Brick by Brick: Finding PMF in Africa with Sid Sridhar, Head of Business @ Wave (fmr. Uber, Google)

product Market fit you know when you have it that that was my conclusion like one is you know the the metrics are up and to the right on a you know daily

weekly monthly Cadence but also internally everything breaks uh because you just aren't ready for uh exponential growth right and and then when you know

it you have to get [Music] prepared welcome to Brick by Brick my name is Rishi Taria co-founder of G Adventures and today I'm joined by a very good friend of mine Sid Shar I've

had the pleasure of knowing Sid for probably over 30 years at this point we grew up together in Indonesia as expats in Jakarta and have been great friends ever since Sid went on from Jakarta to

the University of Pennsylvania and then had stins in banking Google Uber sendwave and now wave and I'm thrilled to have him on the podcast Sid welcome thanks richy for having me absolute

pleasure so let's jump in you've had an amazing path into startups can you walk us a little bit through your journey and in particular tell the audience what the heck is capital markets at Google so my

my first experience with startups it was actually in New York back in 2008 2009 uh one of our uh actually somebody who went to high school with us rishy Shon was part of the early team at venmo and

I was Believe It or Not venmo's fifth ever user so you amazing and that's before they even had a IOS app like I think iPhone had just come out then so

they were building on like ESS texting reals at that at the time uh and I and I just completely didn't understand what they were doing right and uh so I had taken the more uh the conservative path

of kind of being in Investment Banking in in New York Etc pay pay off student debt Etc but I saw firsthand uh what their Vision was which was to make it super easy to send money

but I also saw firstand just what a drain it was what an absolute uphill battle it was with kind of figuring out product Market fit but then also compliance when they discovered they had to get 50 state license so that was my

first experience and I knew then that I didn't want to do it and then after New York I went to to to to Google and that's when I I really realized it was right when app stores were taking off

and I had a role in finance so cap capital markets essentially it's managing all the money Google had and managing their foreign exchange exposure Google generates about 50% of their

revenue in international money uh so Euros P Aussie doll Yen and I was I was in charge of essentially protecting that and hedging Etc uh and booking that to

revenue but at like doing a non core role at Google was actually the thing that really got me excited about startups because you realized that like while it was interesting managing all the money Google had like all the fun

was being had by the 10 to 15% of people that were actually Building Products Etc and uh and actually in in my role a lot of startups that either Google funded or other startups would come and say hey

there's this interesting like FX startup that uh that I have um you know can you give me thoughts on it and because I developed a little bit of expertise in FX um I I realized that I could actually opine on you know some of these things

so that so then that took me back to the venmo days and I actively started asking people you know in the community like hey is there a a startup that's working

in the intersection of tech and crossb payments Etc um I I went to Uber for for a little bit where I worked on International driver payments again sort of FX focused and international payments

focused but at Google like the exciting five years had already been done sorry at Uber the exciting five years had already been done right they had already gone from you know nothing to $40 billion and 100 billion in gmv ETC I think that first five years is really

critical and so I was still missing that so while I still learned you know what it was like being part of a hyperscaling team at at Uber I realized that that I was late and it was that first five years that's really really important

from a you know from a learning perspective from a real from a fulfillment perspective so yeah and then a mutual friend uh Justin Khan actually had led the seed round in Sen wve and

his roommate was a good friend of friend of mine at the time and introduced me to Drew Durban and and swave was the I think I was sort of almost born to work at this company because it was at the

intersection of Emerging Markets we grew up in Indonesia you know FX which I had learned at at at Google uh and and sort of you know very venmo like in terms of venmo like user experience so it felt

like uh sort of all the stars were aligning and was a right role for me and so that was my first story into real startups amazing before we get into s wve you know talk about the expertise that you developed that

ultimately made swave the perfect company I mean you talked about the international experience crossb payments moving of money you know I'm guessing if you as you plotted your course forward

you wouldn't have been able to predict this is where you'd end up but looking backwards oh obviously this is what I should be doing how did your domain

expertise could make you n of one for the companies themselves and have people reach out to you saying Sid is the only guy in the world that can do

this job yeah uh I don't know about the only guy but definitely like what one that picks a lot of the boxes you know start starting from the beginning obviously I did a few years on Wall Street so I knew a bit about Corporate

Finance just enough to be dangerous and then um you know and then at at Google and Uber i' learned a lot about FX um International payments Etc and swave um

had built an incredible product so there were just I think four or five employees at the time but to give you a sense of the scale sway was already moving about 50% of all the money that was moving between the US and

