Reducing the cost and risk of payment operations in Africa with Revio co-founder Nicole Dunn

Bill Cilluffo, Partner and Head of Early Stage Investments, sits down with Revio co-founder Nicole Dunn to discuss how Revio is reducing the cost and risk of payment operations in Africa.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
You're listening to the FinTech Thought Leaders
podcast from QED Investors.
You're deep dive into the worldof venture capital and
financial services with today'sdigital disruptors.
Qed is a global venture capitalfirm focused on investing in
FinTech companies all the wayfrom pre-seed to IPO.
Fintech Thought Leaders bringstogether the most talented
entrepreneurs tackling today'sbiggest problems.

(00:30):
If you're looking to learn moreabout what motivates our
founders and team members tosucceed, you're in the right
place.
Hello and welcome to theFinTech Thought Leaders podcast.
I'm Bill Salufo, head of earlystage investments at QED
Investors.
Today on the podcast, I'mexcited to be joined by Nicole
Dunn, co-founder and COO ofRevio.
Nicole, welcome to the podcast,Thanks.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
Bill, it's great to be here.

Speaker 1 (00:52):
It's great to have you.
So, look, we're going to talk alot more about Revio later on
in the podcast, but I wonder ifyou can just start by giving us
maybe a 60 second commercial onwho Revio is and what you guys
do.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
Sure.
So Revio is an Africa-focusedpayment orchestration platform
really focused on helping toreduce the complexity, cost and
risk of payment operations inAfrica.
The problem we're reallysolving is when you look at
Africa as a region, compared toother parts of the world, the
payment landscape is reallyfragmented and broken.
You've got more than 54different regulatory schemes,

(01:25):
you've got 42 currencies andyou've got more than 280
registered payment serviceproviders and, depending on the
market you're in or the industryyou're in, or the U-Kits case
you're focused on, a differentpayment method or payment
provider is the most predominantchoice, and so what we're
really doing at Revio is,through a single API and
platform, giving predominantlyenterprise merchants, both local

(01:48):
and global, access to consumersin those markets and helping to
really bridge that gap betweenthe need for businesses to have
simplicity in their paymentoperations and for customers to
be able to use the local paymentmethods that are most relevant
and accessible to them.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
Yeah, that's great and I know how we'll talk later
on how complicated it really is.
I mean, most listeners probablydon't really get really
internalized how hard a problemthis is.
But how many countries are youguys in right now?

Speaker 2 (02:15):
South Africa is our home market and where we've got
the most depth and proximity tothe payment system throughout
processing partners.
We're able to collect andsettle in 25 different African
markets and we're deepening ourcoverage as it makes sense for
us to do so.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
It's funny how many entrepreneurs I talked to who
you know.
Their parents wereentrepreneurs or their aunts and
uncles were entrepreneurs.
That's not something you had asmuch exposure to, but you had a
lot of experiences that led youto question sort of Africa and
how, why many things look theway they did in Africa and had
you questioning some of thosethings.
So I'd love to hear a littlebit about your upbringing and
how it led you to be interestedin some of these problems that

(02:51):
you're tackling now.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
Sure, I was born in a working class suburb in Cape
Town.
Both my parents were traineedoctors at the time and so
really focused on financialsecurity more than anything else
.
We didn't have a lot of money.
Neither of them came fromparticularly much, and so I was
raised to really thinkconservatively, probably follow
in their footsteps, go into amedical career or become a

(03:13):
lawyer, because I was quiteargumentative.
But what happened that wasreally formative in my story was
when I was three years old.
My dad got this incredibleopportunity to finish his
specialization as a spinalsurgeon in the UK and we moved
over from South Africa and Ibecame an immigrant right, which

(03:33):
is a really loaded word to alot of people, but for me it was
one of the best things thathappened to me.
One of the things it did was Iwas moving around the UK at a
really formative stage in mylife and going to different
schools, meeting lots ofdifferent people and really got
to see that reality could bedifferent to what you know.
Right, there's not one acceptedway of doing things, which is

(03:57):
what I'd see in back home.
The other interesting thing thatI think is particularly
relevant because I'm from SouthAfrica, is that I went to school
with other immigrants who, atthe time in the UK, were
predominantly from places likePakistan and the Middle East.
And so if I'd gone to school andstarted school in South Africa,
I would have had a verysheltered upbringing where most

(04:20):
of the kids in my class wouldhave been white.
They would have been from thesame social class and I would
have had a lot less diversity inthose initial years of starting
to connect with differentpeople and engage with different
ideas.
And so when I came back to thecountry a couple of years later,
I remember feeling very curiousand confused about the way that

(04:42):
South Africa looked.
I knew conceptually this was anAfrican country, but everyone I
engaged with outside of rolesof servitude looked like me and
spoke like me.
And that didn't make sensebecause I had had a much more
diverse experience in a countrylike England, which should have
been the inverse right, and itreally instilled this belief in

(05:03):
me that reality could bedifferent, that convention could
be challenged and that therewas opportunity to do things
differently.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
Yeah, it makes a lot of sense, and South Africa is
one of the more interestingcountries on earth, right which?
is an interesting blend of apart of the country being a very
behaves like a very developedmarket, Much of the country
behaves very much like anemerging market.
I mean, it's kind of aninteresting contrast.
But so it is ironic to hearthat your realization of that
actually came from when you leftthe country and then really

(05:32):
sink home when you come back.
True, no, it's fascinating.
I decided to do university inCape Town and it sounds like you
had a really interestingexperience with entrepreneurship
in university.
I wonder if you can talk alittle bit about that.
You know most people don't havesuch an opportunity to really
dive in while they're still inuniversity.
I'd love to hear a bit moreabout that.

