How Klearly Pivoted to Dominate Hospitality Payments (Geus Walder)

We Built It Because We Had To - Tech Founder Backstories · Jun 23, 2026 · 20m

What if going narrower is what makes you fundable?

Geus Walder co-founded Klearly as a generalist soft-POS app — download an app, turn any phone into a payment terminal, no hardware required. It gained traction across taxis, retail, and more. But a year of staying close to customers kept pointing to one place: hospitality had the deepest payment pain and the worst-fitting tools. So Klearly cut everything else and became a hospitality-only specialist — and that focus is what unlocked the growth, including a $12M Series A led by PayPal Ventures and a jump to 53 people.

In this episode, Geus…