November 14, 2023
Global Entrepreneurship Week: 14 Founders Share Their Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs
November is National Entrepreneurship Month, with November 13th – 19th being dedicated to Global Entrepreneurship Week. At QED Investors we’re so lucky to have many inspirational founders as a part of the QED family.
Last year, we launched our Fintech Thought Leaders podcast, hosted by Head of Early Stage Investments Bill Cilluffo, where we have the opportunity to speak one-on-one with our founders about their journeys to becoming an entrepreneur, the inspiration behind building their companies and their approach to leadership.
During those sessions, each founder shares their advice for aspiring entrepreneurs who wish to embark on their own entrepreneurial journey. From founders who’ve started HR software solutions to founders who’ve developed enterprise platforms to power loyalty programs, we’ve outlined the advice QED Investors’ founders would give to entrepreneurs.
About: Capim is fueled by the ambition of enabling healthcare access to all. By way of a simple plug-and-play solution, Capim offers a full set of embedded financial products that allow private clinics and healthcare service providers to run their business more efficiently while treating more patients and increasing the quality of service provided.
Website: https://www.capim.com.br/
About: ClearScore is the UK’s first-ever service giving consumers completely free access to their credit report and credit score. ClearScore offers consumers a critical tool to actively manage their financial profile and ensure they get the best access to the market for their personal financial position.
Podcast Link: https://www.qedinvestors.com/blog/podcast-one-on-one-with-clearscore-ceo-justin-basini
Website: http://clearscore.com
About: Collective believes there is strength in numbers. Your business is our business. We are dedicated to increasing the number of financially successful businesses-of-one. We provide an online concierge platform, designed to give self-employed people the technology, team and community they need to easily set up and scale their businesses so they can spend more time at what they are good at, giving them peace of mind, more money and a clear path to success. We take care of all your back office needs from business formation to accounting, bookkeeping, payroll and tax services in one online platform, guided by our team of trusted advisors. We are founded by serial entrepreneurs who have firsthand experience with the challenges of being a business-of-one, we are driven by our members’ success. Everything we do, we do for our members. We are relentless in pursuing their goals for financial success. We are headquartered in San Francisco and backed by General Catalyst, QED Investors, Google’s Gradient Ventures, Expa and more.
Podcast: https://www.qedinvestors.com/blog/podcast-one-on-one-with-collective-ceo-hooman-radfar
Website: http://collective.com/
About: Coru is the leading financial coaching platform in Mexico, working to mitigate financial stress for people across all stages of their lives. The Coru platform offers personalized and actionable coaching to identify the cause of its users' money troubles, create a personal wellness plan and support them on their journey to making better financial decisions.
Podcast: https://www.qedinvestors.com/blog/podcast-one-on-one-with-coru-ceo-fernando-gonzalez
Website: http://coru.com
About: Fairplay is a revenue-based financing platform that supports entrepreneurs' growth by investing in their performance marketing campaigns and their inventories with a flexible, fast, and friendly product. For fast-growing businesses reliably earning sales from their marketing spend and/or their inventories, Fairplay offers a sales advance as funding in exchange for a flat fee and a steady revenue share of earnings until capital is paid back.
Podcast: https://www.qedinvestors.com/blog/podcast-one-on-one-with-fairplay-ceo-manolo-atala
Website: http://getfairplay.com
About: FlapKap is working steadily to make the largest revenue-based financing platform. They aim to impact the B2B financing world in ways that are not very different from how the buy-now-pay-laters have impacted the B2C financing world. FlapKap provides extremely fast, flexible, and insightful financing to digital and native businesses at large.
Podcast: https://www.qedinvestors.com/blog/podcast-one-on-one-with-flapkap-ceo-ahmad-coucha
Website: https://www.flapkap.com
About: GetGround makes it easier, faster and more cost-effective for landlords and property investors based anywhere in the world to manage their residential property investments in England and Wales.
The company’s innovative platform allows customers to establish registered UK limited companies entirely online within 30 minutes, through which they can purchase buy-to-let properties and enjoy the benefits of investing through company structures. GetGround then provides a current account for rental income and expenses and takes care of the day-to-day management of the companies, from bookkeeping and accounting to tax returns, relieving investors and landlords of these time-consuming administrative burdens.
