There’s a scene in the 2010 film about the early days of Facebook The Social Network in which successful start-up founder Sean Parker, played by Justin Timberlake, offers a young Mark Zuckerberg and his business partner some words of wisdom.

As they’re trying to decide whether to cash out and accept an early offer for the company, or hold on to their chips while it grows, Parker sums up the situation. “A million dollars isn’t cool,” he says. “You know what’s cool?”

The answer arrives: “A billion dollars.” Tom Blomfield doesn’t exactly say that this moment was what pushed him into the world of tech start-ups. But he reckons it was a “tipping point” for others in the industry.

“That was the point when people started – at least in Europe – thinking ‘something’s going on here’.” Seven years and several start-ups later, Blomfield, now 31, is chief executive and co-founder of Monzo, part of a new wave of banking apps that have set out to transform the way people manage their money. Some of the early signs augur well.

Since it was founded in 2015, Monzo has received £35m in funding, valuing the business at £65m. Much of this has come from venture capital investors, but a sizeable chunk has been provided by individual users, who have invested via crowdfunding platform Crowdcube. Appetite for a slice of “the bank of the future”, as the company styles itself, has been so intense that one crowdfunding round raised £1m in just 96 seconds.