Kenya sent by diaspora so they built an incredible product but there's nothing really more than that there wasn't a finance team there wasn't or you know beyond product and Engineering it was

sold very very early so they needed somebody that could both manage the sort of the operational aspects of you know Finance your your treasury your building

an accounting system Etc which I knew just enough about having done some accounting and finance work on Wall Street uh but then also some of the more strategic stuff so sway generated all their revenue by charging foreign

exchange spreads between what they were showing customers and what were they creating at the wholesale market and that you know I I'd build an expertise at Google figuring out how to get the best rates run competitive processes use

technology to solve a lot of that um so and you know FX is a very Niche space right so when I was chatting the founders it just you know made a lot of sense and I and I thought if I was you know to chart what were the types of

skills that I would bring to a startup it was you know Corporate Finance you know f um and you know the sort of Blitz killing was an experience that I had but it was something I really wanted to do

right uh but it enough of a bet to to for them to take a leap of faith and and sort of hire me and um yeah and it was a space I was following very closely as I said from my from my Google days Etc

amazing well you know s w obviously checked a lot of boxes for you in terms of category traction proof points obviously super early days when you

joined and as you alluded to there was not the infrastructure that was set up what were those first few months you know maybe year year and a half two years like when you join and having G

come from large organizations where they're basically teams for everything to effectively running uh large chunk of the business yourself what were the things that were the most surprising or

intimidating about that yeah I think the first was actually just putting your ego aside uh you know I'd had an MBA I'd worked on Wall Street I had been at Google i' been at Uber and the first

task that I was given was to run payroll like literally because they had not formalized payroll for you know for for some time and um like even just navigating uh you know new HR software

and like there's so many Corner cases like oh like an ex there's an ex employee who we have to run like a fake dummy payroll Etc so first is just like you know really putting your ego aside and saying like I'm just going to figure

out how to do basic things like uh yeah run payroll get access to that to that system uh talk to you know the legal council about how to go you know handle a lot of these sort of corner cases um

implementing an Erp you know never done that you know you you realize when you know when you were on on Wall Street that you were just a like consuming the output of all the stuff right that is that that's work when here a startup

that you have to do you know your yourselves and you realize how much you know Blood Sweat and Tears goes into that process so you know running that um getting access to bank account sending wires Etc um obviously at that point

you're controlling all of the money that the sand wave is Ever Raised and you know I only ever sent a wire transfer before you know for you know one once a year now you got to do it on a daily

basis and figuring out how to use uh yeah like banking portals Etc right so yeah I think first like putting your ego aside and just like realizing that you have to first master all of these things um you think you know I was also sort

naive and I thought I was going to come in and do fundraising and you know it was going to be the on Tech crunch next day but in reality like that's something that happens once in two or three years

and isn't really um uh the part that's most important right it's so yeah I think just learning all the basic stuff and then and then you earn the right to make all of the fun strategic decisions

around pricing and product and new markets Etc but that's you know maybe 5% of that work 95% is just making sure that you survive that you have the right safeguards in place and that you're

continuing to do the things you know operationally to make the company you know successful and build a best-in-class finance team you know what's really critical also is when you're the first Finance employee you're

setting the framework and the gr you know the the for everything to come in the future so the decision you make around the Erp that your company is going to live with really for the rest

of your life how how you go about making certain journal entry decisions how you go about you know building your Finance function your first few hires um yeah so those are decisions that you really

can't get wrong and so you you seek a lot of advice um and yeah and you put one foot uh in front of the other amazing so you know we'll talk about the sendwave wave journey in a second

because it's so fascinating I want you to expand on both the products and the the decision to ultimately sell the remittance business $500 million and so

on but before that you know at send wave what did product Market fit feel like yeah product Market fit you know when

you have it that that was my conclusion like one is you know the the metrics are up and to the right on a you know daily weekly monthly Cadence um but also

internally everything breaks uh because you just aren't ready for uh exponential growth right and then when you know it you have to get prepared so what what

does that mean um you know Support Compliance all of these all of these systems are going to be taxed so you have to start thinking about how you

automate uh and and you know like solve all these problems because otherwise like it's going to go the other way if you don't fix your support and compliance issues especially as a as a fintech in a highly regulated industry

uh your your user is going to feel the pain and you're going to stop growing up and to the right um You it's really important to know what is a urgent and

important problem versus what is an important but not urgent problem because you have to let a bunch of fires burn um so like what's an example of that like if you know going back to the accounting

example if you have to delay closing the books by 30 days that's fine it's not you're not a public company you have to all like you're not you're not using engineering resources to solve

accounting problems when you're growing 30% week over week right um you know H hire very very quickly because you need engineering resources to quickly go and

automate these things because now it's Mission critical um you're also now figuring out like how do you keep this going so you have to start opening up kind of newer markets Etc because the the only thing worse than getting

