January 5, 2025 • 35 mins
Meet the visionary behind Africa's cross-border payment revolution. In this compelling episode, Tope Alabi, Co-founder and CEO of Afriex, shares his extraordinary journey from winning the visa lottery to building a FinTech powerhouse that's transforming how millions handle international transactions.
Tope's story begins with a life-changing moment: his mother's sudden announcement that they'd be moving to America in just four days. This unexpected twist set him on a path that would eventually lead to creating Afriex, a platform now serving over 40 countries. We explore how Tope's deep understanding of blockchain technology and his personal experiences with cross-border payments inspired him to develop a groundbreaking solution using stablecoins.
You'll hear about the serendipitous meeting with his co-founder at a Facebook hackathon, their remote journey through Y Combinator during the pandemic, and the bold decision to establish Afriex's headquarters in Lagos, Nigeria.
But this isn't just a story about technology – it's about family, roots, and giving back. Tope shares how his entrepreneurial mother shaped his vision and why returning to his childhood home of Lagos was crucial for his mission.
With over 70 employees and a unique culture of ownership, Afriex is redefining what's possible in African FinTech. Whether you're an entrepreneur, tech enthusiast, or simply love stories of innovation and impact, this episode offers valuable insights into building a company that truly makes a difference.
Tope's story begins with a life-changing moment: his mother's sudden announcement that they'd be moving to America in just four days. This unexpected twist set him on a path that would eventually lead to creating Afriex, a platform now serving over 40 countries. We explore how Tope's deep understanding of blockchain technology and his personal experiences with cross-border payments inspired him to develop a groundbreaking solution using stablecoins.
You'll hear about the serendipitous meeting with his co-founder at a Facebook hackathon, their remote journey through Y Combinator during the pandemic, and the bold decision to establish Afriex's headquarters in Lagos, Nigeria.
But this isn't just a story about technology – it's about family, roots, and giving back. Tope shares how his entrepreneurial mother shaped his vision and why returning to his childhood home of Lagos was crucial for his mission.
With over 70 employees and a unique culture of ownership, Afriex is redefining what's possible in African FinTech. Whether you're an entrepreneur, tech enthusiast, or simply love stories of innovation and impact, this episode offers valuable insights into building a company that truly makes a difference.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is the Startup Podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Thank you for tuning in.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
You as a favorite.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Enjoyed this episode.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Hello everyone, Good morning, grieving, goodnon to wherever you're joining
us from. This is Anthony Prakash, your host from Startups.
They'll say, Today, I bring to you a brand new
episode of the podcast, and I'm super excited to welcome
Tope a Lobby who is the co founder and CEO
of affree X, which is a remittance platform and to
(00:37):
its co founder John built this through a.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Stint at y combinator.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Remittance is, as many of you might know, is a
big problem around the world for people, especially immigrants, to
send back money back to their country. As although that
industry is a world quite a bit, there are still
parts of the world where it is still very difficult
that I'm so lad.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
I found Topay and his company after x trying to
do this for.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Africa as a as someone who's been through this pain firsthand,
I really appreciate Topay and his company doing this. So,
first of all, without further ado to pay, welcome to
the show. So glad you took the time on to
come on here. Yeah, so Topay, why don't we kick
us off today and tell the world about who you are,
(01:27):
where you come from, and maybe a little bad after X.
Of course, we'll focus this conversation a lot about after X,
the problem and how you're solving for but we'd love
to know more about you as a person and what
got you to this point.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Yes, never really imagining, you know, where what turns my life?
Would say, it came to me instead. It was like
a Monday, Oh, on Thursday, We're moving to America. I
was like literally I remember like in the playground at
school and just like standing me. I wasn't even stopped playing.
(02:04):
I was just looking around like I'm gonna like I'll
never see these people again, you know, and just being
a kid and it just being like a really big
moment for me as a child. So nine years old,
my family won something called a visa lottery, visa lotteries
where the US sort of like gives free visas to
some poor country and Nigeria was poor enough at the time,
(02:27):
and we qualified and my family won moved to America
on that Thursday. I remember landing in Houston, Texas, and
everything smelled like plastic. I was, you know, watching wrestling
and eating hot dogs like like every other American kid,
and so you know, moved over when I was a
(02:47):
kid and kept you know, I was very focused in
academics as a kid, I studied engineering. I also played
a little bit of sports, but I was mostly academic
and I ended up studying engineering. I went to university,
I studied electrical engineering. Nice you know, much more like
(03:10):
computer chips, hardware, circuits, electronics. But I never actually worked
as an electrical engineer. Yeah, I'm sure it's a common thing.
But soon, yes, I graduated, I pretty much went straight
into software. I went to work at wigs dot com
for a little while software engineering did I work at Ideal,
which is a consulting firm, and I also worked at Consensus,
(03:35):
which is a blockchain consulting firm as well. And in
between that I would babble a little bit. I was.
I was always working on projects, always curious and working
on new ideas. But those were my I would say,
probably major work experiences.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Okay, awesome and fascinating story.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Right, So you get told on a Monday and you're
more on a Thursday, and do you still remember the.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Exact date as to when it happened? I mean one
for the memory books.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Yeah, yeah, May twenty seven, nineteen ninety eight, Okay, and
we landed in Houston, and you know, obviously a big
impact on my life. Things obviously a full circle because
now I run a Africa focused fintech. But yeah, at
(04:31):
that time, it was you know, a whole new world
and new experience from Okay.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
That is incredible.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
And so if him, I ask you, I mean, after
all that time, almost twenty years, what made you choose
to go back to your home country and run what
you're doing right now?
Speaker 2 (04:54):
You know what, I think it's the same story a
lot of immigrant kids here to grow up. You grew
up as an immigrant kid, and you always want to
And I was one of those kids. You know, I
always kind of knew that I would do something. And
I think my parents, my mother kind of raised us
that way. My mother was very entrepreneurial herself. Always had
a business. She had a beauty salon, she sold cars.
(05:18):
My mother has pretty much done every business that you
could you can imagine, and so we grew up watching that.
And she also kind of bread in us that you know,
you you were lucky to get this opportunity, and so
you should pay that forward to the next generation and
to the people that weren't so lucky, and I think
that was something that kind of stuck with us, myself
(05:38):
and my sisters as well, and so I would say,
you know that that is probably a good part of
the motivation that kind of brought me back.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Yeah, yeah, a little to our moms, right, I mean,
they are they played such a big role in our lives,
and you know we can do we can't do enough
to thank them for all the all the stuff that
they do lives. So let's talk about afrey X a
little bit, right. So you said that you worked in
a bunch of companies after you did your electrical engineering.
