Podcast: Reducing the cost and risk of payment operations in Africa with Revio co-founder Nicole Dunn

In this episode of Fintech Thought Leaders, QED's Head of Early Stage Investments Bill Cilluffo speaks with Nicole Dunn, co-founder & COO of Revio.

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Show notes

Bios

Bill Cilluffo joined QED as a Special Advisor in the fall of 2014 and became a Partner in 2015. He is currently Head of Early Stage Investments after six years as Head of International, leading QED’s Investment teams in Latin America, Europe and Asia.

Prior to joining QED, Bill spent nearly 20 years at Capital One, spanning several roles and leading several businesses. He spent the first 6 years of his career leading Marketing, product development and credit policy for Capital One’s subprime credit card business; ultimately having overall P&L responsibility, and growing the business to become the most significant player in the market. He moved on to spend 2 years in various new business development roles, spanning the telecom, medical finance and small business finance industries. Bill spent 3 years as Deputy Chief Credit Officer for the bank, playing nearly every role there was to play in the central credit function, after helping build the department from scratch in 2002.

Bill then pivoted his career to general management, leading Capital One’s Canadian, and ultimately International businesses, over the course of 6 years. Profitability of the business grew significantly under Bill’s leadership, through new product and channel introductions, acquisitions, and significant cost take out. During Bill’s last 3 years at Capital One, he led its Co-Brand and Private Label credit card business, building the business nearly from scratch to one of the top few players in the US market, through a series of acquisitions, most notably including leading the acquisition and post-merger integration of HSBC’s US credit card business, which closed in May 2012.

Bill graduated with a BA in economics from the University of Michigan, and competed the SEP program at Stanford GSB.

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Bill Cilluffo:

You are listening to the Fintech Thought Leaders Podcast from QED Investors, your deep dive into the world of venture capital and financial services with today's digital disruptors. QED is a global venture capital firm focused on investing in Fintech companies all the way from pre-seed to IPO. Fintech Thought Leaders brings together the most talented entrepreneurs tackling today's biggest problems. If you're looking to learn more about what motivates our founders and team members to succeed, you're in the right place. Hello, and welcome to the Fintech Thought Leaders Podcast. I'm Bill Cilluffo, head of Early Stage Investments at QED Investors.

Today on the podcast, I'm excited to be joined by Nicole Dunn, co-founder and COO of Revio. Nicole, welcome to the podcast.

Nicole Dunn:

Thanks, Bill. It's great to be here.

Bill Cilluffo:

It's great to have you. So look, we're going to talk a lot more about Revio later on in the podcast, but I wonder if you can just start by giving us maybe a 62nd commercial on who Revio is and what you guys do.

Nicole Dunn):

Sure. So Revio is an Africa-focused payment orchestration platform really focused on helping to reduce the complexity, cost, and risk of payment operations in Africa. The problem we're really solving is when you look at Africa as a region compared to other parts of the world, the payment landscape is really fragmented and broken. You've got more than 54 different regulatory schemes, you've got 42 currencies and you've got more than 280 registered payment service providers. And depending on the market you're in or the industry you're in or the UK case, you're focused on a different payment method or payment provider as the most predominant choice. And so what we're really doing at Revio is through a single API and platform giving predominantly enterprise merchants, both local and global access to consumers in those markets and helping to really bridge that gap between the need for businesses to have simplicity in their payment operations and for customers to be able to use the local payment methods that are most relevant and accessible to them.

Bill Cilluffo:

Yeah, that's great. We'll talk later on how complicated it really is. I mean, most listeners probably don't get really internalize how hard a problem this is, but how many countries are you guys in right now?

Nicole Dunn:

South Africa is our home market and where we've got the most depth and proximity to the payment system. Through our processing partners, we're able to collect and settle in 25 different African markets and we're deepening our coverage as it makes sense for us to do so.

Bill Cilluffo:

It's funny how many entrepreneurs I talked to who their parents were entrepreneurs or their aunts and uncles were entrepreneurs. That's not something you had as much exposure to, but you had a lot of experiences that led you to question Africa and why many things looked the way they did in Africa and had you questioning some of those things. So I'd love to hear a little bit about your upbringing and how it led you to be interested in some of these problems that you're tackling now.

Nicole Dunn:

Sure. I was born in a working class suburb in Cape Town. Both my parents were trainee doctors at that time, and so really focused on financial security more than anything else. We didn't have a lot of money, neither of them came from particularly much. And so I was raised to really think conservatively, probably follow in their footsteps, go into a medical career or become a lawyer because I was quite argumentative. But what happened, that was really formative in my story, was when I was three years old, my dad got this incredible opportunity to finish his specialization as a spinal surgeon in the UK and we moved over from South Africa and I became an immigrant, right? Which is a really loaded word to a lot of people, but for me, it was one of the best things that happened to me.

