Latest / South Asian Trailblazers / Founder Garima Shah: How She Scaled a $10M FinTech in 5 Years

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Founder Garima Shah: How She Scaled a $10M FinTech in 5 Years · South Asian Trailblazers

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hotest tape.
• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Find ways that you can win, whether that's on Candy Crush or by getting the next cab.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: If you can give yourself dopamine hits, your body chemistry is automatically positioned to make you win more.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_02: Today I am so excited to welcome Garima Shaw.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_02: You had a doctor for a father.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_02: Were there any expectations you felt placed on you to pursue some of the more traditional paths South Asians are often encouraged to pursue?
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_02: Dr.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_02: Lauren here?
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: Correct.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Not really.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think my parents knew that I was a little bit more of a wild card.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: Co-founder and president of Biller Genie.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: Greema has built it into a profit-generating platform, achieving over 10 million in revenue every year.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_02: Your favorite financial hack.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Make a profit.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I know it's a hack, but like just turn a profit.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like if you owned a coffee shop and you were losing five or$10 million a month, would you be like, oh my god, what a great coffee shop?
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: But for some reason, we're like, oh my god, what a great tech company.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: They're losing$10 million a month.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_02: Biller Genie is a fintech platform that's automating accounts receivable for small and mid-sized businesses.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: So in the United States, it takes an average of 47 days for a business to get paid, which is crazy.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: With Biller Genie, we take an average business from 47 days down to eight days.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_02: She started the company in 2020 with her co-founder and actually has over 20 years of experience scaling companies in this realm.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: The very first day in the role, someone committed fraud, and I had to terminate him, and he threw a chair at me.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: Most unusual customer feedback you've gotten.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't like the color of the shirt that you're wearing in the demo video.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously, FinTech is a super male-dominated industry.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, have you felt like comments like that are gendered?
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_02: She graduated from Boston University, holds an MBA from Rollins, and has been a lifelong dancer.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm so excited to welcome her today to talk about the business of building a business.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for having me.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm super excited about our conversation.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_02: Same here.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_02: I am someone who likes to start at the beginning of people's journeys because I think it helps our audience understand how they got to where they are today.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_02: Your parents originally were in the UK or in India and then they went to Africa.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_02: You grew up in the UK.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: Can you tell me a little bit about your upbringing in the UK and then eventually immigrating to the US?
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: I was super young when I was in the UK.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: I moved here.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: I moved to the States when I was like three years old.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: My father is a physician, and so he was doing his residency all over again to be able to be qualified here to practice.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so therefore we were in Detroit and Chicago and Missouri before he opened his practice in Florida.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_02: And did you always, I mean, I assume growing up in a household where you had a doctor for a father, were there any expectations you felt placed on you to pursue some of the more traditional paths South Asians are often encouraged to pursue?
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: Doctor Lawyer Engineer?
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_02: Correct.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I would say not really.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: I think my parents knew that I was a little bit more of a wild card.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that they never thought I'd go into business of any kind.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, they all said I'd do something creative, a creative profession.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think they were surprised about that.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: And look, my degree is actually in advertising.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I thought I'd be going into something creative as well until I found business and fell in love.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_02: You went to BU, you studied advertising, you graduated at the ripe age of 19.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_02: Can you talk a little bit about what you foresaw for yourself in terms of career path?
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I chose advertising because I wanted to make a Super Bowl ad.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: Also, you know, I was like, oh, it's easy, it's at the top, and people pay a lot of money for the Super Bowl ad.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: So that seems like it'll take my creative box and my business box, and everything will be great.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: I went down to Miami to work and I interviewed a bunch of ad agencies.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: And when I said that I wanted to make a Super Bowl ad, they kind of laughed me out of their office.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, wow.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: They would say, Oh, sweetheart, cool, great.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: In 20 or 30 years, maybe, maybe we'll let you work on something like that.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Well, 20 or 30 years.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: And at 19 years old, five years sounds like an attorney d 20 or 30.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, well, that's double or triple my age.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: What are you talking about?
