5 minutes with Ryan Ladwa, on start-up culture and growing through innovation

What’s your background?

Before I joined Bondaval, I was at Citi in their Debt Capital Markets and Banking divisions.

There I was primarily helping the world’s largest corporates in two ways. The first was advising them on their financial strategy: how to raise debt, how to think about strategic financing to fund acquisitions or refinance their entire capital structure. The second was then helping them to execute on that strategy, whether that meant tapping the corporate bond market or using bank capital financing.

I was quite lucky with the experience I had at Citi. I never had the nightmare scenarios or horrible bosses you sometimes hear about in banking.

But I was intrigued when I saw the role at Bondaval come up. It represented an exciting opportunity for me to move into a different world, while still using my core skill set, but learning a lot.

How have you found the difference between working at Bondaval versus a large corporation?

To be honest, I was always a bit sceptical of the start-up dream. Going from a 200,000-person organisation to a company of just 25 was not what I expected my next move to be. However, looking back it was definitely the right time to move out of a big corporate for me.

Sometimes companies talk about their values (for example, one of Bondaval’s is that we’re “family-first”), but you don’t really know for sure until you’re in it. Here it really does ring true, with some of the things that we do here day-to-day, whether it’s Thursday drinks or playing tennis at lunchtime, our off-sites and the “mildly competitive” Strava group… I had imagined a workplace like that, but never experienced it.

The biggest difference though is the variety and scope I have within my role. At a big corporate, there’s an overall production line and huge teams who each own their piece of a transaction. That means you can become really specialised in your particular area, but you don’t always have the freedom to stretch your legs and develop a broader set of skills. At Bondaval there’s a lot more growth potential, because you’re taking on a wider range of responsibilities.