One of the things it did was I was moving around the UK at a really formative stage in my life and going to different schools, meeting lots of different people and really got to see that reality could be different to what you know, right? There's not one accepted way of doing things, which is what I'd seen back home. The other interesting thing that I think is particularly relevant because I'm from South Africa is that I went to school with other immigrants, who at that time in the UK were predominantly from places like Pakistan and the Middle East. And so if I'd gone to school and started school in South Africa, I would've had a very sheltered upbringing where most of the kids in my class would've been white, they would've been from the same social class, and I would've had a lot less diversity in those initial years of starting to connect with different people and engage with different ideas.

And so when I came back to the country a couple of years later, I remember feeling very curious and confused about the way that South Africa looked. I knew conceptually this was an African country, but everyone I engaged with outside of roles of servitude looked like me and spoke like me. And that didn't make sense because I'd had a much more diverse experience in a country like England, which should have been the inverse, right? And it really instilled this belief in me that reality could be different, that convention could be challenged, and that there was opportunity to do things differently.

Bill Cilluffo:

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. And South Africa is one of the more interesting countries on earth, right?

Nicole Dunn:

Yeah.

Bill Cilluffo:

Which is an interesting blend part of the country behaves like a very developed market. Much of the country behaves very much like an emerging market. It's an interesting contrast, but so it is ironic to hear that your realization from that actually came from when you left the country and then really sink home when you come back.

Nicole Dunn:

True.

Bill Cilluffo:

No, it's fascinating. So you decided to do university in Cape Town and it sounds like you had a really interesting experience with entrepreneurship in university. I wonder if you can talk a little bit about that. Most people don't have such an opportunity to really dive in while they're still in university. I'd love to hear a bit more about that.

Nicole Dunn:

Sure. So something great that happened to me when I was thinking about going to university is I got a fellowship program with an organization called The Allan Gray Orbis Foundation, which essentially funds the schooling journeys of people they believe will be high impact leaders and entrepreneurs. And going through school, I'd never really been able to place myself because I was academic, I was top of my class, and so looked like the model student in many ways except that I wasn't because I was disruptive, I was often in fights or arguments with teachers, didn't agree with how they were teaching something. And so they couldn't kick me out, I was a great student and I was bringing in accolades for the school, but at the same time, they really didn't like the chaos that I was causing.

And what happened when I got into this fellowship is I was suddenly in this room full of people who were like that. And so the first thing I learned was I'm an entrepreneur. And that was an amazing realization and being able to place yourself in your identity and not feel othered or never fitting in, I think something a lot of entrepreneurs go through, it was my first feeling of belonging in a community, which was really, really impactful. And then through that, I got to do some incredible work. They really encouraged the pursuit of entrepreneurial learning alongside your traditional studies, which not a lot of scholarship programs would typically do. And so that started with me going into townships or slums in South Africa, Khayelitsha and Philippi, and working with local microentrepreneurs on their business models and trying to make them more sustainable in terms of their business practices.

What was my first real exposure to the venture ecosystem came in about my third year of university where through a friend of a friend, I managed to get a role as a part-time project manager at an accelerator program that was run by the Dutch consulate in Cape Town of all places. And the focus of this program was really to pair South African scale ups or growing startups with peers from the Netherlands to co-create solutions to shared problems and to create launchpads into each of these regions. And that was incredible. I got to work with some fantastic entrepreneurs, startups like Aerobotics, and recommend that have now gone on to do really well, and I'm glad to say I scouted them at the time, but it was an incredible experience to get exposure to this venture ecosystem and to realize that South African businesses could really build globally compelling companies, right?

Aerobatics has gone on to scale into the US and they were able to hold their own in front of a equivalent drone company from the Netherlands that had had far more public support and funding. And so that was really, really interesting and taught me a lot about what was possible. But at the same time, I also learned I wasn't really that useful as is. So I was really excited about this new world of venture that I'd discovered, but as a young grad with no skills, no network, no credibility, there was limited value I could bring into that ecosystem. And so I started looking around for a career that could really accelerate the contribution I could make into venture and startups, but without having to climb some corporate ladder.

Bill Cilluffo:

Yeah. It's interesting you came to that realization. We certainly talk to a number of university grads and certainly some people are able to make the jump directly into venture, but I usually try to counsel them not to do that. Go do something else first just because it'll be so much easier to really add value in venture if you've worked for a startup or consulting investment banking. I mean, pick the career. So it was probably a good realization you came to.

