Week #39: FinTech is eating the 🌍
Every week, I send you an email to crystallize ideas that I have in mind and to inspire you about working remotely, investing in startups, networking, and personal growth.
This newsletter is by invite only, if you are reading this, it means we share the same visions and our paths will cross one day.
🗓️ My week with Bullets points, perfect for lazy people.
The community is growing fast! Day after day, I discover the community that I built and the power of it. This is one of my powerful assets from the engagement on my Linkedin Post, the reply on Instagram stories, and the number of signups to the webinar. And you are the first network of this community 🙏.
FinTech (Startup in the Finance Industry) will eat the world? It’s starting in Africa 🌍! I fell in love with Union54 who wants to build a banking infrastructure available for the 54 African Countries. Let me explain to you why I "harassed" the CEO for a month on Whatsapp 😃
Here is the startups that I interviewed/connected this week: tagme.pk, lukount.com, cuentamono.com, caption.market, amenitiz.io and madjacques.fr
Business is growing: Swan.io 🇫🇷 my first Angel Investment raised a Serie A (18M$) with Accel Venture 🌟
Culture fact: One good aspect of living in Latin America is the similarities with European Culture, this is one of the few continents where you can feel it.
Have you heard about the "scout program"? I received two new requests to become Scoot for the UK and French VC this week. I will explain to you the role of a "scout".
Concept of the week: I love to explain to companies my vision to make successful hires, starting by networking and creating a pool of talent rather than pitching jobs to anyone.
Meeting interesting people: This is the most exciting part of my week! meet new people. Here are some interesting people I connect with: Neil (CTO of Lukount), Pénélope de Vitry (Growth of Horace), Christian Kongolo (Investor in Africa), Pierre Touzeau (Founder of Claap)...
Business idea: Building Software can also be a hobby, why not building a club to launch Micro SaaS during our free time?
Interesting facts: 580 million people speak Spanish 🇪🇸 (7.6% of the world's population), and I’m not part of this group yet :)
What is coming? Join us for our next webinar 🇫🇷. We will explain equity to startup employees with Caption Market.
🚀 Zoom on a startup that I love: Union54.com 🇿🇲
Building an African Startup in the Finance space is an impossible Mission, there is no Banking Infrastructure to allow you to build an application or a software with finance aspect. Worst of all, there is no way to connect the banking system of the 54 countries of Africa. For example, we have SEPA protocol in Europe that allows anyone to send money to most of the country of 🇪🇺.
The Ambition of Union54 is to enable any African businesses to use banking services inside their product. Alan, Spendesk, Swile, Payfit, Qonto, Shine... all of those businesses are dependent on an European version of Union54, without a Bank As A Service provider, the french fintech ecosystem will be empty...
I hope you imagine the potential of a solution like Union54 for the African ecosystem.
More about the company
Headquarter in Lusaka, Zambia 🇿🇲
Launched by a CEO who build one of the biggest neobank in Africa (Zazu)
Seed Stage, 13 employees
Part of the last Demo Day of Y Combinator.
🤞Portfolio is growing: Last week swan.io (my first angel investment) raised 18M$ with Accel Venture. Swan is a Banking As A service, similar to the vision of Union54 but focused on the European Market. Hope that my first African angel investment will also be a BaaS (Banking As A Service).
"How do you find those investment opportunities?"
Most of my deals come from an Outreach to the CEO, with a simple proposition value and an 'aggressive' way to get a meeting :)
🚀 Others startup that I discovered or connect last week:
TAG (tagme.pk) 🇵🇰 #SerieA #YCombinator – The first NeoBank for Pakistan. Value proposition: simply open a bank account in 3 min and get a credit card. They just raised around 12M$ with a valuation at 100M$. The product is not released yet, but the need is there, and consumers in emerging countries are struggling with their banks. The Banking Infrastructure of TAG will be the biggest challenge, to ensure they have the feature available.
Lukount (lukount.com) 🇨🇴 #Pre-Seed – The "Pennylane" for Latam America, launched by 2 french entrepreneurs in Medellin, it's one of the first companies that I met. I'll let you imagine how accounting firms are digitizing in Mexico and Colombia... Lukount finished the Beta phase, and will start onboard customers. The distribution and Acquisition will be the biggest needs. They will be raising at the end of the year :)
Mono (cuentamono.com) 🇨🇴 #Seed – Digital Bank for business in Colombia, let's say the BREX or Spendesk of Colombia? 🙃 To follow up with the concept of Bank As A Service, Mono decided to partner with a small local and traditional bank in Colombia and build an API with them to release the Spendesk of Colombia. What I like with them is the onboarding process which is fully on WhatsApp. Super early project, I may advise them for Growth Topic.
Caption (caption.market) 🇫🇷 #Seed – A marketplace where you can buy the equity of the biggest startups in France. Employees who vested and exercised their options like me, can sell them on Caption at the price of their choice. The application was only open to accredited investors before, just open to everyone! Let me know if you need a referral code (reply to this email).
