Episode 34 - Martin Della Chiesa
In this episode, I sit down with Martin Della Chiesa, CEO at Skaleet.
Guests
Show notes
In this episode, I sit down with Martin Della Chiesa, CEO at Skaleet.
Martin comes from a corporate finance and investment background, starting his career at Accuracy first, with a focus on strategy and financial services, and later on at Long Arc Capital, where he climbed the corporate ladder from associate until principal. At Long Arc, he discovered the passion for investments in high growth tech companies, backing multiple times between Paris and New York.
He joined Skaleet in 2023 as board member, and eventually became CEO in 2024, stepping in with a very operative role. Skaleet is a core banking solution designed with a logic of perpetual evolution, cloud-based, modular and 100% API, managing the technical infrastructure for over 30 high level financial institutions clients across EMEA.
With him, we talked about the journey from investments to a very operative role, the struggle of being a CEO, but also hiring and the upcoming challenges he sees in fintech moving forward.
In this episode
Martin Della Chiesa describes moving from growth-equity investor and board member to CEO of Skaleet, a core banking platform, and why hiring is the hardest part of the job. He argues B2C fintechs are really tech-enabled banks rather than software companies, explains why selling core banking to large banks takes years, and sees Revolut's rise pushing bank CEOs to act, while the US remains very hard for neobanks and banking-software challengers.
Chapters
Key facts
Martin became CEO of Skaleet after being a board member for its investor, a New York growth-equity firm focused on B2B software, when a founder retired.
Martin meets almost every new hire for a final interview and meets new joiners in small groups for two hours.
Skaleet's biggest bank customer took 24 months to win, but new projects with it now take three to six months.
Skaleet is building a pan-European core banking platform and has not yet decided to enter the US.
If a CEO had only one job, it should be head of HR; a CEO allocates talent like capital.
A CEO's direct reports must score at least eight out of ten, because sevens hire sixes and eights hire nines.
Direct-to-customer fintechs are tech-enabled banks or lenders, not software companies, and should be valued accordingly.
Revolut's growth has turned banking technology into a CEO-level issue for European banks.
Spanish banks such as Santander moved faster because neobanks challenged them early in Latin America.
German banks now face both neobanks and foreign banks such as BBVA and Crédit Agricole entering Germany, while Trade Republic is a strong challenger.
The US is hard for neobanks because of credit scores and consolidation, and incumbents such as Jack Henry quickly buy banking-software challengers.
Questions and answers
What is hardest about becoming CEO?
Talent: allocating people like capital and building a shared standard for what good performance looks like.
Why do banks buy from Skaleet?
Fintechs trust it because it knows banking; banks trust it because it helped fintechs compete.
How long does it take to sell to a big bank?
Around 18–24 months for the first deal, then much faster once trust is established.