shipshape.vc

shipshape.vc is a free investor search engine, enabling you to search investors and investments by topics.

CEO and Co-Founder

Cambridge Judge Business School

Guest speaker for MBA and MFin lectures on the importance of Investor Fit in the Venture Capital industry and how technologies currently being developed will make this easier.

Guest Speaker

TAINA Technology Limited

-	Produced financial model, collateral and managed prospective VC and institutional investor communications that ensured valuations between 8-10X end of year ARR, leading to term sheets
-	Delivered 60% of new revenues in 2019
-	Won key first clients in the crypto and stock-trading segments
-	Negotiated key customer contracts, ensuring the business could price higher than competitors through a superior offering
-	Established a presence in the USA as part of international expansion (pre-US incorporation)
-	Co-designed and produced a retail customer-facing web and mobile web application to early adopter clients, from a business (non-technical) perspective (B2B2C distribution model)
-	Managed the successful go-live of said app, ensuring customer and compliance needs from application were met by the Technology and Compliance teams
-	Created training manuals and processes for client customer service teams to manage exception handling
-	Solicited and fed customer feedback into roadmap, produced business cases and championed customer needs with high value generating potential
-	Managed, maintained and upsold key client relationships
-	Designed and produced marketing and sales collateral, managed website re-design
-	Responsible for prospect demonstrations in key growth segments
-	Trained new users on the platform, requiring a detailed knowledge of the system and architecture
-	Invited on the Oracle podcast to discuss TAINA, Data & Analytics
-	Represented TAINA at events and in publications, including a DIT event in Frankfurt and in L39 publications.
-	Managed market communications specific to B2B and B2B2C distribution model of the business, ensuring regular feeds of market news.
-	Co-ordinated office move
-	Trained team members in production of collateral, account management and demonstrations 
-	Key decision maker for non-technical business hires
-	Successfully applied to the Morgan Stanley Multi-Cultural Innovation Lab as part of a team

Commercial and Communications Lead

Axis Corporate

Leading European Fintech: 
- Building a business on DLT for international remittances and lending platform. Activities include economic modelling, business analysis, competitor analysis, vendor negotiations, pricing strategy, customer journey mapping and client relationship management.  
- Creating Funding applications; Strategy, Product road map, commercialisation of core technology, financial sector partnership and distribution model strategy.
Leading European Fintech:
- Producing a report on market entry strategy and product alignment. Including TAM, SAM, SOM analysis, assessing likely demand for a groundbreaking financial product.
Other:
- Advising Fintechs and FIs on application to the Alternative Remedies Capability and Innovation Fund

Senior Consultant

Leading UK Bank: 
  - Assisted Branch rationalisation and Bank digitisation Programme
  - Digital tool selection, business case writing, Fintech partnership co-ordination

UK Challenger Banks and Fintechs:
  - RBS Alternative Remedies package Capability and Innovation fund strategic advisory

Head of Fintech partnerships: 
      - Ecosystem integration and evolution (technical and process)
      - Regulated DLT e-money payments and micro-payments projects 
      - Durable Media Proof of Concept
      - Business Case and senior stakeholder buy-in

Consultant

UKIMUN

Games and events company specialising in competitive game-ification around elections and other political scenarios. 
Basic data model creation for US and UK election scenarios.

Co Founder

Public Sector Security Services  – Project Manager and Business Analyst					
Led Software as a Service based project. Including: 
- Led process design for new software development marketplace project
- Management of multiple stakeholders senior to him both inside CSC and from other towers in a SIAM model
- Supported the transition of new joiners to CSC, acting in an ambassador role to multiple new work streams
- Delivered several process analyses, delivering better value to the client

Global Insurer Next-Generation IT Operating Model - Business Analyst				
- Assisted the design of a Digital TOM to enable more rapid product and service development. 
- Ensured digital strategy cohesion; combining the CSC digital vision for a Global Insurer's Operations with the vision of the client. 
- Managed internal stakeholders in an engagement with multiple moving parts.

