Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: NorthOne CEO Eytan Bensoussan (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: How were you financing a 15-people operation?

Eytan Bensoussan: A lot of it is personal. We had a very early investor who helped us out. Then it was about making the very tiny amount of money that we had last as if it was 10x the amount. This was about being scrappy, extremely thoughtful, and purposeful. Over time, there wasn’t enough. I had to start taking out of my savings and retirement and putting them into the company. Otherwise, you wouldn’t even have the opportunity to launch.

Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: NorthOne CEO Eytan Bensoussan (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Which of these channels is producing? Is Google search producing the best?

Eytan Bensoussan: They’re changing almost every month. The growth team is not dogmatic about where we go. We have very specific constraints. We look for where people come in that have the attributes of the highest likelihood to use the product. Then the cost guardrails. That will shift meaningfully as the pricing on these channels puts them out of our budget or keeps them within. A lot of channels where you can put visual collateral help a lot.

Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: NorthOne CEO Eytan Bensoussan (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: As a small business signing up for NorthOne, you sign the small business up for QuickBooks as well.

Eytan Bensoussan: We work with a lot of accounting suites. QuickBooks is one. A large number of our customers use them, so it’s top of mind. In many ways, what we’re trying to do is to be humble in the face of the existing operations of the business. You have an accounting suite. We’re not going to tell you to change that. We’ll take whatever is working and connect them all. After connecting to the bank platform, then the functionality comes alive.

Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: NorthOne CEO Eytan Bensoussan (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: First, what is your background?

Eytan Bensoussan: What I did prior to this was helpful, but they were adjacent. I studied Mathematics and Biochemistry. In the iterations of my career, I did a law and MBA program. Not connected to this thing, but they were iterative pieces. Then I spent six years at McKinsey, which gave me an eye-opening view. I was seeing what was happening in Europe and seeing the way that FinTech was emerging in the early 2010s. I combined that with this understanding of the problem from my childhood, I quit my job, and went to go work on it. I got started on NorthOne.

Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: NorthOne CEO Eytan Bensoussan (Part 1)

FinTech companies are difficult to get off the ground. This case study is a deep dive into how Eytan managed to get to the seed funding round and marshal capital to go to the next level.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as NorthOne.

Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: My Digital Money CEO Guy Gotslak (Part 4)

Guy Gotslak: We’re interested in providing fractionalized metals like gold and silver. We have plans to put that on the platform. Especially in times like this, more people are buying metals. Gold is doing well. That will allow us to stay stable. From a client standpoint, it helps people get access to diversification.

Even if you talk about tokenizing real estate, a lot of people can’t buy a whole house. They don’t have enough for the down payment or maybe they don’t have good enough credit. By tokenizing real estate, you can buy a part of a house and you can do it at a click of a button.

Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: My Digital Money CEO Guy Gotslak (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How many crypto traders are on the system?

Guy Gotslak: We’re in the thousands so far. Each individual contributes a good amount because the average IRA that comes in is $25,000 to $50,000. We’re already in the thousands of users and growing.

Sramana Mitra: What is your business model?

Guy Gotslak: We take a transaction fee. We’re looking to expand our products into other assets as well.

Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: My Digital Money CEO Guy Gotslak (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: To what extent did the consulting business help you in this new project?

Guy Gotslak: A lot. I was customer-focused. I wanted to get personalized services to our clients. We ended up getting acquired by a software company that does personalization where the idea is to help give personalized digital experiences. It can be on any channel. I just became passionate about being able to do that but still keep humans in the mix too.

Sramana Mitra: You stayed with the company that acquired you?