$15M ARR Fintech Founder: I Found My First Customer on Facebook

and I thought payment is real time and he said no it actually not and I'm like oh my God OK tell me more about this Caroline Tran was building a payments company with no payment background she started building a consumer cashback app and realized she needed to pivot so we run out of money right we need more either we need more capital or we pivot it and then found her first paying merchant on a Facebook group I literally reached out to him and be like Ashley we do have something for you no brand no product CEO of the largest telco in Tasmania his answer you got nothing to lose hello Clover now processes payments across 20 countries 15 million in annual recurring revenues and I'm thrilled to welcome Caroline Tran on Founders Emotion hi I'm Caroline Tran co founder and CEO of Hello Clover and this is Founders Emotion before we get into your story for people who might not know how do you describe Hello Clover so hello Clover is a global financial uh payment technology company um so we help merchants or global businesses to accept payments in 20 countries and on top of that we see payment is um an engine for growth right and that's why we have products such as embedded loyalty and uh Clever AI which is a data analytics products that help merchants to understand um give them insights understand their business on the day to day activities and help them grow hello clever now is a major player in fintech um I think you guys said that you crossed 50 million in AR which is crazy and insane and globally as well not just in Australia but your story so you moved to Australia 15 years ago you did accounting you did media finance what was the moment when you realized maybe the corporate pathway wasn't the right fit 2021 when I was in you know sitting in my room in the middle of Covid and I realized what I'm doing here Covid makes you question life yeah questions like correct and I realized this is like my time to do something different and before that I'm always in you know wanting to be building a business of myself and and I covid just made everything happened um and that's where I called my a co founder who's was my high school friend we we kept in touch for years and I know he was the smartest guy in the room and you know wanted to get him into you know doing business together you know what I've Learned from this always keep in contact with your smart friends exactly exactly you never know you know okay so you had this itch to build something of your own um but ideas are easy and action that's where kind of the real magic happens so you launch hello clever during Covid at the peak of uncertainty of life what was the spark or kind of the moment that really made you think oh like this could be your an idea with legs when you started a business it actually takes a couple of times to get it right so when we uh when we found uh hello clever it was actually the original idea was building a financial apps for Gen z's and millennials um and that's why the the name is clever because we want people to be clever with their money yeah um and I thought you know it's a great idea we got like thousand of users that downloading our apps but we quickly realized for us to be able to scale this this product it requires a lot of capital and Australia is not a market for consumers consumer product in general right um so we quickly pivoted and realized more problems right in payments I had a chat with one of our advisors and he mentioned about return payments and I'm like actually what what return payments and I thought payment is real time and he said no it actually not and I'm like oh my god okay tell me more about this he was a global chief compliance officer at a really big uh fintech company they're unicorn they raised millions of dollars then we doing our market research and kind of like realised actually yeah no one was doing real time payments in Australia specifically on the consumer to business payment so up until that point businesses only know how to accept payment with visa and Mastercard right and real time payments came about and we're like realize like actually this is great right uh businesses get a uh benefits of getting capitals instantly so um we we were yeah one of the first fintechs that launched consumer to business payments in early 2022 in Australia um and that was a really great moment for us to realize yep we wanted to be everything for business we wanted to focus our product now on the merchant's focus side we love building consumers products um up until this point if there is opportunity I would love to invest more and more into building consumers because the uh the most valuable tech companies in the world is consumer tech when we realize that we need to switch or pivot it because we run out of money right we need more either we need more capital or we pivot it 2021 2022 it was um yeah it's cap you know interest rates starting to increase and and getting more capital into the business is quite hard especially pitching a consumer product in Australia so that's where we we quickly pivoted um and launched a product that you know immediately um could come uh commercialize and start making revenue OK so you made the pivot over to merchant and but you have zero connections in banking or yeah merchant e commerce anything like that so can you walk me through how did you land your first merchant this was a merchant who actually based in Tasmania it was a merchant who actually based in Tasmania and he posted a a questions on a Facebook group that I was part of and he was asking yeah I was like