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Keeping up the digital dialogue
The digital assets community encompasses a huge range of organisations, from innovative tech firms to financial services companies and investors in both crypto assets and companies. Ensuring an ongoing and lively dialogue with the industry’s many stakeholders is essential, say BCB Group’s Tim Renew and Sam Shrager.
T he crypto sector loves its conferences. From Paris Blockchain Week, Digital Assets Summit in New York and Money 20/20 in Amsterdam, professionals operating in this burgeoning sector recognise the need to share insights, create new partnerships, win new clients and attract new investment. As with any sector that is growing at high speed in a fast-changing environment, communication in all its forms is key. Tim Renew, Deputy Chief Executive at BCB Group, has worked on scaleups and a range of companies and puts communication high on his list of priorities. “The audience we need to communicate with is very wide,” says Renew. “Obviously we need to keep clients informed of what we are doing, how we might be able to help them, and new products coming out. At the same time, we are communicating with the rest of our industry. “A lot of what is going on in crypto and payments is about partnerships with other organisations in fintech or tradfi and we need to make sure they know who we are and what we can offer.” On top of clients and operational partners, there are investors. BCB completed its series A fundraising in 2022, raising USD60 million. At the time this was the largest sum raised by any UK blockchain company. Keeping investors fully informed and up to date is another vital communications task. "Existing investors have put their confidence in us and we have to keep them fully informed on the business,” says Renew. “Right now we are in a new scale-up phase and looking
towards our next round of financing. So, we need to be thinking about prospective investors too.” Speaking from experience, Renew outlines how securing investment for growth is about more than just getting the money. “It’s about a relationship with investors,” he says. “It’s vitally important that they understand our strategy and our expectations and that those are aligned with theirs.” Future fundraising will involve a different communications approach from that in 2022, when the BCB Group brand was less well-established, says Sam Shrager, BCB Group’s Chief Marketing Officer. “Back then, on the comms side, we explored partnerships with traditional finance titles, like Bloomberg for example, and it worked well in positioning us as a serious player,” says Shrager. The group is in a very different position this time. “We have established ourselves as an important player in the payments space – not least because of our partnerships with major banks and global leaders in digital assets,” she says. “Building our brand is still a strategic objective, but among those familiar with the digital assets market our name is much better known. So future fundraising will be much more about tactical execution.”
just delegates from a tech and development background, the wider financial community are coming too; while Money20/20 is a remarkable mixture of leading people from across finance and fintech. “All events are seeing an ever- widening geographical reach with delegates flying in from around the world.” The live events that pepper the crypto calendar are an opportunity to meet clients, partners, and investors, says Shrager. “Being face to face with our target market, allows us to get people’s feedback on what they need. Now, when we have big objectives for growth, it’s more important than ever that we put a high value on client opinions and take the time to evaluate what they need from us.” BCB Group is using these events to talk to banking partners. “It helps ensure relationships are solid and that all our key stakeholders are aware of where we are going from a regulatory perspective,” says Shrager. “With that in mind we try to get as many of our senior team on the ground at events whether that’s our Chief Executive Oliver Tonkin, his deputy Tim Renew as well as our sales and product team. “Juggling the whole team can be quite a challenge at events, but at a very basic level I have to make sure the senior leadership team is always in the right place at the right time and meeting the right people.”
Real-world events are invaluable Real-world events, such as
Money20/20, are an essential feature of the crypto sector, according to Shrager. “Every year the major events are getting better,” she says. “The mix of people is also changing. The highly crypto-focussed events like Paris Blockchain are attracting more than
Regulation is never far from client conversations
BCB Group has established a reputation as a ‘regulation first’ company securing authorisation as an Electronic Money Institution in France and aligning its
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