Monday 22 February 2021
The stress of meeting a deadline to get a banking licence or delaying the launch of a new product feature is nothing compared to losing a baby animal during birthing. Paul Rippon should know: he spent several years juggling work as a co-founder of challenger bank Monzo with running an alpaca farm alongside his wife, Debbie Rippon.
For a while, the two businesses complemented each other nicely; his teamwork and collaboration skills honed at Monzo transferred over to the alpaca business, while the farm offered some welcome perspective. “When you have all of the emotional and intellectual stress of something like Monzo, to be honest, going back home and moving a bale of hay or shovelling up some alpaca shit was very welcome indeed,” Rippon says.