product Market fit is like not having it you know not being able to take full leverage uh you know of it for as long as you as you can ideally you know forever so you have start opening up

newer markets newer corridors Etc um but yeah that's sort of what it what it feels like you know I think a lot of Founders come to me and say well I don't know if I have it I'm like you'll know if you have it like it's it's a pretty

much a binary question and so now talk let's talk about kind of sendwave and wave and the decision you maybe give a little bit of background on the business and how that grew and then how did you

decide to ultimately split and focus on Wave sandwave was a is a remittance business allowing diaspora uh African diaspora that live in the US UK Europe to send money instantly back to their

family in Africa um it it's a great business but it is a transactional business I.E customers are coming in and

business I.E customers are coming in and out they wanna you know they don't want to go to a a clunky banking portal hit 25 buttons to go send $100 or send $10

for somebody's birthday or for $20 for school fees or for a hospital payment for their mother right so we knew quickly that swave is a transactional business people don't want to spend more

time because they're trying to just send money and then get get along with their day so that is a a product or feature where you want to be able to complete a transaction in 10 seconds and then they

don't want to see your app again so it's about scale it's about efficiency it's transactional nature it's there's no real Network effect so we identified

pretty early on that this is you know a valuable business but it's not one that's going to have huge Network effects and potentially be worth 50 hundred billion dollars one day it can

be a nice billion doll business if you look at the market cap of all the remittance companies in the space like Western Union was the largest at only about five billion in market cap wise was about to go public then at a few

billion Etc but the entire market cap of companies doing remittances was in the low double- digit billion dollars right which which showed that there wasn't going to be some massive Pam at the end

of the day there's only so many so so many people that live in in countries outside of uh where they uh where they came from so I think that was the first part the the second part is realizing

that there was a much larger Tam in Africa in building Cent way we real realized that there was a much larger addressable Market of a billion people that live in Africa where you could go

build a network effect uh business so like a closed loop wallet similar to uh you know WeChat in in China new bank you know Revue Beno ET so understanding that there was a problem that nobody was

really solving other than you know Legacy telom providers and so when you looked at it from a um from a return on Capital perspective there was this this

massively Green Field Market that nobody was attacking versus a highly competitive market like remittances with not huge barriers to entry you just needed a stripe API on the S side and a

receive API to mobile money or some payout option in the local side and you were kind of sway was just operating the middle so one was I think understanding those those dynamics of of the business you know I think a lot of people tried

to sort of think their business is a lot more valuable than it is or that it's a lot sort of it was more sway was more of a evolutionary business versus the opportunity that wave had was revolutionary and I think like it was

understanding that and credit for that for our Founders but also to a lot of our advisers and early investors that helped us through think uh through thinking through that decision um and then the question was like when was the

right time right like there's lots of times we could have sold it so that there you know I think the concept of local Maxima right like like there was a bit of Tailwinds because you uh it was

getting into covid so there was a structural shift from um Legacy brick and mortar remittances that you couldn't really go to because things were closed to to to digital um there were there was

a time when private companies could buy other private companies because it was 2021 and that is very you know very rare even in a bull market but like if there's a time to do it it was 2021 um

there was also I think good timing we we we ultimately ended up selling swave to a company that uh was a larger version of of itself sending money from you know North America and Europe to to Africa

and the the founder had just changed and there was a professional CEO installed and I think that's where timing really mattered because now you had a CEO that was good at mmaa that was tasked with

doing m&a so it was the right time to to to to do it so we seized on that opportunity and so talk about that and [Music]

how you approach that conversation you know did you how how once you made the decision okay we're going to focus on the wave piece the inter Africa money

movement and less of a transactional business and more of a kind of network effect business we have this amazing asset it's

definitely got value we know we want to you know figure out how to take advantage of that and return capital and and all of those things did you have a

list of people and so we're going to talk to every single one was it more strategic oh I know this CEO oh that's happening how many how many conversations did you have how long did

it take talk a little bit about that because m&a and doing it right is incredibly challenging and of course you always want to be bought not sold and so

uh and you guys executed flawlessly yeah but before I get into that process of actually selling the business I think what was really tricky with this particular transaction was figuring out when to do it because the

wave business was largely unproven in 2020 and so what you didn't want to do was sell to early early where you didn't have enough proven of a business with wave to stand on its own legs right be

able to raise money uh attract Talent Etc but also not do it too late where a lot of value had accured to wave and uh you know then uh you'd have a whole host of other challenges um and so timing was

probably the biggest challenge so what we did was um we were in touch with three or four of the potential buyers for the sunwave business but we sort of

