Building a Public FinTech Company From Scratch: OppFi CEO Todd Schwartz (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: What scale are you at right now?

Todd Schwartz: This year, we’re in the over $400 million range.

Sramana Mitra: When did you go public?

Todd Schwartz: In 2021 on the NYSE. When I walked up to the stock exchange, it was never about financial gain. It’s so funny to me to see OppFi on the banner. This was literally about helping people. I want to make that clear. If financial gain is the reason you’re doing it, your heart and soul won’t be in the business.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped to $100M from The Netherlands

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

Pierre and Fred Guelen bootstrapped Planon, a very significant company from The Netherlands, using the bootstrapping using services principle. Read this conversation from 2016 to learn more.

Sramana Mitra: We’re going to start at the very beginning of your personal journeys. One of you please start by telling us where you’re from, where you were born, and in what kind of background, and then we’ll do the same thing with the other person.

Pierre Guelen: I’m the CEO of Planon group. Fred is my brother. We were born in The Netherlands in a small town near the German border. We were raised in an entrepreneurial family. My father owned a large building company. He was already the fourth generation in that building company.

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Analysis of Palo Alto Networks’ Cider Security Acquisition

According to a recent report, the global cyber security market is estimated to grow at 10% CAGR from $216.11 billion industry in 2021 to reach $478.68 billion by the year 2030. Security player Palo Alto Networks (NYSE:PANW), which recently announced its quarterly results, continues to expand its presence through acquisitions.

Video FAQs

Building a Public FinTech Company From Scratch: OppFi CEO Todd Schwartz (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What about going beyond Illinois? How long did you do just Illinois?

Todd Schwartz: We scale nationally now. What was interesting to me was there were 17 other states that had small-dollar lending laws that we could use. What’s difficult is that each state has its own rules. We started to scale that way. There are 35 states that have payday lending laws, but only 17 have small-dollar lending laws.

Our goal was to provide credit access in a better way and, essentially, eradicate the payday loan. That was our original mission. That’s when I stepped down as CEO. I became Executive Chairman and hired a CEO.

Catching Up On Readings: Top 10 Strategic Tech Trends 2023

This feature from Gartner identifies the top ten strategic technology trends that organizations should explore in 2023. For this week’s posts, click on the paragraph links.

Building a Public FinTech Company From Scratch: OppFi CEO Todd Schwartz (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What about the technology? Did you build all that?

Todd Schwartz: I do not believe in going out and blowing a bunch of equity to build this beautiful shiny technology system. In four years, it’s probably not going to be the best system with the rate of change. I used off-the-shelf solutions and did API integrations into them. I spent little on technology. I didn’t have a CTO for the first five years. They were all variable costs. I didn’t have to outlay a lot of equity. I was able to grow with a variable cost model.

596th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast with Julien Pham, Third Culture Capital

Julien Pham is Founder and Managing Director at Third Culture Capital (3CC), a firm focused on investing in the healthcare space.

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Colors: Les Voiles Rouges I

I’m publishing this series on LinkedIn called Colors to explore a topic that I care deeply about: the Renaissance Mind. I am just as passionate about entrepreneurship, technology, and business, as I am about art and culture. In this series, I will typically publish a piece of art – one of my paintings – and I request you to spend a minute or two deeply meditating on it. I urge you to watch your feelings, thoughts, reactions to the piece, and write what comes to you, what thoughts it triggers, in the dialog area. Let us see what stimulation this interaction yields. For today – Les Voiles Rouges I

Les Voiles Rouges I | Sramana Mitra, 2021 | Watercolor, Pastel, Brush Pen | 8  x 8, On Paper