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: I can't even think that far ahead.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I quit very quickly pivoted away from that.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_02: I remember the part of myself in college that believed I could do anything and have these wild dreams.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_02: And then it's almost like the real world sets out to temper those aspirations.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_02: How did you sort of maintain the wherewithal to be like, wait, no, I want to go do something impactful right now rather than being there and accepting that, okay, fine, I can do this in two decades.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think that at the time I knew where I was gonna go.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I wanted to somehow make a change somewhere in the world.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so I didn't know what that meant.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know how I was gonna get there.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why I took a job in commission-only sales, which is just such a crazy pivot.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that that was the humility I needed that kicks you in the teeth every single day.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: And you have people being like, get out of my business and no soliciting.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: And you're like, oh my God, I'm one of those people.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: And it was amazing though.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I had the most amazing team.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: I had a boss who just taught me everything about life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, you know?
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that that was that moment of people care about who you are, people care how hard you work a lot more than they care about what your degree is.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you can just use that to build something, how much better would the world be?
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_02: I want to speak a little bit about that experience because it's so fascinating to me that you're 19 years old and you were doing sales for Bell South Communications, right?
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_02: And for those who don't know, Bell South was like OG ATT.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_02: Then it was acquired, I think, in around 2006.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_02: Can you speak a little bit more to how you landed that experience, made the decision to pursue it, and what it was like to your point to like go door to door and sell telecom?
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, so I chose it completely by accident.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I told you I went on these interviews, and I wanted to have an apartment in Miami, and I wanted a very nice apartment in Miami.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: And the amounts that I was being offered from the jobs that I was interviewing at just simply wouldn't pay for the apartment that I wanted.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I was absolutely too proud to ask for help or to go to my parents.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, I'm gonna do this on my own.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: So when I interviewed for the job in sales, I didn't know what sales was.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: And they were like, Well, look, why don't you come out for a day and actually watch what we do?
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: She taught me about law of averages.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: And she's like, Look, if you just see 50 businesses, you will sign at least one and you make this per account.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, hold on.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: So if I see 100, could I sign two?
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: If I see 150, could I sign three?
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I just started doing the math, and I was like, well, great.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: That means I can just control this and do this on my own, and I can probably make a lot more money, and I get to be outside and I get to meet all these people.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: And how great is that?
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't realize being outside in Miami in a three-piece suit and high heels every day.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_02: So you were literally going door to door.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: Literally going door to door, business to business, um, in some of the craziest areas, but it was amazing.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I truly, like I even tell my kids, I'm like, at some point, I would love for you to have this experience because it is so based on yourself.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: And if you can create revenue, if you know how to talk to people, I think those soft skills are kind of going away.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it helps you in every part of life.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_02: I love this take because Tope O Awatana, who is the founder of Calendly, talks about this all the time.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_02: He talks about how he started his career going door to door.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_02: I think when he was at the University of Georgia selling alarm systems.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_02: And whenever he gets on these founder talks, he's like, the number one skill a founder can have or an entrepreneur can have is learning how to sell.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_02: And to your point, it's becoming more of a lost art, right?
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_02: Like we're all in our CRM sending emails these days.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_02: Can you talk about those core skills that you feel like have translated to then you going on to build businesses?
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: And like I talk about this again with my children all the time, but we all get scared of, oh my God, AI and how is this going to take people's jobs?
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Humanity hasn't changed.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: Human connection, how you look someone in the eye, how you are empathetic to them, how you're able to carry your conversation, how you can fill those social boxes, those things are not going anywhere.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: So those are the soft skills, which it's so fascinating to me because I do interviews all day long.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: And people walk in, and I'm like, Can you can you look me in the eye?
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Can we have a conversation?
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Can we, can we just be human for a second?
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Because I do think people have gotten so accustomed to hiding behind this veil of a computer, a Slack channel that's so impersonal and it just gets worse and worse.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: But the people who are truly successful, the founder skills that I think make all the difference are all of those soft skills.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_02: You, after Bell South, you ended up starting your own company.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_02: Tell me about that business and how that came to fruition.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: So when I was selling for Bell South, my boss who owned the company, she went on maternity leave and she left a 19-year-old in charge of her company.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: And that was me.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, okay, I I can do this.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I had 75 salespeople reporting to me from one day to the next.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: The very first day in the role, someone committed fraud.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my gosh.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I had to terminate him.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: And he threw a chair at me.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_02: This doesn't even sound like a real story.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_02: What does that?
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_02: What does that mean?