Since launching in early 2020, GetGround has attracted thousands of customers across the UK, Middle East and Asia, and has become a trusted ‘one-stop-shop’ partner for landlords and investors.
GetGround is supported by the UK Government through HM Land Registry. The company has offices in London, Hong Kong and Singapore and is a recognised supplier with the National Residential.
Website: http://www.getground.co.uk
About: Co-founded by CEO Naré Vardanyan and CTO Ilia Zintchenko, Ntropy believes that by turning data into leverage rather than a barrier is a game-changer in financial services. While in recent years open banking and other financial regulations have made data more accessible, the problem of understanding this data to create real value remains largely unsolved. This data powers decisions from credit scores to loan agreements and enables a variety of financial products that impact lives. Ntropy saw an opportunity to provide a developer-first and scalable platform that helps businesses make sense of their transaction data, for customers to benefit from in the future.
Website: https://ntropy.network/
About: Refyne is India’s first Earned Wage Access (EWA) provider based in Bengaluru. The B2B2C company was founded in 2020 by Chitresh Sharma and Apoorv Kumar. Refyne partners with organisations to allow their employees - full-time and contractual - to access their real-time earned pay anytime before payday, enabling them to align their expenses with their income and build their financial stability. Refyne is an affordable and innovative financial product that can help users curb their dependence on costly credit schemes and prevent them from falling into debt traps. The company currently caters to more than 300,000 employees of over 100 companies in India. Its clientele includes Cars24, Rebel Foods, Hira Group, Chai Point, Wow! Momos, and others. Refyne is backed by leading global investors like QED Investors, Jigsaw VC, partners of DST Global, RTP Global, and XZY Capital.
Website: https://www.refyne.co.in/
About: Stem provides a financial platform for creators, artists, and their teams to run their own businesses with clarity and long-term career sustainability. Launched in 2015 by Co-Founder and C.E.O. Milana Rabkin Lewis, its intuitive interface enables clients to track, divide, disperse, and even donate revenue to various recipients, designating percentages and simplified splits with the utmost clarity and accountability in real-time. Most importantly, the company has distributed over $200 million to 40,000 people as of 2021.
Podcast: https://www.qedinvestors.com/blog/podcast-one-on-one-with-stem-ceo-milana-lewis
Website: https://stem.is/
About: True Link is a diversified financial services firm offering a range of money management, investment, and insurance products, primarily for retirees.
Website: http://truelinkfinancial.com
About: Wagestream is Europe’s #1 Benefit for Employee Financial Wellness Wagestream’s revolutionary platform allows all employees, both salaried and hourly workers, to have complete control over when they get paid. It effectively ends the need for employee advances, loans and employee stress suffered from short term, unplanned financial obligations. Wagestream can be operational without any change to a company’s cashflow or payroll process. Wagestream is an FCA authorised agent [FCA #902046].
Podcast: https://www.qedinvestors.com/blog/podcast-one-on-one-with-wagestream-cto-portman-wills
Website: http://wagestream.com
About: Wildfire Systems provides an enterprise platform which enables partners to embed social commerce, rewards, and cashback offerings within their existing services. Wildfire’s patented suite of technologies rewards online shopping and harnesses digital word-of-mouth, delivering enhanced user experiences, consumer loyalty, and new revenue streams for partners. By harnessing word-of-mouth recommendations, Wildfire drives incremental revenue for over 30,000 online merchants including 1800-flowers, Dell, Macy’s, and Sephora. The company is based in San Diego and was founded in 2017.
Podcast: https://www.qedinvestors.com/blog/podcast-one-on-one-with-wildfire-ceo-jordan-glazier
Website: https://wildfire-corp.com/
About: Worky is an all-in-one HR software and payroll platform for Mexican SMBs. Through Worky, a company can automate employee files, PTO management, recruiting, evaluations, payroll, employee benefits, and more. Using the wealth of employee centric and performance information generated through its software, it can better serve employees and offer fairer and more relevant financial products.
Website: http://worky.mx/