Amenitiz (amenitiz.io) 🇪🇸 #SerieA – The perfect all-in-one solution that drives direct bookings. After my interview with Ayenda, I wanted to explore existing solutions in Europe who keep focusing on the software and succeed to onboard thousands of hotels. The acquisition mainly comes from Outbound.
Mad Jacques (madjacques.fr) 🇫🇷 #Bootstrap – Book an adventure in the French countryside and come back with 12 new friends! They contact Growth.Talent to help them on the hiring of the Head of Growth and to be honest they publish the well written job offer:check it out (in French).
💡 Concept of the week: Always be hiring, don’t wait to have an open position!
This idea came from my last hiring at Spendesk, when I was looking for a Senior Product Manager (👋 Martin) to join the company. I outreach to almost 70 senior product managers, and most of them agreed to take a call with me, but then this was challenging.
For the small ratio of people interested in the position, almost none were available right now for a different reason. Realizing the current project they were working on, leaving the current city/country and waiting to see if the company raised money.
So, in the end, the pool of qualified candidates available is extremely low! But, unfortunately, most of the companies are doing that.
You need to always be hiring, outreaching, and qualifying people during the year. I try to explain this to the talented Crew.work's team who is building a CRM for the Talent Acquisition team.
While interviewing people, get the information about when they will be available and for which type of challenge. For example, you know that you will need PM, Engineer, Sales in the coming month so start to hire now.
It's exactly the DNA and vision of Growth.Talent: We connect with Growth people every week. We use a reminder to follow up with them and propose the perfect opportunity at the right moment.
Hiring is all about timing, and the timing is decided by the talent, not your hiring needs. So adapt yourself.
🤝 Social life! Let’s see the interesting people that I met this week
Neil (CTO of Lukount), the CTO and Founder of the Colombian Pennylane, one of the first French entrepreneurs I met in Medellin, I admire the fact that he launched a product in a new country, in the most technical aspect of the business (accounting). I'm learning a lot about this type of entrepreneur.
Pénélope de Vitry (Growth @Horace), most of my week is dedicated to coaching and networking with talented Growth Folk, Penelope is definitely one of them. As one of the first employees of Horace (Beauty Brand for man), she managed the Acquisition but also the Product Marketing (conception of new beauty product). I want to organize a webinar about the Job of Growth inside a DNVB!
Christian Kongolo (Angel in Africa), I continue to increase my network with angel investor particularly people who can follow me on my Angel Investment in emerging countries? Christian is one of them, he is looking to build a found dedicated to african startups.
Pierre Touzeau (Founder of Claap), talented Growth people who turned into startup CEO, after leading the Demand Generation team at 360 learning for 4 year, Pierre launched Claap, a simple tool to democratise the asynchronous work. They release ameeting waste time calculator.
🤔 Business idea: Why not create an association of people who want to launch micro-saas?
During your free time, people go to the Gym, Bridge Club, or Lecture Club. Why not create a club where people use their free time to build micro-software?
I still find some free time in my calendar, and I will love to build software with a team, from the idea to the release. Am I the only one with this idea? :)
Let me know if you want to be part of this club!
🌍 Travel stories – Why do I love Latin America ?
One big aspect of living abroad is the ability to meet people and make friends. I travel to most of the different parts of this world, but I recognize myself (on the cultural aspect) in only a few places.
All around the Mediterranean, from Toulouse, Marrakech to Beirut
In Africa, from Mauritius, Rwanda, and Congo
And in Latin America, mainly in Mexico and Colombia
The culture in those parts of the world are very similar to mine, it's difficult to explain, but I will try to give concrete examples:
People live mainly outside and love to meet new people.
Transparent and open-minded, they don't have their tongue in their pocket.
Deep relationship, they are interested to learn more about you, your background, origin.
Similar language, it's super easy to communicate, there is a lot of similar words
Open to the world, and people travel a lot. They have been to Europe.
👋 A little more about me to finish this newsletter
Last week, I posted a story about my private newsletter on Instagram, you are 25 more in this email loop :)
The content strategy for Growth.Talent is working well, another week and another webinar Success (+200 people). I really enjoy the routine and the exercise.
We tested a new offer for Growth.Talent, more affordable for companies (started at 500€), to help them build scorecards and hiring processes. Already 2 customers signed in a week.
Two Venture Capital firms contacted me to present me with their "Scout Program". They allocate you an envelope (100/200k€) that you can invest in super early-stage startups, and you get a "Carry", a return on investment on it. The return is less than if you invest directly in the company, but you don't have any risk and cash limit. I may develop about it in a youtube video.
Linkedin is still our most significant source of leads, with a simple post I can get Advisory Request or Growth.Talent prospect.
I will talk about my favorite subject in next week Webinars: 🔗 Equity as an Employee
I started a list of companies that I want to meet in Brazil 🇧🇷 next month. Let me know if you have some in mind!
From Medellin while packing my luggage for Rio,
Jérémy