Speaker 2 (05:50):
Sure.
So something great thathappened to me when I was
thinking about going touniversity is I got a fellowship
program with an organizationcalled the Alan Gray Orbus
Foundation, which I can파j talkto my friend as secretary, who
is really important for mebecause the last time I went to
essentially funds the schoolingjourneys of people they believe
will be high impact leaders andentrepreneurs, and going through
school, I'd never really beenable to place myself because I

(06:13):
was academic, I was top of myclass and so looked like the
model student in many ways,except that I wasn't, because I
was disruptive.
I was often in fights orarguments with teachers, you
know, didn't agree with how theywere teaching something, and so
they couldn't kick me outbecause I was a great student
and I was bringing in accoladesfor the school, but at the same
time, they really didn't likethe chaos that I was causing.

(06:36):
And what happened when I gotinto this fellowship is I was
suddenly in this room full ofpeople who were like that, and
so the first thing I learned wasI'm an entrepreneur, and that
was an amazing realization, andbeing able to place yourself in
your identity and not feelothered or never fitting in.
You know, I think, something alot of entrepreneurs go through.

(06:57):
It was my first feeling ofbelonging in a community which
was really really impactful, andthen through that, I got to do
some incredible work.
They really encouraged thepursuit of entrepreneurial
learning alongside yourtraditional studies, which not a
lot of scholarship programswould typically do.
And so that started with megoing into townships or slums in

(07:21):
South Africa Kailiča inPhilippi and working with local
micro entrepreneurs on theirbusiness models and trying to
make them more sustainable interms of their business
practices.
What was my first real exposureto the venture ecosystem came in
about my third year ofuniversity where, through a

(07:42):
friend of a friend, I managed toget a role as a part-time
project manager at anaccelerator program that was run
by the Dutch consulate in CapeTown.
Of all places, and the focus ofthis program was really to pair
South African scale-ups orgrowing startups with peers from

(08:03):
the Netherlands, to createsolutions to shared problems and
to create launch pads into eachof these regions, and that was
incredible.
I got to work with somefantastic entrepreneurs startups
like AeroBotics and RecoMedthat have now gone on to do
really well and I'm glad to sayI scouted them at the time, but

(08:24):
it was an incredible experienceto get exposure to this venture
ecosystem and to realize thatSouth African businesses could
really build globally compellingcompanies.
Aerobotics has gone on to scaleinto the US, and they were able
to hold their own in front ofan equivalent drone company from
the Netherlands that had hadfar more public support and

(08:46):
funding, and so that was reallyreally interesting and taught me
a lot about what was possible,but at the same time I also
learned I wasn't really thatuseful as is.
So I was really excited aboutthis new world of venture that I
discovered, but as a young gradwith no skills, no network, no
credibility, there was limitedvalue I could bring into that

(09:08):
ecosystem, and so I startedlooking around for a career that
could really accelerate thecontribution I could make into
venture and startups, butwithout having to climb some
sort of corporate ladder.

Speaker 1 (09:21):
Yeah, I mean it's interesting you came to that
realization.
I mean we certainly talked to anumber of university grads and
certainly some people are ableto make the jump directly into
venture.
But I usually try to counselthem not to do that.
Go do something else first,just because it'll be so much
easier to really add value andventure.
If you've worked for a startupor consulting, investment
banking, I mean, pick the career.

(09:42):
So it was probably a goodrealization you came to.
Let me go back to one of thefirst things you said in that
little segment.
You were kind of a troublemaker.
You mentioned that your parentsnoticed that early on.
What made you realize that thatwas more about challenging the
status quo to lead toentrepreneurship versus what
your parents would say, which iswhy don't you go be a lawyer

(10:03):
and argue all the time for acareer?

Speaker 2 (10:05):
So I tried being a lawyer when I was about 14 or 15
, you get these moot courtcompetitions and so I thought,
okay, mom, I'll do what you say,I'll go argue with people for a
living.
And I remember being reallyfrustrated with the legal system
in South Africa because it's aprecedent-based legal system and
so even if you know and believesomething is right, if you

(10:27):
can't find precedent, you can'twin the case, and I found that
incredibly frustrating.
I'm really glad in hindsightnow I didn't become a lawyer,
because the other thing that satuneasily with me about law that
I wasn't able to articulateuntil much later in life is that
in law someone always has tolose.
And I think I'm more energizedand this is where I've grown up

(10:49):
a little bit but I'm moreenergized by deals where
everyone can win.
So I'm really glad I didn't godown that track.
I think.
How did I know it wasentrepreneurship?
I wasn't disruptive for thesake of being disruptive.
It was typically around a causeor a conviction or something
that could work better ratherthan just being, I suppose, this
unruly child who didn't getenough attention at home, and so