who has you know who's doing return payment right cause his business so particular so there was a one of the largest telco companies in Tasmania and he looking for real time payments because then he can get you know his customers pay with their internet bills and everything using real time payments right he didn't want to see visa or Mastercard so I literally reach out to him and be like Ashley we do have something for you and I remember I had a call with him and and then I brought in um my co founder Gavin and another salesperson um he's also a young guy um went in and have a chat with this guy who's like CEO of like one of the largest telco companies in Tasmania and he literally just signed up with us as the first merchant back then we you know we're literally has no brand right we're literally just building out um and building our first product so and then since then um he been giving so this first merchant been giving us a lot of feedback how we can continue to improve our product and that was so valuable for someone like obviously you know um is for a business of that size to give us a lot of like insights and continue to like improve our our our way of working so it's lucky but also we we just go for it you got nothing to lose and then at that point what did the product look like so at that point we were building out the real time payments connections and in 2022 there's not many providers that could give you access into pay 80 um if you're familiar with that and pay 2 we were the first that raised our hands up and be like yep let's just do it so we could rebuild the first uh version of our product and and sign up merchant up and start generating that revenue you never forget your first customer no you never forget your first customer when is a product about to sell like how would you advise someone that is in fintech more of a regulated industry yup to figure that you can never wait for it to be hundred percent complete or like hundred percent perfect right because that's the the definition of MVP so MVP really means something you need to start building something small and you know getting feedback from merchants start to commercialize it uh because if you continue to I guess you know bidding more and more you don't know whether it's good fit your merchants anyway or your your customers anyway if we wanted to launch a new product it's always MVP right and then we continue to get feedback and fine tune it as we go so we got three main uh products that part of Clever AI so the first one is Clever AI Forecaster so what it means is we help merchants to forecast their sales and see the future so if you come to us and be like hey tell us what is my sales gonna be in the next 30 days we'll tell you that and then another product is called Clever Actionable Insights so we actually give you productive insights whether your business is going up or down what is your seasonality and you know give you alerts and then clever data analytics so we help you to understand your customer segment help you understand you know where is the best time to do cashback campaigns so then yeah you get feedback from merchants and they'll be like yeah I know this is great you know it's helped me to replace a business analyst that could cost me 100 k a year and then we got feedbacks around merchants that wanting us to do more with clever AI right yeah would you help me to see my uh my sales in the next you know 30 days why not like giving me more insights into like other things like inventory level cat like what kind of like marketing budget I could spend to acquire certain customers that's kind of things so we continue to fine tune it because if I've just start to build everything in one go then I can't converge like it's just too much and then it just cost a lot of resources that you don't know maybe it's not gonna be success when you just go into a hole and you build you don't think about like what are the key use cases exactly and sometimes you build something that's actually very unnecessary yeah exactly and then within your first few customers how did you even figure out how to charge so when we first sign our first merchant um we gave them a really I wouldn't say like like more cheaper but it's just more like reasonable will you actually speak to people around your industry and do research how uh your competitor is charging what is their you know how what is their business model right we get feedback from merchants actually your competitor charge me this much right and we'll be like oh okay but now we do have a really uh well structured commercial model so we I have obviously a CEO I've got a channel manager who's you know really strong background in payment so they know the payment industry really well so as soon as we put out a proposal the merchants like yep this is perfect in in the last kind of year you've had this exponential growth like when do you think it really flipped for you it's really happens when we started our strategy around multi Geo multi infrastructure and multi product right so it's so important so we started in Australia in as I mentioned 2022 and we've been hyper focused to Australia until like actually early 2024 so that was 18 months I have a focus just Australia and we see great traction right we got merchants we got like great customers on boarding with us but then because payment is so complex and you work with a lot of banks um that has really tight compliance requirements so for you to depend on one single bank to grow your business is not ideal what if they say no to you right and they just turn them turn you off so that's why in around