Let me go back to one of the first things you said in that little segment that you were a troublemaker. You mentioned that your parents noticed that early on. What made you realize that that was more about challenging the status quo to lead to entrepreneurship versus what your parents would say, which is, "Why don't you go be a lawyer?" And argue all the time for a career?

Nicole Dunn:

So I tried being a lawyer when I was about 14 or 15, you get these moot court competitions, and so I thought, "Okay, mom, I'll do what you say. I'll go argue with people for a living." And I remember being really frustrated with the legal system in South Africa because it's a precedent based legal system. And so even if you know and believe something is right, if you can't find precedent, you can't win the case. And I found that incredibly frustrating. I'm really glad in hindsight now I didn't become a lawyer because the other thing that sat uneasily with me about law that I wasn't able to articulate until much later in life is that in law someone always has to lose. And I think I'm more energized and this is where I've grown up a little bit, but I'm more energized by deals where everyone can win. So I'm really glad I didn't go down that track.

I think how did I know it was entrepreneurship. I wasn't disruptive for the sake of being disruptive. It was typically around a cause or a conviction or something that could work better rather than just being, I suppose this unruly child who didn't get enough attention at home. And so it always had an element of for the greater good or social justice outcome or because something didn't make sense for what we were trying to achieve. And I think that gave me a lot of signal that it was more around creative problem-solving and the resilience that's required to be an entrepreneur.

Bill Cilluffo:

Yeah. No, that's awesome. It's always fascinating to hear how people came to the conclusion that entrepreneurship was for them. So that's a fascinating anecdote. So in this search to really develop some skills, even though you're really interested in the venture ecosystem, you decided to go the route of consulting, which is certainly one of the proven labs for learning a whole lot about business and different business problems, but you managed to also be an entrepreneur within the consulting firm. I'd love to hear about that.

Nicole Dunn:

Yeah, I started my career at a company called Elixirr, and at that time, much smaller than it is now, we're about 60 people, they're now listed on the London Stock Exchange, seen phenomenal growth. What really attracted me to them over some of the more traditional consultancies is that they really branded themselves around being a challenger consultancy, writing off the language of challenger banks that had become really popular in the UK at that time. And a lot of their marketing messaging was, "We build businesses, not PowerPoints. We hire entrepreneurs, not employees." And so I thought, cool, this is a great place for me to go. I flew myself over, did my big pitch, my interview, they offered me the job. It was great. And all the way through it felt natural unlike some of the other consultancies that I'd interviewed with. And it ended up being a really, really great place to start for me because I was able to build out a new business practice within the organization.

Looking back, you can tie a really nice golden thread in my career, but I don't want to give anyone the impression that I knew what I was doing or setting myself up for at that time. So the first project I got put on at this company was this horrendous, grueling, deep IT transformation project, and I can't say the client name, but it was lifting this behemoth in the UK from on-prem to the cloud. And I had been briefed in as an ITIL expert. And so I was trying to learn about ITSM and user acceptance and operational readiness and then cloud transformation all at the same time. And it was about 10 months of late nights and complete hell. And I remember speaking to one of the partners in the firm saying, "I really don't want to keep doing this. This is not for me. I'm not excited about this. The technology's cool, but I don't want to know it in this level of intimacy."

And he said to me, "Unfortunately, Nicole, you are very good at this. So if you don't want to become the person for cloud transformation, which is a very lucrative area of our business at the moment, you need to find an equally lucrative business opportunity that only you can deliver." And I thought that was really interesting, and that was a really interesting challenge and possibly some of the greatest career advice I ever received. And so I looked around at what the firm was doing and its market positioning, and Alexa was doing some really interesting work in Silicon Valley at that time where they would work with executive teams inside large banks like RBS, and they'd build an innovation outpost in Silicon Valley as a source of either M&A targets or new technology vendors that these enterprises could incorporate into their businesses as part of their digital transformation agenda.

And so my idea was, "Why couldn't we do the same thing in Africa?" I was uniquely positioned to do it. I was one of the only people, if not the only person at that time, I think from South Africa. I was passionate about Fintech. And so I thought, "Let me pitch this as an idea." And so I put together all the materials, did the business case, found the initial funds we would work with, which was really hard because no one was really talking about venture capital in Africa back in 2017, 2018.

And pitched it to the CFO of the company and he said, "This looks good. If you can sell it to three clients, we'll let you run with it." And so I sold it to three clients and that's now a big part of Elixirr business, funnily enough. And so got to really build something out and it's great to see it's still going. And that was my first, I suppose that's how I came back into venture and Fintech on the continent. So it wasn't super intentional in that I was pulling towards it. I was actually pulling away from something else, but luckily pulled towards a really great place.

