Granola’s Made in the UK: Featuring Anne Boden

Granola's Made in the UK event featuring Anne Boden

by Dee Miller

SEMINAL joined Granola in London for the first edition of Made in the UK, its new event series celebrating British businesses and the people behind them.

The opening conversation featured Anne Boden, founder of Starling Bank, in discussion with Matt Robinson, co-founder of GoCardless and Nested and now a partner at Accel. The conversation covered entrepreneurship, timing, risk and what it takes to build something people initially struggle to believe in.

Boden is one of the defining figures of the UK fintech era. After decades working in traditional banking, she founded Starling Bank in 2014 with the ambition of building a digital bank from the ground up.

Robinson has played his own part in shaping the UK startup scene. He co-founded GoCardless, later launched property platform Nested, and now works with founders and early-stage companies as a partner at Accel.

One of the most interesting themes of the evening was when to start a business. Both Boden and Robinson reflected that some of the best moments can be when you are a student or in your early twenties, when there is often less to lose, or later in life when experience, confidence and networks can work in your favour.

Starting in the middle of an established career can be much harder. By that stage, the financial and personal stakes are often higher, making the decision to walk away and build something new considerably more difficult.

Boden’s own journey captured that perfectly. She explained that at almost every major milestone, people told her she was “crazy” and should not attempt the next step. That included leaving a successful banking career to start a digital bank, and later deciding to write a book about the journey.

The recurring lesson was that the people around you will not always see the opportunity before you do.

It was also a fitting conversation for Granola, one of London’s most exciting new AI companies. Founded by Chris Pedregal and Sam Stephenson, Granola has built an AI-powered meeting notepad that works differently from many competing tools.

Rather than sending a visible bot into a Zoom or Teams call, Granola runs in the background and combines the meeting transcript with the notes you choose to write yourself. Its approach has always been centred on using AI to support human judgement rather than replace it.