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: So he had forged a signature.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: I got a call from Bell South saying that someone in your office has forged a signature.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: I had no idea who I could call, what I could do.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I was like, I just need to fire them.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like, this is pretty easy.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: Bring them in the office.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_02: But you're nine, like 19, 20 years old at this point.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, I need to fire you for forgery.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: But the customer meant to sign.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, that doesn't matter.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's still forgery.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like you can't forge someone's signature.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna have to terminate you.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: And he picks up a chair and throws it at me across the desk.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, wow, like I guess that's not how you're supposed to fire somebody.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: I guess you need to do things a little differently.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: So all these learning experiences, but suffice to say, learning running that business for her for five, six, seven months, I was like, I I can do this on my own.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I ended up moving to West Palm, opening my own sales and marketing firm.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: My first client was First Rise in Merchant Services.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how I ended up in FinTech because it was First Horizon Merchant Services.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I would hire anywhere from 30 to 50 people all the time.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: Every day I did about 20 interviews a day.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: And would hire people on commission only sales because I felt like I could always teach someone how to sell.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, if I could just keep teaching people how to do cool things and teaching, inspiring people to go out there and sell something and simplify conversations, then it was cool.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: What was the core of the business?
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: You were teaching people like helping develop sales reps for these companies?
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh no, I mean I was the sales arm.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I was outsourced sales for first fractional sales.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: We were so we were the sales arm for first rise in merchant services.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_02: So tell me a little bit more about how that eventually planted the seed for you going into FinTech broadly.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: So when I was at First Rise and Merchant Services and we had this company, my husband and I got married, went at the ripe age of 22.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: It was super, super late.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so we got married at 22, and we're on our honeymoon.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: And during our honeymoon in Hawaii, I'm on the phone like the entire time.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, Don't you want to have a life?
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Oh my god, I'm so stressed.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: I work 16 hours a day.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: And it just wasn't the right time, and it probably wasn't the right business.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I came back and I sold that.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: When I sold it, the buyer was the people who were on the back end of First Rise and Merchant Services was a company called Payment Alliance.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: Payment Alliance ended up bringing in in-house to run their sales teams.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't really know FinTech other than knowing First Rise and Merchant Services tangentially because we sold their products.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um but then when I started working for Payment Alliance, I started learning about the acquiring business and how interchange works and just the basics of merchant services and payment processing long before fintech was even a term.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's where I really fell in love with fintech again, long before it was called fintech.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: I think the first time I heard someone say fintech was probably in the year like 2010.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's probably when it was starting to get popularized.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: Before that, like we would say what we do, and people would be like, kind of like, oh, you're like Chandler.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like we have absolutely no idea what you do.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_02: That's so funny.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: You go to work, but we have no idea what you do every day.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: And also, I think back then, um, it wasn't as commoditized as it is right now.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: I think now businesses are very aware that they pay fees for credit card processing.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: There's Stripe and there's so many other payment facilitation orchestration tools, and also it's becoming so much more integrated, which is again what the advent of FinTech truly is.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_02: Super interesting.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_02: I I want to back up a second because you talked about how you come back from your honeymoon and are like, I'm gonna sell my company.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_02: That's not usually a very easy process to initiate for people.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_02: And I want to draw the veil back on that of what does that actually mean and look like?
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_02: And what did that mean and look like for you, at least in that era?
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: I had no idea what I was doing.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: And looking back, I sold it for a huge discount.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: I truly had no clue.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: It was, hey, I'm thinking about selling this, and someone's like, Oh, I'll buy it.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, great, bye.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: And that was kind of it.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: Did you do outreach to Pinoel?
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: Nope.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: It was like just an internal, hey, I know you said you were thinking about potentially opening a company.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: I knew somebody, and do you want and they're like, yeah, I'll buy it.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: And no diligence, no term sheet.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: It was very different, especially after that when I did get my MBA and got really into MA.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, wait, what did I do?
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: What did I do 10 years ago?
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but you know, you live and you learn.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_02: Wow, super interesting.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_02: I want to spend some time obviously talking about Bill or Genie, the company that you're building and co-founded now.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_02: It's in the realm of automation for accounts receivable.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_02: Can you lay that out for those of us who don't live in the world of finance and fintech and what that means in terms of what you're trying to do for small and medium-sized businesses?
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: So, accounts receivable automation is truly just getting small businesses paid faster.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: When we think about any business in the world, there's three things that they need to do to have a good billing process.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: Just three things.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: You've got to send out a bill, right?
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're my landscaper, you're my pool guy, you're my recording studio, you have to send me a bill because if you don't, I can't pay it.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, you've got to bill me for the right amount.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: And number three, we all shop at Amazon.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: Not because it's cheaper, the product is better, but because it's easier.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to make it easy for customers to pay you.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: And we've all gotten the bills that we see, and we're like, you want me to write a check?
