OakNorth Founder: "My exit strategy is a clean heart attack at my desk"

Joel Perlman is living the dream of many fintech founders as a co-founder of a unicorn: OakNorth. On a panel at Fintech Connect 2024, however, he refuted many of the markers of success for startups, including expanding headcounts and that coveted unicorn status. He also said that he won't be leaving OakNorth until death does them part.

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Perlman said startups should only focus on making money, and that celebrating fundraises and high valuations are "red flags." Perlman said, "there’s nothing to celebrate. If you raise money, you have to pay it back."

Other unicorn founders, like Zopa CEO Jaidev Janardana have been similarly critical of this approach, but Perlman even criticizes fintechs for celebrating headcount expansions. "Why are you going to celebrate hiring people?" He said. "It raises your cost base."

Perlman walks the walk. OakNorth's 2023 annual report revealed the fintech had just 228 employees. Starling Bank hired more than quadruple that in 2023 alone, while Revolut has upwards of 10,000 employees. That low headcount can be advantageous for its employees; OakNorth staff earn almost three times as much money as staff at Monzo: £147.9k per head in 2023.

Perlman says investors, like VC firms, categorize startups into three groups: unicorns (which they love), moderate successes (which they tolerate) and failures. He says a startup should want to be in that "category B" of moderate successes. Unicorn founders often "drink the kool aid" and "mess up their company," at the whim of investors, while moderate successes often have much healthier businesses as they lack that pressure to be in hyper-growth mode.

OakNorth is one of the most profitable unicorns in fintech, however, and Perlman doesn't want to leave his unicorn any time soon. He joked that his "exit strategy is a clean heart attack at [his] desk at OakNorth."

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