(11:13):
it always had an element of forthe greater good or a social
justice outcome, or becausesomething didn't make sense for
what we were trying to achieveand I think that gave me a lot
of signal that it was morearound creative problem solving
and the kind of resiliencethat's required to be an
entrepreneur.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
Yeah, that's awesome.
It's always fascinating to hearhow people kind of came to the
conclusion that entrepreneurshipwas for them.
So that's a fascinatinganecdote.
So in this search to reallydevelop some skills, even though
you're really interested in theventure ecosystem, you decided
to go the route of consulting,which is certainly one of the
proven labs for learning a wholelot about business and
different business problems.
But you managed to also be kindof an entrepreneur within the

(11:55):
consulting firm and I'd love tohear about that.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:58):
I started my career at a company called Elixer and
at the time much smaller than itis now.
We're about 60 people.
They're now listed on theLondon Stock Exchange seen
phenomenal growth.
What really attracted me tothem, over some of the more
traditional consultancies, isthat they really branded
themselves around being achallenger consultancy, sort of

(12:19):
writing off the language ofchallenger banks that had become
really popular in the UK at thetime, and a lot of their
marketing messaging was you know, we build businesses, not
PowerPoints.
We hire entrepreneurs, notemployees.
And so I thought cool, this isa great place for me to go.
I flew myself over, did my bigpitch, my interview, they
offered me the job.
It was great and all the waythrough it felt natural, unlike

(12:41):
some of the other consultanciesthat I'd interviewed with, and
it ended up being a really,really great place to start for
me because I was able to buildout a new sort of business
practice within the organization.
Looking back, you can tie areally nice golden thread in my
career, but I don't want to giveanyone the impression that I

(13:01):
knew what I was doing or settingmyself up for at the time.
So the first project I got puton at this company was this
horrendous, grueling, deep ITtransformation project, and I
can't say the client name, butit was lifting this behemoth in
the UK from on-prem to the cloud.
And I had been briefed in as anITIL expert and so I was trying

(13:26):
to learn about ITSM and useracceptance and operational
readiness and then cloudtransformation all at the same
time.
And it was about 10 months oflate nights and complete hell.
And I remember speaking to oneof the partners in the firm
saying I really don't want tokeep doing this.
This is not for me.

(13:46):
I'm not excited about this.
The technology is cool, but Idon't want to know it in this
level of intimacy.
And he said to me unfortunately, nicole, you are very good at
this, so if you don't want tobecome the person for cloud
transformation, which is a verylucrative area of our business
at the moment, you need to findan equally lucrative business

(14:09):
opportunity that only you candeliver.
And I thought that was reallyinteresting and that was a
really interesting challenge andpossibly some of the greatest
career advice I ever received.
And so I looked around at whatthe firm was doing and its
market positioning and Alexa wasdoing some really interesting
work in Silicon Valley at thetime, where they would work with

(14:32):
executive teams inside largebanks like RBS and they'd build
an innovation outpost in SiliconValley as a source of either
M&A targets or new technologyvendors that these enterprises
could incorporate into theirbusinesses as part of their
digital transformation agenda.
And so my idea was why couldn'twe do the same thing in Africa?

(14:52):
I was uniquely positioned to doit.
I was one of the only people ifnot the only person at the time
, I think from South Africa.
I was passionate about fintech,and so I thought let me pitch
this as an idea, and so I puttogether all the materials, kind
of did the business case, foundthe initial funds we would work
with which was really hardbecause no one was really

(15:13):
talking about venture capital inAfrica back in 2017, 2018, and
pitched it to the CFO of thecompany and he said this looks
good.
If you can sell it to threeclients, we'll let you run with
it.
And so I sold it to threeclients and that's now a big
part of Alexa's business,funnily enough and so got to

(15:35):
really build something out andit's great to see it still going
, and that was my first.
I suppose that's how I cameback into venture and fintech on
the continent.
So it wasn't super intentionalin that I was pulling towards it
.
I was actually pulling awayfrom something else but luckily
pulled towards a really greatplace.

Speaker 1 (15:55):
That's awesome.
I mean Nigel frequently has aquote something to the effect of
you know, when we write thebook on QED it's going to sound
like we planned it all out andit was very linear, but you know
that's all full of it and itwas just a windy road.
It's kind of kind of what youdescribed there, so I can
resonate.
So you had the chance to startthis business and go sell three
clients, et cetera, but you'reobviously not still there

(16:16):
running it.
I mean, what led you to thepoint of, hey, I started this
business but now it's time tomove on?
And I know you know you movedon from there actually into the
venture world for a while.
So what caused you to notdecide to stay in consulting and
really run toward building thatbusiness?