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: What do you mean a check?
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think I have a checkbook.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: So the harder you make it for someone to pay you, the more friction you add to that process, the longer it takes to get paid.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: So in the United States, it takes an average of 47 days for a business to get paid on any open bill or invoice, which is crazy.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, businesses go out of business all the time because they have less than 20 days of cash flow.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so 47 days is a crazy average.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: With Bill or Genie, we just do those three things really well.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: We send out invoices, we ensure that the data is right, we make it really easy for customers to pay.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: We have a lot of other bells and whistles, we do a lot of really cool stuff.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: But because we do those things so well, we take an average business from 47 days down to eight days.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so they get paid within eight days, and they usually say between 10 and 15 hours a week of administrative time.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: And that's really where you see these businesses thrive because they were spending all this time doing something that was so far outside of their zone of genius, and they're allowing us to, they're giving us the opportunity to outsource that for them and automate it for them and make it so much easier.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, cutting it down to one-sixth of that time is I imagine a matter of survival for a lot of businesses.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_02: How did you stumble on this idea?
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: Play-doh necessity drives invention.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: My partner and I both, as I said, come from payments, and we always had this issue where we could not elegantly connect a payment software to an ERP system.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: So originally the idea was to give the software away free and make revenue on the payment side because we knew payments really well.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: We had a very major bank approach us very early on before we even basically launched and said, we would love to work with you, but we can't because you're directly competing with our payments business.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: From one day to the next, we decided to go from a payments company to a SaaS company.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: Literally, that was the decision.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: And we launched in January 2020 as a SaaS company, as a standalone SaaS solution, and changed the entire business model and realized that everyone we knew in the payments realm, everyone knew in the banking realm needed this solution for their customers.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: If we needed it, we knew that they needed it as well.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: So that's why we made that a distribution channel.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_02: It's you and your husband?
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: No, me, my co-founder.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, and tell me about that relationship and how you guys met.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: So him and I met uh 12, 13 years ago because I was hired as a consultant to due diligence on an MA transaction.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: I was flown down to Miami and I was asked to take a look at someone's financials and meet the founder.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: Spoiler alert, he was the founder.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I was tearing apart his business.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure he did not like that very much, as he says.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: I was a newly minted MBA who was trying to flex my muscle, and he was a founder trying to figure out whether or not he wanted to sell.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: And always being on the opposite side of the same transaction is a very tense moment.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: Of course.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I ended up going to work for that company that I was doing diligence for, consulting for full-time.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: The day that I started, I signed the contract to buy his company or buy a portion of it with a long-term investment or a tail investment.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: That tail investment meant that I was, he was gonna be one of my option.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, more like we were consistently investing to get larger equity stakes.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: Gotcha.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyways, he was one of my portcos basically.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so it was my job to maintain it and grow that business.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I would fly down to Miami all the time to help work with him and grow the business, and that's how we became friends.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so we've really been in the trenches together.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: And he's a computer engineer.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: As he was ideating about this software, we started talking about it.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, what if we did this?
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: What if we did that?
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: And it just seemed to make sense.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_02: Tell me about some of the milestones that you guys have achieved in building this business over the last five years.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: So, going from zero to any revenue is always always a huge milestone.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: So, 2020, we literally launched.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: We thought we were going to raise a round of funding.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: It was supposed to close the end of April of 2020.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: We all know what happened in March.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: So the round of funding obviously didn't happen.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: It was probably the biggest blessing in disguise for our business.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: I think it made us really scrappy.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: We said we're not gonna focus on anything but how we how the product works, what our distribution strategy is.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: We're only gonna focus on these things and we're gonna make it amazing.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that that was a huge turning point.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: It was a huge like reset of we're just gonna figure this out.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: And then we launched with this big bank in like 2021 was the first time we started having revenue.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: And then it was still kind of proof of concept like, does this work?
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: Do we have anything?
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then we like doubled that in 2022, and we're like, huh, we might actually have a business.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden we signed another 500 partners.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: We're like, wow, we might really have a business.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then we look at 23 and that becomes like our professionalization year.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: That year we opened an office, we got on Salesforce, we, you know, started using a phone system, just all of the basics that a company needs.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: And then we doubled again in 23, and then we doubled again in 24, and we're doubling again this year from a revenue, actually almost 300%.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: And we are break-even.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: And that is really exciting.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we're well over, I can say we're well over 10 million in revenue.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: Umgratulations.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: And we're growing, we're growing double or triple that almost every single year.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that's really exciting because I feel like the world is our oyster and we can kind of do whatever we want at this point.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_02: You talked about how not ending up raising a round of funding ended up being a blessing in disguise.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_02: Can you expand on that, especially in the current media environment we live in?
