Linda Yang, Global Head of PR at GoCardless
- Career journey
I actually trained to be a journalist and a teacher. I grew up in the US and the summer between my third and final year at uni, I was nominated by my journalism school for an internship to write for several magazines based in New York City. It sounded amazing but fast forward a few weeks and it turns out that my professor, who was supposed to send my recommendation for this programme, forgot to turn it in.
So, fate intervened to steer me away from the ‘journalist’ route. Instead, I went on an even more circuitous journey: I taught English in Hong Kong for three years, opted for a career change, enrolled in a Master’s in Management programme in London, and ended up on a graduate scheme at Barclays. I was in the marketing stream and out of my six-month rotations, one was in the PR team at Barclaycard — and I never looked back.
2. How did you first get into fintech? How has the industry evolved?
Towards the end of my time at Barclays, I supported a department that was focused on innovation and the fintech ecosystem. I enjoyed the start-up and scale-up mentality and coincidentally, a recruiter from GoCardless reached out. They were looking to start their in-house PR team, so I jumped at the chance to work in that dynamic environment and build something from scratch.
This was in 2019 so fintech was already fairly well-established in London. Since then, I’ve seen much more resilience in the sector; after Covid and the boom times of 2021-2022, the companies that are still standing are much more focused on driving a sustainable growth model. It’s not about growth at all costs; it’s about being disciplined on costs and very intelligent with the bets you do make, so that your fintech has a real chance of scaling.
3. Looking back, is there a piece of advice you’d received earlier in your career?
You’re an employee and you’re only paid to worry about your job for c. 8 hours a day. It’s not the be all and end all of who you are.
4. What do you see as the biggest opportunities and challenges in the market and in your role specifically?
It’s both an opportunity and a challenge: As PRs, we don’t have as much data as our growth marketing peers. Because not everything can be directly linked from clicks through to conversion, it’s difficult to surface hard data that shows our business impact.
This is an opportunity because we can all be more savvy at using data to our advantage. UTMs are of course important to track the traffic we drive, but with many journalists stripping these out altogether, focus on traditional top-of-funnel metrics with a new twist: ‘share of search’ is one that I’m curious about, for example. It’s about finding new data points in our current environment to measure what PR is and was always meant to do: capture the mindshare of our audiences.
5. What are three things fintech companies should be prioritising today?
I’ll answer this from a comms perspective and narrow it down to just one: shout about your positive corporate story. In a world where fintech valuations are no longer based on increasing user numbers but through demonstrating a clear path to profitability, emphasise how financially robust you are. If you have a solid, repeatable way to generate revenue alongside an efficient cost base, make sure these messages are front-and-centre in your corporate narrative. This will also help your customer acquisition goals — everyone wants to work with someone who will be around for the long term.
6. What role do partners and ecosystems play in driving innovation in fintech?
A huge role, especially in the B2B space! Businesses we speak to really value the ability to manage their operations in one platform. That’s why we see a lot of customers using GoCardless through one of the 300+ integrations we have with CRMs, accounting software, billing solutions and other platforms that they use everyday. Partnership and integrations create a ‘best-in-breed’ ecosystem where merchants can pick and choose from the top providers in each domain, all whilst accessing them through a single interface.
Quickfire round:
- Fintech company to watch? Tembo Money
- Most overused fintech buzzword? ‘leverage’
- Favourite TV show? A Man on the Inside