AI: Starling Bank founder wants women to drive Welsh revolution

The founder of Starling Bank has called for Wales to be at the centre of a “revolution” in artificial intelligence (AI), driven by women.

Swansea University graduate Anne Boden has returned to the city to encourage others to follow her lead.

Ms Boden said she hoped “Wales and Swansea play a huge part” in the growth of AI businesses.

She has launched a book and led a UK government taskforce to encourage women entrepreneurs, after stepping down as CEO of Starling Bank last year.

Ms Boden remains a director and shareholder at the bank, but has focussed on inspiring a new generation of female company founders.

Only around 2% of funding for start-up firms currently goes to businesses led solely by women.

“That’s really, really bad,” Ms Boden said. “There are so many women out there that have great ideas that need venture capital to grow their businesses.”

She said companies led by women could help Wales to become a focal point for businesses based around AI and deep learning.

While businesses can utilise AI to improve their own performance, new start-ups are focussing on developing AI tools that can then be sold around the world.

Fundraising for new businesses can be exhausting.

Ms Boden recalled the significant challenges she faced raising money for Starling Bank, which she successfully launched in 2014 after seeing the need for improved banking technology and a better customer experience.

“People laughed at me. It took me two years and nearly 300 meetings to raise the money,” she said.

Her age and being a woman were big barriers to success, she said.

“It was so hard because the people the other side of the table tended to be 30-year-old men, mostly with beards, actually. And I was very, very different.”

Ms Boden said people tended to invest in others that looked and sounded like themselves.

“And as a mid-fifties Welsh woman, there weren’t many mid-fifties Welsh women doing the investment.”

During her visit to Swansea University on Monday, she spoke to students from her former school, Cefn Hengoed Community School in Bon-y-Maen.

Fourteen-year-old Ffion said the barriers facing women were “something I am very aware of, and that’s something I am prepared to face when I am going into jobs”.

She added she wanted “to prove people wrong, that we can do just as well as men in these industries”.

Ms Boden was one of the “role models you can follow”, Ffion said.

“You see all these other people doing it, it inspires you to go forward and do it as well.”

Thirteen-year-old Freya said she was aware it was “much harder” for women to succeed in business.

“You have to prove yourself to more people, and show that you can do it,” she said.

Women had to overcome a gender bias “just to convince people they are good enough, as good as the men who do it as well,” Freya added.

Ms Boden said she was passionate about the potential for women-led businesses to boost the Welsh economy, and said investment in female founders was worthwhile.

“The wonderful thing is that when these women actually get the funding, they grow extraordinary businesses that are very, very successful,” she said.

Women need to “play a part” in the “reset” that’s happening in business, she said, adding the latest industrial revolution was the perfect opportunity.

“I’m from Swansea, I went to Swansea University. I did a computer science degree and built a very successful bank that changed banking technology worldwide,” she explained.

“So we can do things in Wales. We can do them in Swansea. And I very much hope that we can create new businesses in AI and deep learning that change things for the good of everyone. And that’s very, very exciting.”