0 to $2.1B in <2 years; My Ambition; Facing Difficulty Creates Meaning
Recently, I’ve been spending a lot of time learning about Fintechs. One company that stood out to me, is Y-Combinator, Tencent, and a16z-backed Jeeves.
Jeeves is a corporate card Fintech. They make it easy for companies to spend money internationally, but keep all of the information centralized. Jeeves started in 2020 and in March of 2022, they closed their Series C for $180M at a $2.1B valuation.
I watched the founder’s talk at Websummit.
Here’s what I learned:
When building a Corporate Card Fintech, your competitive edge needs to come from a suite of products, not just a Corporate Card.
Recently there have been a string of corporate card companies reaching billion-dollar valuations: Brex, Ramp, Razorpay, and now Jeeves, among others.
Corporate cards are practically a commodity. The margins are razor thin, and there are few things one can offer that stand out above competing cards. Their use case is to act as a funnel, bringing people into your Fintech Ecosystem.
Instead of just offering a corporate card, offer a personalized bank-company relationship. You need a suite of products that cover corporate spending, wire transfers, deposits, working capital loans, etc.
One example of this in the US is Rippling. They started as payroll management software, and are now moving into corporate cards. The path forward is about building suites of tools. Corporate cards need to be a part of that to stay competitive, but they don’t make you stand out from the competition.
Last, getting customers to use more than one financial service from Jeeves (or any Fintech for that matter) increase the company’s stickiness.
Dileep (the founder) emphasized that you can not compete on capital anymore. There needs to be more. The hard problem to solve is “what is your differentiator?”
Navigating the Lack of Financial Infrastructure is Difficult
Jeeves focuses on creating products for smaller companies going international.
In the international space, Jeeves needed to build personal relationships with regulators to set up payment infrastructure that previously never existed.
This also made them competitive since any company that wants to compete now needs to do the same.
On Scaling Fintechs Rapidly
Corporate Cards can be Broken into 4 Components
Top-funnel customer acquisition
Payment Processor
Program manager (regulation/manager)
Issuing Bin [Local Accounts that can be used to Spend Money]
By standardizing the first 4 components, Jeeves does not need to create a full payment stack with each country. This makes scaling much more manageable. The most significant thing being changed across countries is the Issuing Bin.
As the Company Scales, so does the Responsibilities of the CEO.
When Jeeves started, Dileep was very focused on finding Product Market Fit. As Jeeves scaled from 500 to 5000 customers, he spend a lot more time on Finance. For him, it’s important to work in focus sprints on the things he is good at, for 6-8 months.
He understood that as a founder he could not do everything, and so one of his first hires was a Chief People Officer, who helped establish and nurture a culture. Because Jeeves needed people around the world to work within local banking infrastructure, their team grew to about 200 people across 24 countries. With such daunting growth, having a CPO was critical to do this effectively.
Maintaining Ambition in High School
Recently, I’ve started to struggle a bit in maintaining my ambition. Spending time in a type-A school means that at any given moment, the 5 people around me are often not on the same wavelength.
The environment feels more curated to following the grain than it does people trying to challenge the status quo.
Learning is about (test) curves not curiosity.
Work is separate from what people love to do.
Conversations are more likely to focus on College Applications over Career Ambitions.
At times, it can feel almost soul-sucking.
I’ve spent time reconnecting with friends and mentors who realign my ambition. People who remind me that the only thing I can strive for is the strongest, most capable, loving, and open version of myself.
There's nothing wrong with others thinking differently than me. I just don't want to find myself striving for a CS degree from an Ivy League to become an Investment Banker or Software Engineer at a Fortune500 company. That is not what gives me energy.
Pain
Last, something I've observed is if I am not pushing myself to do uncomfortable things daily, I begin to feel physically sick.
I need showers so cold I'm shivering, burpees until I don't think I can breathe, and reading dense literature until my brain reaches exhaustion.
Without this, I begin to feel restless. There’s a sense of shame and dissatisfaction I feel when I have not pushed myself sufficiently.
How much is sufficient? It’s an intuitive feeling - I just know. Deep in my gut, there’s either a sense of pride or disappointment for how the day went.
It’s kind of like a choice:
To feel pain doing difficult things, moving towards a goal
Or to feel the pain in the form of frustration for not using my time effectively.
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Talk to you next week 👋,
-Satvik