slow played it I we built the relation ships we had initial conversations Etc so that when the time came we could execute very very quickly so we wanted to be warm similar to what you would do if you were raising you know big ground

and you were in touch with with folks so we'd already gone through um gone through that kind of about a year in advance because we knew that this was a eventure probability and then when we knew there was traction at wave and you

know like a lot of this is sort of asymmetric information we know we know something about three to four months you know before the rest the market does when we had confidence that wave could stand on own two feet that we essentially just reached out back to

those four people and said hey remember the thing that we told you we were going to do like a year ago hey we're doing it now and then you know like we we could have hired a banker um but like what we

were maximizing for here was you know definitely like valuation but also with speed and certainty because we had this other B rocket ship and it wasn't going to hurt anyone we were like getting an

extra couple percent on value or whatever wasn't going to be the thing that was going to change the world but if we didn't get the sale done that would have have a very sort of detrimental impact on kind of way a

standalone business um so yeah when we so we R we chose to run a process that was uh sort of narrow and deep go deep with kind of three four guys that understood this business you know very well that we already knew um there were

already kind of relationships from an from an investor perspective and and very quickly you know one was doing an IPO one uh was going to go one had like a 12 person board uh one like called us

back and put us in touch with the board member Within three hours and so we kind of immediately knew right it's a bit like you know maybe speed dating or something where you know quickly if there's you know if there's interest and

so um we we kind of decided that uh we make the decision that is going to provide us the greatest certainty um and so you know the the eventual buyer the business had instilled a CEO that that

had done m&a was a public company CEO in the past had done successful M so we knew very quickly reading the body language the responses Etc that it was worth focusing on kind of them of course

we kept others in the mix just for competition Etc U but we were able to get from initial conversation when we re-engage with the buyer to fully signed

um you know Spa in less than two months oh wow amazing progress and speed you know as you're going through that maybe to touch on for a second what was it

like internally with the team because you obviously had the wave business that you were starting to build out and you had to make sure you didn't maybe not

spend time there because that was ultimately going to be the product going forward and the business going forward you also had to maintain the send wve business and make sure that didn't fall

off the The Rails because that was ultimately the asset that was being acquired you're balancing the the two of those things you know how did you handle

and the team handle the juggling act uh there yeah thanks to really good advice from some of our early investor one of the things we had already done was uh

separate the teams for swave and wave um fully separate you know code bases product managers Engineers um swave has a CEO incredible CEO orue that I've

introduced you to previously uh will fogal uh and so we'd already done a bunch of things that already had separated the companies um and then it

it was a case of again just making sure that you know we executed this in in the right in the right way as in when do you bring employees Under the Tent um you do

need you know 50 state approvals for the the sale and change of control of like a of a of international business Etc so's a bunch of like you know little things like like that that really mattered but we'd set we'd set us up for Success

actually from decisions we' made you know we the sale ended up completing Jan 2021 but in 2019 we made a bunch of decisions to separate the company because we knew sort of there was this

fuzzy end state where you you know swave might belong to to to somebody else um and so yeah you know I think full credit there to our investors those are the types of things where I think investors can be very helpful because I've seen things like this you know before uh it

would have been very messy I think separating out the code base and figuring out the team structures Etc while kind of doing the uh the the m&a the other thing I'll say is also our you know our Founders and a lot of our team

were fully focused on the businesses I as the sort of the head of business at the time you know completely ran the sale process and really wasn't focused on the operations of either business at

the time so us and our head of Finance uh you know cevin at the time so we fully relieved like kind of every other employee it was business as usual um they were only brought in really uh you

know for confirmatory due diligence or where you know they they had to talk to the buyer for some reason so I would say there was less than maybe 20 man hours of work that went into m&a from anybody other than myself and the head of

Finance okay no makes a ton of sense and obviously very intentional in the approach that you took uh to both of these you know we talked about product Market fit at send wave now let's talk

about wave and that business a little bit and what did what does product Market fit feel like with wave because you obviously have it uh what and what is the difference between the

feeling yeah where it's very similar in that like all those things that happened with swave uh were true I you're going up and to the right things are breaking Etc I will say

that because of the you know the ambition of wave the fact that it's a it is truly a network effect based product and the fact that it was in you know in

in Sagal civa Africa where you've had less you know Financial innovation in in general it it was the the entire scale of it was just incredible and something

that you know we'd never seen before so what do I mean by that like you know at scale you know we were adding you know almost seven digigit levels of users on a you know on on on a month-by-month

basis and it had captured the entire Zeitgeist of the sort of the sagales population and so what we saw was not just sort of the tax on our you know on

on our systems Etc uh but but but also this you know incredible sort of tsunami of love and adoption um from the population which you know which sort of kept you going which you know again it