MiFiD II impact assessment for Global FS Institution 
- Organisational impact analysis
- Recommendations on impacted business areas

Next-Generation IT Operating Model 
- Produced impact analysis for IT TOM for future integration of big data, BI, automation and hybrid cloud capabilities 
- Produced technology maturity matrix for future integrations as part of strategic change roadmap

Achievements:
- Created CSC viewpoint on the new EU-US Data Privacy Shield Agreement (data privacy)
- Co-authored CSC's thought leadership on Next-Generation Digital Target Operating Models
- Impact Analysis of MiFID II regulations on a Global Financial Institution
- Assisting with development of a Future Target Operating Model and future strategy for a global Financial Services firm
- Software Development Marketplace for Public Sector
- PRINCE II Foundation certified

Associate Consultant

thisislanguage.com

- Led business development in the UK market and assisted with US market growth
- Assisted the design of future growth strategy following a successful funding round
- Produced a phased business growth plan based upon demographic hotspots
- Assisted agile product development feedback loop from customer interactions

Account Executive & future strategy planner (Edtech startup)

- KYC reviews of High Risk and Ultra High Risk institutional clients

Senior Associate

CfBT Education Trust

- Business process re-engineering
- Business Analysis
- Proof reading of policies and standards

(Hays Contractor) Data Analyst - Agresso Project

Sovereign Housing Association

- Communications with stakeholders throughout the group
- Housing Market Research & Review for Sovereign Living Operations Manager
- Research project for Board into possible compatibility of Islamic Finance with Social Housing
- Legal Administration of complex Shared-Ownership property sales (6 party conveyancing procedures)
- Internal and external stakeholder management

(Hays Contractor) Conveyancing co-ordinator and Market Researcher

shipshape.vc | the free investor search engine

building the free to use investment search engine at shipshape.vc

Daniel Sawko

Ship Shape

Full technology and Product ownership (delivery management, development and engineering, QA and testing, data science, DevOps, network and infrastructure)

Manage and contribute to engineering team for:
- Semantic vector search
- In-house LLM deployment (Llama)
- OpenAI LLM integration
- Own trained models
- Client-facing apps (Angular+NestJS, Jest/Karma/Supertest)
- DevOps, Infra, AWS Kubernetes, Terraform, Helmchart, GitOps, Pinecone, Redis)
- Low/no code solutions
- DB management (Postgres, Mongo, vectorDB)

Manage and contribute to product management team for:
- BA (JIRA, Confluence, Epics, Stories, Agile, Kanban)
- UX/UI design (Figma)
- Data ERD
- Test framework, test cases, test data
- Product Mgmt and governance

Completed grant projects (InnovateUK, SMART Cymru)

Co-Founder and Board Director, in addition to the above I have full commercial accountability for company performance to shareholders.

Chief Information Officer (CIO)

DOHE

Assessing via "startup diagnostic" process the status of/ risk to startups as they began a 20-week accelerator program.

Startup Assessor

NBT (Next Big Thing)

Assisting Turkish startups on: entering the UK market (business ops), and finding funding (£££ $$$)

UK Market Entry coach

Fintech and Regtech

Leadership roles in tech startups.
- 2 x exits, on management team | Series A fundraise
- C-suite (COO, CFO), Director, ‘Head of’ roles

MarketFactory (successful exit) - Director EMEA Sep 2016 - Mar 2019
- Low-latency connectivity (data centre), C++ API data transformation, FX trading
- Inherited team of 5, in EMEA and grew to 22. Reformed and restructured teams including recruitment and off-boarding.
- Grew EMEA revenue 91% to be 70% of company revenue at exit, by focusing on product delivery and tech support and thus enabling upsell.
- Company successfully exited in 2019, and I left.

Caplin Systems (successful exit) – IT delivery manager, then Global Head of Account Management Feb 2015 - Sep 2016
- Caplin was 110 staff, developing HTML5/JS front-end and integration for FX trading and sales, acquired by ION in 2015
- I started as IT Delivery Manager, then transitioned to commercial role in Acct Mgmt.. On leadership team through post-acquisition transformation
- Increased revenue by 25% through upsell
- Simplified products offered, such that we reduced headcount by 40% with no loss of clients
- I left after the post-exit transformation to join MarketFactory (above) for another exit.