Bill Cilluffo:

Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, Nigel frequently as a quote, something to the effect of when we write the book on QED, it's going to sound like we planned it all out and it was very linear, but that's all full of it, and it was just a windy road. It's kind of what you described there, so I can resonate. So you had the chance to start this business and go sell three clients, et cetera, but you're obviously not still there running it. I mean, what led you to the point of, "Hey, I started this business, but now it's time to move on." And I know you moved on from there actually into the venture world for a while. So what caused you to not decide to stay in consulting and really run toward building that business?

Nicole Dunn:

There were a confluence of factors, to be honest. I think the biggest driver was Elixirr actually listed on the London Stock Exchange, and they were really, really bullish around inorganic growth. And so I was asked to join this new team in the business, which was a corporate development team with some incredible best and brightest minds of the company. And it was career limiting to say no to that opportunity. And so I said yes, and I built enough momentum with the Sub-Saharan African Innovation Network that it was going to last without me. And so I could still have some say into it. And that was a big part of the negotiation is I still want some input into how this plays out. And they said, "Absolutely, but this is a key focus of the business. We want you here."

And it was an incredible learning curve for me. I was leading commercial due diligence on some multimillion pound deals and got to see those through from cold outreach through to money in the bank, but it wasn't the right role for me because I love being in the field with customers, engaging with people, solving their problems. And now I was essentially in M&A at a public company where you can't talk about anything with anyone because you run the risk of insider trading. And I might've stayed longer to be honest if I hadn't made that transition. But I think I was also getting a bit restless around being a consultant who you can often only go so far with the work that you do. And I wanted to get more into how do I actually build a business from the ground up? And that's what I started looking around for is there a role where I can really learn how to build a tech startup.

Bill Cilluffo:

Yeah. That makes all the sense in the world. And so you took the opportunity to get into venture, which I guess was one of your original goals back to university. So you joined Founders Factory and spent a couple of years really in the venture ecosystem. Can you talk about that and how that went for you?

Nicole Dunn:

Sure. I mean, it's hard to summarize how much I learned during that time. I think it was a really great bridging step. When you're a consultant, I think you think everyone is like you because you're all that insecure, a type overachiever personality. And I think it was a really healthy bridging step for me to do something in venture before coming into the operator role because I would've really struggled to work with developers, product people, designers, right? So I think that was the most overarching impactful learning coming into Founders Factory. I think it was interesting to see what Founders typically struggle with, right?

And two of the big things that stood out for me were this shiny object syndrome where often founders in particular always looking for the next thing, the next thing, the next thing, and actually executing on what needs to happen today to get to that vision tomorrow gets lost. And that was interesting to be able to observe. And something I've really tried to keep the team honest about where I'm now is you can do anything, right? But you can't do everything. So we need to sequence and prioritize.

But the other was the information asymmetry that exists between founders and investors, and even founders, and say, corporate stakeholders. And I think this is particularly pronounced in markets like Africa where often your founder personas have not worked inside large organizations. And so their enterprise sales acumen is really poor because they just don't even know how those organizations operate. They don't know about budget cycles or procurement processes or the stakeholder mapping that exists inside these very complex hierarchies. And those were two, I think really important learnings for me and gave me confidence that going into a startup, I would really be able to add value because I'd been on the other side and I really understood how those worlds worked.

Bill Cilluffo:

It's amazing how many of our B2B investments have conversations, "Oh, we misjudged what the sales cycle was going to look like for enterprise, so it's going to take us six months longer than we thought." I mean, that's such a common thing. So it's great to have that realization.

Let's transition into Revio. I mean, you had an interesting start with Revio where you joined as a co-founder, but joined several years after the company had started. That's not your typical kind of co-founder opportunity. So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how that came to be and then we'll talk a bit about the business.

Nicole Dunn:

So while I was still at FFA, a guy I'd worked with previously reached out to me and said, "Hey, I've been talking to these guys at Revio. They're doing something interesting. I think it would be worth you having a conversation. They might be able to add some value to your portfolio." I was like, "Okay, sure, fine." So set up this meeting and he and Ruaan, co-founder and CEO were on the call and their agenda was, let's talk to you about the business and maybe you can bring us some beta customers because they'd been operating for about a year. It was still very early. They'd been mostly in build, the product was in MVP and they were now really thinking about how do we take this thing to market?