speaks to the kind of the the difference of do products right because you know Sunway was a great product as well but it was it transaction product where you're in and out versus with wave it is a product that somebody uses multiple

times a day for any sort of financial transaction whether it's sending money to to to to a loved one in another city paying uh you know a merchant paying your electricity water bills Etc so

because you use the product a lot more and you're saving a lot of money from the product there's a lot more level of customer love that comes with it uh which is I think what we saw in you know 2020 2021 when you know we still see it

but of course uh we we we saw it of course that confirmed that you know it it was the thing that was worth investing in and spending a lot of our

time solving problems for it yep makes sense and so you know you mentioned advice from investors from advisors you've been building on the African subcontinent for probably over a

decade and so you've seen the differences in in building in Africa and building in the US I think there's often a belief that oh startup advice is

generally you can you know apply it anywhere I don't know that to be true I'd be curious as to what are some of the key differences in strategy and

playbooks between building in more developed emerged markets and developing markets uh like the African subcontinent what have you found to be the key key

strategic differences there and what do you have to pay pay attention to yeah there are obviously lots of differences I'll hon in on you know a couple that were you know very clear from the early stages one thing you can assume you know

when you're building generally a product in you know uh in the West in the US or Europe is that you can focus on the core value proposition of your product so if it's Revue it's you know quickly onboarding getting a debit card your

hands Etc you don't have to worry about you know maybe kyc because there are great tools out there you don't have to worry about that person getting an SMS within 20 seconds every time or 10

seconds Etc um things like that versus one of the things in Subs Africa at least is uh you cannot rely receive an SMS within 30 seconds so you have to

spend a ton of your time you have to make what would otherwise been non-core functions actually core parts of your business I you have to manage it yourself so we had to get direct

Integrations to all the Telecom provider so we essentially spun up our own twio we essentially and you know there's no stripe to plugin so you have to build out an entire agent Network so you have to build your own stripe so a lot of

things that you know that that are infrastructure like um in uh in the west are actually core functionalities that you have to build so that means a lot more resources but also identifying that

right like you can't just assume that oh yeah I'm going to go you know like these things will you know these things will just you know work you do have off toelf Solutions but you you if it's a key feature of the of the product uh like if

you need to get an SMS within you know 5 Seconds you have to actually go build that thing nobody's going to actually there's going to be no product in the in the market that does that you know another difference is uh wave when we

launched in Sagal in 2018 was not a smartphone app you know it was a QR card solution we tried NFC a bunch of things our smartphone app didn't launch till Q4

2019 eight quarters after we launched after we had hundreds of thousands of users right like where today would you say I want to build a fintech and and

your smartphone app is like on your Q eight priority L sure sure sure sure because you have to start with a better version of what what customers already

used to so they were used to kind of ussd and uh you know QR NFC and agent networks Etc so you start with a better version of that they adopt it they you

build trust and then you start sort of building for the future and you start you know building smartphone app because if you you know start throwing up throwing you know forcing the technology you know it's a classic statement of

like you don't take the technology and find you know how how the cers use it you have to find the problems and then figure out how technology can solve that solution so that was the biggest surprise to me was like I kept asking

our Founders hey in the product team like where's the smartphone app right now in 2019 when we ended up launching the smartphone app eight quarters after we launched it was a number one app on

the app store within like three months and it is it remains today right so you do have to sort of time but I think you have to be very sequential about it um you have to be really be married to the problem not not the solution because in

any other version of wer fch building in Africa might say well I'm just going to go use whatever the equivalent t Le I'm going to build a smartphone app and you're just not going to have that uh

you know a 10x product at a an Inc incredibly compelling price if you do it almost like the abstraction layer that exists in the west which you can build on top of and not have to think about is

not as robust in uh in you know subsaharan Africa and so you you know you have to really focus on the basics first and getting those right in order to deliver that amazing experience

correct and so you know on that topic of focus you know we talk about the importance of focus especially on the early stages of company building as critical you have to think about product product Market fit you know getting into

product and getting into customers and revenue you know you call it the one thing how do you establish the one thing at wave and what advice would you give to Founders early employees that are

struggling with finding just one thing when there are so many things to be doing at early stage companies yeah I think this is especially valuable in the

in the early stages um look when I say one thing it doesn't actually mean you do literally one thing right but it really helps you from a management perspective because when you're starting

a company in all in most cases it's the first time you really managing people the first time you're setting real directions and objectives and okrs Etc and that's hard when you're also build trying to find product Market fit and

