Bruce Davis on creating Abundance, co-founding £1bn Zopa, inventing a whiskey and the secret social life of money

Bruce Davis is co-founder of Abundance, a revolutionary business that raises money for green energy projects through peer-to-peer investing: Wind Turbines, Solar, Hydro, that sort of thing.

Bruce was also co-founder of the world’s first peer-to-peer lending platform Zopa (a place you can lend your money to others directly) which has gone on to do over a billion pounds-worth of transactions.

He’s one of the most prominent figures in the world of alternative finance, and I myself have invested in multiple projects through Abundance (disclaimer: your capital is at risk and this is not an endorsement). We talk about its conception and how it works in great detail.

Bruce also holds an enviable claim to fame. Namely, he invented a whiskey: Monkey Shoulder. You may have drunk it in pubs and bars, but you will have also seen or tried two other drinks he helped create. Sailor Jerry spiced rum and Hendrick’s Gin. We discuss how he did this and what’s made all of them so popular.

What’s really amazing though and revealed in this podcast is that all of Bruce’s insights stem from a deep interest in Anthropology and Sociology. While it was not his academic background – he read Classics at University – Bruce worked as an Anthropologist for over 15 years both inside companies and for companies.

We talk about what this means, how entrepreneurs today can apply the same techniques and thinking to business ideas, and also how one Polish Sociologist in particular, Zygmunt Bauman and his concept of Liquid Life, is the core of much of Bruce’s work.

Take a look at Abundance Investment and its green energy projects that you can invest in today here

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Show Notes

• Bruce Davis (Twitter)
• Abundance
• What is Peer-to-peer investment? (Wikipedia)
• Zopa
• Niall Ferguson The Ascent of Money
• Bruce’s Blog (no longer active but some brilliant articles)
• William Grant
• Sailor Jerry
• Hendricks Gin
• Monkey Shoulder
• What’s the difference between a single malt and blended malt whiskey?
• Monkey Shoulder: The choice of a Liquid Modern drinker
• Zygmunt Bauman
• Zygmunt Bauman: Liquid Life
• Mark Davis, Bauman Institute
• How Starbucks transformed coffee from a commodity into a $4 experience (FastCompany)
• Keith Hart
• Nigel Dodd, The Social Life of Money
• [24.20] How you earn money changes how you spend it
• [28.00] Richard Duvall, co-founder of Egg
• [30.00] How Zopa was founded out of a single conversation in a barn
• [32.00] How the world of credit works
• [35.00] Giles Andrews, Co-Founder of Zopa
• [37.00] How Abundance was created
• Karl Harder, Co-Founder of Abundance
• [39.00] What is a Debenture? And how can it be used to fund clean energy projects?
• [49.00] How can you list a project on Abundance e.g. get funding for a Wind Turbine?
• [59:00] Rapid fire questions
• Oeconomicus, Xenophon
• [1:03:00] Why Bruce sends his whole team from Abundance to learn the skill of Ethnography
• [1:04:00] Why companies should not do research with a goal
• Marcel Mauss The Gift: the book Bruce would give to everyone in the world if he could