Video: Bambu Moves on to 2nd Round of Jumpstarter With Robo-Advisor

Andrew Work speaks to Ned Phillips, CEO and Co-Founder of Bambu at the Jumpstarter competition sponsored by Alibaba Entrepreneurs Fund, Cyberport and the Hong Kong Science and Technology Park.

Ned was a finalist and will compete for the grand prize on November 21 – up to USD $1 million from the Alibaba Investment Fund.

Transcript:

NEXCHANGE: Hi I’m Andrew Work from NexChange. We’re here at the Jumpstarter competition where companies are pitching and one of them will eventually win up to a million US dollars. Today at Cyberport FinTech companies are pitching and I have someone here that is well-known to the NexChange community.

He is Ned Phillips the CEO and founder of Bambu.

Ned, during the competition today, what did you present about what you’re doing and what’s new with the company? The NexChange community will know you. You’ve had some great announcements about the development of companies, some big deals you’ve closed but what what can you tell us about what was happening today?

Ned Phillips: The main thing here was that we found that the pitch was told: Show what you’ve done. So we wanted to show that we’ve got clients, we wanted to show that we have revenue and they were really clear. Show us what you’ve done; show us how you can contribute to Hong Kong; and show us what innovation you’ll do. So we showed them the clients; we showed them how we’re growing in Hong Kong and we showed that, you know, as I mentioned I have an eighty-year-old dad who’s more innovative than most people who are half his age.

We’re going to use his innovation to help build the company.

NEXCHANGE: You guys are providing robo-advisor solutions, you’re in the financial institutions. Like you said your old man was one of the originals in AI. What’s the latest thing that’s going on in Bambu in terms of what you’re doing with robo-advisors and what you’re finding now that you’re actually embedded in clients and your product is having actual interaction with the real world and real customers.

Ned: What we found is that banks need multiple robos so you don’t turn up and say, “Oh here’s the robo.” It’s different for every segment, so we started to build with one client. We’re working in the private banking, and the retail guys went “Hey, can you build one for us?” and then the [—] guys said, “Hey can you build one for us?” and then a telco company came to us and said, “Hey, we want to do wealth too!”

What we’re finding is that you need a different solution. Same building blocks, but different solution. There’s no Robo [where] one size fits all. That’s what we want.

NEXCHANGE: So you get the Bambu beachhead robo in the door and then see

what happens after that.