Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: My Digital Money CEO Guy Gotslak (Part 1)

Guy transitioned from being a hands-on developer to running a consulting company, and then eventually, to becoming a Crypto entrepreneur. In this interview, we discuss the nuances of his journey, as well as the trends in the Crypto world that are opening up opportunities.

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

Guy Gotslak: I’m the President and Co-Founder of My Digital Money. I’m originally from Israel. I moved to the States when I was eight years old. I ended up studying computer science and engineering at UCLA. Then I went on to be a programmer for over five years.

19 Udemy Courses on How To Build a Startup in Latin America

This bundle of courses is designed for IT entrepreneurs who want to start and scale a business in Latin America.

The Latin America startup movement has accelerated recently. We’re seeing lots of e-commerce in various domains, of course, but also FinTech, AgTech, even B-to-B SaaS.

548th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast with Lloyed Lobo, Boast.ai

Lloyed Lobo, Co-founder and President of Boast.ai, discusses his failures and eventual success building AI startups. Wonderful conversation.

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Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: Nectarine Credit CEO Alex Armitage (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: How did you get your first customers?

Alex Armitage: We have some other businesses. A couple of them are e-commerce companies. We knew that space quite well. We knew that this was a problem. We had hundreds of relationships with companies in various industries. We had hundreds of contacts in that space. We went to them and said, “We’ve done business in the past. We know this is a problem. How can we make this process easier?”

Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: Nectarine Credit CEO Alex Armitage (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: The trend that I’ve seen in this market is, people zero in on one set of data and develop a set of heuristics based on which they are making these decisions. You look at Kabbage for example. They weigh heavily on online transactions. They are willing to lend against that transaction volume. That’s their primary heuristic.

In the case of Intuit, they’re basically using QuickBooks data. You’re not a proprietary data provider. You’re basically bringing on a lot of data signals and then you’re offering heuristics on those data signals. I’m curious about how you got the company going. What was the MVP for a company like what you’re talking about?

Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: Nectarine Credit CEO Alex Armitage (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: You started with the dozen beta customers who ordered the product in advance. You built the product. They came on board as paying customers. They brought on 400 to 600 prospects. 

Alex Armitage: That’s a simplification of it, but that’s essentially how we’re moving forward. It’s a huge problem. Thousands of companies are sending out physical paper applications and are asking for credit verification over email. Dozens of emails are sent back and forth. Sometimes that process takes months. Our system takes minutes.

Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: Nectarine Credit CEO Alex Armitage (Part 1)

One of the biggest trends in FinTech is digitizing and speeding up the credit application and approval process. Another trend is using proprietary data to bring new financing options to cater to different segments of borrowers. Alex discusses a very interesting niche context within which he’s building a wonderful FinTech company.

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

Building a Fintech Company from Luxembourg: STOKR CEO Tobias Seidl (Part 1)

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

Much is happening by way of innovation in fund raising exchanges in the field of FinTech. Here is a story from Europe.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?