Interview with Jake Spark, Managing Director of Evolve Currency Management
Tell Us About Your Journey
I was born and raised in England. I went to university to study business. And I always knew that I’d want to work in financial services. In 2013, I started working for a Fortune 500 company who, at the time, was the largest non-bank provider of foreign exchange. I worked for them for about 6 and a half years, 3 of which were in London. And halfway through that period, they asked me to move to the US where I managed a derivatives portfolio for them for US businesses. We got an opportunity to move back to London when I left that business, and I started working for a private equity-backed foreign exchange company. I worked for them for 2 years, and after that period they asked me to move to Amsterdam, where I became Head of Europe for that business. Now, with it being private equity owned, it was inevitable that at some point it was going to be sold. We completed that transaction in 2023, and shortly after that I moved back to the US and started Evolve Currency Management.
What Is the History of Evolve Currency Management?
We are a cross-border, cross-currency payments company. We help businesses and individuals with their foreign exchange requirements. From a simple perspective, if you, as an example, we’ve got a wine importer in the US, they’re purchasing wine from France, and the French manufacturer of that wine wants to receive euros because that’s their local currency. The US importer has US dollars, we facilitate that transaction. The foreign exchange and then the onward payment to their supplier. We started the company in 2024, and we’d identified that there was a small subset of US small, medium-sized businesses that were largely overlooked and underserved from legacy banks. That’s our niche and that’s our target market. Since starting the company, we’ve seen phenomenal success and growth.
What Motivates You?
I’ve been incredibly lucky to work for some fantastic entrepreneurs. And I know some incredibly successful entrepreneurs, and their drive and determination to achieve what they’ve done, it really motivated me to take on the challenge to step away from the corporate world where there’s the backup and the support of different departments and a legacy or a large brand that will help with the client interactions that you have, to take that challenge and to see what I could achieve as an entrepreneur when I don’t have that large company backing me.
What Challenges Have You Faced?
When we started the company, we were an unknown brand in a very competitive space. Trying to convince clients to start and work with us was initially a large challenge because people didn’t necessarily want to take the leap of faith from moving away from an incumbent provider that could be decades of years old to work with a startup in financial services. The way we got around that was tapping into our existing network. Who have we worked with previously who would want to work with us again? Who within our network can provide referrals, introductions, whatever that might be? And who can be an advocate for us and for our business? The other way that we tackled it was we have two routes to market, and one of them is a partnership model, which we call a one-to-many model. So, we have a relationship with a partner who might have lots of clients. And through that relationship, they refer their clients to us. And because there’s already that trust between the partner and the end client, by proxy, because of our relationship with our partner, it’s allowed us to work with a lot more companies.
What Advice Can You Offer to Other Entrepreneurs?
If you aren’t disciplined, I would say it’s probably not the right idea to become an entrepreneur. So, working in a corporate environment, there’s a huge support system for you, the other departments that can help you, and a management team that can guide you and coach you. But when you’re an entrepreneur, if you aren’t disciplined, there isn’t anyone there to give you any of that information. It’s a challenge to run at 100% every day to try and get to your goals. You’ve got to be disciplined to do it. And if you aren’t, then I would say don’t become an entrepreneur. The second piece of advice, which really goes back to how we have managed to grow, but it’s focus on your network. Who in your network can help you, and also try and grow your network. How can you try and get more people there who could be a trusted advisor? How could you get more people in there who might become a client? How can you get more people in there who might be an advocate for your business? Use that network to try and grow your company, and that’ll really help you succeed.
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Where Do You See Evolve Currency Management in 3-5 Years?
So we’re a boutique financial services business by design. We’re not looking to have 5,000 clients. We’re looking to have a smaller subset of very good quality clients that we can help with their foreign exchange requirements. That is going to continue as we go on this path to growth. We’re in the process of hiring more people, which is going to allow us to work with more clients and still offer the service levels that we want to. And we’re also in the process of adding new liquidity providers and new products, which is going to give all existing clients and new clients a greater breadth of products that they can use from us. The clients are going to get a better user experience, but we’re still going to maintain the boutique style that we’ve wanted since day one.
What Value Has Gesmer Updegrove Provided to Evolve Currency Management?
Aside from the legal work that they’ve done for us, which has been second to none in terms of quality of work and speed of which they’ve done it, we’ve been very impressed with their ability to bring different companies together and allow us to tap into their network. We work with service providers that Gesmer have referred to us that they trust, which is great for us because it saved us time. We have clients who work with us that have come from the Gesmer network. We’ve been to networking events from the Gesmer network, and all of that has allowed us to grow, and it goes back to our network, and Gesmer has been really part of helping us develop it.
Why Go With Gesmer?
One of the main reasons why I would recommend for someone to go to Gesmer is they sit down with you and try and understand your business so they can understand how they can better help you. They’ll refer you to people that might be able to help the business. They’ll guide you. As an entrepreneur, you don’t know everything, but they work with such a large amount of entrepreneurs because they’re such an entrepreneurial-friendly law firm, and they’ll give you information that could take you years to find out. But it’s because they have been exposed to so many different companies and it’s allowed us to grow because it saves us from making mistakes that we might have done had we not had that information.
