James Varga
I help founders think clearly about hard problems.
- Serial founder and operator — still building.
- Board-level advisor. Mentor.
- 30+ years pattern-matching across fintech, open banking, climate, AI.
Canadian in Edinburgh since the '90s. Dyslexic and neurodivergent — a fact, and an advantage. First-principles thinker who reads patterns laterally. Three decades building in industries where the vocabulary for the work didn't yet exist.
- 15 years in open banking
- 13,000+ bank connections built at DirectID
- 45 countries served
- US Patent 8332322B2 — digital identity validation
Currently
- Closing Foundry — Founding Partner. A GTM system for B2B founders in regulated markets. Three phases: Design, Enable, Run. Embedded, not advisory.
- H2C — Chief Growth Officer. World's first market for Green Hydrogen Certificates. Registry and marketplace letting shipping companies, fuel producers, and cargo owners trade environmental attributes independently from the physical fuel. Launched from Edinburgh, October 2024.
- First Carbon Investments — Chief Growth Officer. Catalytic financing for low-carbon fuels, transport, and heavy industries. Parent of H2C.
- Wildfire Gin — Chief Expedition Officer and co-founder. Small-batch Scottish gin. Same thesis as the day job: narrative, brand, category-creation.
- GoLLM — Chair. Agentic AI for feedback insights.
Projects
- Building Scotland — Structured interviews across the founder ecosystem. Connects entrepreneurs, investors, and innovators across Scotland.
- Lessons of a Fintech — Six-episode video series for founders building in regulated markets. Hosted by Fintech Scotland's Finance & Health Lab. Operating system, positioning, product, messaging, distribution, enterprise sales — plus a companion GPT.
- Business AI Alliance — Founding member. UK not-for-profit advocating SME voices in AI policy, publishing white papers, and connecting members for practical adoption.
- Wildcast — Free, activity-specific weather tool. Scores every hour for hill walking, sea kayaking, fishing, or wild camping via the Good Time Score.
- Mindy — AI meeting companion. Live notes, mind maps, summaries, and hand-drawn sketchnote infographics in real time.
- Art Gallery (Cromlix) — Immersive digital gallery for the Cromlix art collection. Board, list, and slider views with ambient music.
- Beyond the Runway — Honest conversations about insolvency.
Previously
- DirectID — Founder & CEO, 2011–2024. Global credit-risk platform; 13,000+ bank connections across 45 countries; reach to over 1.5 billion people; the UK's first open-banking app under PSD2; standards work to shape the regulation itself. €9M Series A from IKEA's Ingka Investments. Rebrands: miiCard → The ID Co. → DirectID → Atto.
- Money Dashboard — COO / Co-founder, 2008–2011. UK's leading personal finance management tool.
- Earlier: beblu (MD, ~2005, living-room mini-PC hardware); c2sky & squarepeg (Technical director, 1998–2004).
Co-founded FDATA, Open Banking Excellence, and Innovate Finance. US Patent 8332322B2 — Digital Primary Identity Validation. Scottish Financial Technology Awards 2023: Evangelist of the Year and Special Recognition. DBT Export Champion. Estonian e-Resident Envoy. FinTech Champion for Scotland.
How I help
Four engagement types, small numbers each year:
- Advisor — hands-on, strategic. Short engagements on specific problems, or ongoing retainers where I act as a fractional CxO.
- Board — chair, non-executive, or observer seats where operator depth and independent thinking are what's wanted.
- Angel — personal cheques in early-stage companies, usually in fintech, regulated markets, or founder teams I've worked with before.
- Mentor — selected programmes, accelerators, and direct founder-to-founder relationships.
Best fit: B2B, regulated, technically-hard, international. If that's you — get in touch.
Scotland ecosystem
Chair (GoLLM — agentic AI for feedback insights); Scottish Government Ministerial Trade Board; University of Edinburgh Financial Services & Fintech Industry Advisory Board; FinTech Scotland SME Advisory Board; founding member of FDATA, Open Banking Excellence, Innovate Finance, and Business AI Alliance; advisor to TechPassport, SHIFT Open Finance Community, Ingenii Capital, SustainableFinance.Live. Host of Beyond the Runway and Open Banking Excellence (Edinburgh).
Writing & speaking
- Medium — “Lessons from a FinTech”, operating notes from 15 years in open banking.
- Substack — Building Scotland, weekly conversations across the founder ecosystem.
- Stages — Money 20/20, Hong Kong Fintech Week, UK Fintech Summit, Fintech Zurich, Open Banking Excellence, Cyprus Fintech Summit.
60+ articles, papers, and talks across open banking, AI, fintech GTM, and ecosystem building. Recurring themes: trust as market infrastructure, practical AI in regulated businesses, first principles for founders selling into hard markets, Scotland punching its weight.
Contact
First conversations, not calendar invites. I'm most useful early — before you've decided the answer. Send context: where you are, what's stuck, what you've tried, what kind of engagement you're considering.