Speaker 2 (16:31):
There were a confluence of factors.
To be honest, I think thebiggest driver was Elixir,
actually listed on the LondonStock Exchange, and they were
really, really bullish aroundinorganic growth, and so I was
asked to join this new team inthe business, which was a
corporate development team withsome incredible best and

(16:53):
brightest minds of the company,and it was career limiting to
say no to that opportunity, andso I said yes and I built enough
momentum with the Sub-SaharanAfrican Innovation Network that
it was going to last without meand so I could still have some
say into it.
And you know that was a bigpart of the negotiation is I

(17:15):
still want some input into howthis plays out, and they said
absolutely.
But you know this is a keyfocus of the business.
We want you here, and it was anincredible learning curve for
me.
I was leading commercial duediligence on some multi-million
pound deals and got to see thosethrough from cold after each

(17:35):
through to money in the bank.
But it wasn't the right rolefor me, because I love being in
the field with customers,engaging with people, solving
their problems, and now I wasessentially in M&A at a public
company where you can't talkabout anything with anyone
because you run the risk ofinsider trading, and I might

(17:56):
have stayed longer, to be honest, if I hadn't made that
transition, but I think I wasalso getting a bit restless
around.
Being a consultant to.
You can often only go so farwith the work that you do, and I
wanted to get more into how doI actually build a business from
the ground up, and that's whatI started looking around for is

(18:17):
is there a role where I canreally learn how to build a tech
startup?

Speaker 1 (18:21):
Yeah, that makes all the sense in the world.
And so you took the opportunityto get into venture, which I
guess was one of your originalgoals back to university.
So you joined Founders Factoryand kind of spent a couple years
really in the venture ecosystem.
Can you talk about that and howthat sort of went for you?

Speaker 2 (18:39):
Sure, I mean, it's hard to summarize how much I
learned during that time.
I think it was a really greatbridging step.
When you're a consultant, Ithink you think everyone is like
you because you're all thatinsecure, a type overachiever
personality, and I think it wasa really healthy bridging step
for me to do something inventure before coming into the

(19:00):
operator role, because I wouldhave really struggled to work
with developers, product people,designers, right.
So I think that was the mostoverarching impactful learning.
Coming into Founders Factory, Ithink it was interesting to see
what founders typically strugglewith, right.
And two of the big things thatstood out for me were the shiny

(19:22):
object syndrome, where oftenfounders in particular always
looking for the next thing, thenext thing, the next thing and
actually executing on what needsto happen today to get to that
vision tomorrow gets lost, andthat was interesting to be able
to observe.
And something I've really triedto keep the team honest about
where I am now is you can doanything right but you can't do

(19:45):
everything, so we need tosequence and prioritize.
But the other was theinformation asymmetry that
exists between founders andinvestors and even founders and,
say, corporate stakeholders,and I think this is particularly
pronounced in markets likeAfrica, where often your founder
personas have not worked insidelarge organizations and so

(20:07):
their enterprise sales acumen isreally poor because they just
don't even know how thoseorganizations operate.
They don't know about budgetcycles or procurement processes
or the stakeholder mapping thatexists inside these very complex
hierarchies.
And those were two, I think,really important learnings for

(20:28):
me and gave me confidence that,going into a startup, I would
really be able to add value,because I'd been on the other
side and I really understood howthose worlds worked.

Speaker 1 (20:39):
It's amazing how many of our B2B investments have
conversations oh, we misjudgedwhat the sales cycle was going
to look like for enterprise, soit's going to take us six months
longer than we thought.
I mean, that's such a commonthing, so it's great to have
that realization.
Let's transition into Revio.
I mean, you had an interestingstart with Revio where you
joined as a co-founder butjoined several years after the

(21:01):
company had started.
That's not your typical kind ofco-founder opportunity.
So I wonder if you could talk alittle bit about how that came
to be, and then we'll talk a bitabout the business.

Speaker 2 (21:10):
Sure.
So while I was still at FFA, aguy I'd worked with previously
reached out to me and said hey,I've been talking to these guys
at Revio.
They're doing somethinginteresting.
I think it would be worth youhaving a conversation.
They might be able to add somevalue to your portfolio.
Okay, sure, fine.

(21:30):
So set up this meeting and heand Rohan, co-founder and CEO,
were on the call and theiragenda was you know, let's talk
to you about the business andmaybe you can bring us some beta
customers, because they'd beenoperating for about a year it
was still very early, they'dbeen mostly in build, the
product was in MVP and they werenow really thinking about how

(21:53):
do we take this thing to market.
And we had an incredibly robustdiscussion.
I think they got a lot morethan they bargained for, because
I was like why are you comingto me?
Why are you trying to sell thisto SMEs?
This is clearly an enterpriseproduct.
Your whole go-to market iswrong.
So, really, really robustdebate and pulled out some work
I'd done on omnichannel paymentstrategies while I'd been inside

(22:15):
some of the banks in myconsulting days, and it just was
a great conversation.
And so three days later, on aSaturday morning they phoned me
and they were like do you wantto come build this with us?
Which I think my first word waswhy?
Like, why?
Me?
I'm not a payments expert.
You know, we've just met.

(22:36):
You are a 40-year-old man,we're just so different.
If I'd had to sketch who's theperson I'm probably going to
start a business with, it wouldnot have looked like Ruan.
And they said no, we think youcan bring a lot of value, like
here's where we think you wouldplay.
And I was like okay, that'sinteresting.
And on my side I had startedgetting restless at Founders

(22:57):
Factory.
As I said, one of the bigreasons I joined was I wanted to
learn how to build a techstartup, and the more and more
time I spent there, the more andmore I believed, and now fully
believe the only way you learnthat is through doing it.
And it's kind of like swimming.
Right, you can kind of standoutside the pool and think about
how you're going to do thestrokes, but to learn how to

(23:19):
swim you have to get in thewater, and so that's how I think
startups work basically.
So it was intriguing and Ididn't say yes immediately.
I said look, I don't know you.
This is a huge commitment.
I'm going to give you my mostprecious and expensive asset,
which is my time.
So let's fill each other outfor a while.
I'll join as an advisor.