(06:11):
So where did you actually first feel the pain that, Okay,
this is a problem and this is something that you
should go solve for. How did that starting point happen.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
My journey into afread specifically really came from an engineering standpoint.
I'm doing all these really cool blockchain solutions at that time. Yeah,
and you know, I worked on a lot of cool things,
and I always thought to myself, like, well, it feels
like there's something here that could be helpful for people
(06:51):
with inflationary currencies, and so, you know, I was kind
of dabbling in my mind, it hadn't really clicked. Stable
coins hadn't really taken off at the time. It was
really mostly crypto people were using just just buying bitcoin
and etherium and that was a lot of the activity
at that time. And so, uh consensus was, you know,
(07:12):
very early in the remote work trend. And so I
really had the opportunity to travel around. I actually got
a chance to travel to Legos, so I started I
started traveling back to Nigeria, uh from San Francisco at
that time, and so here I was my co founder,
John and I were just kind of playing around different ideas.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
At some point we actually built like a bitcoin exchange,
and we basically realized that no one was holding at
least the people in Africa. It was just buying it
and like sending it and kind of using it as
a payment system. And we were like, oh, wow, this
is interesting. Uh. You know, we would talk to our customers, Hey,
(07:53):
why did you what was you Why did you buy
that bitcoin? They're like, oh, I wanted to make a
payment in Germany. Interesting, and so we just to just
double down on the remittance and payments use case with
the idea that we would use crypto as a back end,
and then all of a sudden you start to rise
of stable coins, and it just became much more simple,
right Like, instead of me trying to buy bitcoin and
(08:16):
you know it might go up and down, I can
just buy stable coin, maintain the value, and then you know,
deliver value for my customer. So that started working well.
And then over time, as we got bigger, even the
stable coins became sort of like less necessary in our system,
but still still useful. I think in general, and we
(08:38):
can touch on this more later, but I think in general,
the world is moving to like the instant movement system.
And that's probably big that a lot of people aren't
talking about. Is that not just in a marketing space,
but even in the fiat space. Payments are just getting
faster globally, and so you have new entrants like ourselves
who are taking advantage of these technologies and bringing them
(08:59):
to theustomer to just provide a more seamless payment experience.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
Got it? That is beautiful?
Speaker 1 (09:06):
And you did mention your co founder John right ready
to ready to actually run into John? And how did
you guys decide to team up John?
Speaker 2 (09:16):
So, so FRIX is like, you know, a lot of
our early stories start like online nice. There was like
a I think Facebook had an online hackaton, like a
Facebook developer conference. There was a hackathon online and I won.
(09:42):
I don't know thousands. I used to do. I used
to experiment a lot with technology, and John saw that
I want. He reached out to congratulate a fellow Nigerian
one this global thing, and uh, you know, just through
that conversation, we were just check out each others projects,
you know, like, oh, what have you built? Oh? I
(10:02):
built this other thing, this depth tool, and so we
were just kind of comparing notes and they were like,
you know what, we should just work together on whatever's next.
And so it was almost kind of like a hobbyist,
I would say, kind of shared interest. And then over
time we kind of started getting more serious.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Okay, very nice.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
So it's it's it's really fascinating to hear the stories
of co founders in general, right. I mean a lot
of them know each other for their entire lifetime. A
lot of them say, oh, you know what I was,
he was he or she was sitting next to me
on the plane.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
We started talking ideas, we became co founders.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
So I do have to know the stories of you
know how how how you actually run into one another?
Speaker 3 (10:44):
So that's that's is John also based in Legos right now.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
He's efforts as a remote company. I'll say, yeah, good remote.
So we have sort of clusters of people in various cities.
We have a cluster and Legos cluster and in Na
and another major cluster I was saying in the UK. John
these days spends a lot of time in Kenya. Over
(11:09):
the years, he spends time in Brazil. John just kind
of lives okay, somewhere.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Okay, that's that's that's the twenty twenty four lifestyle. So
I'm glad he's doing that. So so let's, uh, let's
maybe unravel a little bit more of afrex as well. Right,
So you saw the problem and you know you said, okay,
let's go tackle this. So from what what made you
guys choose the y combinator path for afree x to
(11:40):
start with? And then talk to us a little bit
about where where you are in your journey. I see
that you're almost hitting a half a million subscribers and
users from around the world, so congratulations on that. So
just talk about the journey in general and where you are, right.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Am, Yeah, just a just a double click on the problem.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Right.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
So I mentioned that our customers were using it as
a payment system, we also had to pay ourselves, so
like all of my money was in the US and
I had to keep using the money in my US
bank accounts to pay for my Nigerian expenses. And so
from both angles, we were seeing like, hey, this cross
border thing is like a real problem. It was just
(12:20):
too expensive and too slow, and so basically we decided
to focus on that and build around that. And so
we were doing this. I was already I was living
in San Francisco before moving to Lego, so I had
like a San Francisco network, and so White Combinator had
(12:40):
always been sort of this legendary place where you you know,
great companies had come out of and so honestly, I
didn't think a whole lot about it until we applied.
I wasn't didn't necessarily think we would even get in,
to be honest with you, it was just one of
those moments where you know, we have been working on
(13:03):
a project and we had like, you know, a little
bit of traction, and we were just like, guys, you know,
what are we gonna do? We need to like raise
some money. And we were like at that time only
four of us was myself, John and two other engineers,
Valentine in Earnest. So just four engineers basically working on
a project, a little bit of traction, and you know,
(13:29):
everyone's looking around like hey, like what's what's next. And
so I was like, all right, guys, you know what,
let's just apply for some accelerator programs, see if we
get in. We applied for TEXTARS and didn't get in,
and then we applied for y C, which we assumed
would be harder, and we were like, well, I guess
if we didn't get in TEXTARS might not get in
(13:49):
y C. And we actually got in. We got into
y C, and it was like really exciting. Again. This
was around the pandemic time, so early to mid twenty twenty.
Really really put a bolt of electricity into the company.
I would say for me, that's the biggest value that
YC provided us. It wasn't the money, because whatever we're
(14:13):
going to give to these days, maybe one fifty or
whatever it is, I think a little bit they give
probably more. Now generally you don't get it. You're not
gonna get it on day one, right, Yeah, you get
to accelerate. It's probably going to take a while for
you for you to even get that money, but what
it gives you is that energy as a young startup,
like oh we have a chance, and so everyone is
(14:34):
like given everything they got. It just creates a really
really intense moment and it surrounds you with other startups
that also movement at the same pace. So it was
it was great for us, I think in that we
probably made more money from that than the actual money
that they gave us, right, so it was.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, perfect. Then how big is your
came now? I mean you said you were four then,
I mean I maybe your website says fifty people, is
as all right?
