00:00I'm interested as to what the 100 million helps you do.
00:03You're going global. Where are you leaning into?
00:06Absolutely. First of all, Caroline, thank you so much for having me on as a longtime watcher of the show.
00:11It's such a privilege to get to participate for the first time.
00:14Succinctly, there's two things this funding enables us to do.
00:17Serve more markets and serve more geographies.
00:20Quite core to the slash thesis and strategy, as you mentioned,
00:24is this idea that business owners deserve banking products hyper-tailored to the needs of their specific industries.
00:29Slash right now is valuable to businesses in over a dozen industries, but we want Slash to be a household
00:34name.
00:34We want to bring it to as many possible entrepreneurs in America and beyond.
00:38Right now, we're living in a super interesting time in fintech history, where for the first time ever,
00:42it's very easy and possible for an American fintech company like Slash to serve businesses all over the world.
00:48Stablecoins are this really enabling force that allow us to have a default global product,
00:53and we want Slash to reach business owners worldwide, and that's what this funding is going to go towards.
00:57So you're raising $100 million, but I think you guys would be at pains to say we're a really small
01:01team,
01:01or a lean team is how you'd put it.
01:03You're at $300 million ARR, right?
01:06Which is something to note.
01:09If that's the case, where does that $100 million go?
01:13Like, why do you need to deploy?
01:15Absolutely. I think you're absolutely right.
01:18We have a very lean team.
01:19Our company's been profitable since May of last year, but in the age of AI, because it's so easy for
01:24anyone to build software,
01:25brand is more important than ever, and banking is very much a relationships game.
01:29There's three reasons customers come to Slash.
01:31The first of all is we have a phenomenal product.
01:33The second of all is we offer phenomenal rewards.
01:35And the third is we've brought the community bank model to fintech.
01:39All else being equal, people like to bank and spend with an institution they have the best relationship with.
01:43So if we want to reach and deliver an amazing level of support to business owners all over America and
01:48all over the world,
01:49that's going to take a lot of people and a lot of investing in our brand.
01:52Victor, just go back to how lean the actual startup is.
01:55I think you've only got 68 or thereabouts employees before you start adding more to this go-to-market and
02:00marketing strategy.
02:01How much are you enabled by AI?
02:03How much are you thinking about keeping your cost base low?
02:09Entirely, this business, the way that we run it would not be possible if it were not for AI.
02:14I think that's the thing that Ribbit, that COSA, that Goodwater, all the investors that invested in this past round
02:19found most attractive about Slash.
02:21It's this idea that over 50% of the engineering hours at our company are spent actually building internal software
02:28to help us be much more efficient.
02:30So a lot of these tasks that the legacy banks or fintechs that came before us have thrown copious headcount
02:36at are just agents automated away at Slash.
02:38Everything from parsing documents when somebody is applying for an application or processing disputes or responding to requests for information
02:45from a bank partner.
02:45All these back-end tasks are agents automated away at Slash.
02:49So, Victor, kind of as your elevator pitch for Slash, who are the incumbents that you're trying to displace in
02:55helping us understand,
02:56like if you were a customer of Slash, how it would work, what it is you offer.
03:01Absolutely.
03:02Well, Ed, I think a very underappreciated fact is that fintech, particularly B2B fintech in the U.S., is extremely
03:08underpenetrated.
03:10Less than 5% of businesses in America, bankers spend with a fintech.
03:14The vast majority of them still use a legacy bank.
03:16And the reason our offer is resonating so much is quite simple.
03:19We live in an age where machines can think, where cars can drive themselves, but as I mentioned, the vast
03:24majority of entrepreneurs are still banking with an institution that has an interface that was last updated in the year
03:292003.
03:30Core to the Slash thesis is this idea that your bank account can do much more for you.
03:33It can be the place where you invoice your customers, where you reimburse your employees for out-of-pocket expenses,
03:37where you get insights around how to cut wasteful spend and much, much more.
03:42We have ambitions to become the most popular business banking platform in America, and we're going to do it by
03:47building a very powerful platform that puts a lot of money back in the pockets of our customers and gives
03:51them back a ton of time.
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