Building Products Etc so I think the one thing is a more simplistic management philosophy where you can say um it it is a forcing function for management or

leadership or CEOs or Founders to say like what is the Urgent and important thing versus a thing that's important and not urgent that's it like everything's important right but when

you start saying like hey Sid you go work on just closing the books and FX like that's it like of course you're going to run par into all those things but then you know that like I'm like that is the most important thing for the company because that's how we make our

money that's how you know we make sure there's accountability Etc I think it's one is it creates a simplistic cisti for for for for management and Leadership because you can just meet every week you don't need to come up with a massive

agenda you can say what was progress on the one thing or is the one thing changing and it can change right if you yes I've implemented this thing like I can change the one thing but I think it makes it easy when you're fighting so

many different fires you don't want to now also be prepping for six different things and one-on ones with you know 10 different people so I think that's one advantage of it also I think it it starts I think creating that mental

model of like really making sure I think it's very it's it's very hard to know it's easy to prioritize between things that are important and not important but it's much harder to prioritize between something that's urgent and important

versus you know urgent and uh or sorry important and you know maybe can be done next week Etc and I think that creates a forcing function to get better at at that because it it really is a sort of a

a mindset thing right there's lots of things um and sort of you have to let you know some some some some fires lie Etc right and that and that's hard because when you come from you know big corporate world like you want to don't

have you want to have any fires but you also don't want to necessarily push the button on something that's transformational so um I think it's a simplistic kind of puristic to to manage

in the early stage and and it it works well I think in the early stages Etc um and then you have to obviously evolve when you know maybe your business is little more established you have a lot more people Etc and you can you know focus on a lot of different things at

once from a managerial perspective how do you use that theistic the concept to guide your team you know the folks that are accorting into you do you have a

board of you know here's everyone on the team here's their one thing for right now and that's kind of the main topic of conversation you H how have you applied that and how might people take that

lesson away uh and building their businesses yeah definitely from from from my philosophy of management I go to kind of all my directs and say these are you know maybe now weol invol from one

thing to two things but like these are two things that I absolutely want to see you ship or focus on or or or spend 80% of your time on or it's the thing that you know if somebody calls like you're going to pick up the call no matter what

call you're on right if you're on one1 because that thing is incredibly important for example we're launching a product you know very soon and you know yes there's lots of other things we're working on but I want my team to make sure that from a business development

and partnership perspective like that thing is going to be shipped and I think it's very clear that you know every one onone in every notes that's the update that I asked for first that's the things we chat about first Whenever there you

know we have a meeting Etc um of course all other things are important but this is the thing that's urgent and and important um uh so again it helps with prioritization um but of course there's more than one thing right there's like

two three things Etc uh that that that we will work on but I think you know there's a little bit of slack in the system right so you so you can kind of which which I think important when you're running a people facing team that's going on doing Partnerships Etc

you want to be able to pick up that one call that comes in very quickly to unblock something in a way that you know an engineer should just be focused on you know building the product and not distracted versus I think Business Development people should have a bit of

slack Etc and I think having this one thing with a few other things that are less prioritized or less urgent I think can help um you know help uh effectuate

that in reality you know you mentioned earlier the idea of letting fires burn uh because you have to focus because you have to move fast product Market fit things are breaking all the time you

know so much of company building particularly if it's going well is firefighting and focusing maybe on the problems that are right in front of your face instead of being able to step back

and be intentional about you know something that might happen 12 18 24 months from now like you guys did with wave and sendwave you know is there a particular role process function

infrastructure that you think an early stage company should invest in earlier in their life cycles to make focusing on the one thing a bit easier you know should everybody have a sid treater that

they bring on as employee number five uh to the business uh you know things like that yeah I look I think with every company I think your philosophy can be slightly

different but but I think instilling it very early in the in the leadership so you know if it starts with you know this you know CEO founder and their directs Etc and and then propagating that same

culture I think down for I think to each of you know their teams um I think I think the core principle I think is really understanding what's urgent right and and you know versus what's not and I

think making sure that you do that in whatever way that you know whatever way Cadence or process I think that that that you want um you know of course now at at scale you know lots of CEOs have

chief of staff that manage I think a lot a lot of that process um and help with their you know prioritization Etc I think the in in the beginning for early stage companies you know the CEO I think has to Pro propagate that Co and the

founders have to propagate that you know them themselves but I'd say like the main thing that I learned is not to over manage right and I think kind of the one thing is a something that helps you you

know create some process but also be quite fluid with you know changing priorities because that one thing could be X on Monday and could be y on Tuesday and could be Z on Wednesday right so it allows for a little bit of fluidity and

be like yeah it just changed right what you know the thing that you're focused on even if it's not fully shipped because we learned something and we're now you know changing you know the focus you know completed to something else right so I think it gives you that

fluidity versus if you go through a Google type you know okr and kpi process ET it's much kind of more rigid to kind of change all of that on a weekly basis