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Sure, so today we're seventy five people. That's I'm proud
to say that all of those four guys are still
at the company the next the next few years.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
Yeah, yeah, perfect. I mean so cool. And I mean
I wish that you can expand this.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
Globally, right, I mean, from what I see, you're concentrating
a lot on where you came from and the countries
around Nigeria in general, but I also see a few
other countries, So that is that the goal. I mean,
do you see this as a global challenge for people
to send from point A to point B? And your
(15:54):
grander revision is to say, I mean, you know, treat
almost the world as one entity and you know, make
the super easy and instantaneous for everyone. I mean, I'm
probably putting words in your mouth here that just just
talk to us about what you're thought as a starting
point and maybe in your journey. What's that grand derivasion
(16:15):
for Fax?
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Yeah? Yeah, crossboarder payments are even today we connect you know,
countries in Southeast Asia, we connect to Europe obviously, so
we we actually I think forty now, so there's a
new new release and we are getting ready to launch
some Caribbean endpoints and so naturally this is a globally
(16:40):
connected payment network that we're building. Yeah, we started with
an audience that is African and African diaspora, and from
there we will naturally expand up. So, for example, throughout
the from from when we started to where we are,
we've built a lot of new products. We've also started
(17:02):
serving B to B clients and so there's naturally, I
think in a life of a company, you just find
yourself expanding to new and new places, and so what
we're trying to do is not get too far ahead
of our skis, focus on you know, what's in hand,
while also continuing to build out the global network.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Okay, got it.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
And just in terms of you know you moving back
to Nigeria, you are in Legos right now. So I'm
part of an open source community called Flutter, and I
know for a fact that I mean that community is thriving.
The developer community in general is thriving an affect especially
(17:46):
in Lagos where where I see a lot of traction.
But I know very little about just the startup ecosystem
in general in Nigeria. Uh what excites you most about
you going back setting up shop there? And can you
tell the world about you know, Nigeria and general and
(18:07):
the startup ecosystem that you're part of.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Yeah, yeah, so I've got to see a few startup ecosystems.
Absolutely did the san fer se major differences. I think
the founders here are a lot plier problems with the direct
revenue opportunities. Yeah, you know, I really appreciate that because
what it does is everyone is speaking from a real
(18:34):
place where real customers and real experiences. The startup ecosystem
is very interconnected. You know, Lego has a high population,
but it's not geographically large, so it's actually very very
dense dense. Everyone knows each other, you know. Every people
have worked at different companies and not work for a
new company, and so there's there's a very tight knit
(18:58):
community definitely where where everyone is kind of working together.
Everyone has impact goals, right, everyone is trying to like
boost the continent in some way or the other. And
so it's been for me very enjoyable. You know, I
sit in an interesting part of the ecosystem where you know,
we I've gotten opportunities to live in other places, and
(19:20):
we've raised a good amount of money and stuff and
so forth. And I see I see folks that are
ahead of us. I see folks that are coming up
sort of behind us, And you know, I'm very excited.
I think Legos has a lot of contribute to the world,
especially in the financial services space. Yeah, and so yeah,
very very excited and impressed about what I see here.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
Beautiful.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
So you mentioned you worked on blockchain before afrite x
and a lot of the crypto exchanges and those sort
of ideas and as ceiling based on what you said,
I mean, you know the underlying tech for aflete x,
you've also used a lot of the those principles from
a I mean my assumption might be incorrect, but I mean,
(20:06):
what sort of approach did you take to uh make
the tech super simple?
Speaker 3 (20:11):
Number one? Number two is to you know, to to
your point. I mean, you know, if it's if it's
a global exchange, if you will, and it needs to
cross border payments, needs to be instantaneous and all that,
how have you ensured to pay that the tech that
you're using is like cutting edge and it will stand
the test of time if you will.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Yeah, the technology is I would say, first of all,
anyone building consumer payments, you know, it's a there's a
there's a it's a high bar technology, right because you're
dealing with people's money and lots of people at the
same time, and so you I don't care how if
(20:56):
you've if I've completed every transaction for you for the
last ten years, that one that doesn't go through is
like the world is the world is ending, right, And
so for that reason, that's a very very high bar
for reliability and functionality, and so you really have to
build around that and make sure that every digit is
accounted for, you know, and everything happens exactly how it's
(21:20):
supposed to happen. That's all possible, and so I would
say that's really the main design principle As far as
like the comparison or like the influence of blockchain technologies,
I think that happens more so on the operational side
for a lot of companies. So from a technology standpoint,
(21:40):
building a building an exchange is very different from building
a payment system. And what we've built is more of
a payment system, a really fast payment system that integrates
with a lot of global networks card systems, mobile money systems,
bank accounts, SYSTM stems. But that is also I would say,
(22:03):
still different from like a proper exchange even you know,
whether you're talking about finance or like NASTAC or any
any sort of like real time, those systems are technologically
I would say, quite different, but they can integate. And
so we've built this basically a really fast payment system
(22:25):
that enables people to move value around the world like
literally in seconds.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
Okay, you spoke about the high bar there.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
I totally understand, right, I mean, people, it is people's
hard earned money, and you've got to be super careful
with it. So I mean that those expectations come a
big responsibility as well, right, Like our friend spider Man says, right,
so you're building a company you've grown from four people
(22:57):
to seventy people right right now? So I mean I
think you know, from at least my advantage point, I mean,
that's a culture you need to build. I mean everyone
needs to take that seriously that you. I mean, you're
dealing with people's livelihoods in a way that right. So
I mean as a CEO to maybe where your CEOs
(23:21):
had to mean what what what are those principles and
values that are foundational principles.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Rather that you're building Afrey Exxon and I.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Mean what is what is it that you keep stressing
to your team or what sort of culture have you
built and.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
What you want to build rather for the company?
Speaker 2 (23:41):
Yeah, I think the means a lot of things for
a lot of different people, but it basically for us
means you need to because we have so many everyone
is a problem solving, right, Like, yeah, problems you need
to solve it, to solve for them fast because you know,
we're not in a world where, you know, like in
(24:03):
the old times where somebody sends money and they're expecting
it to land in three days, and so you can
pass them off to the next department to handle it
and like move them through different In at Afroax, like everyone,
it's very flat and horizontal. Everyone pretty much understands how
the business works, and everyone pretty much understands where to
find things. So if there's a problem, you're responsible for
(24:26):
solving that problem. It's not enough to say, oh, I
emailed somebody about it or whatever. You know, you kind
of have to do it. And so I think what
that breeds in us there's a lot of empathy for
the customer because when a customer has an issue or
a challenge, we take it on like I need to
solve it. I'm the one that needs to solve it
(24:46):
for this person. And so that is like the primary
culture that we kind of take on. We see a problem,
we kind of roll up our sleeves and take personal
responsibility to solve those problems. And I think it's helped us.
