Fintech on the up-and-up: Spotlight on Wio Bank

[Music] so uh thank you for having me today I thought rather than just pitching weo Bank to all of you guys by the way you should all sign up uh I thought I'd share some thoughts yeah uh with you I've been in the region for 15 years I think it's incredibly exciting the pace at which things are moving here I think it's unparalleled there has never been a better time to do a amazing stuff in the right places right here so I want to talk about some of the lessons I've learned uh over the years yeah so six lessons I've learned uh I've launched three digital banks for some reason painfully I only do banking uh but there have all been startup Ventures uh backed by big companies uh and I've learned a lot and I know there's a lot of startups here so I thought I'd shared my thoughts on this I think the first thing is is you have to do the hard things yeah too often you want to copy somebody else that does the easy stuff and you think it's going to hold it will not hold things get commoditized so easily I give you an example a year ago when we were here exchanges selling crypto were unique now they are commodity yeah retail crypto is now a commodity there is very hard to survive in that business the big ones take the share the small ones don't survive y so what have we done at we we changed the entire way account opening processes work y we open accounts most of them in less than 24 or 48 hours we open 5,000 accounts a month and I want to give you context we are 14 months old when we hit this target or 12 months old that is four times higher than every other bank the second third fourth and fifth bank Bank added up open less accounts in a month than we does in a month yeah and that is because we did the hard things we solve the problems everyone else ignored so if you're going to do a startup or a business here you need to solve the hard things the second one is there's a lot of distractions there's a lot of distractions where I sit I have incredible people work with me and there's an idea every day yeah how do you decide what you do and what you don't do yeah opportunity is there an opportunity there there's tons of opportunity the second one is where I see a lot of startups fail do you have the capabilities yeah and don't pretend don't sell it to yourself if you don't have the capability you shouldn't be doing it yeah and the last one is uh is there a reward if you do it is there revenues yesterday I was talking to one of the startups great business great adoption zero revenues if there is no money the valuation game is Dead yeah uh you need to do businesses where the three exist yeah and there has to be alignment with what you can do I'll give you an example for we we're very clear we do three businesses we launch digital banking apps for consumers and business we want to build embedded Finance capabilities and we have a very clear Focus where we'll do this we do banking as a service those are the three things we do we get pitched 50 different ideas every three months but that's what we're going to focus on and that's what we're going to do yeah now within each we have subcategories and that's what we'll focus on the other thing is just don't be a pitching machine you need to be an execution machine yeah the number of companies I see with amazing decks and as soon as we look at the tech it's non-existent is shocking the reality is you will will get funding because there's tons of money out there when you get the customers you don't scale yeah we've had tons of startups I've worked with I know of who've worked really hard to work with big companies once they've gotten there they can't grow anymore because their focus wasn't building an execution machine and therefore they lose the contracts they were te to get you so you have to be a very focused execution machine I give you an example so how many of you have received a call that says hey I'm ahed calling from this bank or I'm calling from the police yeah trying to scam you obviously you guys will get tons of that we get to see this all the time what have we done at weo we looked at this problem our app will send you a message as soon as somebody from our team is calling you with their name it's super simple if you don't see the push notific ification that we is actually calling you from your app don't answer the call yeah this took us about four weeks to build and roll out because we are consistently focused on delivery we looked at an issue we said our customers are being harassed by this we need to make sure they feel more secure the teams got together in four weeks we had this out yeah and that is what makes you get the next customer yeah and I think it's critical I talked about this follow revenues you there has to be revenue and profitability if you're not seeking profitability at some point you're either going to become a blockbuster and there's only a few of them or you're going to fail yeah it literally is that simple look where the money lies that's why Banks do so well they're not good at many things but they're very good at making money yeah follow where the money is another thing I look love about startups who pitch to me fake it till you make it yeah I'm sure many of you have used that line I think it's okay yeah I I I think it's okay but not when it comes to governance not when it comes to security not when it comes to Identity not when it comes to fraud you cannot fake it yeah because you will get caught very quickly any decent company that wants to partner with you will do basic DDA on that yeah and as soon as they start integrating it'll start flowing through yeah you're not going to get further it's short-term gains you're not going to get further long term so please this is probably the area I see startups most underinvested in yeah uh is governance ask for help we ask for help when we don't know what to do we have tons of great Partners we partner with just because you're a part a Founder doesn't mean that you look bad if you ask for help I think it makes you a better leader to ask for help because it helps you achieve your objective yeah uh so please ask for help if you need to and last sign up 6% interest the best deal in town no I'm just kidding yeah thank you very much