insideKENT Magazine Issue 45 - December 2015 | Page 166

BUSINESS #VOOM Kent business wins Pitch to Rich 2015 interview with Fourex co-founder Jeff Paterson INTERVIEW BY LISAMARIE LAMB Coming up with a good idea – or a great one in the case of Jeff Paterson and Oliver du Toit of Fourex – is often a case of realising there is a problem and solving it. And that’s exactly what these Kent-based entrepreneurs have done. All that spare holiday change, all those old coins that no one else wants, all that money that we stash away in a drawer because throwing away money is something no one ever wants to do (certainly not in a literal sense) can now be made into something useful. Jeff Paterson and Oliver du Toit From initial idea to winning Richard Branson’s Pitch to Rich scheme, Fourex is soon to be a household name. We caught up with one of its founders, Jeff Paterson, to find out what went right (and what happens next). What gave you the idea for Fourex? I think it was purely born out of the same frustration that everybody else has, because I had a whole pot of money in my drawer that nobody was interested in exchanging – I think I had about £500 worth of coins and notes just lying at home that I couldn't do anything with. So, we asked a couple of friends, and everybody we spoke to had a similar problem, and we just couldn't believe that there was nothing in the market that could to what we wanted to do. Can you explain a little about what the kiosks do and how they’re used? Basically, you have a jar of mixed money, the kiosk adds it up and pays you out in pounds, euros or dollars. So, it's not only a leftover currency machine, it's a bureau de change, which anybody from any country can use. It's currency exchange on steroids. What made you apply for the Pitch to Rich scheme? We'd knocked on a thousand doors to get finance to do it, and everybody said to go and build ten machines, put them out there, and if it works, then we'll fund you. That was no good to us then, so we crowdfunded and it just went crazy. We had 430 investors invest in us in under two weeks, and we over-funded by 250%. Sir Richard Branson, Jeff Paterson and Oliver du Toit When Pitch to Rich came up, we thought, well, you know what? If it works for the man on the street, let's just give this a bash, and we ended up winning it; it was amazing for us. When you finally went to Richard Branson's home and did your pitch, how did you feel it went? At the beginning of the pitch, Richard Branson was asked what makes a good pitch? And he said, you know, oh, a good bribe, and everybody laughed. Part of my pitch was to give all the judges a pot of money, because that was my prop. So when I gave it to him, I said, “Richard, I'm so glad you're up for a good bribe, because I've got a pot of money for you.” When he took the pot of money, he said no, I'll have the big one, and I pulled it away from him and I said, “No, Richard, come on. You've got more money than all of the other guys. You can have a small one.” As I walked away I said to myself, “Ah Jeff, you're such a *beep*,” and didn’t realise the microphone was right next to my mouth and everybody heard it. 166 Embarrassing, but it broke the ice, and all of the judges simply loved the business. What has winning Pitch to Rich enabled you to do that you couldn't do before? Where do you see the company going? We've recently closed the second round of funding, which is several million pounds. We've had interest from probably 20 countries around the world to franchise this and we haven't even got a machine up! I recently met with someone from the Middle East, who wants the rights to the whole of the Middle East. That's Saudi, UAE, Bahrain – that's a big contract for us. So the idea is that we work with partners, they'll buy the machines and we'll manage the software – that's the bigger picture for us. We want to put 10,000 machines around the world. www.fourex.co.uk