You know, even when we move from consumer space and
now serving more businesses, it helped us a lot in
(25:09):
that way. Some people from our team will call our
partners on a weekend, you know, and be like, let's oh,
I noticed this thing on your system. How can we
like work together to like make this connection better? And
people are surprised, like why why Because that's just how
we are. It's like we we sort of take personal
(25:31):
responsibility to solve problems.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
Yeah, yeah, I love it because I mean it gives
them a sense of ownership accountability at the same time, right,
I mean, and in a way it's also empowering them saying,
you know what, I should be able to do it.
So I mean you're kind of hitting all all three
of those birds in one shot with that, right, So nice,
nicely done to Okay, the next piece, I mean I
(25:55):
was I was curious about as to the app that's self, right,
I mean, you know me me being an immigrant as well.
I mean I've used plenty of these apps, A lot
of these things that set up time is long. I mean, yes, said,
things have changed over the years. So can you tell
us a little bit about I mean, you know how
long it takes for somebody to sign up an afriax
(26:18):
and make that first transaction? I mean, how how easy
or simple?
Speaker 3 (26:22):
Have you made it?
Speaker 2 (26:23):
Super easy and super simple? Of course? I mean that
was we came. You know, these apps were charged in
like seven percent taking you know, same day, Like if
it was same day, that was a miracle. I remember
like those first payments would literally take hours, and I
was like happy about it. Now at AX, ninety percent
(26:44):
of payments arrive in two seconds. So it's not does
not arrive in two seconds. It's almost like on our
batt list, like, oh, what did we do wrong? You
know what I mean? And so that's a very very
different world. And so we take that into consideration with
it's on verification standpoint to the payment standpoint, we want
to make everything as fast as simple as possible. The
(27:05):
other thing that I would add is we're now moving
into a new generation of cross border payments. I would
say the first generation was the Western unions and the
money grams of the world. Right send money is going
to get there in five days. We're going to charge
you twenty dollars to send one hundred dollars. Second generation
was like transfer wise world remitt So now it's mobile
(27:27):
right now, we're digitized it, but it's not necessarily cheaper
or it is, but you know, maybe you've not trying
you twenty dollars. Now we're charging you six dollars and
it's going to get there in eight hours something like that.
That was the case, I would say shortly before this
new generation joint. Now this new generation is not only
(27:49):
like super fast and easier, but also we're starting to
see more features, more parts of the financial life. We're
now built not just the remitstance platform, but something that
really encompasses and immigrant's entire financial life. So, for example,
ef rex also enables people to generate USD bank accounts. Nice,
(28:12):
so not only not only can you send money, but
you can actually open up a bank account. And we
do this for immigrants in North America and Europe and
like remote workers in Africa. And so we're enabling sort
of like a push remittance from the immigrant and like
a pull remittance from the remote worker, giving people access
(28:36):
to foreign accounts, allowing them to send money quickly in
directions that they've never been able to before. So basically
we're still to see like a much more this is
much more advanced, sort of like cross border payment ecosystem
springing up.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Yeah, nicely done. I mean I'm glad to get all
these near features and with you know, the Internet changing
every day and customer demands and needs for speed and you.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
Know the world and self just be compressing so much.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
Or you know, we're all global citizens, right, I mean,
so we we want that flexibility. So it's so cool
to see that you're doing this. So given your success
so far to pay, I mean, what what is next?
I mean, now you guys doing any any sort of fundraising.
I mean, how can people in the community and people
(29:32):
listening to this help af Rex.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Yeah, I mean, first of all, most of the things there,
let's say, I'm increasingly so very excited about what that's
going to enable on a platform for all about customers globally.
As far as like interacting with the ecosystem, we're not
like actively raising, but I'm you know, always in touch
and speaking to investors, you know, I like to One
(29:59):
of the things that I think has changed about me
as a as a founder from when we first started
to now, it's like I now see everyone as a
stakeholder or a customer in ecosystem, investors, competitors, regulators, the customer,
like everyone. It's my job to make sure that everyone
(30:20):
is aligned for the success of the mission, right, and
so that includes everyone and so you know, you spend
a good amount of time talking to investors, learning from
sharing some of our plans, and you know, a lot
of times they might have seen examples of this in
Latin America, or they might have seen an example of
this in Europe or something like that, and so we
(30:44):
can sort of compare notes and figure out how we
can work together to build a better future.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
Yeah, yeah, I mean I love what you're doing as
a CEO. I mean, and it looks like, I mean
the other type of CEO who is plugged into everything
that goes on, especially given the culture that you've built.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
In your or structure.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Uh And yeah, I mean, and as a CEO, I
mean a lot of what you do is actually just talk, right,
I mean, your calendars are usually filled up, and you've
got to be talking to either internally or externally. Do
a lot of talking, right.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
So I don't believe you for that because I'm an
engineer in my background, and yeah, sometimes I want to
like roll up my sleeves, but I realized a lot
of times it's just communicating the ideas and letting other
people have their input. And so yeah, you're right, I'm
literally just responding. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
Perfect. So we've reached.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
The section of the episode to where I'm going to
fire away a few questions, rapid fire sort of thing.
I think some of this you already answered, but I
mean you.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
Can choose to, you know, add more to it. So,
first of all, I mean, you're you're like a first
time founder, you know maybe.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
Uh you you you mentioned about your mom being your
inspiration for being an entrepreneur herself. I mean, any anybody
else that you look up to in your entrepreneurial journey
as an inspiration.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
She would have to be the number one.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
Yeah, okay, I'll take that. We can move on. Yeah, beautiful.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
So I mean, I'm sure your mom is proud of
what you're doing and especially going back home.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
And I can just make a quick point. I mean,
she's quite unique, just to give you a sense. I
mean a lot of people like, oh my mom is great,
but my mom actually, so I've seen her literally do it.
So yeah, you know, she's she's you know, she she
really lived the American dream and I got to see it.
Of course.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
Beautiful.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
So any I mean, obviously as an entrepreneur, I mean
you you're an engineer. Now you're playing it all of
the CEO. You spoke about all the nuances that come
with the CEO. I mean, so you're you're learning a
lot of as well, right, I mean, so are you
much of a reader or are you more into documentaries
to take inspiration any anything you keep going back to
(33:10):
to help yourself as a CEO.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
To pay Yeah, it's been different, different things at different times. Definitely,
you want to keep learning at all times. I would
say it used to be a lot of books, now
probably more. Yeah, today I listen to podcasts and watch videos.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
Yeah. Nice.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
So I mean if you were the tope who figured
out on a Monday that you've got to go to
the US on on the Thursday.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
Looking back at that journey, you know, are you what
would you tell.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
That tope from ninety ninety seven, ninety ninety eight, I mean,
have you have you arrived on the world scene or
any any How would that.
