About

Team size: 7
Major law firms used: Addleshaw Goddard, Bird & Bird, Orrick, Slaughter and May, Stephenson Harwood

‘If you want to join a start-up like WorldRemit, make sure you have mates who aren’t lawyers,’ GC Sam Ross advises. ‘Don’t communicate in an overly formal way. In a small company, you’re not going to get that formal deference you’re used to from private practice.’

But it is not a case of dumbing down. At the fast-paced mobile payment platform WorldRemit, Ross had to take a crash course in finance to make sure he was up to speed. A ten-week-long course at City University covered the basics, but Ross argues it has made a big difference: ‘If you don’t understand the finance lingo being used by everyone around you, then you won’t be able to give effective advice.’

WorldRemit, founded in 2010 as a mobile-first remittance platform, hired Ross as its first in-house lawyer in 2016. He has since brought in two more fully qualified lawyers, with a view to build out the function further in 2019. Ross has his eye on a specific type of lawyer: ‘We want to build a team of people who all want to be the head of legal. It’s not like Deliveroo or Uber, where we can afford to have lawyers with different specialisms.’

With the ability to send money to over 140 countries worldwide and just the small London legal team to back it up, Ross and his lawyers are obliged to have a thorough understanding of local laws when it comes to moving money. WorldRemit has rapidly announced partnerships in recent months to expand its international footprint: in February 2019 the company struck a deal with Enat Bank to allow digital money transfers to Ethiopia and in January a similar partnership paved the way for transfers to Nepal. The legal team is vital to forming these pathways.

On leadership, Ross emphasises the need to walk before you can run. He concludes: ‘I try to throw people in at the deep end even if it involves making mistakes. You learn so much from it! It’s important to create a supportive environment for making mistakes.’