Today's guest is Kiaan Pillay, the Co-founder and CEO of Stitch. My conversation with Kiaan comes on the heels of their recent fundraising announcement, a $25 million Series A extension led by the global fintech fund Ribbit Capital, which brings their total funding raised up over $50 million since the launch of the company in 2019.

In this episode, we talk to Kiaan about how they've gotten here, the intangibles of company building, their vision for the next generation of payments, and much more.

00:00 - Intro
03:29 - Stitch's $25 million Series A extension
05:51 - Why take money from Ribbit Capital?
07:00 - Stitch's growth
09:03 - Building products for enterprise
11:38 - A developer-centric org
13:23 - What products has Stitch built?
15:50 - Building a "next-generation" PSP
19:06 - Specialization vs. building the full stack
22:36 - How deep is the South African market?
29:48 - Stitch's company culture as a reflection of Kiaan
32:28 - How Stitch has recruited so well
35:20 - The perception of startups and equity in South Africa
37:15 - How Kiaan hired Stitch's president
39:26 - Investing in product and engineering talent
42:17 - Kiaan's evolution as a startup founder to CEO of a 70-person company
44:30 - The future for Stitch and fintech in Africa

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