Speaker 3 (33:53):
Topey feel as to what this turpe is.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
I don't know if I would tell them. I wouldn't
want to stress them out. I don't know if you
would have been ready for what's to come? Yeah, you know,
but I would I would just have told myself to
stay focused. You know, I probably would have dropped a
few hints. You know that that might have accelerated a
(34:19):
few things, but in general, just just kind of focus
on your strengths, focus on your strengths, and just continue
to develop that because every single person has like supreme
talent inside them and you just got to figure out
what that is.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
And awesome to so cool to have you on the show.
Thanks so much for taking the time amidst your super
busy schedule. I'm so glad I got you on and
I'm gonna try after it myself.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
And see how it works.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
So I'll pass on any feedback that I have, but thanks, thanks, awesome,
Thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (35:01):
Bye.
This is the Startup Podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Thank you for tuning in.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
You as a favorite.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Enjoyed this episode.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Hello everyone, Good morning, grieving, goodnon to wherever you're joining
us from. This is Anthony Prakash, your host from Startups.
They'll say, Today, I bring to you a brand new
episode of the podcast, and I'm super excited to welcome
Tope a Lobby who is the co founder and CEO
of affree X, which is a remittance platform and to
(00:37):
its co founder John built this through a.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Stint at y combinator.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Remittance is, as many of you might know, is a
big problem around the world for people, especially immigrants, to
send back money back to their country. As although that
industry is a world quite a bit, there are still
parts of the world where it is still very difficult
that I'm so lad.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
I found Topay and his company after x trying to
do this for.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Africa as a as someone who's been through this pain firsthand,
I really appreciate Topay and his company doing this. So,
first of all, without further ado to pay, welcome to
the show. So glad you took the time on to
come on here. Yeah, so Topay, why don't we kick
us off today and tell the world about who you are,
(01:27):
where you come from, and maybe a little bad after X.
Of course, we'll focus this conversation a lot about after X,
the problem and how you're solving for but we'd love
to know more about you as a person and what
got you to this point.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Yes, never really imagining, you know, where what turns my life?
Would say, it came to me instead. It was like
a Monday, Oh, on Thursday, We're moving to America. I
was like literally I remember like in the playground at
school and just like standing me. I wasn't even stopped playing.
(02:04):
I was just looking around like I'm gonna like I'll
never see these people again, you know, and just being
a kid and it just being like a really big
moment for me as a child. So nine years old,
my family won something called a visa lottery, visa lotteries
where the US sort of like gives free visas to
some poor country and Nigeria was poor enough at the time,
(02:27):
and we qualified and my family won moved to America
on that Thursday. I remember landing in Houston, Texas, and
everything smelled like plastic. I was, you know, watching wrestling
and eating hot dogs like like every other American kid,
and so you know, moved over when I was a
(02:47):
kid and kept you know, I was very focused in
academics as a kid, I studied engineering. I also played
a little bit of sports, but I was mostly academic
and I ended up studying engineering. I went to university,
I studied electrical engineering. Nice you know, much more like
(03:10):
computer chips, hardware, circuits, electronics. But I never actually worked
as an electrical engineer. Yeah, I'm sure it's a common thing.
But soon, yes, I graduated, I pretty much went straight
into software. I went to work at wigs dot com
for a little while software engineering did I work at Ideal,
which is a consulting firm, and I also worked at Consensus,
(03:35):
which is a blockchain consulting firm as well. And in
between that I would babble a little bit. I was.
I was always working on projects, always curious and working
on new ideas. But those were my I would say,
probably major work experiences.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Okay, awesome and fascinating story.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Right, So you get told on a Monday and you're
more on a Thursday, and do you still remember the.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Exact date as to when it happened? I mean one
for the memory books.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Yeah, yeah, May twenty seven, nineteen ninety eight, Okay, and
we landed in Houston, and you know, obviously a big
impact on my life. Things obviously a full circle because
now I run a Africa focused fintech. But yeah, at
(04:31):
that time, it was you know, a whole new world
and new experience from Okay.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
That is incredible.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
And so if him, I ask you, I mean, after
all that time, almost twenty years, what made you choose
to go back to your home country and run what
you're doing right now?
Speaker 2 (04:54):
You know what, I think it's the same story a
lot of immigrant kids here to grow up. You grew
up as an immigrant kid, and you always want to
And I was one of those kids. You know, I
always kind of knew that I would do something. And
I think my parents, my mother kind of raised us
that way. My mother was very entrepreneurial herself. Always had
a business. She had a beauty salon, she sold cars.
(05:18):
My mother has pretty much done every business that you
could you can imagine, and so we grew up watching that.
And she also kind of bread in us that you know,
you you were lucky to get this opportunity, and so
you should pay that forward to the next generation and
to the people that weren't so lucky, and I think
that was something that kind of stuck with us, myself
(05:38):
and my sisters as well, and so I would say,
you know that that is probably a good part of
the motivation that kind of brought me back.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Yeah, yeah, a little to our moms, right, I mean,
they are they played such a big role in our lives,
and you know we can do we can't do enough
to thank them for all the all the stuff that
they do lives. So let's talk about afrey X a
little bit, right. So you said that you worked in
a bunch of companies after you did your electrical engineering.
(06:11):
So where did you actually first feel the pain that, Okay,
this is a problem and this is something that you
should go solve for. How did that starting point happen.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
My journey into afread specifically really came from an engineering standpoint.
I'm doing all these really cool blockchain solutions at that time. Yeah,
and you know, I worked on a lot of cool things,
and I always thought to myself, like, well, it feels
like there's something here that could be helpful for people
(06:51):
with inflationary currencies, and so, you know, I was kind
of dabbling in my mind, it hadn't really clicked. Stable
coins hadn't really taken off at the time. It was
really mostly crypto people were using just just buying bitcoin
and etherium and that was a lot of the activity
at that time. And so, uh consensus was, you know,
(07:12):
very early in the remote work trend. And so I
really had the opportunity to travel around. I actually got
a chance to travel to Legos, so I started I
started traveling back to Nigeria, uh from San Francisco at
that time, and so here I was my co founder,
John and I were just kind of playing around different ideas.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
At some point we actually built like a bitcoin exchange,
and we basically realized that no one was holding at
least the people in Africa. It was just buying it
and like sending it and kind of using it as
a payment system. And we were like, oh, wow, this
is interesting. Uh. You know, we would talk to our customers, Hey,
(07:53):
why did you what was you Why did you buy
that bitcoin? They're like, oh, I wanted to make a
payment in Germany. Interesting, and so we just to just
double down on the remittance and payments use case with
the idea that we would use crypto as a back end,
and then all of a sudden you start to rise
of stable coins, and it just became much more simple,
right Like, instead of me trying to buy bitcoin and
(08:16):
you know it might go up and down, I can
just buy stable coin, maintain the value, and then you know,
deliver value for my customer. So that started working well.
