Innovation to investing made possible through collaboration
Stratiphy is a fintech SME that provides automated investment and investment strategies to everyday investors, providing them with the same benefits that banks offer to professional clients. Stratiphy is a wonderful example of how small companies can engage and develop a strong relationship with the University. Stratiphy has engaged with the University in several ways and were a member (2021 to 2022) of the acclaimed tech incubation programme run by SETsquared Bristol.
‘Working alongside the University has been a huge win for us. We have hired one student into a full-time position, we secured a major grant totalling £1m for all consortium members, and to top it off we have supported the University to secure major UK backing for their AI for Collective Intelligence initiative. I would highly recommend collaborating with the University to any aspiring startup. It is important to find the right internal sponsor within the university, and then they are set up to support and nurture industrial partnerships in a way that can bring tangible benefits to any business.’
Working with researchers and students at the University all started when Luke Kirwan, at the time a student on the MSc Financial Technology with Data Science, approached Stratiphy’s CEO and Founder, and Bristol alumnus, Daniel Gold, to propose an internship. Although Stratiphy was a small company and pre-revenue, Daniel was impressed by Luke’s confident approach and agreed on the internship. The internship was supported by the University’s Careers Service through their SME Internship Scheme, and was a resounding success, resulting in Stratiphy going on to employ Luke as a Software Engineer.
Kath Ayres, Knowledge Exchange and SME Programme Manager, says ‘At the University of Bristol, we connect SMEs with talented students through internships, projects, and graduate roles. These partnerships help students build employability skills while bringing fresh ideas and talent to growing businesses. We always hope that these connections turn into longer-term professional relationships, and this is a perfect example.’
In addition, Daniel was introduced to Prof. John Cartlidge, and it was immediately clear there was an appetite for further collaboration. It started with a couple of Masters projects, and Daniel has very positive things to say about working with the University’s students: ‘We have found that students have strong technical skills and a very creative approach to problem solving. I have enjoyed working with them and they have contributed to our growth journey. The MSc projects that we managed were a big success and have positively influenced my views of both the quality of students at the University and also the willingness and ability of the University to collaborate on commercially led projects’.
The relationship continued to grow and Stratiphy looked to include Prof. John Cartlidge in their next grant application. Daniel says, ‘The University has access to expertise related to the problem we sought to address, within the fields of financial modelling and AI, with John in particular being an expert in both. There was also a pool of high-quality students who would be available if and when we were awarded the grant and so pursuing this collaboration was an easy choice to make.’
The team have recently (January 2025) concluded the project ‘Stratlib.AI - A Trusted Machine Learning Platform For Asset and Credit managers' for the competition 'Accelerating trustworthy AI: Phase 2 Collaborative R&D’. Prof. John Cartlidge and University of Bristol join the grant as partners, alongside University of Birmingham, and Chenavari Investment Managers et al. The team is looking to build upon the success of this grant and are actively looking for the next opportunity to collaborate.
During the establishment of this project, Daniel, John and the team were able to take advantage of the University of Bristol’s Innovation Adviser, who is a dedicated resource to work with SMEs. They introduce SMEs to academics and vice versa, help to build relationships, and support project scoping and collaborative grant applications. Daniel said, ‘Sophie has been instrumental in the process of applying for the grant, from coordinating and liaising between the relevant parties and opening doors to new opportunities. During this process Sophie went out of her way to find solutions to problems we couldn’t solve alone, and push things along… this help was vital to the success of our application, and what’s more was done in good spirit and no doubt sped up our efforts considerably.’
