Why I Love Mondays

Clive Foley, co-founder at 5Coasts and we’re building a product that we are calling wave.
We are a very early stage fintech company. We formed in early 2015.

The company: 5Coasts is a fintech startup. As I said, we’re making a product called Wave. The aim of Wave is to remove the friction involved with day to day finance and replace your bank with an app.

Job description: As co-founder, my role is everything and anything but mainly, it’s the technology side of things.
I am writing code all day, both the app that customers will use but also the backend that supports the app. We’re using a myriad of tech including swift on iOS to Ruby in the backend and various AWS services.

Likes: It’s never boring and I am working on a product that I myself will use. It’s very motivating to be able to do that and see an idea grow.

Career ladder: I’ve worked in a few industries and enjoyed them all. I started o? in online poker, with Pocket Kings in Dublin (who have become FTRational) as a software engineer. I moved from there to RenRe (Re-Insurance), wonga.com (short term lending) and now 5Coasts. Along the way I held various titles, from software engineer, senior software engineer, team lead to principal engineer at wonga.
I decided to go into software as a teenager as I had been tinkering with code from about 12 years old. I’ve always viewed it as a well paying hobby as opposed to a job. Currently I guess you’d say I’m in finance but we don’t see it that way. We’re techies looking to change finance rather than finance guys looking to use tech. We got into the finance side of things because we’re frustrated with the way things are in day to day banking. Everything is setup to suit the banks rather than to suit the customer. We wanted to change that, if only for ourselves.
As for recommendations, it might sound clichéd but you have to do what you love. You’re going to spend most of your life at work so my advice to anyone would be to do things that you find interesting and will make you proud and excited to say “I work there and we do that”. If you are unhappy 8+ hours a day, no amount of free lunches / chocolate / soft drinks / free gym will get you out of bed on a Monday morning.

Qualifications: I have a Bsc. In Computing from IT Sligo and I have an Msc. In Computing from DIT

Working hours: I’m a night owl so I usually start around 10am and work till the wee hours, taking breaks in the evening to recharge the batteries.

Breaktime: Lunch is fairly typical, something around the Grand Canal Dock area. I’m involved in the improv comedy circuit in Dublin so in the evenings I tend to perform with 2 groups I’m involved with – The Imps and The Identical Knees. They are good fun and help with the creative side of work.

Social media credentials: I’m not as active as I’d like to be but I am on twitter, LinkedIn, etc. We’re finding twitter to be an excellent way to chat to customers and meet other like minded people in fintech. We’ve met so many customers / partners and tech leaders that way. You can find me at @clivefoley on twitter

News sources: I’m a big fan of www.macrumors.com, www.wired.com and techcrunch.com . www.theregister.co.uk can be good for more offbeat stories.

Onsite or offsite: Depends on the day. I’m in the o?ce unless we’re meeting some customers or partners.

Digital strategy/vision: Our whole business is digital. We’re aiming to be the digital solution for day to day banking. No branches, no borders, no hassle.

I love Mondays because: The rollercoaster starts again. It’s addictive, in a good way