go and look the dog with dish and fish and bring your bike or whatever go to driving range or just sit home. Dinner thing. Actually sometimes that's when you get your best thinking you know to so allocate time in your diary to take time away from it all because the pressures are gonna come and they're gonna come clicking.
00:42:30 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Rest and they do take a toll, both physically and mentally on you as you go through the journey, so make sure you put those that timing to look after yourself for it all, because you'll be better for it. And so all the business.
00:42:42 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
Yeah. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, that that, that that classic saying for the military, you know, it's a it's a a marathon, not a Sprint. Just seems to ring.
00:42:49 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
True, but I've seen veterans, you know, especially for etcetera. They pull insights into the ground and they and trains at all hours and going everywhere. And it's kind of like.
00:43:03 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Take a step back is. Is it necessary? Really. But you know, because you're willingly and wanting. It isn't gonna necessarily make it happen that you've gotta put a plan and you gotta look after yourself to get there and and that. That's.
00:43:18 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
100% Maybe there's David. There's a wide words to it to in the podcast on that's that's been finally fantastic. Cheers for cheers for sharing your your your inspiring journey your the companies inspiring story as well because I I I generally think it it's been great working with you guys and being able to document it in the.
00:43:37 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
On the podcast on the You know, on the on the, on the website, you know is it.
00:43:40 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
It's pretty, yeah.
00:43:42 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
No, thank you. Thank you very much. And also thanks for the work you've done because you know it's lovely to be able to lift the headache off my desk and put it on someone elses.
00:43:50 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
And now it's gonna be, you know.
00:43:53 Stewart Griffiths, co-founder of Albany Group, a tech company that proudly serves the banking, legal and insurance sectors with innovative risk and intelligence products
Again, this goes back to building those networks right of trusted people. So thanks again, I really appreciate it. Fantastic job.
00:44:01 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus.Design, website design and brand studio
It's really great chatting with you and hearing how he built Albany Group and developed this incredible software products. You want to hear more about the company. You can find the link to the website and the shows below and we'll see you next time.