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the glorification of fundraising is one of the most frustrating things, I think, that I've ever experienced.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it has nothing to do with being a startup founder.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: I think just being in business, the fact that we're glorifying, like, oh my gosh, this company raised 50 million, 80 million, 100 million, and you look at their revenue and it's zero.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: And you're like, what is happening?
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like, if you owned a coffee shop and you were losing five or$10 million a month, would you be like, oh my God, what a great coffee shop?
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: But for some reason, we're like, oh my God, what a great tech company.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: They're losing$10 million a month.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know when this became so sexy.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I almost think it's like the downfall of many businesses because you're on this treadmill of you've raised this money and now you're being forced to spend that money, which means you're always going to be increasing your burn rate to more than what your revenue increase is going to be.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: And if you keep doing that, you're just gonna have to keep raising until you dilute yourself out of the business, which is I think what happens to so many young founders.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it is awful and scary, and it's you know, you put your heart into heart and soul in something, and then you find out five, 10, 15 years later that it was all for nothing.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that's gotta be horrifying.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel bad, like I said, for a lot of the super young founders that are coming out and getting so excited about their amazing ideas and too quickly being scooped up by VC money and being like, oh yeah, well, I could build something huge.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I hope that they'll build something huge, but I hope it's not at the expense of their own governance and their own ability to make decisions in their business.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_02: I generally agree with this take, but the flip side argument, I think, for some people has often been, well, I don't have the capital or resources to go and start my business.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: Can you speak to those people and what you'd say to them?
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: I think that there's a lot of ways to raise money.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I and I'm not saying that raising money, like, look, we've raised rounds too.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's raising only what you need and being as scrappy and conservative with that as possible.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: I think what I have a problem with is this glamorous 10, 15, 20 million.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think we've gotten almost like nose blind to the idea$10 million isn't a small amount of money.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: To spend that in a year, spend 20 million, it's it's a lot.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: So, what do you really need to run the business?
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: And take as little as humanly possible, use angels, use growth equity, use family.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Offices, use friends and family and try to bootstrap and be scrappy for as long as possible.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: Or if you need to take the money, again, raises are great.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: I think they're a fantastic tool, but do it in a way that's smart where your goal isn't to continually raise.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: Your goal should be to get to profitability.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: And the raise should just be the vehicle that gets you there.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_02: I know I love that take.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_02: And it's a conversation I ended up having with a lot of business school classmates because even in the realm of not venture-backable businesses, so more lifestyle or the conversation we've been having, unsexier businesses, but that can turn a profit.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_02: I've been talking to so many of my friends.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, go to a community bank and take out a loan.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_02: It's going to be so much of a better outcome for you than taking out all these investors, diluting yourself completely, and then not ending up with much in the end after putting in blood, sweat, and tears over many, many years.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_02: So I appreciate you talking about that.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_02: Talk about what is ahead for the business.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_02: What are you looking forward to?
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_02: What do you think is important for you to build?
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_02: Are you guys sort of seeing what the potential exit strategy here is long term?
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_02: Do you want to keep building this business?
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_02: What's next for you?
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: So we always say that we've only built 5 or 10% of what we want to build.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: We see so much more potential in the product.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: There's so much more that needs to happen in accounts receivable from how do we, we've already integrated a lot of AI, but how do we integrate AI even further to make it even easier for small businesses?
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: How do we use tools to be integrated in every facet of their life and make payment options even simpler and be part of various payment rails so that the options at the point of sale, if I'm paying a bill, it's not just credit, debit, ACH, but it's Venmo, PayPal, Cash App, Check, Bill Pay, Bill Push.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's our, you know, real-time payments, buy now, pay later.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I see us really expanding in all of those different facets.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so I don't think that we're anywhere near done because we're still pretty young.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I love that.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_02: Do you feel any pressure from the larger fintechs?
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I I do think some of them have tried to move into this space and down market.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_02: Can you speak to that a little bit?