(23:41):
You can talk me through whatyou're doing and we'll see if
there's synergy here and if itworks out.
And so for about four months Ithink, we did that dance until I
made the commitment to come onfull time as a co-founder.

Speaker 1 (23:56):
Was there any one thing that kind of got you over
the hurdle, or was it more justcollectively?
The more time you spent, themore comfortable you got.

Speaker 2 (24:02):
Yeah, there definitely wasn't one moment.
I went through essentially adue diligence process with them,
more probably more intense thanmost investors would go.
So everything from I want tosee your metrics, I want to do
product deep dives, I want totalk to the whole team, I want
to speak to existing angels theywere going into a fundraising

(24:23):
process I said I want to speakto investors you've already
spoken to.
I want to review your pitchdeck, and so really went into
quite a lot of depth.
I spent a lot of time with theleadership team as well.
I tried to kind of simulateconflicts to see how they would
respond to me in those kind ofsituations.
My biggest concern was aroundcultural fit and whether I was

(24:44):
going to be treated as an equaland as a real decision maker
coming in, especially because Iwas younger.
I was the only woman at thetime and I was later to the team
and they really did anincredible job of giving me the
comfort that I would be reallyvalued.
There was a clear need for thekind of value that I could bring

(25:07):
and they were willing to listento what I had to say.

Speaker 1 (25:10):
Yeah, that's awesome, that's awesome.
Well, let's get into thebusiness problem.
I mean, we touched on it verybriefly at the beginning of this
session, but something like 20,30% of all payments fail in
Africa, which is a stunningnumber it's probably actually
the level of payment failurearound the world is probably
higher than most people think,but it's nowhere near the level
of 20, 30%.

(25:31):
Can you talk a little bit aboutthat problem and why that
happens, and then we can go fromthere into how Revi is a
potential solution to a bigchunk of it?

Speaker 2 (25:42):
Sure, one of the reasons we exist is there's not
one reason payments fail.
If there was one reason, thiswould be an easy solve and to
date, I think we've mapped over1,500 different failure codes
that have come back fromdifferent processes and payment
methods to really enrich themwith insight on what's going on

(26:04):
at each step of the value chainright Issuer, a crier, a
processor, gateway, customer andbroadly because I don't want to
take everyone down a payments101.

Speaker 1 (26:15):
I'd like to analyze every one of those 15.

Speaker 2 (26:18):
Yeah, I will now list them in alphabetical order.
There's broadly threecategories.
Right, there's technicalfailures, which are more
predominant in Africa becausethe infrastructure is more
nascent, right?
So things like acquire adowntime gateway, downtime
authorization failures, timeout,connectivity issues, because

(26:40):
you don't have 5G or satelliteeverywhere along the continent.
There's operational failures,which could be something like
you've got updated details onfile, whether that's a bank
account or a card, as an example, or something we're seeing a
lot of is because of the riskprofile of African markets.
There's a lot more falsepositives driven by fraud

(27:04):
monitoring that are notnecessarily purpose built for
the region.
And the third category that'squite unique to the market is
around customer related failures.
So customers are still gettingused to digital payments.
They're growing very rapidly16% caga hitting 150 billion
this year but customers arestill getting used to digital

(27:26):
payments.
And so often you'll see thingslike abandon, authorize or
abandon 3D secure, which I knowthe US doesn't actually use, but
those types of issues.
And then insufficient funds,and what we've seen is
insufficient funds isn'tnecessarily an outright
affordability issue.
It's typically one of twothings.
It's cashflow, so I've gotmoney, but not today, and if you

(27:49):
give me some flexibility aboutwhen and how I pay you, I will
honor this payment and I'llactually stay with you as a
customer for longer becauseyou've offered me that level of
flexibility.
Or there's a mismatch betweenhow businesses are trying to
collect and where customers holdtheir money.
So in the States, everyonekeeps their money in their bank
account or has a credit card.
In Africa, most consumers makeone transaction a month, which

(28:13):
is a withdrawal out of theirbank account into cash, or they
move their money into a mobilewallet, and so that presents a
big challenge to businesses,whether local or international.
They face different levels ofcomplexity.
Who are just trying to do themost basic thing that any
business needs to do, which iscollect revenue from my
customers.

Speaker 1 (28:33):
So, as a relatively young startup, you're obviously
not going to be tackling 1,500different failure reasons right
away.
Even those three buckets youdescribed, I'm sure you're not
tackling those in a homogenousway.
So the current valueproposition that you're offering
, what are the types of thingsthat you're doing to start to
tackle that problem?

