Ahmad discusses building MENA's largest revenue-based financing platform, 'winning the lottery' twice, why it's OK to fail and why you'll never win an argument by losing the heart.

Sam chats with QED's Bill Cilluffo about the origin story of Ocrolus, his competitive drive to succeed and how he drew inspiration from Google's CAPTCHA to improve the accuracy of machine learning tools.

In this episode of Fintech Thought Leaders, QED Partner and Head of Early Stage Investing Bill Cilluffo chats with colleague and Head of Africa Gbenga Ajayi.

In this episode of Fintech Thought Leaders, QED's Head of Early Stage Investments Bill Cilluffo speaks with Fairplay CEO Manolo Atala.

In this episode of Fintech Thought Leaders, QED's Head of Early Stage Investments Bill Cilluffo speaks with Stem CEO Milana Lewis.

Tune in to learn:

[2:17] The problem that Stem is solving, from music distribution to automating payouts, and how the company unlocks economic opportunities for content creators, including mortgages, benefits and healthcare.

[4:38] The exponential growth of new music, from 70,000 songs a week, to more than 100,000 a day.

[6:20] How Milana was shaped by her immigrant experience and the role her family played in her love of music.

[10:07] How Milana’s first business plan was to pitch to her parents to show she could afford to attend college.

[12:18] The parallels between fintech and the music industry how recessions can be such a catalyst for innovation.

[16:20] The motivation behind starting Stem and how she was inspired by Malcolm Gladwell’s book about 10,000 hours.

[26:20] How the business today is different from the original vision in 2015, why Stem never planned to become a distributor and how the technical integration with the industry’s biggest names took years instead of weeks.

[31:12] The balance between being a disruptor while remaining part of the establishment.

[33:00] Trying to force consensus on contracts before music came out in order to try and get people to agree on what they own before the song gets published.

[35:05] Milana’s leadership style and how that changed from the agency environment to the startup environment.

[37:53] The way Stem approaches constructive feedback as a team, and why her one big commitment is to have fewer sacred cows and to be more clear about what they are.

[40:17] The learning from the first team off-site and the impact it had on company culture. Find out how Milana thinks about creating connection, driving more context and accelerating its ability to align.

[44:25] Why the things that people do for fun still feels like work for Milana, and why she has embraced golf as a way to clear her mind and unplug from work.

[47:07] Milana’s one piece of advice for new entrepreneurs. Spoiler: it’s that nobody else knows what they’re doing wither.

In this episode of Fintech Thought Leaders, QED's Managing Partner Nigel Morris speaks with ClearScore CEO Justin Basini.

Tune in to learn:

[4:55] How Justin thinks about the role of left-brain, right-brain thinking in decision making.

[6:17] Why creating a business is about building art on top of science.

[12:45] How CEOs think about existential threats to their businesses and how they deal with crises of leadership. 

[16:20] What happens when you need to re-motivate your team when a sale or acquisition falls through.

[18:41] The limitations of geographic expansion and how leaders balance growing a product line versus entering a new country.

[25:25] The impact entrepreneurship can have on mental health and how it personally affected Justin.

[31:01] The best advice Justin every received... And the advice he regrets ignoring.

[31:58]  Why Justin is bullish on the future of ClearScore and the continued growht of fintech.

In this episode of Fintech Thought Leaders, QED's Head of Early Stage Investments Bill Cilluffo speaks with Coru CEO and QED Executive-in-Residence Fernando Gonzalez.

Tune in to learn:

[2:24] How Fernando’s entrepreneurial journey was shaped by his familial experiences and those of his father.

[7:04] The story of Fernando's first business idea -- Taking cheese from north of Mexico City and selling it to his favorite taco place.

 [10:05] How Fernando thinks about the role culture plays in determining people’s behavior and beliefs.

[11:20] The serendipitous journey from Tec de Monterrey to MicroStrategy, an enterprise software organization, to adtech company ComScore.

[15:27] The problem that is negatively impacting 87 percent of Mexicans, and how Coru can help.

[24:42] The unique perch of a CEO-EIR and the synergies between the roles that are grounded in empathy.

[29:32] Fernando’s motivation to make people feel better and how he draws energy from others. 

[31:16] The importance of work-life balance.

[35:32] Channeling tennis great Rafa Nadal to think about overcoming inertia.

[37:05] Fernando’s advice for founders. It starts with refusing to fall in love with the solution.

In this episode of Fintech Thought Leaders by QED Investors, QED Managing Partner Nigel Morris is joined by Bambee CEO Allan Jones, Tribal Credit President Duane Good and organizational and strategy consultant Seamus McMahon about the lessons learned from conducting reductions in force.

Tune in to learn:

How the best founders thrive under constraints. "Constraints drive creativity and they rob you of optionality.”

How founders think about the balance of keeping once versus cutting too deep.

The key considerations around how you message the layoffs to employees.

The importance of taking a retrospective look back at how you grew and where mistakes were made.

Why honesty is the only thing that matters when you're forced to execute a RIF.

Helping team members understand how you came to a decision.

 The role of leaders in helping people navigate change.

In this episode of Fintech Thought Leaders, QED's Head of Early Stage Investments Bill Cilluffo speaks with Wagestream CTO and co-founder Portman Wills.

Tune in to learn:

[1:07] An introduction to Wagestream, a super-app for frontline workers.

[2:28] How Portman thinks about his North Star -- the concept of a social enterprise business that helps those who are less fortunate but still pursues a profit.

[6:10] How moving schools 14 times in 12 years helped shaped Portman’s independence and resilience. 

[14:02] The Wagestream origin story – the moment Portman and his co-founder learned about the concept of earned-wage access and why they knew it was a problem they wanted to tackle. 

[20:36] Why Portman’s trip to Notting Hill in 2017 framed his perception of how people change their social calendars based on their pay schedule.

[23:07] Validating Wagestream’s theory that workers would want to be paid on their schedule – at hundreds of restaurants, ice cream trucks and boutiques in the shadow of Windsor Castle.

[27:00] Getting unexpected market research by cold-calling the UK government directly. 

[30:42] Forks in the road – the one thing Portman got 100 percent correct from Day 1.

[33:46] Over-indexing on how popular their product would be at launch. Just because it is a no-brainer, it doesn’t mean every B2B enterprise company will want to sign on the dotted line right away.

[37:49] The ability to take complex problems and distill them down to the one core question. The importance of solving complexity by minimizing inputs. 

[41:18] Get comfortable with failure. The entrepreneurship journey is never easy and never linear. Get knocked off the horse, get back on. 

In this episode of Fintech Thought Leaders by QED Investors, QED Managing Partner Nigel Morris is joined by Wander CEO John Andrew Entwistle, Summer CEO Paul Kromidas and QED Partner and Head of Growth Chuckie Reddy to discuss the future of proptech and short-term rentals.