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know, actually, not really.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: We don't feel a lot of pressure from larger fintechs right now.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: We are partnered with so many large fintechs.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: I think our background in fintech and acquiring and payments has really helped our network with that.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: So we get all of their advice kind of for free.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: We get to work with all of them because of their being in our network.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: But what I also think is very important is that there's a proliferation of AP solutions and accounts payable, and there always has been.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: Accounts receivable obviously isn't as sexy, but businesses do need to get paid.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it's interesting that we haven't made that more of a priority.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: So 90% of small businesses in the United States still do not automate their accounts receivable.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: And if I just look at that, this is a greenfield play.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not trying to switch someone from who they're with because 90% of them don't use anybody.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's I'm I'm competing against someone in their office who's doing it manually and I'm making their life easier.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I love that.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_02: Super, super fascinating.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_02: Do you imagine that you will continue to be a serial founder?
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_02: Do you see yourself going in-house somewhere, becoming an operator?
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I'm talking like the 10, 20 year vision for you.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: I would say I absolutely love being a founder.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: I love being an entrepreneur.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: I love solving really complicated problems.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: And as much as like you said, it's blood, sweat, and tears.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: And at the end of the day, sometimes I'm like, oh my God, what am I doing with my life?
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_02: There are easier ways to make a living.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what I say to people all the time as a founder.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, this is a complicated way of living.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: I totally agree.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: But I think we're adrenal junkies.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, totally.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think that, you know, I think it's all the same things that allows, like, allows us to bungee jump in jobs.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's the same, it's the same people, it's the same cloth.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's why we do it because that challenge is so exciting.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_02: Tell me a little bit about what it's been like to be a founder and a mom and a wife and a daughter.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_02: What's it been like juggling that on a personal level?
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so you know, I don't really believe in the idea of work-life balance only because I think that it balance inherently means 50-50.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I just don't think it's that.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: I really believe in like filling your cup the way you want it to be filled.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: But look, I think that it has been really cool, I think, for my kids, for my girls, to be part of the journeys.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: I have obviously Bill or Genie, and then I have a nonprofit as well.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: And they get to see it and be part of it and get excited that they can do whatever they would like to do.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just about working your ass off.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_02: I want to talk about your nonprofit, but first I want to say, what are some of the lessons that you try to instill in your daughters coming from the perspective of being a founder?
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_02: And do your do you and your husband ever find yourselves at odds with each other in that dimension?
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: So my husband's a founder as well.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: So, no, I think that we both are very on the same page of like, I think that the things that we talk about more than anything are stand up for what you believe.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like, even with us, they'll be like, I want to take this class or I want to go on this trip.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like, okay, great.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: Well, create a PowerPoint presentation or create a pros and cons list and present it to us.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: And if you don't learn how to have an argument, if you don't learn to stand up for the things that you want in a constructive fashion, you're just not gonna win.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like in life, you're just not gonna win.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: So learn to fight, learn to negotiate, learn to put things in ways that people can understand.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I think communication skills are the absolute most paramount.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I think number two is be a good human, right?
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like just show up and be a good human.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the most important over everything is nothing, absolutely nothing, will ever be any stronger than hard work.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like you can't replace hard work with anything else.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I don't care.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_02: Especially in the age of AI.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_02: What do your daughters want to be when they grow up right now?
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well, my younger one is a firecracker, and her goal is to be an actor, singer.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: She wants to be a triple threat, an actor, singer, and a dancer.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: She's done nothing to this end, but this is her absolute goal.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like she's like ignoritions, but that is her absolute goal, um, which is hilarious because she's a total firecracker, and I think she's gonna do amazing things.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: My older one is also just incredible, super studious, crazy smart, and she really wants to potentially be in the medical field.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: And she wants to do that, but she also wants to be an attorney, so she wants to be an attorney and a doctor.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_02: So she's fulfilling your parents' dreams.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: Right, do all the things.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's very interesting.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_02: Tell us about Brown Girls on a Mission.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: So Brown Girls on a Mission came from I sit on a lot of nonprofit boards, and I was getting a little frustrated with this idea that you have to sell gala tickets and you've got to get silent auction items, and you want to be seen at the gala.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: And you go to these galas and you're like, what are you here for?
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: Do you even know the cause that you're supporting?