And then over time, as we got bigger, even the
stable coins became sort of like less necessary in our system,
but still still useful. I think in general, and we
(08:38):
can touch on this more later, but I think in general,
the world is moving to like the instant movement system.
And that's probably big that a lot of people aren't
talking about. Is that not just in a marketing space,
but even in the fiat space. Payments are just getting
faster globally, and so you have new entrants like ourselves
who are taking advantage of these technologies and bringing them
(08:59):
to theustomer to just provide a more seamless payment experience.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
Got it? That is beautiful?
Speaker 1 (09:06):
And you did mention your co founder John right ready
to ready to actually run into John? And how did
you guys decide to team up John?
Speaker 2 (09:16):
So, so FRIX is like, you know, a lot of
our early stories start like online nice. There was like
a I think Facebook had an online hackaton, like a
Facebook developer conference. There was a hackathon online and I won.
(09:42):
I don't know thousands. I used to do. I used
to experiment a lot with technology, and John saw that
I want. He reached out to congratulate a fellow Nigerian
one this global thing, and uh, you know, just through
that conversation, we were just check out each others projects,
you know, like, oh, what have you built? Oh? I
(10:02):
built this other thing, this depth tool, and so we
were just kind of comparing notes and they were like,
you know what, we should just work together on whatever's next.
And so it was almost kind of like a hobbyist,
I would say, kind of shared interest. And then over
time we kind of started getting more serious.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Okay, very nice.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
So it's it's it's really fascinating to hear the stories
of co founders in general, right. I mean a lot
of them know each other for their entire lifetime. A
lot of them say, oh, you know what I was,
he was he or she was sitting next to me
on the plane.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
We started talking ideas, we became co founders.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
So I do have to know the stories of you
know how how how you actually run into one another?
Speaker 3 (10:44):
So that's that's is John also based in Legos right now.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
He's efforts as a remote company. I'll say, yeah, good remote.
So we have sort of clusters of people in various cities.
We have a cluster and Legos cluster and in Na
and another major cluster I was saying in the UK. John
these days spends a lot of time in Kenya. Over
(11:09):
the years, he spends time in Brazil. John just kind
of lives okay, somewhere.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Okay, that's that's that's the twenty twenty four lifestyle. So
I'm glad he's doing that. So so let's, uh, let's
maybe unravel a little bit more of afrex as well. Right,
So you saw the problem and you know you said, okay,
let's go tackle this. So from what what made you
guys choose the y combinator path for afree x to
(11:40):
start with? And then talk to us a little bit
about where where you are in your journey. I see
that you're almost hitting a half a million subscribers and
users from around the world, so congratulations on that. So
just talk about the journey in general and where you are, right.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Am, Yeah, just a just a double click on the problem.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Right.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
So I mentioned that our customers were using it as
a payment system, we also had to pay ourselves, so
like all of my money was in the US and
I had to keep using the money in my US
bank accounts to pay for my Nigerian expenses. And so
from both angles, we were seeing like, hey, this cross
border thing is like a real problem. It was just
(12:20):
too expensive and too slow, and so basically we decided
to focus on that and build around that. And so
we were doing this. I was already I was living
in San Francisco before moving to Lego, so I had
like a San Francisco network, and so White Combinator had
(12:40):
always been sort of this legendary place where you you know,
great companies had come out of and so honestly, I
didn't think a whole lot about it until we applied.
I wasn't didn't necessarily think we would even get in,
to be honest with you, it was just one of
those moments where you know, we have been working on
(13:03):
a project and we had like, you know, a little
bit of traction, and we were just like, guys, you know,
what are we gonna do? We need to like raise
some money. And we were like at that time only
four of us was myself, John and two other engineers,
Valentine in Earnest. So just four engineers basically working on
a project, a little bit of traction, and you know,
(13:29):
everyone's looking around like hey, like what's what's next. And
so I was like, all right, guys, you know what,
let's just apply for some accelerator programs, see if we
get in. We applied for TEXTARS and didn't get in,
and then we applied for y C, which we assumed
would be harder, and we were like, well, I guess
if we didn't get in TEXTARS might not get in
(13:49):
y C. And we actually got in. We got into
y C, and it was like really exciting. Again. This
was around the pandemic time, so early to mid twenty twenty.
Really really put a bolt of electricity into the company.
I would say for me, that's the biggest value that
YC provided us. It wasn't the money, because whatever we're
(14:13):
going to give to these days, maybe one fifty or
whatever it is, I think a little bit they give
probably more. Now generally you don't get it. You're not
gonna get it on day one, right, Yeah, you get
to accelerate. It's probably going to take a while for
you for you to even get that money, but what
it gives you is that energy as a young startup,
like oh we have a chance, and so everyone is
(14:34):
like given everything they got. It just creates a really
really intense moment and it surrounds you with other startups
that also movement at the same pace. So it was
it was great for us, I think in that we
probably made more money from that than the actual money
that they gave us, right, so it was.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, perfect. Then how big is your
came now? I mean you said you were four then,
I mean I maybe your website says fifty people, is
as all right?
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Sure, so today we're seventy five people. That's I'm proud
to say that all of those four guys are still
at the company the next the next few years.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
Yeah, yeah, perfect. I mean so cool. And I mean
I wish that you can expand this.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
Globally, right, I mean, from what I see, you're concentrating
a lot on where you came from and the countries
around Nigeria in general, but I also see a few
other countries, So that is that the goal. I mean,
do you see this as a global challenge for people
to send from point A to point B? And your
(15:54):
grander revision is to say, I mean, you know, treat
almost the world as one entity and you know, make
the super easy and instantaneous for everyone. I mean, I'm
probably putting words in your mouth here that just just
talk to us about what you're thought as a starting
point and maybe in your journey. What's that grand derivasion
(16:15):
for Fax?