right yeah anything in working in in and with the African diaspora on the African continent building startups

there from A playbook upgrade perspective that you think should in fact be brought to the kind of General startup playbook in in the

west oh that's that's a that's a great question you know I think I'll say that you know building in Africa is is more challenging obviously than building you know in in the west partly because every

country is different so it's almost like building a different startup in every Market you're going from zero to one with maybe a little bit of an advantage

so I think you you you do build I think more sort of muscle tissue and you know fiber by by by by by doing that but um yeah I'm trying to think of like what are things that we've learned that maybe

up up applicable more the West look I think you know one is just I think it's quite basic startup advice but but just like the forcing function of being

married to the problem versus the the the solution um I think deeply understanding the problem and then trying to go figure out what is the tech that actually you know solves the solves

problem like you for example like even you look at a lot of the I think big fexs from Europe that have gone to the US your you know revelus claras Etc it's a very different product that's going to

succeed in in the US than it is in Europe so you can't take the same product from here and you know take it out to the US which is also competitive in its own sense right so you really have to understand start from scratch I

think that's maybe the the single closest Corr is you have to say what are the problems that exist in these markets and you know start my product Evolution from scratch uh and not take you know

would not just be just another debit card and make money of interchange right and be like really started and say well is it credit is it is it FX focused you know and I think start from start from

the beginning there I think that's probably I think maybe the most important lesson is just going back to the basics and like really figuring out you know 0o to one uh uh in any new

market that you go to even in the west was that a natural thing for you guys as you expanded wave can goo to geo mark country to country or was there maybe

more of an expectation that hey we can probably reuse this and then after you entered Market two and Market three like oh you know what we have to re like start from scratch and make sure were're

really dialing in on the problem in this country uh in order to scale yeah largely like the you know the product set largely stays the same I think what's really different is the go

to market and the you know the initial uh sort of cohorts or segments of customers you go after um every country in Africa has very different uh you know

flora and fauna almost right which then impacts the trade that gets done in that in that market in some Market it's it's you know fish you know they're they're big fish trades because they're on the

ocean some have a lot more um you know classic agriculture uh trade Etc so picking your kind of initial um kind of use cases Etc are are things that we've

definitely you know honed you know over o o over time but other than that largely the products that is similar you know pricing can can also be different in in different markets um and then of

course there's also you know I think you know your team could be uh built differently in different places to go after different you know segments if you wanted to go kind of make make a larger

you know B2B or or payments play in in a new market versus Go customer first Etc so I would say a lot of those things are more tactical than you know strategic in

in nature okay how I mean you look at the way you guys have scaled and the types of businesses that you've built at send wave and wave you know how much

inspiration did you draw from launch teams at Uber expanding into different markets how you know venmo money movement between peers with now wave you

know H how much of your background and history has been infused into the now sendwave and wave businesses that you

built you know a a lot 100% knowing that like especially with I think you know Ubers and airbnbs Etc like knowing that like Network effects are incred hard

right because the value of the network increases as you have more people on it but it gets exponentially better the more people you have on it but it also

the economics of that type of model are incredibly bad in the early stages also and so you need deep conviction because the network effects

don't actually show they don't manifest themselves in p&l or metrics until until very late so you so I think that deep conviction is probably the most important thing and so you go many years

without seeing that uh and it feels like a little bit of a bet but having seen it play out before in the in the West in so many cases uh in more cases than not you

know I think gives you a lot of confidence to to do it and then you know second thing is like a lot of companies sort of maybe give up when you're in that precipitous where it's working because you're either running out of

capital or you run out of conviction and so you have to solve for both you have to solve for having the conviction and the capital and so that's I think you know I think definitely a lesson that we drew from you know a lot

of the incredible companies of of the West that I think have definitely shaped our thinking uh around and our Founders and investors obviously have you know deep conviction Etc but when you're building in a different Geo in a

different case you always question like is this still relevant here and you know and then I you know happy to report that it's still the case Network effects are the same in the East the South the West the north wherever wherever you are but

and it's still equally hard you know getting there and you have to persevere through I think a lot of difficulties to to to to get there and then you reap the rewards once you're

there well in talking to a lot of mutual friends and peers of yours uh in preparation for the conversation you know there it seemed to emerge that

you've knowingly or unknowingly uh gained a reputation for someone who is willing to take The Longshot swing at in probability that other people would have

said no this is not worth our time uh or worth the effort you know and and your superpower certainly at least in the conversations has has been you know a

great sense of timing you know how how have you built that sense of timing that ability and

willingness to take the big swing uh you know is that a learned skill that you feel like you've developed or is that something that uh has is more innate