Speaker 2 (28:51):
I mean, I assume this is a decades-long journey to
fully attack the problem but toreally make good headway early,
Absolutely, and we've tried tomap, especially by industry and
use case, what are the bigsources of failure and what's
the long tail and reallyprioritize how we build the
product around that.
So the first thing that webuilt was essentially a payment
routing platform where amerchant can integrate with a

(29:14):
single API, they get access torelevant payment methods, so
you're now not not collectingfrom your customers because
their preferred payment method,like mobile money, isn't
available.
But then the logic layer webuilt on top of that was really
the differentiate and firstmarket, which is the ability to
route transaction traffic basedon different parameters to

(29:35):
increase your authorization andsuccess rates.
And we have that two differentextents in different markets.
So in somewhere like SouthAfrica, where card is used a lot
more often than somewhere likeCote d'Ivoire, we have much
deeper levels of routingcapability where we can move
traffic in real time from onegateway to another, one
processor to another, and sothat deals with a lot of your

(29:58):
technical failure and touches onsome of those operational
failures.
So our expired card on file.
You can solve some of thatthrough card update or something
like tokens that are nowbecoming available in the local
market.
You can deal with some of thefalse positives on fraud,
because if you're passingthrough more robust transaction

(30:19):
references, you can solve someof those problems.
The other bit that we built outpartly because there was a
nervousness around enterpriseclients to introduce alternative
payment methods into theirstack was a customer engagement
piece, where we can embed thispayment capability into channels

(30:40):
like WhatsApp, which is reallyuniversally used in Africa,
offering customers analternative way to make a
payment when something fails soI'm trying to pay for my Spotify
or my insurance premium paymentfails because I don't keep
money on my card.
Follow up with the customerwith a WhatsApp saying hey, bill

(31:00):
, this payment failed due toinsufficient funds to keep
enjoying your favorite artists.
Make a secure payment here andthen giving you the option
because it doesn't need to be apool payment to use something
like a mobile money option oreven, in some markets, giving
them the option to go to anearby agent with cash, and what
that did was start to solve forsome of those customer issues

(31:23):
but also build the business casefor these enterprises around
the value that some of thesealternative payment methods
could add to their business andjustify the broader payment
orchestration integration.

Speaker 1 (31:38):
Yeah, I mean that explanation just goes to show
both how complex and difficultit is what you're building, but
also how valuable right Like Imean, there's payment
orchestration players around theworld, but many of them in
market, like US, might be hey,is it this credit card or that
credit card or some prettysimple things?
I mean you're talking aboutjust such a large range of
payment methods and goingcountry by country, it's

(31:58):
stunning how different it is.
And you've got a credit cardmarket like South Africa, you've
got mobile money markets, cashmarkets.
I mean it's certainly one ofthe things that got us so
excited about what you're doing.
So you talked about, when youwent to Revio, how you did a
very extensive diligence process.
I mean, I wonder if you could,you know, maybe name one thing
that, hey, it's gone exactly asyou hoped it would, or maybe

(32:19):
even better than you hoped itwould.
And then what's one thing thatturned out to be way harder than
you thought it would be whenyou joined?

Speaker 2 (32:25):
Sure, that's a good question.
I've been really continuallyimpressed and positively
surprised by the quality of theteam.
I have very high expectationsof people and I've just got to
say there are incredible peoplein this business and I have to
give a lot of credit to ourco-foundancy everyone for how

(32:51):
he's driven the vision andbrought incredible people into
the business and continues tokeep people motivated even when
things are not going as well aswe might have hoped.
I think what has not gone aswell we haven't had a bump-free
ride.
I think a lot has gone reallywell right.
Bringing on QED and Patek thisyear is amazing.

(33:12):
We're so excited about whatthat means.

Speaker 1 (33:15):
Well, obviously that's a great accomplishment.
We're biased.

Speaker 2 (33:17):
Yeah, we're really excited for what that means for
our business and our growth.
I think this year was reallychallenging, especially around
some of those customer failures,and that piece of the product
we built out everywhere has beena little bit tough from the
recessionary conditions we'veseen.
South Africa has beenparticularly badly hurt.

(33:39):
We've had pretty extreme hikesin interest rates and you've got
a very indebted population andso a lot of consumers are just
very, very financiallydistressed and so some of the
customers we thought this isn'tan affordability issue for ended
up being an affordability issue, and particularly in industries

(34:02):
like insurance where we werequite heavily exposed, that did
impact the kind of traction wewere hoping to see.
But we learned a lot aboutconsumer preferences, how they
prioritize their spend, the kindof flexibility they need, and
it actually surfaced new andinteresting use cases like
partial payments or paymentplans that we were able to turn

(34:23):
into an opportunity.
But some hard learnings, Ithink, from the initial
excitement going in.
I think if we'd launched thatpart of the solution two years
ago, we might have seen muchbetter results than we did
launching it this year.

Speaker 1 (34:39):
Yeah, no, that's awesome.
I mean there's kind of noentrepreneurial journey that's
linear, where everything works.
It's funny Nigel likes to saythere's only two companies we've
ever invested in that have hittheir numbers every time.
And even in those two I'm surethat wasn't actually true.
There's probably tons of thingsthat have gone wrong.
But let's switch gears for ourfinal segment to talk about kind
of you as a leader and kind ofyour learning journey.

