Nektarios Liolios

Your Story:

Born to Greek immigrant parents in Germany, Moved to the UK in 1996 Fell into financial services and 'served time with Clearstream, Deutsche Boerse and SWIFT. In 2011 I was lucky enough to join Innotribe at SWIFT and it change my life. I ended up leading the Innotribe Startup Challenge, the first global FinTech startup competition, left the corporate world and co-founded the Startupbootcamp FinTech accelerator and Rainmaking Innovation to facilitate the relationship between corporates, startups and investors across 10 financial centres around the world.

Having worked closely with hundreds of entrepreneurs and early-stage businesses over the years, I walked away from everything in 2018 because I was physically and mentally run down.

Whilst recovering from the intensity of my previous life, I cofounded The Future Farm, to advocate for better mental health in the entrepreneurial world.

In parallel I started playing around with the idea of building financial services build around the needs of the LGBTQ+ community, something the resulted in the creation of Daylight, the first LGBTQ+ financial services platform in the US.

In 2022 I cofounded Radish, a lending-as-a-service platform for companies whose customers are underserved by existing banks and lenders.

Your Impact:

My first experience of how being gay in the financial industry was at a work Christmas party in 1998 I was sitting next to the wife of the company CEO. We got on well and after a few drinks, she leaned over to me, put her hand on my arm and said: "I hear great things about you, and if you tone down the gay, you'll go far in this company.

It was then that I decided to do the opposite and started volunteering for or supporting LGBTQ+ causes (THT, GMFA, Walk for Life, Stonewall, etc.)

I guess the biggest achievement was getting Daylight off the ground, even though the experiment didn't succeed in the end.

Radish, my new business, is looking to help a range of underserved groups and gay men starting a family through surrogacy is the first one.

Your Advice:

Community: find your people. If your organisation has a group, meet them. If it doesn't, maybe start one?

Small steps: you can only do things when you're ready, so don't feel pressured but make sure you find a small thing or two to give you a sense of belonging.

Leadership: lead by example. You cannot expect things to happen to you. Visibility matters!