that you maybe have a hard time placing it I learned it from here but this is why I'm good at it yeah I think it's a combination of those two things firstly that's very kind but uh it's a

combination of those two things you know I think I I I know exactly what these people are talking about when they say you know wild swings Etc but I think the part that maybe folks don't know is they

sort of there's some gut instinct and intuition and there's something I know that maybe the market or or folks don't know and that specifically uh it doesn't maybe stick

out uh when you look um you know superficially but when you look deep there has to be something there that gives you a slight unfair Advantage right or or maybe it's a fair it's actually a fair Advantage but you

know it so it a lot of times if these things are Partnerships or m&as or financings or you know things like that like there is often times sort of some

hidden clue or some hidden change so what do I mean by that specifically um maybe it's a it's a company you been trying to do a deal with or it's a company you want to sell to Etc and

they've said no before well what changed now and they said no like you know an absolute no don't talk to me well what changed well maybe the CEO changed right

the a person changed that's very very influential a board member changed Etc and now the entire you know table has has changed because you look like you have a better relationship with that

person you can you know Bank on yourselves to go make that argument to somebody different uh and you only failed you know the the prior time because it was you know a personal thing

and and people change right so I think you know with with long shots the the one thing that that I'll say is to always re-evaluate kind of any any long shot based on the uh the the

circumstances that exist today whether you know at the end of the day kind of it's either people or strategy Etc and markets change uh and so if you're if it's a product type situation like

markets change literally every month and new technologies come out um you know uh population demographics change Etc uh and companies that you're trying to do

deals or Partnerships with CEOs change board change m&a happens Etc so I think you know in in taking these big swings Etc I think there's generally something

that you know i' discovered or I'm aware of that I think you know has changed the stakes doesn't always mean you can you know it it'll work in your favor but it's definitely worth trying I I'm a strong believer that you miss every shot

you don't take interesting you know there's that old saying you know the it's important to make a first impression and the first impression is the most important one but

maybe said differently don't let the first impression be the Lasting Impression and keep going back and re-evaluating is something change that allows it to be

almost a new one uh for whatever particular project or initiative that you're running yeah absolutely and then also being you know low ego and not worrying about what happened in the past or not holding any grudges with either

you know people or institutions ET I think that matters too well you're now a parent to two young kids four years old and two years old and so Sid has evolved

over the last few years as an operator as well you know how do you find success being a husband dad and early stage operator yeah I think uh you know what

one strong cultural value we have at wave is to kind of live your fullest life now and I think that's something that I've really taken you know take taken to heart and of course you know CO's been a a blessing look I think

if you're uh it goes back to sort of the one thing the one thing is my family it's always going to be the absolutely most important thing right um uh but I

think putting that in in in in perspective um you know I think you know we have affords me I think an opportunity to like really you know strike a very strong work life Harmony I

think is is the word that I that I like here I think which is a b basos term Etc um and put things in perspective Etc but I think the the other real takeaways I think a real drive to make the world

just a better place for the Next Generation I think you know before kids and family you know I think I was sort of working for myself but then you know when you see kids and you you see kids around the world you realize that

there's a sort of moral obligation for us to make the world better for the next Generation so I think that sort of inspires me to you know continue to motivate me to to give up my all on a on

a day-to-day basis yep that makes total sense and I feel exactly the same way you know what what is one lesson that you've learned later on in life that you

wish you might have learned earlier I think to uh be far less obsessed about the uh the brand of an organization to work for or the brand of

a school or kind of all the resume building things that maybe mattered 20 years ago and just have a lot of different life experiences whatever that is it will shape you it doesn't have to be professional but I think you know

traveling a lot more doing lots of you know even if you're at a company like be the person that says yes to any project nothing should be beneath you because everything is a learning opportunity you know I always thought like you know it's

the the person that has deep expertise that you know generally does well in carea I think that it's good to have like one thing that you're very very good at but it's also incredibly important to kind of superficially know just lots of little things about the

world about different roles about things I think those are the generalists that really make you know make startup successful but also in general General help you know help change the world

right I think every startup has has some of these um has some of these people or or any organization that has had a lasting impact and I think if I went back you know what I would tell myself

is to you know be be a lot more flexible on you know types of roles and organizations and things to join and really think about your life as building a repertoire of SK skills well Sid thank

you so much that's a great place to end really appreciate you taking the time to join me today we've had countless conversations over the very many years uh but this is certainly what I'm glad we were able to do on camera and share

with all of our listeners so thank you for joining and uh we'll put all of Sid's contact information and details where to find him online uh in the show notes so definitely check him out check

out the wave story and uh let me know if you got any feedback thanks so much thanks a lot for having me Richi [Music]