(35:01):
I think you've been quite selfreflective already about
starting off not being shy toshare your views and share your
beliefs.
I think that's awesome.
We had a chance to talk to oneof your friends, dominic Shore,
who just talks about how much headmires how principled you are,
how willing you are to defendyour beliefs and, at the same
time, how loyal and generous youare with the time you have,

(35:22):
particularly given how busy youare.
So it's great to hear, I mean,as you continue to be self
reflective, how would youdescribe your biggest superpower
?
And, conversely, if there wasone thing you could be better at
, what's one thing maybe you'reworking on or trying to improve?

Speaker 2 (35:36):
Yeah, I mean firstly, dom, absolutely love you and
thanks.
He's a big part of the reasonI've had the courage to pursue
this entrepreneurial ambitionSuperpower I think it's.
Being able to cut through.
The noise is consistently whatpeople value.
So I'm able to actively listenin even quite charged

(36:00):
conversations and find a way tothe way forward, even if that's
uncomfortable, and being verywilling to kind of say that and
being able to kind of distillthe key insight.
And so that's, that's thesuperpower I tried to harness,
whether that's in fundraisingnegotiations or uncomfortable
team conversations or clientnegotiations.

(36:23):
Right, one thing I'm working on.
I'm working on a lot of thingsright now.
I think one of my big parts ofmy self identity is
responsibility.
I have been quite a responsibleperson since I was very young
and I think I've ingrained thatas a big part of who I am.
Which can be great, right, itcan lead to great things in your

(36:46):
career, but it can take overinto a place where it's
unhelpful, both professionallyand personally.
So I'm doing a lot of lettinggo in review at the moment where
I'm like I need to step backfrom this now.
This is not the best use of mytime, or I'm actively taking
away agency from other people inthe business to step up, and I

(37:07):
see that pattern in my personallife as well, where I think I'm
stepping in and being helpful,but actually taking away other
people's agency to figure thingsout on their own, and so that's
something that for me, is likereally important to get right,
especially as we get ready forthis next phase of growth and
scale.

Speaker 1 (37:26):
Yeah, I mean, figuring out kind of the right
way to delegate and step away isoften challenging, and I find
particularly in veryentrepreneurial people right
where you're kind of used torolling up your sleeves and
getting things done.
So good luck with that journey.
I think you're certainly notalone among those in your seat
sort of working on that onethat's for sure.
Back a little bit to yourwillingness to be forceful and

(37:46):
confront uncomfortablesituations.
I mean I think that's a hugeasset that many people could
very much learn from.
But we've talked a little bitthat that's not a typical kind
of South African sort ofbusiness style.
I mean, how have you foundyourself sort of wanting to
continue to leverage yourstrength, which can be so
powerful?
But also at times you're anenterprise sales business.

(38:07):
You've been a consultant tovery large companies.
There's also an element offitting in which is important to
getting that credibility.
How have you thought aboutjuggling that?

Speaker 2 (38:15):
It's hard and I don't think there's one right answer
to that.
I think in some cases, theradical candor really helps to
build trust, as long as you canshow that you're listening and
you're taking into account whatpeople are saying, what they
care about, and I try to do thisin sales.
I did this when I joined Revio.
I met with every single teammember and really tried to

(38:38):
understand what do they careabout?
Why are they here?
Why are they wanting to buildRevio?
What are they struggling withtoday?
And if I could find a way to behelpful, I just followed through
and I think a lot of buildingtrust and you need trust to be
candid with people is makingsure you do what you say you're

(38:58):
going to do.
So I think the way that I'vebuilt the conditions in which I
can be candid and can be quiteforceful with people is making
sure, at the same time, I'mbuilding that trust with them
and having that transparencywith them of why I'm doing
certain things and that it is inthe interest or is in our joint

(39:19):
interest, and very happy todebate on that as well.
And so I think you can't be,you can't be forceful in your
views or overly candid if youdon't, at the same time, have
transparency and trust with yourteam yeah, that's a great
insight.

Speaker 1 (39:32):
You know, I'm sure it'll continue to be a journey.
I mean, I certainly find thatpeople's biggest strengths and
weaknesses are often mirrorimages of each other and it's a,
you know, it's kind of a neverending journey to find the right
balance, but that's awesome tohear the self reflection.
Let me jump to another topicthat I like to talk to a number
of people about, which is thenotion of kind of remote work
versus in person work and thepros and cons means probably

(39:54):
every company around the worldis juggling sort of that
particular topic.
I know revio was started as akind of remote first kind of
business during the pandemic.
I understand you have a numberof people kind of wanting to
come back into the officefrequently.
That's more of a led bymanagement type type activity.
So it's Interesting to hear theorganic piece.
How are you all sort ofthinking about that?

(40:14):
And you know people are wantingto come in.
How do you accommodate thatversus a remote first?
You know, once you start thatway it's really hard to change
that and you may not even wantto change that.
I mean, I'd love to hear yourviews on on this topic that
that's so many people arewrestling with.

