Fund Recs, Football, and Fatherhood: 2024 in 900 words
Going into 2024 there was lots to feel good about.
Hopeful Beginnings
I was optimistic that my beloved Man Utd would finally steady the ship with new, albeit minority, ownership coming in and that Erik Ten Hag would have them purring again.
Monaghan were coming off the back of a great year in 2023 were they ran the Dubs close in the All Ireland semi final. With great young talent emerging and some of the old guard remaining I dreamt that year ahead would see the Farney Army reach the promised land.
I held my perennial belief in Rory McIlroy and knew that 2024 would be the year his major drought would end.
At Fund Recs, momentum was building. We had begun the process of standing up the Go To Market team that would drive us on our growth journey and had plans afoot to add talent across the organisation. Two years of efforts were about to come to fruition with the launch our redeveloped platform in the first half of the year.
At home, my little girl had recently turned one. Thirteen months in and I had learned so much, I thought I had fatherhood cracked. I was flying high.
Ups and Downs
Man Utd, as they so often do these days, gave a brief illusion that a corner had been turned. An unbeaten run collapsed at the end February. The season dithered along until we somehow won the FA Cup in May. The less said about what has happened since the better.
Monaghan got their 2024 campaign off to a blazing start under the lights in Croke Park on January 27th. A one point victory over their 2023 victors, the all conquering Dubs. Goals galore and a new generation laying down a marker. Unfortunately, that night was the peak and the year ended in relegation.
Ah Rory. Rory, Rory, Rory. After 68 holes in Pinehurst, I’d have bet my life on a 2nd US Open and 5th major being added to his record. And then bogey, bogey, bogey, Bryson.
Things closer to home were rosier than they were in football stadiums around the UK, GAA pitches around Ireland and golf courses across the US and Europe.
Delivering in Spades
At Fund Recs, 2024 was a year of progress and accomplishment.
We added the first of many awesome colleagues (our creatively brilliant Sky Blue and Head of Marketing, Matt) to our GTM team in January and throughout 2024 my team grew from 2 to 12. We’ve built an amazing GTM team that I am proud to lead. Elsewhere there was incredible talent added across Fund Recs. All in all, we grew our headcount by 45% and have a retention rate of 97% this year.
We launched our redeveloped platform. We migrated our EMIR, SFTR and ASIC clients and onboarded all our new clients this year while navigating regulatory rewrites in Europe, Singapore and Australia. In 2025, we will complete dozens more migrations of existing clients.
Our new platform is changing the game by democratising the automation of data oversight, reconciliation and transformation for the funds industry. I can understand if you think that’s hyperbole. Get in touch and we’ll prove it. In the meantime get yourself a sneak peek here.
Our team took part in events in Dublin, London, New York, Orlando, Luxembourg, Sydney, Melbourne, Mumbai and Bangalore, delivering key notes and leading discussions on industry trends. Across many of those cities we welcomed over 1,000 clients, partners and friends to our own events, culminating in the first ‘Mind the Craic’ event in London last month.
We knew our customers were happy and we started to measure it to make it tangible. Enter CSAT. CSAT is short for Customer Satisfaction and is a way of measuring satisfaction with a business, purchase, or interaction. It’s one of the most straightforward ways to measure customer satisfaction, and it's obtained by asking a simple question, such as 'How satisfied were you with your experience?'. It is the question we asked after every support query. In 2024 our average score is 97.1%. The software average is 79%.
At Fund Recs, it is no secret that culture is important to us. We’re a high performing team and we celebrate our collective successes, no matter how big our small. We are also big fans of Slack and how it enables communication and transparency. We have #victory and #wemadethis Slack channels where team members can share their latest wins, developments and successes with the business. Both channels are very active and over the course of the year we’ve had weekly posts between them. We’ve celebrated development milestones, customer feedback and client wins. And we’ve celebrated births, engagements, marriages, educational achievements, charitable work and we’ve even had multiple marathon completed by Fund Reccers.
While Man Utd, Monaghan and Rory McIlroy didn’t reach the levels I had hoped, at Fund Recs we delivered in spades. 2024 was a great year and I am lucky to be able to play my part on an amazingly talented team.
What about my daughter and journey into fatherhood I hear you ask? Well, it turns out being a father is like being a student. And having a 2-year-old is like having a teacher. I learn something new everyday. Many things most days. Best school I ever went to.
