Lessons From a Serial Entrepreneur

Rishi Khosla is the CEO and Co-founder of OakNorth, the leading fintech business focused on empowering entrepreneurs.  He started his first business, Copal Partners, a financial research company, in 2002 with just $60k. Over 12 years, he and his Co-founder, Joel Perlman, scaled it to a 3,000-employee organization across 13 markets, before selling it to Moody’s Corporation (NYSE: MCO) in 2014, returning over 200x for seed investors.

They then set out to build their second business – OakNorth – which launched in September 2015, reached cash-flow break even 11 months later, and had its first full year of profitability the following year. In 2017, just two years after its launch, OakNorth closed a nine-figure funding round at a unicorn valuation. What lessons did Rishi take from founding his first business that enabled him to build a profitable unicorn in less than two years with his second business? Given the highly successful exit from his first business, why did he decide to start another businesses, especially one as hard as a bank? Where does his hunger and drive come from, and how does he stay energised and motivated about what he's doing? What are his hacks for first, second, or multi-time founders in the audience?

In this fireside chat, we'll hear from one of Britain's most successful entrepreneurs with practical learnings for founders attending.