mid 2024 we start our strategy around as I mentioned getting more and more banking relationships globally and for you to get into the banking ecosystem it's not easy what sort of compliance you have what sort of licensing you have what sort of like policies you have so we quickly realize yeah we need to really build our foundation from the ground up although we already have something but obviously building out even more strengthen uh compliance structure so that's why uh we got our CEO our compliance manager our head of compliance to really build out policies and and uh and frameworks for us just to satisfied yeah we were a startup but we also have like really strong compliance process um and then you know licensing right so we apply for our license as well uh we're fortunate because we got our Australian financial services license now which allow us to do a lot of things in Australia um and then yeah quickly doing that and then starting to get in touch with banks across 20 markets right banks in Japan banks in Philippines especially in Southeast Asia Philippines is our strongest market and then you've got banks in the US and banks in Australia which where we're based right so at the moment we've got about 60 banking uh relationships globally um instead of like two haha like 24 months ago without a sponsoring bank so without a banking uh relationship you cannot facilitate payment that's one of the challenges that we have once you're also connected once you're also connected to the Shopify ecosystem that's international already so you sort of have the demand yeah and now you just have to make sure that you can supply all the yes I wanna talk about a story that you told me yeah um there's a deal that almost broke you OK a massive contract you were about to sign until everything fell apart the night before does this ring a bell yeah yeah OK so could you take us to that moment like what happened at eleven PM that night there was a really large merchants wanted to start with us and I received a call from a from the the merchant side a general manager at the merchant side that um they they're not doing it anymore like they they're like yep not we we shut down Australia we don't wanna be in Australia anymore obviously he didn't give me a reason because I don't think he's knows the reason um from his his side as well um so I was quickly called him and explain like ask the questions right what's happening um up until this point I didn't know what happened ha ha so uh so but but I think it's it's also open new doors for us because now uh rash who's was um the general manager at that at the company now working with us right because he's got a relationship with the banks he got a relationship with the merchants um so rush was um our yeah so he started with us immediately after I mentioned you should come work with us right so you you need you need someone or you need a new company that could facilitate all of these merchants demand right so we um yeah I quickly like talk to him the day after and be like hey this is us right come join because you know we we we eager we wanting to grow with you and he has been like with us since like three years he's now with us nearly three years really happy based in Singapore our regional hub he's now has a team of 10 people working with him super happy um and I think yeah if I didn't call him that night he probably would gone somewhere else right and I have to say rash is one like one of the best general manager or salesperson in South Asia some vcs told me that like you have Rush Kelly you don't need anyone else I'm like great that's good that's awesome but for me to convince someone who's start start with it I need to give them assurance right I give them assurance I give them the vision we're gonna be succeed together right so that's why yeah and he's just been yeah growing with us ever since yeah I love that you know turning a bad situation into an opportunity yeah so talk to me a bit more about team culture so yeah how do you think about like hiring the first few people and building the right dynamics to make this to let this team thrive when we first started hiring uh a the first few uh full time employees was obviously um yeah quite challenging because you know we were still small um people still need assurance myself and my co founder we're all about empowering people to do their jobs we don't like like go to people and be like micromanage them at all we trust them to do the best of their job so hiring the first few people and you know continue to grow the business and get everyone connected so we we're a team of like nearly 70 employees globally we've got like five offices right and we've got people who speak like 10 10 languages like among hello Clover so I get people together in one day like literally every Monday uh and we do old hands and we call clever together which is our old hands so this is like everyone globally I'll be calling on Monday so normally what we would do is I'll do CEO updates right what's going on last week this week my co founder will do CEO update and then we'll have a session it's called Clever Pitch everyone right whether you're an engineer whether you're an ops manager whether it's your CFO CTO whatever so show us your perspective about Hello Clover so basically what like from your perspective as an engineer what do you think Helloclever is from your perspective from a compliance manager what is what do you think Helloclever is right so it's actually sparked a lot of ideas your perspective from an engineer is different perspective from like a salesperson so the engineers will then