And we had a incredibly robust discussion. I think they got a lot more than they bargained for because I was like, "Why are you coming to me? Why are you trying to sell this to SMEs? This is clearly an enterprise product. Your whole go-to market is wrong." So really, really robust debate and pulled out some work I'd done on Omni-channel payment strategies while I'd been inside some of the banks in my consulting days. And it just was a great conversation. And so three days later on a Saturday morning, they phoned me and they were like, "Do you want to come build this with us?" Which I think my first word was why. Like, "Why me? I'm not a payments expert." We've just met a 40-year-old man. We're just so different. If I'd had to sketch, who's the person I'm probably going to start a business with, it would not have looked like Ruaan. And they said, "No, we think you can bring a lot of value. Here's where we think you would play." And I was like, "Okay, that's interesting."

And on my side, I'd started getting restless at Founders Factory. As I said, one of the big reasons I joined was I wanted to learn how to build a tech startup. And more time I spent there, the more and more I believed and now fully believe the only way you learn that is through doing it. And it's like swimming, right? You can stand outside the pool and think about how you're going to do the strokes, but to learn how to swim, you have to get in the water. And so that's how I think startups work basically.

So it was intriguing and I didn't say yes immediately. I said, "Look, I don't know you. This is a huge commitment. I'm going to give you my most precious and expensive asset, which is my time. So let's fill each other out for a while. I'll join as an advisor and you can talk me through what you're doing and we'll see if there's synergy here and if it works out." And so for about four months, I think we did that dance until I made the commitment to come on full-time as a co-founder.

Bill Cilluffo:

Was there any one thing that got you over the hurdle or was it more just collectively the more time you spent, the more comfortable you got?

Nicole Dunn:

Yeah, there definitely wasn't one moment I went through essentially a due diligence process with them, probably more intense than most investors would go. So everything from, "I want to see your metrics, I want to do product deep dives, I want to talk to the whole team. I want to speak to existing angels. They were going into a fundraising process." I said, "I want to speak to investors you've already spoken to. I want to review your pitch deck." And so really went into quite a lot of depth. I spent a lot of time with the leadership team as well, tried to simulate conflicts to see how they would respond to me in those kind of situations.

My biggest concern was around cultural fit and whether I was going to be treated as an equal and as a real decision-maker coming in, especially because I was younger, I was the only woman at the time and I was later to the team, right? And they really didn't incredible job of giving me the comfort that I would be really valued. There was a clear need for the value that I could bring, and they were willing to listen to what I had to say.

Bill Cilluffo:

Yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. Well, let's get into the business problem. I mean, we touched on it very briefly at the beginning of this session, but something like 20, 30% of all payments fail in Africa, which is a stunning number. It's probably actually the level of payment failure around the world is probably higher than most people think, but it's nowhere near the level of 20 or 30%. Can you talk a little bit about that problem and why that happens and then we can go from there into how Revio is a potential solution to a big chunk of it?

Nicole Dunn:

Sure. So one of the reasons we exist is there's not one reason payments fail, right? If there was one reason, this would be an easy solve. And to date, I think we've mapped over one and a half thousand different failure codes that have come back from different processes and payment methods to really enrich them with insight on what's going on at each step of the value chain, right? Issuer acquire a processor gateway customer. And broadly, because I don't want to take everyone down a payments 101.

Bill Cilluffo:

I'd like to analyze every one of those 1,500 failure points.

Nicole Dunn:

Yeah. I'll now list them in alphabetical order. There's broadly three categories, right? There's technical failures which are more predominant in Africa because the infrastructure is more nascent, right? So things like acquirer downtime, gateway downtime, authorization failures, timeout, connectivity issues, because you don't have 5G or satellite everywhere along the continent. There's operational failures, which could be something like you've got outdated details on file, whether that's a bank account or a card as an example or something we're seeing a lot of is because of the risk profile of African markets, there's a lot more false positives driven by fraud monitoring that are not necessarily purpose-built for the region. And the third category that's quite unique to the market is around customer related failures. So customers are still getting used to digital payments. They're growing very rapidly, 16% CGA hitting 150 billion this year, but customers are still getting used to digital payments. And so often you'll see things like abandoned author rates or abandoned 3D secure, which I know the US doesn't actually use, but those types of issues. And then insufficient funds.

And what we've seen is insufficient funds isn't necessarily an outright affordability issue. It's typically one of two things. It's cashflow. So I've got money but not today. And if you give me some flexibility about when and how I pay you, I will honor this payment and I'll actually stay with you as a customer for longer because you've offered me that level of flexibility, or there's a mismatch between how businesses are trying to collect and where customers hold their money. So in the states, everyone keeps their money in their bank account or has a credit card. In Africa, most consumers make one transaction a month, which is a withdrawal out of their bank account into cash, or they move their money into a mobile wallet. And so that presents a big challenge to businesses, whether local or international. They face different levels of complexity who are just trying to do the most basic thing that any business needs to do, which is collect revenue from our customers.

