TECHFIN BEFORE FINTECH, FINTECH BEFORE DEFI: A CASUALTY STUDY IN BEING EARLY

⋰ ORYX SIS 1 (Oryx Secondary for Information Systems) was the 1ˢᵗ tranche of a failed attempt to create an independent secondary banking house, built entirely to serve niche needs of the Information / Communication Technologies (ICT) industry… by reducing time, risk, and cost to scale into less-creditworthy frontier markets. ⋱

What put the last nail in its coffin? 2009 crash pessimism. While too late for us, that financial crisis birthed blockchain & Bitcoin, commencing the populous and open banking movements... changing the money system forever.Thanks to everyone who believed in ORYX Secondary's potential with their savings, sweat, advice, connections.The learning lives on through the people who contributed to it, at firms like Dubai Holding, Qatar Foundation, HP, Credit Suisse, ORACLE, Motorola, and AFAQ Group.

BETWEEN 2006-2010, the ORYX SIS venture sought alliance partners and friendly LBO candidates to interweave into a global platform, offering:

⋯ STREAM UPON which its model relied was debt to end users... via capital lending for complex app-infrastructure projects, HW leasebacks for pre-datacenter server rooms, and network equipment. Benefits were accelerated replacement of legacy systems through reduced barriers for moving to the latest tech, enhanced vendor coverage in markets with less-developed SME financing options, and generally driving emerging economies' growth through digital transformation-spend.⋯ SPV/SPE SEEDED with 100K AED paid-up by 3 execs from tech vendor or financing backgrounds. Demo modules & dummy-data sandbox were built over i-FLEX (ORACLE-acquired ISV bank-OS spun off from Citi). 3.8M AED conditional LoI secured from Gulf angel investment syndicate for PoC. Neither PMF achieved nor pivoted, due to slow pre-agile MVP SDLC.⋯ DESPITE HAVING compliantly circumvented delays via regulated first-intermediary reliance & offshore-online basing, it still gave way to closed federated-banking ecosystems, laggard mindsets, not in SF Bay to unseat SVB, Tier 1 vendors starting own customer-financing divisions in house, the era's clunky form-based UX/UIs, and Cloud/XaaS monthly payments solving upfront-costly licensing & on-prem SI implementation). Ceased before branding for prospectus/memorandum/offering raise, bank was not named operationally and no outside capital was called (drawn).

NOW, onto the new.