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Yeah? Yeah, crossboarder payments are even today we connect you know,
countries in Southeast Asia, we connect to Europe obviously, so
we we actually I think forty now, so there's a
new new release and we are getting ready to launch
some Caribbean endpoints and so naturally this is a globally
(16:40):
connected payment network that we're building. Yeah, we started with
an audience that is African and African diaspora, and from
there we will naturally expand up. So, for example, throughout
the from from when we started to where we are,
we've built a lot of new products. We've also started
(17:02):
serving B to B clients and so there's naturally, I
think in a life of a company, you just find
yourself expanding to new and new places, and so what
we're trying to do is not get too far ahead
of our skis, focus on you know, what's in hand,
while also continuing to build out the global network.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Okay, got it.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
And just in terms of you know you moving back
to Nigeria, you are in Legos right now. So I'm
part of an open source community called Flutter, and I
know for a fact that I mean that community is thriving.
The developer community in general is thriving an affect especially
(17:46):
in Lagos where where I see a lot of traction.
But I know very little about just the startup ecosystem
in general in Nigeria. Uh what excites you most about
you going back setting up shop there? And can you
tell the world about you know, Nigeria and general and
(18:07):
the startup ecosystem that you're part of.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Yeah, yeah, so I've got to see a few startup ecosystems.
Absolutely did the san fer se major differences. I think
the founders here are a lot plier problems with the direct
revenue opportunities. Yeah, you know, I really appreciate that because
what it does is everyone is speaking from a real
(18:34):
place where real customers and real experiences. The startup ecosystem
is very interconnected. You know, Lego has a high population,
but it's not geographically large, so it's actually very very
dense dense. Everyone knows each other, you know. Every people
have worked at different companies and not work for a
new company, and so there's there's a very tight knit
(18:58):
community definitely where where everyone is kind of working together.
Everyone has impact goals, right, everyone is trying to like
boost the continent in some way or the other. And
so it's been for me very enjoyable. You know, I
sit in an interesting part of the ecosystem where you know,
we I've gotten opportunities to live in other places, and
(19:20):
we've raised a good amount of money and stuff and
so forth. And I see I see folks that are
ahead of us. I see folks that are coming up
sort of behind us, And you know, I'm very excited.
I think Legos has a lot of contribute to the world,
especially in the financial services space. Yeah, and so yeah,
very very excited and impressed about what I see here.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
Beautiful.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
So you mentioned you worked on blockchain before afrite x
and a lot of the crypto exchanges and those sort
of ideas and as ceiling based on what you said,
I mean, you know the underlying tech for aflete x,
you've also used a lot of the those principles from
a I mean my assumption might be incorrect, but I mean,
(20:06):
what sort of approach did you take to uh make
the tech super simple?
Speaker 3 (20:11):
Number one? Number two is to you know, to to
your point. I mean, you know, if it's if it's
a global exchange, if you will, and it needs to
cross border payments, needs to be instantaneous and all that,
how have you ensured to pay that the tech that
you're using is like cutting edge and it will stand
the test of time if you will.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Yeah, the technology is I would say, first of all,
anyone building consumer payments, you know, it's a there's a
there's a it's a high bar technology, right because you're
dealing with people's money and lots of people at the
same time, and so you I don't care how if
(20:56):
you've if I've completed every transaction for you for the
last ten years, that one that doesn't go through is
like the world is the world is ending, right, And
so for that reason, that's a very very high bar
for reliability and functionality, and so you really have to
build around that and make sure that every digit is
accounted for, you know, and everything happens exactly how it's
(21:20):
supposed to happen. That's all possible, and so I would
say that's really the main design principle As far as
like the comparison or like the influence of blockchain technologies,
I think that happens more so on the operational side
for a lot of companies. So from a technology standpoint,
(21:40):
building a building an exchange is very different from building
a payment system. And what we've built is more of
a payment system, a really fast payment system that integrates
with a lot of global networks card systems, mobile money systems,
bank accounts, SYSTM stems. But that is also I would say,
(22:03):
still different from like a proper exchange even you know,
whether you're talking about finance or like NASTAC or any
any sort of like real time, those systems are technologically
I would say, quite different, but they can integate. And
so we've built this basically a really fast payment system
(22:25):
that enables people to move value around the world like
literally in seconds.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
Okay, you spoke about the high bar there.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
I totally understand, right, I mean, people, it is people's
hard earned money, and you've got to be super careful
with it. So I mean that those expectations come a
big responsibility as well, right, Like our friend spider Man says, right,
so you're building a company you've grown from four people
(22:57):
to seventy people right right now? So I mean I
think you know, from at least my advantage point, I mean,
that's a culture you need to build. I mean everyone
needs to take that seriously that you. I mean, you're
dealing with people's livelihoods in a way that right. So
I mean as a CEO to maybe where your CEOs
(23:21):
had to mean what what what are those principles and
values that are foundational principles.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Rather that you're building Afrey Exxon and I.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Mean what is what is it that you keep stressing
to your team or what sort of culture have you
built and.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
What you want to build rather for the company?
Speaker 2 (23:41):
Yeah, I think the means a lot of things for
a lot of different people, but it basically for us
means you need to because we have so many everyone
is a problem solving, right, Like, yeah, problems you need
to solve it, to solve for them fast because you know,
we're not in a world where, you know, like in
(24:03):
the old times where somebody sends money and they're expecting
it to land in three days, and so you can
pass them off to the next department to handle it
and like move them through different In at Afroax, like everyone,
it's very flat and horizontal. Everyone pretty much understands how
the business works, and everyone pretty much understands where to
find things. So if there's a problem, you're responsible for
(24:26):
solving that problem. It's not enough to say, oh, I
emailed somebody about it or whatever. You know, you kind
of have to do it. And so I think what
that breeds in us there's a lot of empathy for
the customer because when a customer has an issue or
a challenge, we take it on like I need to
solve it. I'm the one that needs to solve it
(24:46):
for this person. And so that is like the primary
culture that we kind of take on. We see a problem,
we kind of roll up our sleeves and take personal
responsibility to solve those problems. And I think it's helped us.
You know, even when we move from consumer space and
now serving more businesses, it helped us a lot in
(25:09):
that way. Some people from our team will call our
partners on a weekend, you know, and be like, let's oh,
I noticed this thing on your system. How can we
like work together to like make this connection better? And
people are surprised, like why why Because that's just how
we are. It's like we we sort of take personal
(25:31):
responsibility to solve problems.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
Yeah, yeah, I love it because I mean it gives
them a sense of ownership accountability at the same time, right,
I mean, and in a way it's also empowering them saying,
you know what, I should be able to do it.
So I mean you're kind of hitting all all three
of those birds in one shot with that, right, So nice,
nicely done to Okay, the next piece, I mean I
(25:55):
was I was curious about as to the app that's self, right,
I mean, you know me me being an immigrant as well.
I mean I've used plenty of these apps, A lot
of these things that set up time is long. I mean, yes, said,
things have changed over the years. So can you tell
us a little bit about I mean, you know how
long it takes for somebody to sign up an afriax
(26:18):
and make that first transaction? I mean, how how easy
or simple?
