The London fintech industry is pretty close-knit, full of strong personalities and, at times, fiercely competitive.
Within this context it is quite common for employees and sometimes even founders to swap sides.
The latest such move sees Andr Mohamed, previously CTO and a co-founder of Freetrade, join rival Revolut as its new Head of Wealth Trading Product.Freetrade launched its zero-fee trading app in October last year, four months after Revolut announced its intention to add commission-free trading to its banking app, in a bid to compete with Silicon Valleys Robinhood.
That feature has yet to see the light of day, although Im told it is still on track to launch this quarter.
That makes the hiring of Mohamed from Freetrade all the more noteworthy.
He joined Revolut in November.The circumstances that saw Mohamed depart Freetrade remain unclear.
According to my sources, his contract was terminated last year and the two parties settled, with Freetrade accepting no liability.
Companies House records show that the former CTO resigned as a director of Freetrade on 7 September 2018.
According to one person familiar with Mohameds side of the story, the former CTO had a difference in philosophy to that of Freetrade co-founder and CEO Adam Dodds.
Founder disputes are not uncommon, after all (and I should know!).Freetrade declined to comment on the specific reasons for Mohameds departure, but did provide TechCrunch with the following statement:In the first half of last year, it became clear to us we were not shipping the Freetrade product fast enough.
We decided to bring in new technical leadership.
Ian Fuller joined us as our new VP Engineering in July.
Coming from Snap, and Amazon before that, he arrived with deep experience in shipping and scaling mobile products to millions of users.
Under his leadership, weve finally launched our app and have been working on a new investment platform, which we are excited about rolling out in the coming months.Meanwhile, Mohameds background suggests he is a good fit for Revoluts soon-to-launch trading product, and not just based on inside experience as a co-founder of Freetrade (its curious that Mohamed doesnt appear to have signed a non-compete clause).
He has a Computer Science degree from UCL, coupled with 20 years industry experience where he has worked at a number of leading fintech startups, SMEs, tier 1 investment banks and capital markets technology consultancies.
He is also a former colleague of Revolut co-founder and CTO Vlad Yatsenko, from their time at Lab49.Its a company that you dont come across very often, so I jumped at the opportunity, says Mohamed in a statement.
Revolut has a huge customer base and global ambitions, at a completely different scale to any company Ive worked at before.
Its extremely exciting to be part of a fast-growing scale-up that is growing rapidly and getting worldwide recognition.
The products we are building are truly disruptive, and we cant wait for the trading products to join the roster of other fantastic money-saving financial products on offer at Revolut.As head of Wealth Trading Product, Mohamed is said to be focused on delivering Revoluts commission-free trading platform as well as a complementary robo-advisor offering.If you have tips regarding Londons fintech scene, get in touch confidentially by emailing me at steveohear@techcrunch.com