Bill Cilluffo:

So as a relatively young startup, you're obviously not going to be tackling 1,500 different failure reasons right away. Even those three buckets you described, I'm sure you're not tackling those in a homogenous way. And so the current value proposition that you're offering, what are the types of things that you're doing to start to tackle that problem? I assume this is a decades long journey to fully attack the problem, but to really make good headway early.

Nicole Dunn:

Absolutely. And we've tried to map especially by industry and use case, what are the big sources of failure and what's the long tail and really prioritize how we build the product around that. So the first thing that we built was essentially a payment routing platform where a merchant can integrate with a single API, they get access to relevant payment methods. So you're now not collecting from your customers because their preferred payment method like mobile money isn't available. But then the logic layer we built on top of that was really the differentiator and first market, which is the ability to route transaction traffic based on different parameters to increase your authorization and success rates.

And we have that two different extents in different markets. So in somewhere like South Africa where card is used a lot more often than somewhere like Cote d'Ivoire, we have much deeper levels of routing capability where we can move traffic in real time from one gateway to another or one processor to another. And so that deals with a lot of your technical failure and touches on some of those operational failures. So expired card on file, you can solve some of that through card update or something like tokens that are now becoming available in the local market. You can deal with some of the false positives on fraud because if you're passing through more robust transaction references, you can solve some of those problems.

The other bit that we built out, partly because there was a nervousness around enterprise clients to introduce alternative payment methods into their stack was a customer engagement piece where we can embed this payment capability into channels like WhatsApp, which is really universally used in Africa, offering customers an alternative way to make a payment when something fails. So I'm trying to pay for my Spotify or my insurance premium payment fails because I don't keep money on my card, follow up with the customer with a WhatsApp saying, "Hey, Bill, this payment failed due to insufficient funds to keep enjoying your favorite artists, make a secure payment here." And then giving you the option because it doesn't need to be a pool payment to use something like a mobile money option or even in some markets, giving them the option to go to a nearby agent with cash.

And what that did was start to solve for some of those customer issues, but also build the business case for these enterprises around the value that some of these alternative payment methods could add to their business and justify the broader payment orchestration, integration.

Bill Cilluffo:

I mean, that explanation just goes to show both how complex and difficult it is, what you're building, but also how valuable, right? I mean, there's payment orchestration players around the world, but many of them in market like us might be, Hey, is it this credit card or that credit card or some pretty simple things. You're talking about just such a large range of payment methods and going country by country. It's stunning how different it is. And you've got a credit card market like South Africa, you've got mobile money markets, cash markets. I mean, it's certainly one of the things that got us so excited about what you're doing.

So you talked about when you went to Revio, how you did a very extensive diligence process. I mean, I wonder if you could maybe name one thing that, "Hey, it's gone exactly as you hoped it would or maybe even better than you hoped it would." And then what's one thing that turned out to be way harder than you thought it would be when you joined?

Nicole Dunn:

Sure. That's a good question. I've been really continually impressed and positively surprised by the quality of the team. I have very high expectations of people, and I've just got to say there are incredible people in this business, and I have to give a lot of credit to our co-founder and CEO Ruaan for how he's driven the vision and brought incredible people into the business and continues to keep people motivated even when things are not going as well as we might have hoped. I think what has not gone as well, we haven't had a bump free ride. I think a lot has gone really well, right? Bringing on QED in partic this year is amazing. We're so excited about what that means.

Bill Cilluffo:

Well, obviously that's a great accomplishment, but we're biased.

Nicole Dunn:

Yeah. Yeah. So we're really excited for what that means for our business and our growth. I think this year was really challenging, especially around some of those customer failures and that piece of the product we built out everywhere has been a little bit tough from the recessionary conditions we've seen. South Africa has been particularly badly hurt. We've had pretty extreme hikes in interest rates, and you've got a very indebted population. And so a lot of consumers are just very, very financially distressed.

And so some of the customers, we thought this isn't an affordability issue for ended up being an affordability issue, and particularly in industries like insurance where we were quite heavily exposed, that did impact the traction we were hoping to see. But we learned a lot about consumer preferences, how they prioritize their spend, the flexibility they need, and it actually surfaced new and interesting use cases like partial payments or payment plans that we were able to turn into an opportunity. But some hard learnings I think from the initial excitement going in. And I think if we'd launched that part of the solution two years ago, we might've seen much better results than we did launching it this year.