TAINA - COO/CFO Regtech July 2019 - July 2020
- TAINA was a regtech startup developing software for tax file processing automation (FATCA/CRS), 20 staff.
- Closed $6.5M Series A investment round (mixed equity and convertibles), all financial and CoSec responsibilities
- Opened US subsidiary; operating since November 2019
- Redefined pricing to be modular, competitive, and profitable
- Improved Financial Control, cleaned GL, and created first budget
- created billing process and increased revenue 200%; and improved collections

R5FX (contract) - Head of Operations Mar 2019 - Jul 2019
- eFX trading venue, early-stage(EIS), four staff
- Short-term contract to improve business systems, process, governance, esp. financial control
- Discovered historical undercharging, recouped the money

Tech startups (C-Suite, Director, Head of) - 2 x exits, and Series A raise

Liquid Tango

I spent a glorious year teaching tango and discovering Buenos Aires.
My Spanish also became proficient, such that I could do business in Mexico in 2016.

Tango (dancing) Teacher

Banking/ Financial Services/ Consulting/ Advisory

Accountable for commercial and technical objectives, managing budgets ~$15M and teams of ~50 staff.
- Delivery management of a $16M Credit Risk IT rebuild following a demerger
- Pensions automation: $6m project in which I delivered all objectives for $500k (92% cost saving)
- IT Program Implementation Manager of a $120M FX improvement program
- Strategy Consultant advising Bank CEO on M&A possibilities
- Project management (IT and support ops) of an $8M FX payments solution
- IT Program Director of an insourcing Infrastructure web-hosting program
- Product selection 360 degree review system
- Project Management (Ops and IT) of Pension eCommerce program, reduced projected budget of $5M to actual of $400k
- $10M project to introduce new trading and market data engines to cope with multiple Equity trading exchanges
- Emergency turnaround of online initiatives: in one instance I arrived to find go-live was the very next day!
- Revamp of Project Methodology, reducing projects from six phases to four for State Government

Clients: Commonwealth Bank of Australia, TAL Life, E*TRADE Australia, ASX (Australian Securities Exchange), Lloyds International, Sydney Water, Westfield Digital Business Group, Vero Insurance, Promina Group, Colonial First State, Queensland Electricity Board, Westpac, Macquarie Bank

IT Delivery, IT Project Manager/ Programme Manager

- Business Ownership, sales

I completed both sales and account growth at two Capital Markets (FX Foreign Exchange) startups that were successfully acquired in 2015 and 2019 respectively.
Then in 2020 I set-up my own business with my co-founder, and won Fintech of the Year in 2021 and 2022.

- Product & Delivery - 20 years experience

Over 20 years experience in delivering client-facing solutions, from the management of managers and large teams in complex multi-national environments, to working solo in startups/ scaleups.
I’ve both inherited teams and hired whole teams from scratch, always ensuring that we are a productive, innovative, and Agile/agile workplace. And achieved miracles on a tight budget. To do this I live and breathe two things: data and people.

- Work at scale, or on new initiatives in small teams

I’ve had big budgets and teams managing 50 staff via line managers, I’ve had sole responsibility of a $16M Credit Risk transformation, I’ve been Implementation Manager for a $120M FX program; 
However I consider my biggest achievement to be taking on a $6M pensions automation initiative and achieving 92% cost-savings by understanding in detail the regulatory and product needs and engaging patiently with internal and external stakeholders. I delivered it for only $500k.

- AI, Natural Language, User Application product leader

Building on my traditional software product experience of SaaS apps with excellent UX/UI, I have spent the past four years leading an AI-powered Martech, launched in 2022, www.shipshape.vc. This is a SaaS online/ digital offering underpinned by data and AI.

Strong understanding of NLP models, use of commercial LLMs, in-house use of open source LLMs (Llama 2, t5), Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning (PEFT), MLOps including building-out fine-tuning infra to reduce inference costs e.g. using Spot instances, semantic search, VectorDBs, embeddings.


- Product & Engineering through and through - but can talk with real experience to all peers

I started my career in New Product Development and marketing, and I’ve spent much of the last decade in commercial and client-engaging roles, so have proven ability to show to peers. Helps stakeholder engagement!
And I'm not a fully-fledged software engineer, but I still enjoy keeping tech skills fresh so that I can see eye-to-eye with technical stakeholders.

taplio

The Battle

Daniel Sawko

Alistair Baillie

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