Speaker 3 (26:22):
Have you made it?
Speaker 2 (26:23):
Super easy and super simple? Of course? I mean that
was we came. You know, these apps were charged in
like seven percent taking you know, same day, Like if
it was same day, that was a miracle. I remember
like those first payments would literally take hours, and I
was like happy about it. Now at AX, ninety percent
(26:44):
of payments arrive in two seconds. So it's not does
not arrive in two seconds. It's almost like on our
batt list, like, oh, what did we do wrong? You
know what I mean? And so that's a very very
different world. And so we take that into consideration with
it's on verification standpoint to the payment standpoint, we want
to make everything as fast as simple as possible. The
(27:05):
other thing that I would add is we're now moving
into a new generation of cross border payments. I would
say the first generation was the Western unions and the
money grams of the world. Right send money is going
to get there in five days. We're going to charge
you twenty dollars to send one hundred dollars. Second generation
was like transfer wise world remitt So now it's mobile
(27:27):
right now, we're digitized it, but it's not necessarily cheaper
or it is, but you know, maybe you've not trying
you twenty dollars. Now we're charging you six dollars and
it's going to get there in eight hours something like that.
That was the case, I would say shortly before this
new generation joint. Now this new generation is not only
(27:49):
like super fast and easier, but also we're starting to
see more features, more parts of the financial life. We're
now built not just the remitstance platform, but something that
really encompasses and immigrant's entire financial life. So, for example,
ef rex also enables people to generate USD bank accounts. Nice,
(28:12):
so not only not only can you send money, but
you can actually open up a bank account. And we
do this for immigrants in North America and Europe and
like remote workers in Africa. And so we're enabling sort
of like a push remittance from the immigrant and like
a pull remittance from the remote worker, giving people access
(28:36):
to foreign accounts, allowing them to send money quickly in
directions that they've never been able to before. So basically
we're still to see like a much more this is
much more advanced, sort of like cross border payment ecosystem
springing up.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Yeah, nicely done. I mean I'm glad to get all
these near features and with you know, the Internet changing
every day and customer demands and needs for speed and you.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
Know the world and self just be compressing so much.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
Or you know, we're all global citizens, right, I mean,
so we we want that flexibility. So it's so cool
to see that you're doing this. So given your success
so far to pay, I mean, what what is next?
I mean, now you guys doing any any sort of fundraising.
I mean, how can people in the community and people
(29:32):
listening to this help af Rex.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Yeah, I mean, first of all, most of the things there,
let's say, I'm increasingly so very excited about what that's
going to enable on a platform for all about customers globally.
As far as like interacting with the ecosystem, we're not
like actively raising, but I'm you know, always in touch
and speaking to investors, you know, I like to One
(29:59):
of the things that I think has changed about me
as a as a founder from when we first started
to now, it's like I now see everyone as a
stakeholder or a customer in ecosystem, investors, competitors, regulators, the customer,
like everyone. It's my job to make sure that everyone
(30:20):
is aligned for the success of the mission, right, and
so that includes everyone and so you know, you spend
a good amount of time talking to investors, learning from
sharing some of our plans, and you know, a lot
of times they might have seen examples of this in
Latin America, or they might have seen an example of
this in Europe or something like that, and so we
(30:44):
can sort of compare notes and figure out how we
can work together to build a better future.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
Yeah, yeah, I mean I love what you're doing as
a CEO. I mean, and it looks like, I mean
the other type of CEO who is plugged into everything
that goes on, especially given the culture that you've built.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
In your or structure.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Uh And yeah, I mean, and as a CEO, I
mean a lot of what you do is actually just talk, right,
I mean, your calendars are usually filled up, and you've
got to be talking to either internally or externally. Do
a lot of talking, right.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
So I don't believe you for that because I'm an
engineer in my background, and yeah, sometimes I want to
like roll up my sleeves, but I realized a lot
of times it's just communicating the ideas and letting other
people have their input. And so yeah, you're right, I'm
literally just responding. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
Perfect. So we've reached.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
The section of the episode to where I'm going to
fire away a few questions, rapid fire sort of thing.
I think some of this you already answered, but I
mean you.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
Can choose to, you know, add more to it. So,
first of all, I mean, you're you're like a first
time founder, you know maybe.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
Uh you you you mentioned about your mom being your
inspiration for being an entrepreneur herself. I mean, any anybody
else that you look up to in your entrepreneurial journey
as an inspiration.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
She would have to be the number one.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
Yeah, okay, I'll take that. We can move on. Yeah, beautiful.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
So I mean, I'm sure your mom is proud of
what you're doing and especially going back home.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
And I can just make a quick point. I mean,
she's quite unique, just to give you a sense. I
mean a lot of people like, oh my mom is great,
but my mom actually, so I've seen her literally do it.
So yeah, you know, she's she's you know, she she
really lived the American dream and I got to see it.
Of course.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
Beautiful.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
So any I mean, obviously as an entrepreneur, I mean
you you're an engineer. Now you're playing it all of
the CEO. You spoke about all the nuances that come
with the CEO. I mean, so you're you're learning a
lot of as well, right, I mean, so are you
much of a reader or are you more into documentaries
to take inspiration any anything you keep going back to
(33:10):
to help yourself as a CEO.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
To pay Yeah, it's been different, different things at different times. Definitely,
you want to keep learning at all times. I would
say it used to be a lot of books, now
probably more. Yeah, today I listen to podcasts and watch videos.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
Yeah. Nice.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
So I mean if you were the tope who figured
out on a Monday that you've got to go to
the US on on the Thursday.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
Looking back at that journey, you know, are you what
would you tell.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
That tope from ninety ninety seven, ninety ninety eight, I mean,
have you have you arrived on the world scene or
any any How would that.
Speaker 3 (33:53):
Topey feel as to what this turpe is.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
I don't know if I would tell them. I wouldn't
want to stress them out. I don't know if you
would have been ready for what's to come? Yeah, you know,
but I would I would just have told myself to
stay focused. You know, I probably would have dropped a
few hints. You know that that might have accelerated a
(34:19):
few things, but in general, just just kind of focus
on your strengths, focus on your strengths, and just continue
to develop that because every single person has like supreme
talent inside them and you just got to figure out
what that is.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
And awesome to so cool to have you on the show.
Thanks so much for taking the time amidst your super
busy schedule. I'm so glad I got you on and
I'm gonna try after it myself.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
And see how it works.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
So I'll pass on any feedback that I have, but thanks, thanks, awesome,
Thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (35:01):
Bye.
Popular Podcasts
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com