Bill Cilluffo:

Yeah. No, that's awesome. I mean, there's no entrepreneurial journey that's linear where everything works. It's funny, Nigel likes to say, "There's only two companies we've ever invested in that have hit their numbers every time. And even in those two, I'm sure that wasn't actually true." There's probably tons of things that have gone wrong, but let's switch gears for our final segment to talk about you as a leader and your learning journey. I think you've been quite self-reflective already about starting off not being shy to share your views and share your beliefs. I think that's awesome. We had a chance to talk to one of your friends, Dominic Shore, who just talks about how much he admires, how principled you are, how willing you are to defend your beliefs, and at the same time how loyal and generous you are with the time you have, particularly given how busy you are. So it's great to hear. As you continue to be self-reflective, how would you describe your biggest superpower? And conversely, if there was one thing you could be better at, what's one thing maybe you're working on or trying to improve?

Nicole Dunn:

Yeah. I mean, firstly, Dom absolutely love you and thanks. He's a big part of the reason I've had the courage to pursue this entrepreneurial ambition superpower. I think it's being able to cut through the noise is consistently what people value, so am able to actively listen in even quite charged conversations and find a way to the way forward, even if that's uncomfortable, and being very willing to say that and being able to distill the key insight. And so that's the superpower I tried to harness, whether that's in fundraising negotiations or uncomfortable team conversations or client negotiations, right?

One thing I'm working on, I'm working on a lot of things right now. I think one of my big parts of my self-identity is responsibility. I've been quite a responsible person since I was very young, and I think I've ingrained that as a big part of who I am, which can be great, right? It can lead to great things in your career, but it can tick over into a place where it's unhelpful both professionally and personally. So I'm doing a lot of letting go in Revio at the moment where I'm like, "I need to step back from this now. This is not the best use of my time." Or I'm actively taking away agency from other people in the business to step up. And I see that pattern in my personal life as well where I think I'm stepping in and being helpful, but actually taking away other people's agency to figure things out on their own. And so that's something that for me is really important to get right, especially as we get ready for this next phase of growth and scale.

Bill Cilluffo:

Yeah. I mean, figuring out the right way to delegate and step away is often challenging, and I find particularly in very entrepreneurial people, right? Where you're used to rolling up your sleeves and getting things done. So good luck with that journey. I think you're certainly not alone among those in your seat working on that one, that's for sure. Back a little bit to your willingness to be forceful and confront uncomfortable situations. I mean, I think that's a huge asset that many people could very much learn from. But we've talked a little bit that that's not a typical South African business style. How have you found yourself wanting to continue to leverage your strength, which can be so powerful, but also at times you're an enterprise sales business, you've been a consultant to very large companies, there's also an element of fitting in which is important to getting that credibility. How have you thought about juggling that?

Nicole Dunn:

It's hard, and I don't think there's one right answer to that. I think in some cases the radical candor really helps to build trust. As long as you can show that you're listening and you're taking into account what people are saying, what they care about, and I try to do this in sales. I did this when I joined Revio, I met with every single team member and really tried to understand what do they care about? Why are they here? Why are they wanting to build Revio? What are they struggling with today? And if I could find a way to be helpful, I just followed through. And I think a lot of building trust and you need trust to be candid with people is making sure you do what you say you're going to do.

So I think the way that I've built the conditions in which I can be candid and can be quite forceful with people is making sure at the same time I'm building that trust with them and having that transparency with them of why I am doing certain things and that it is in the interests or is in our joint interests. And very happy to debate on that as well. And so I think you can't be forceful in your views or overly candid if you don't at the same time have transparency and trust with your team.

Bill Cilluffo:

Yeah, that's a great insight. I'm sure it'll continue to be a journey. I mean, I certainly find that people's biggest strengths and weaknesses are often mere images of each other, and it's a never ending journey to find the right balance. But that's awesome to hear the self-reflection. Let me jump to another topic that I like to talk to a number of people about, which is the notion of remote work versus in-person work and the pros and cons. I mean, probably every company around the world is juggling that particular topic.

I know Revio was started as a remote first kind business during the pandemic. I understand you have a number of people kind wanting to come back into the office frequently. That's more of a led by management type activity. So it's interesting to hear the organic piece. How are you all thinking about that? And if people are wanting to come in, how do you accommodate that versus a remote first? Once you start that way, it's really hard to change that and you may not even want to change that. I mean, I'd love to hear your views on this topic that so many people are wrestling with.

