Trust, transmission and expansion 🤝

#157 - Patrick Amiel (3,2,1 Founded) and #158 - Siobhan Moret (Saffery Champness)

May 07, 2023

There is nothing I enjoy more than exploring complex, unknown and intriguing areas in finance with you, digging deeper, going into the smallest details, diving into topics known to everyone, without grasping the scope, the risks or complexity.

This week, my two guests are:

On the 🇫🇷 episode, I host the founder of 3,2,1 Founded: Patrick Amiel.
On the 🇬🇧 episode, I host Siobhan Moret, Director at Saffery Champness.

“ Partner with corporates to set up start-ups.” (episode in french)

Patrick, well-known in the French tech ecosystem, talks to us about the obstacles faced by large groups when trying to create start-ups and the reasons why they are interested in them.

We come back to the difficulties they face in innovating significantly internally, why intrapreneurship has not yet really proven itself, but also all the riches that these corporates can bring to start-ups.

We talk about the methodology of 3,2,1 and see the importance of weak signals in the opportunity analysis phase. Patrick uses the example of Angelaw, co-founded with law firm August & Debouzy, and shows us the set-up: from the study of the LegalTech market, to highlighting the needs of start-ups to manage and supervise all of their contracts.

We discover the tools, teams and resources available to the studio to be able to release the first versions in a few weeks before the recruitment of the team that will launch the start-up.

We talk about the positioning of companies, the financing model, as well as the ecosystem created by Patrick and his team to scale this model.

Angelaw

Newly out of the studio, the start-up Angelaw has set up contract management software for start-ups, scale-ups and SMEs. Launched a few months ago, its ambition is to democratize their management, usually manual and tedious, during the creation, negotiation, analysis and signing of contracts.

Solutions:

Library of clauses and contracts,
Negotiation and signature,
Contract generation,
Analysis and follow-up,
Automatic archiving.

3,2,1 Founded

Founded by Patrick Amiel and Romain Ledru-Mathé, this corporate start-up studio differs from a start-up studio like Hexa (Episode #150 with Quentin Nickmans) in the sense that the co-founders of the studio are corporates.

3,2,1 Founded has already created a few start-ups to date: Chango, Livelocal, Angelaw or Stables, in very different sectors: LegalTech, Web3, FinTech and travel.

“Building trusts in digital assets”

In this (quite technical) episode, my guest talks about fiduciary services, trusts and their links with wealth management. We discuss the use, advantages, and disadvantages of trusts holding assets, such as a forest, intellectual property or digital assets, as well as the importance of fiduciary duties and governance.

We also discuss the typology of clients who use trusts, including pioneers, founders and experienced investors. Siobhan mentions the evolution of regulation and interest in the creation of trusts in Switzerland, as well as the controversy surrounding the Pandora Papers. We take this opportunity to do away with preconceived ideas.

During our conversation, Siobhan talks about the challenges of creating trusts in the context of digital assets, including two use cases, such as the legacy of NFTs and the creation of a foundation through which DAOs manage their own treasury. We also talk about the partnerships that Saffery Champness establishes with service providers in traditional finance and companies in the crypto ecosystem, such as Coinify.

Fiduciary services

Fiduciary services are a type of financial management and administration service in which a person or organization, the trustee, is appointed to manage assets on behalf of a beneficiary. Fiduciary services generally involve a high level of trust, as the trustee is responsible for managing assets in the best interests of the beneficiary and must act in accordance with legal and ethical obligations.

The example of a fiduciary service we talk about with Siobhan is trust management. Trust services may also include estate planning, financial planning and other related services.

The trust

A trust is a legal arrangement in which a person, called the “settlor”, transfers ownership of certain assets to another person or entity, called the trustee, to manage them on behalf of one or more persons, the “beneficiaries”.

The trust is of English origin and dates back to the twelfth century. It is generally considered to be related to English law, although it is also used in other countries, notably in common law countries (for the record, common law is the legal system in place in most English-speaking countries).

A trust is often used to protect the assets of a family or business, to avoid inheritance problems or plan the transfer of ownership. The beneficiaries may be named in the “trust deed” or determined later, and the trust may be revoked or modified by the “settlor” under certain conditions.

Creating a trust is similar to setting up a business in terms of administration. The life of the trust is also determined when it is created.

Switzerland does not have its own trust legislation, which means that it is currently not possible to establish a trust under Swiss law. However, foreign trusts have been fully recognized in Switzerland since 2007.

Saffery Champness

Saffery Champness is a UK-based company that provides tax, accounting and wealth management services. The company was established in 1855 and has since opened offices across the UK, as well as in Dublin, Zurich and Geneva.

Saffery Champness works with a diverse range of clients, including individuals, businesses and non-profit organizations. The company is recognized as one of the UK’s top 20 accounting firms.