Published: August 18, 2020
John Lloyd is a financial markets fintech veteran, leading global marketing at foreign exchange trading platform Traiana, which was sold to ICAP for US$247m over a decade ago. Now, personal tragedy and a keen desire to help others has seen him move away from finance and into education technology with the child-focused digital community platform GoBubble.
Lloyd joined London’s GoBubble as chief marketing officer in April this year, in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic’s heaviest assault on the West. With Covid-19 came the economic shutdown of entire countries, and school children across Europe and the US have found themselves out of the classroom for months on end in the middle of the academic year.
Child friendly social network GoBubble was there to give children a chance to stay in touch with their friends.
“It’s really gone gangbusters,” said Lloyd, a gregarious Floridian who exudes the boundless cheery optimism that is so commonplace among doyens of the fintech sector.
GoBubble was not set up in response to the pandemic – the company raised £300,000 in seed investment in November last year – but by coincidence is the right product at the right time.
“It’s really horrible what’s going on [with Covid-19],” said Lloyd, “but for a company like GoBubble, we happen to be positioned to help mitigate the challenges for the primary schools.”
The service offered by GoBubble is a relatively simple one - particularly compared to Lloyd’s over the counter financial product trading past. GoBubble provides young children with a heavily moderated social media network so they can chat and socialise with their friends without parents needing to worry about them stumbling across the mountains of inappropriate content that exists online.