Nicole Dunn:

Yeah, and we're still wrestling, to be clear, this is a big debate among the leadership team. So we've seen the limitations of remote working, especially between us as a leadership team. And so it came from the top of we need to spend more time together to move faster on key decisions, to build more empathy for what each other are going through, to really understand where things are falling through the cracks. And so what we started with was co-locating twice a week, and we've been doing that still up until now. We have a space that we rent on a pay as you go basis, which works because we're not going to be in the office every day and we get together and anyone's welcome to come. So we haven't forced return to office. It's been interesting to see how many people want to come in. We've recently done our first company offsite where we got the whole company together, took them away, and those we will do at least quarterly. I would say going forward, it was really, really impactful and we got great feedback on it from everyone including the engineers.

Something we've tried to balance is making coming in something people want to do or there being a clear agenda item. So whether that's the sprint is just ramped up and the engineers are going to demo, let's make an in-person event out of that. So it's not coming into the office for the sake of coming into the office, but we're coming into the office because it's the end of the sprint week and we all want to brainstorm and share around this particular forum. We've also tried to meet people where they are. So I spoke to the engineers and I was like, "Hey, guys, I think you should get together non transactionally. I'm willing to put some money behind this. What do you want to do?"

Thinking maybe they'll want to play football or I don't know, something that actually involves them getting together in person. And the feedback I got was, "No, we want to play online games against each other on a Wednesday afternoon." Which I just thought was hysterical and very frugal of them to be honest. So we are thinking about, "Well, how do we lean into that? Do we give the guy on the leaderboard a prize of his choice or buy them all lunch?" These sorts of things. So we are meeting people where they are rather than forcing them together. But it's been amazing, especially in that offsite last week to see the kind of culture and friendships that people have built remotely. So it is possible. So we're trying to find the right balance, and I think it's going to be different for different teams to be completely honest. And people in sales and customer success and product may want to get together more often and we'll create the space for that. But if the engineers want to continue to remain predominantly remote, I'm not going to force them to come into the office.

Bill Cilluffo:

No, I can very much relate to this challenge of how do you build the culture remotely. I mean, QED is now spread globally, and so we have tried the same thing once a quarter and it is amazing how well everybody gets along when we're together once a quarter, and those relationships really do grow remotely, but it's also quite clear that when we're able to get together in person, it goes to another level. So that seems to be a pattern a number of people are trying. Is your team all in or near Cape Town or do you have people truly spread around the globe as well?

Nicole Dunn:

Luckily, we've kept it quite local up until now. So most of the team is in Cape Town, and then we've got a few people in Johannesburg, which is a two-hour flight. So for the moment, it's quite easy to get people all together. Once we start building up presence in places like London or other African markets, that's going to be a bigger challenge to maintain that closeness of the team.

Bill Cilluffo:

No, that makes sense. Eventually you'll find yourself having to get together in London because it's the only place every African country can actually fly to, which is ironic. So no, that's awesome. Well, look, we're coming short on time. I really appreciate you talking to us today. It's been fascinating to hear your journey. We're super excited to be a small piece of the Revio journey. We definitely very much understand the problems of payments in Africa, and it's such a foundational thing, right? I mean, there's so many things that need to be built in Africa and making payments work is one of the things that so many other things can be built on. So we really love the work that you guys are doing and very excited about that journey.

Nicole Dunn:

Thank you. It's awesome to be working with you. I've really enjoyed every moment with the QED team.

Bill Cilluffo:

Definitely. Definitely. Well, look, we have a traditional last question here. Hopefully we have a number of aspiring entrepreneurs listening. What is one tip or one piece of advice that you would share with an aspiring entrepreneur?

Nicole Dunn:

There's so many, and I always find this challenge tough because I think the tip you need depends on the entrepreneur, but the one I've seen play out most often is marry the problem, not the solution. I think it's very easy to become fixated on the product you've built and to lose sight that it actually doesn't work for the customers or the problems you set out to solve in the first place. And so remaining really attached and obsessed with what is that core problem and who are you solving for, and being able to detach from what the product ends up being.

Bill Cilluffo:

That makes a lot of sense. I mean, your example of interest rates going way up in South Africa, turning into a bit of an affordability problem in cases and needing to develop new solutions is just a great example of that. So that's a lovely advice. Well, Nicole, thank you so much for joining today. And to all of our listeners, we thank you as well and look to see you next time.

This has been the Fintech Thought Leaders Podcast, your window into the world of venture capital and financial services with today's digital disruptors. QED is proud to provide the best Fintech advice you can get. To learn more or to read the full show notes from today's episode, check out qedinvestors.com. And be sure to also follow QED on Twitter and LinkedIn, @QEDInvestors. Thanks for listening.