After a career in high-stakes trading, Patrick De Nonneville founded October, a fintech SME lender. He navigated a dual-track fundraising process, securing over $50M in equity from VCs and nearly $1B in credit facilities from institutions by tailoring his pitch to each audience—vision for equity, hard numbers for debt.
Key takeaways
- Separate your fundraising: Pitch VCs on vision and tech; pitch credit funds on underwriting and loan performance.
- Use early equity to prove your lending model before seeking a large credit facility.
- Master the regulatory landscape; rule changes can create massive startup opportunities.
- Treat financial crises as normal, recurring events you must be prepared for.
- Your background is not your destiny; you can pivot from a traditional career to entrepreneurship at the right moment.
- Build your investor base by proving you understand risk better than anyone else.
Walking away from a partnership at Goldman Sachs is not a common founder origin story. But for Patrick de Nonneville, it was a necessary step to seize a bigger opportunity: building October, a fintech platform that has raised over $50M in equity and nearly $1B in credit facilities to fund small and medium-sized businesses across Europe.
His journey offers a powerful playbook for founders, especially those in fintech, on managing risk, navigating complex fundraising, and knowing when to leap from a stable career into the startup chaos. It’s a story about blending the discipline of a trading floor with the vision of a tech founder.
Early Lessons in Risk and Reward
Patrick grew up surrounded by entrepreneurship. His father, grandfather, and brothers all started their own companies. He saw the highs of success and the crushing lows of failure up close. This early exposure gave him a realistic, unglamorous view of the founder life: immense hard work and passion don’t guarantee a win.
Initially, this reality pushed him away from startups and toward the structured world of finance. A work experience week on the trading floor of the Paris Stock Exchange sealed his path. The energy, the responsibility of pricing and making trades, and the immediate consequences of decisions fascinated him. He pursued a technical, mathematical education to build a foundation for a career in the financial markets.
What a Trading Floor Really Teaches You
Jumping into trading, Patrick was immediately thrown into a series of major financial crises: the Asian financial crisis, the Russian crisis, and the dot-com bust. This trial-by-fire taught him a lesson most founders learn the hard way.
Crises are not an exception; they are a normal part of the cycle. Your job isn’t to predict them, but to build a business that can withstand them. His time at various banks, culminating in a partnership at Goldman Sachs, exposed him to different philosophies of risk. Some firms only cared about the final number on the P&L. Others, like Goldman, were intensely focused on the decision-making process . How did you arrive at a decision? How were you managing the firm’s risk? This focus on process over outcome is a critical mindset for founders.
You can’t control market swings or competitor moves, but you can control the rigor of your own decision-making framework.
The Three Signals for a Career Pivot
Despite his success, Patrick grew bored. The world was changing, and he felt his career was at risk of becoming obsolete. Three specific signals converged to convince him it was time to finally embrace his entrepreneurial DNA and launch a startup.
The Technology Wave Was Undeniable: From his vantage point, he saw technology systematically replacing humans. The trading floor of 150 people he started on had shrunk to just two. He realized he could either be washed away by the wave of automation or learn to surf it. · A Personal Investing Window Opened: Co-investing with a European VC gave him a ringside seat to the emerging fintech scene. He saw the models, the opportunities, and the talent flowing into the space. This de-risked the jump by giving him tangible experience from the investor’s side of the table. · A Regulatory Moat Disappeared: This was the final catalyst. In 2014, a critical regulation changed in France, breaking the banks’ monopoly on lending to small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs). This single change created the market opportunity for his startup, October.
The Fintech Fundraising Playbook: Equity vs. Credit
For a fintech lending business like October, fundraising is a two-pronged effort. You are not just raising one round; you are running two parallel, and fundamentally different, fundraising processes. This is the most critical lesson from October’s $50M+ in equity and nearly $1B in debt facilities.
Track 1: The Equity Raise (Selling the Vision)
Your equity raise is for venture capitalists. You are selling ownership in your company in exchange for capital to fund your operations—salaries, product development, marketing, and G&A. VCs are betting on your potential to scale into a massive, technology-driven business.
