Alpha Beta Launch | Fintech Founder Stories Sila

Victor Unda, Co-Founder & CEO

If you live and work in one country but your family resides in another, sending money is how you stay in touch and support them. Sending money is expensive, so you do it in a lump sum once a month. Transfer fees are high. You have no control over how the money is spent. Loved ones might have to travel somewhere to even receive it. OKYapp changes all that. You pick a brand from the website (from pharmacies to fast food restaurants), prepay an amount, and your loved ones get an SMS with which they can pay locally. Hear from Victor Unda about the inspiration for this idea and what he had to do to make it a reality. The stories of his customers will warm your heart.

David was always perplexed by the fact that most of his peers could talk for hours about video games and get really excited in the process, but showed no interest in discussing investment strategies and wealth building. Even though the latter will have an oversized impact on their lives. So he had the idea to make wealth planning fun and addictive by creating a game around it with digital representations that would grow as your investments grow. It wasn’t an easy road but clearly something David has been enjoying tremendously. His biggest advice: The world around you was built by other people. If you want to build something, build it. But there is much more to learn from his quest. Listen, learn, and be entertained.

Patrick always thought that e-commerce doesn’t live up to its potential because of a lack of trust about who’s on the other side of the deal. He had started his own companies but finally saw an opportunity to realize his vision through a merger with another firm; negotiating, collaborating, merging, and launching during a worldwide pandemic. And, doing this in a heavily regulated industry like the chemical industry, while attempting something that hadn’t been done before. Hear from him about his journey, which as he describes it, “was ugly” at times. How “being impatient and doing everything at once” can turn out to be the biggest pitfall. How to deal with mistakes. How necessary it is to be open minded, even as you are sticking to your core values and following your vision as closely as possible.

With Currencycloud having been acquired by Visa late in 2021, you know this episode is going to be different. Hear from Stephen how he co-founded the company and the early-day struggles that he and his team had to overcome. Even after many financing rounds, “there is always something” as he put it. Building a company is never done. There is always something in front of you. Hear him talk about how crucial it is to hire smart people and let them tell you what to do. His advice to other entrepreneurs is don’t panic. Keep going. Regret is a waste of emotion. It’s the story of a fascinating roller coaster ride with a great ending. Or, in Stephen’s words, “we are ver fortunate to have ended where we have.”

Billy Roberts, co-Founder & CEO, Wedge.us

When the two co-founders had the idea for what would eventually become Wedge.us, they were convinced a Google search would tell them of other companies already doing it. It took a while to sink in that their idea was a novel one. Hear how they built their business out of a garage of all places. Why their first hire was a chief legal officer. And how they were driven by their belief that the future is digital, and that users want flexibility, seamlessness, frictionless and intuitive design. That when it comes to hiring a team, it is wrong to compromise on personality and values, even if the professional skills are a great fit.

Bo started Lithic with 2 childhood friends in a basement. Hear how the pandemic came just as they were scaling from 25 up to 100 people. While it was very stressful, moving out of a shared office and transitioning to a remote work environment forced the firm to be crisper in communication and more deliberate in how they communicated as a team. Hear him talk about customers, how they still blow him away with the use cases they create for Lithic’s product. He talks about his conviction that if you take something that is really complex and make it available to developers, you can’t imagine what they will come up with down the road. His advice to budding entrepreneurs is that all advice is situational. He found that the most helpful advisors and investors for your business are those that are 2-3 steps ahead of you in their journey. Find out what he loves about fintech and what he says it is that makes our industry unique. And why it is important to learn and understand the language banks use when discussing fintech.