present you know a lot more about technical things right Hellocloud is a payment solution that could you know generate a payments in 20 countries right in a salesperson will be like yeah Hellocloud is a grow engine help you increase revenues etcetera it's so cool to see like people from different departments that come up with a deck although it's like 3 4 slides yeah but like seeing the perspective like from you know from their side we also do clever ideas so clever ideas like propose a feature that you think is gonna be cool and merchants or consumer gonna love it we have like a a a session it's called turn it up so I'll see if I ever gonna turn it up like literally like all the fails marketing that you see across the industry and also we have you know um comedy trip and um you know Team Upsides really regularly because I want people to connect and to know each other you can't really replace the in person interactions exactly and then on the other hand of things it's like hiring is all about like that vision and empowering people like no one works for a startup for kind of like a the base salary yeah right like it's all about like they align with the mission and wanna grow with the business yeah um but super cool so looking back on that journey from idea to near disaster to raising capital yeah what's one thing you used to believe about building a business that turned out to be completely wrong really fast as building products because we have a Super Archie on talented engineers based in Vietnam so if you build a product it doesn't necessarily that it will commercialize that's why at the moment what we're doing right now is doing a lot of research before we actually start building something whose are the customers right do we have demand for this right will they pay for this right so in the past there's you know occasions where we just build product and without realizing oh actually no one's buying it like you know so I think that's one of the thing that we thought you know we could have done better because it's just wasting times and resources that's one of the thing that I you know we now starting to you know get as we grow before we bring product we have to do a lot of research and identify demand so if I go to my co founder right now and tell him to do something he will come back to me be like justify the demand I also think that co founder dynamic is very it's very great too it's like having someone that can challenge you yeah and like actually pushes you back on like certain things yeah because otherwise you know he's just wasting his engineer's time you know and then what has been the most valuable lesson you think you've Learned throughout this founder journey one of the most valuable lessons for me is getting the right people in the team great management team great leadership team who's you know got experience in doing whether it's payments or like whether it's b to B sales one of the things that I Learned during the entire journey was just go with it and because we pivoted a couple of times it's not like you will find the right problem right away and as of today we continue to see problems as we go so so as we find problem we have to you know build a solution for it and that's how we identify gaps and that's how we getting the momentum continue to go um and quickly adapt to the market condition as you can see AI is everything now so so that's why you know you have to be super focusing on how's the market is reacting and how it can fly into your business use case so okay for someone that is maybe still in their 9 to 5 like yeah the Caroline of 2020 um what's one thing that you would advise them to do before they kind of take that leap definitely make sure that you have enough money to do it important yeah important also they look after your your health and have fun while you're at it your health yeah have fun while you're at it one thing I wish I wish I could have done is that I would have started earlier I love that before I let you go we like to play a little game okay so let's think about how we can get people paid for being clever yeah so what's an underrated side hustle that more people should be trying I would have to say drop shipping because I had that I used to run a drop shipping business before Hello Clover and it was fantastic dropship from like Vietnam so it's Asia or even China and sell it to like globally cause it's so easy to do that now and on the flip side what's the most overrated side hustle the most overrated side hustles consultant consultant consultants actually so I guess specific to their expertise that sometime I feel like you more you need to be more generalist consultants I think it's a little bit overrated everyone called himself consultants OK so what's the best financial advice you've ever received invest in startups if you find the right opportunities it actually could yeah help your financial situation I mean I do invest in startups here and there seeing myself you know getting a little you know little resources for me just to invest in the future of technologies it just is great for a better human being and so if I do have opportunities I would love to invest more in biotech health tech fintech obviously but I'm really in fintech so I know what's going on and then if you could instantly solve one financial headache for everyone around the world what would it be oh my god it will be student debts people like my age right still paying for student debts I'm like are you serious like it's been 20 years what's going on OK Caroline thank you for joining me yeah thanks for having me it's great I love the questions