As we head into the end of the year, it’s time for some reflections on 2024 and our priorities for the year ahead.
I don’t want to lose your interest already in the 2nd paragraph, but the truth is that our strategy remains pretty much the same as last year:
i) get more banks to use our solution and
ii) build out the product to capture more workflows and solve a bigger part of bankers’ day to day tasks.
So how have we performed against that strategy?
I think pretty well.
The Clients
Over the last 12 months we more than doubled our client base.
We now have 3 of the global top 10 DCM banks as clients, but also top 20 players and several smaller, regional and single-currency houses. We’ve rolled out with our first US bank and are in the process of signing our first contract with an Asian-headquartered bank.
It’s really encouraging to see our offering resonate with such a diverse set of banks. Word of mouth has been our main growth driver this year and we hope that this will only accelerate from what is now a larger base.
Based on our pipeline today, I would expect us to add at least a similar number of banks again in 2025. Maintaining a growth rate above 100% seems more challenging, but not impossible.
The Product
As for the product, we’ve again made large strides towards a fully comprehensive pre-trade workflow and analytics solution for fixed income primary markets.
In our core areas of DCM and Syndicate, it’s been all about improving an already advanced solution. Whereas a year or two ago we were still focused on nailing the core workflows on desktop, bankers can now achieve most of those on their phone.
For example, as a Syndicate banker, you can now grab your phone in the taxi to a meeting, pull the latest comps, run swap calculations and fulfil pricing requests. And the data then doesn’t just sit in an email somewhere, but feeds your data warehouse and drives insights for the next client interaction.
Coverage bankers can get relevant updates to clients more seamlessly than ever before, in many cases downloading client-ready materials with just a few clicks.
It’s powerful and self-reinforcing, where increased usage drives better data, which in turn drives more usage.
Interestingly, this isn’t just within our traditional audience of DCM and Syndicate, but increasingly with other DCM-adjacent teams, such as Private Placements, ESG Solutions, Liability Management, Hybrid Structuring, Loans, Structured Finance and ABS teams.
Bots is becoming a single source of truth for pricing information across all these teams, which in turn results in more joined-up client coverage and collaboration. We plan to lean into this trend heavily over the next year, with more features to cater to these varied teams.
The Company
As for the company, we’re now comfortably profitable, giving us capacity to re-invest into product development, more data and client service, while being able to give our clients the confidence that we’ll be around as a self-sustaining business for the long term.
We’re still adding to the team and currently looking to hire two more engineers. The entire company continues to run remotely, but of course there were still plenty of opportunities to get together in person and appreciate everyone’s contributions over the year.
One such example were the Bots Summer Drinks, which have quickly turned into a regular fixture on the London DCM calendar. We already have plans to make the 2025 event even bigger and better - starting with canapes being served at a reasonable hour!
All in all, it’s been a good year for us at Bots and it feels like there is a lot of optimism and momentum in the DCM market as a whole. More dealflow lifts all boats - and also tends to highlight operational inefficiencies.
We already look forward to many future collaborations.
On behalf of the team I’d like to express a sincere thank you to all our clients, suppliers, partners and team members for the support in 2024.
Wishing everyone a good break, merry Christmas and a strong start to 2025!
Stephan Gimpel
CEO & Co-founder NB: Video created with OpenAI Sora