Your Pitch: Focus on the vision, the technology, the team, and the Total Addressable Market (TAM). You’re selling the "why." Why is your underwriting model better, faster, and more scalable? How does your tech create a defensible moat? · The Goal: Raise enough capital to build the machine. For a lending business, this includes proving out your lending model with an initial pool of capital. Your first loans will likely be funded by your seed or Series A equity. · Common Mistake: Getting bogged down in the minutiae of loan performance. VCs care about risk, but they are primarily underwriting your ability to build a venture-scale software company, not a loan book.
Track 2: The Credit Facility (Selling the Numbers)
Your credit facility is for institutional lenders, credit funds, and banks. You are not selling ownership; you are securing the "raw material" for your business—the capital you will lend to your customers. These investors are not betting on a 100x outcome; they are underwriting your ability to generate a predictable return on their capital with minimal losses.
Your Pitch: Focus on the numbers, the data, and the risk management. You’re selling the "how." Show them your loan-level data, your default and recovery rates, the performance of your underwriting model over time, and the structure of your credit hierarchy. · The Goal: Secure a large, low-cost line of credit that allows you to scale your lending operations profitably. The spread between your borrowing cost and the interest you charge borrowers is your gross margin. · Common Mistake: Pitching vision and disruption. Credit investors are inherently conservative. They don't want to hear about "changing the world." They want to see a clear, data-backed process for originating loans that get paid back.
Your equity investors fund the factory. Your credit investors provide the raw materials. You must be fluent in both languages.
How to Avoid Common Fintech Fundraising Mistakes
Trying to Raise a Credit Facility Too Early: You cannot raise a significant credit facility without a track record. You must first use your equity capital to fund your initial loans and prove your underwriting model works in the real world with real data. Plan on funding your first 6-18 months of loans yourself. · Mismatching Your Pitch to Your Audience: Walking into a VC meeting with a dense presentation on credit risk models is a recipe for failure. Likewise, pitching a credit fund on your TAM and 10-year vision will get you nowhere. Know your audience and tailor the narrative. · Underestimating Regulatory Risk & Opportunity: Fintech is not a "move fast and break things" industry. The 2014 regulatory change was the entire reason Patrick could start October. You must be an expert on the legal framework you operate in. Your ability to understand and navigate it is a competitive advantage.
How to Apply This This Week
Map Your Fundraising Tracks: If you have a complex model (e.g., lending, hardware, marketplaces), clearly define the different types of capital you need (equity, debt, project finance) and create a separate pitch and target investor list for each. · Audit Your "Why Now?": Re-examine the forces enabling your business. Is there a recent technological shift, a regulatory change, or a behavioral trend that creates your specific opportunity? Sharpen this narrative—it is the core of your pitch. · Pressure-Test Your Risk Framework: List the top 5 macro risks (recession, interest rate hikes) and top 5 operational risks (key hire leaves, fraud) to your business. Write down a 1-paragraph mitigation plan for each. This forces the process-oriented thinking of a trading floor. · Review Your Career Capital: What unique experience or insight do you have from your previous career? How does it give you an "unfair advantage" as a founder? Weave this into your story. Patrick’s background at Goldman gave him instant credibility with credit investors.
Frequently asked questions
- What's the difference between raising equity and a credit facility?
- Equity (from VCs) funds your company's operations like salaries and tech in exchange for ownership. A credit facility (from credit funds/banks) provides the capital you lend out to customers and is paid back with interest, without selling ownership.
- How much traction do I need to raise a credit facility for a lending startup?
- You typically need a track record of loans, often funded by your initial equity round, showing consistent performance and low defaults over at least 6-12 months before institutional credit investors will seriously engage.
- What is a fintech SME lender?
- It's a non-bank technology company that provides loans and financing to Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). They use data and algorithms to make faster credit decisions than traditional banks.