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: And most people don't.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I found that a little frustrating.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that philanthropy is about so much more than writing a check, and it's really about getting in there and doing the work.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: So Brown Girls on a Mission is about minority women.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: I think we make a huge impact in the world, and we can make a huge impact if we just bond together and we not just write a check collaboratively, but we come together as a giving circle and we write the checks to support organizations.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: But more importantly, we give our time and we volunteer.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I always go back to this.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: If everybody, if every single person in the world spent between two and four hours just doing good for someone else per month.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's it.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying it has to be every day, all day, but if you truly thought about spending two to four hours a month just being kind or doing something for someone else, how much better would our world be?
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the basic premise of Brown Girls on Emission of just we're gonna give the we're gonna write the checks because that's important, but more importantly, we're going to do the work.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: So we launched last year, and in the past year, we've donated over$80,000 to local charities.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: And we've given over 1,600 hours, volunteer hours between ourselves, our children.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it's it's been amazing.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: And more importantly, I think it's taught our kids.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like my kids are so excited about it.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: They want to volunteer, they see people as humans, they want to have those conversations, and it opens up conversations that you may not be able to have otherwise.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like, oh my gosh, people are gonna eat the same meal for four days in a row, and that's it.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: And they don't get cookies and donuts and brownies and pizza, and it's like, no, that's not how every life is.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: And it allows having that conversation that I think sometimes we get so far removed from.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_02: I love that so much because you know, I feel like all the studies and and things people talk about are like, you know, right now I I'm focused on my career.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_02: So like let me give money and then later on I'll, you know, I'll give my time.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I I understand the sentiment, but I feel like the further we move away from that, it explains why the poles of society are also moving further away from each other.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's about going and doing the actual work.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_02: And um, as I like to say to my friends, touching grass.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_02: We all need to go touch grass.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so I I really love that and I love the mission.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's also amazing that you're carrying that forward for the next generation.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um, thank you so much for sharing your story here today, agreeably.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for having me.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_02: I want to end on a quick rapid fire.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_02: Do you do rapid fires?
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_02: Because you know, trailblazer's trailblazing, you're lighting fires everywhere in a positive way.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_02: So if your life were a movie, what would the audience be screaming at you to do?
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_02: Dance.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I love that.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um, your favorite financial hack.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: Make a profit.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I know it's not a hack, but like just turn a profit.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um, chase sapphire or amex platinum.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: Amex platinum.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I like that take.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, hottest take.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: Dopamine is really important.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: And give yourself a dopamine hit every single day.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: Find ways that you can win, whether that's on Candy Crush or by getting the next cab.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: But if you can give yourself dopamine hits as often, as many times as possible, your body chemistry is automatically positioned to make you win more.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: So put yourself in a winning state and always get a dopamine hit.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_02: I love that.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_02: That is a hot take.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, something you're unlearning.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: Control.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: Allowing, you know, the whole let it go Mel Robbins theory.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_02: It's so funny.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_02: Every time I have a founder on this podcast, it's some version of control that they say.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_02: And I get it, I feel it too.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_02: Something you're learning.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: How to scale.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: I think learning how to scale and going, you know, when you're a tiny company and you're still growing at smaller increments, it's a um, it's not easier, but it's different.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: But now when you're like, oh my God, we grew up, we're a real company, and scaling that business to a bigger company is very, very challenging.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: Most unusual customer feedback you've gotten.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't like the color of the shirt that you were wearing in the demo video.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh-huh.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: We've got we've gotten something like, yeah, we didn't like the guy who was doing the demo video, or we didn't like the color of the shirt.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, what?
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, I have to pause on this a second in the rapid fire.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously, FinTech is a super male-dominated industry.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, have you felt like comments like that are gendered?
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_02: Well, first of all, that was a male that they're talking about.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I do think that it is interesting that when I go and do things, people are more interested in often what I'm wearing and how I'm wearing it.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm kind of okay with that because I really do enjoy fashion and nice things.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: So, and look, I think it's what sets us apart, and I think it's about owning the space.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_02: Trailblazer, who's inspired you?
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um so many.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: Indrani.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so many.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: Pile Kadakia.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: So many.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, lots of favorites if you have it on the podcast.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_02: What does trailblazing mean to you in one word or phrase?
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: Expanding into new frontiers and finding finding ways to make something from nothing.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for being here, Garima.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_01: It was such a joy.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having me.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for tuning in today.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_01: I hope you'll join our community at SouthAsianTrailblazers.com.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: Be sure to subscribe to our newsletter and follow us at South Asian Trailblazers on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and any major platform.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_01: Here at South Asian Trailblazers, we're dedicated to elevating leading South Asians.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: Until next time.