Speaker 2 (40:27):
Yeah, and we're still wrestling.
To be clear, this is a bigdebate among the leadership team
.
So we've seen the limitationsof remote working, especially
between us as a leadership team,and so it came from the top of.
We need to spend more timetogether, to move faster on key
decisions, to build more empathyfor what each other are going

(40:50):
through, to really understandwhere things are falling through
the cracks, and so what westarted with was co-locating
twice a week and we've beendoing that still up until now.
We have a space that we rent ona pay as you go basis, which
works because we're not gonna bein the office every day and we
get together and anyone'swelcome to come, so we haven't

(41:11):
forced return to office.
It's been interesting to seehow many people want to come in.
We've recently done our firstcompany offsite where we got the
whole company together, tookthem away and those.
We will do At least quarterly,I would say going forward.
It was really, really impactfuland we got great feedback on it
from everyone, including theengineers.

(41:34):
Something we've tried to balanceis Making coming in something
people want to do or they'rebeing a clear agenda item.
So whether that's the sprintersjust ramped up and the
engineers are gonna demo.
Let's make an in person eventout of that.
So it's not coming into theoffice for the sake of coming
into the office, but we'recoming into the office because
it's the end of the sprint weekand we all want to brainstorm

(41:57):
and share around this particularforum.
We've also tried to meet peoplewhere they are.
So I spoke to the engineers andI was like hey, guys, I think
you should get together nontransactionally.
I'm willing to put some moneybehind this.
What do you want to do?
Thinking like maybe they wantto play football or I don't know
, like something that actuallyinvolves them getting together
in person.
And the feedback I got was no,we want to play online games

(42:20):
against each other on aWednesday afternoon, which I
just thought was hysterical andvery frugal of them, to be
honest.
So we're thinking about like,well, how do we lean into that?
Do we give the guy on theleaderboard a prize of his
choice?
Buy them all lunch, you knowthese sorts of things.
So we're meeting people wherethey are rather than forcing
them together.
But it's been amazing,especially in that offside last

(42:42):
week, to see the kind of cultureand friendships that people
have built remotely.
So it is possible.
So we're trying to find theright balance and I think it's
going to be different fordifferent teams, to be
completely honest, and People insales and customer success and
product may want to get togethermore often and will create the
space for that, but if theengineers want to continue to

(43:04):
remain Predominantly remote, I'mnot gonna force them to come
into the office.

Speaker 1 (43:10):
No, I can very much relate to this challenge of how
do you build the cultureremotely mean?
Qed is now spread globally andso we tried the same thing once
a quarter and it is amazing howwell everybody gets along when
together once a quarter, andthose relationships really do
grow remotely.
But also quite clear that whenwe're able to get together in
person it goes to another level.
So that seems to be a pattern anumber of people are trying.

(43:32):
Is your team all kind of in ornear Cape Town, or do you have
people truly spread around theglobe as well?

Speaker 2 (43:39):
Luckily we've kept it quite local up until now, so
most of the team is in Cape Townand then we've got a few people
in Johannesburg, which is a twohour flight.
So for the moment it's quiteeasy to get people all together.
Once we start building uppresence in places like London
or other African markets, that'sgoing to be a bigger challenge

(43:59):
to maintain that closeness ofthe team.

Speaker 1 (44:02):
Now that makes sense.
Eventually, you'll findyourself having to get together
in London, because it's the onlyplace every African country can
actually fly to, which isironic.
So yeah that's awesome.
Well, look, we're coming shorton time.
I really appreciate you talkingto us today.
It's been fascinating to hearyour journey.
You know we're super excited tobe a be a small piece of the
Revio journey.
We definitely very muchunderstand the problems of

(44:24):
payments in Africa and it's it'sSuch a foundational thing,
right?
I mean, there's so many thingsthat need to be built in Africa
and making payments work is oneof the things that so many other
things can be built on.
So we really love the Love, thework that you guys are doing
and very excited about thatjourney.

Speaker 2 (44:41):
Thank you.
It's awesome to be working withyou.
I've really enjoyed everymoment with the QED team.

Speaker 1 (44:46):
Definitely, definitely.
Well, look at, you know, wehave a traditional kind of last
question here.
Hopefully we have a number ofaspiring entrepreneurs listening
.
What is one tip or one piece ofadvice that you would share
with an inspiring entrepreneur?

Speaker 2 (44:57):
There's so many, and I always find this challenge
tough because I think the tipyou need depends on the
entrepreneur, but the one I'veseen Play out most often is
marry the problem, not thesolution.
I think it's very easy tobecome fixated on the product
you've built and to lose sightthat it actually doesn't work

(45:17):
for the customers or theproblems you set out to solve in
the first place, and soremaining really attached and
obsessed with what is that coreproblem and who are you solving
for, and being able to detachfrom what the product ends up
being.

Speaker 1 (45:33):
That makes a lot of sense.
I mean your example of interestrates going way up in South
Africa, turning into, you know,bit of an affordability problem
in cases and needing to developnew solutions, is just a great
example that.
So love, love the advice.
Well, nicole, thank you so muchfor joining today, and to all
of our listeners, we thank youas well and look to see you next
time.
This has been the FinTechThought Leaders podcast your

(46:00):
window into the world of venturecapital and financial services
with today's digital disruptors.
Qed is proud to provide thebest FinTech advice you can get.
To learn more or to read thefull show notes from today's
episode, check outQEDinvestorscom and be sure to
also follow QED on Twitter andLinkedIn at QEDinvestors.
Thanks for listening.