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Ventures from the Valley brings you inside the rooms where billion-dollar decisions get made. Hosted by R136 Ventures, each episode features candid conversations with the founders, operators, and investors shaping the future of technology; from AI infrastructure to global fintech to the companies redefining how we build.
Hello dear friends and family. Uh I'm Victor Alosski and we have a next episode of a podcast Ventures from the Valley brought to you by R136 Ventures. And I have an amazing man, a friend and an amazing founder, Josiah Sanenu, who joined us from Mexico now, but uh he is a truly international man. Um and you will learn why. Uh Josiah, welcome. Thanks so much for having me, Victor. It's a pleasure to to be with you. It's a I'm grateful and honored that I get to share this time with you. So thanks for having me. Thank you so much. So we will start and Josiah is the founder of uh uh Zuba uh the company I'm a small engine investor in proudly uh and um uh we start with like a region right so we are uh born in in Nigerian um uh uh family of immigrants um suburb of London. Uh so you were raised in London. You um um actually uh have a great international experience and we will come to that uh later. But I would like to start with uh what did you learn about uh Africa overall when you were a kid and what was uh uh a true about that and what was the misconception? So maybe we can start with that. So your like kids memory what you were like what you learned about Africa wasn't wasn't a right assumption in a way. I I I love it. Um it's a it's a great question. So I mean I I'm I guess I I describe myself as British Nigerian. Um you know I I I grew up in in England. Um my parents were Nigerian but I was I was born in Gabon. Um and then moved from Gabon to Germany and then Germany to the UK. Um, and you know, I I spent some time in Africa in the early in my early childhood, um, visiting my my dad's adopted mother. And, um, I think what's what's interesting about sort of growing up with two different heritages uh, at the same time is that you sort of dip your toes in both worlds and in different worlds and um, you have a an appreciation of different cultures and ways of being that others don't have. So I I mean my my family in general is is very um energetic and enthusiastic. They're very they're quite bubbly about the world, right? Um uh you know quite loud um very communal uh very communal, very community- based and and you don't have quite the same uh growing up in in Europe um in Germany or or the UK. people tend to stick to themselves. Uh you know uh you know you're not going to get a random conversation uh in in the bus or in the store as much. Um whereas in Africa it's it's abundant. It's all around you. Um though there are differences, right? So you know the Gabanese I would say are much more calm and very much more relaxed. The franophones speaking culture um sitting there whereas the Nigerians are loud and proud and you know you'll know you're going to know when they're in the room. uh which is very different from from you know how it was you know hanging around with the Germans right um who are very direct and to the point or hanging out with the British um who have a good bit of dry sarcasm but not not sometimes don't necessarily tell you how they truly feel about something so honestly navigating and traversing the different plains of cultures places um was was challenging as a young adult as a young man as a as a child just trying to understand and fit in in a particular area. Well, and uh what was this still? What was the misconception? What did you uh learn was not true when you were kid. Okay. You thought that this is A and it appeared to be B. If you can just remember few things and yeah it would be like interesting to know your like kids what like Africa is ABC and then it's appeared to be and I understand that Africa is big right? Okay. Nigeria Nigeria ABC and then when you just started doing business it's appeared to be different. Yeah, I think there are a number of things. Um, so, so the first thing I would say is that often the narratives around Africa, more specifically Nigeria, um, is that, you know, it's a place of extreme poverty, not a lot of great activity that happens, economic activity, um, you know, that people are less talented, less capable. Um, and and I just don't think that's true. Uh, talent is evenly distributed. it simply needs um the time, energy to to flourish and the right education to give it its resources. Um and I would say a big misconception is that you can't find great talent in Africa, you can't find great resources, you can't find um great opportunities. Uh that's all been completely proven to be incorrect, at least from the time that that I've spent there. Um I I think uh there's also this sense in my opinion that that actually Africa and Africans are quite creative people um largely because of a lot of things which are broken. Um so you know less less focus rather should should happen on all the things which are you know uh unpalatable you know like a political risk and you know the corruption and all those things that exist and rather more focus on should we put on the creativity of you know how do you make things work in an environment and a place where things don't work right like electricity you know isn't isn't happening isn't there fulltime all the time 24 hours you know local the the the local grid goes down. What do you do? How do you create systems to overcome and and sort of sidestep that so your business can still can still operate or you know access to uh uh good water? You know, you you think that these things are are you know taken for granted in everyday life when you're you're living in in Europe and and North America and and actually there's a lot of creativity I think that happens on the continent. Um uh aside from that um and I think probably another another misconception um about about Africa is that um uh you can't you can't generate and this is probably something later is that you can't generate meaningful returns from the continent. Um I I think you can I just think you you you you sort of need the right ingredients and the right maturity to make it happen. Um uh and you know I can be more specific about that what that means but um you know I I like at least that's the thesis that I have and sort of part part of the reason why I started in Africa with Zuba. Mhm. And maybe just to complete the story about Africa and I know that I know that Zuba is not all about Africa but that's a rare rare opportunity to uh have an insider who knows a lot about Nigeria in Africa overall. So speaking precisely about Nigeria, Nigeria is I think far the largest economy in Africa, right? Outperforming South Africa, Egypt and many others. Um also by population it's one of the largest countries in the world and I think by 2050 uh 2050 will be one of three or four largest in the world by the birth rate uh and fortunately survival rate for childs now is improving. So it might be like amazingly big country with ex exceptional opportunity right. So if you may give an advice to people who like startupers who want to consider Nigeria as a market uh especially financial services I don't want to open you to open all the secrets but need some guidance so I have bunch of startupers who are probably uh this podcast viewers as well who will ask a question um decide how to get in what should I learn like uh to be in Africa successful And to prosper in Nigeria in particular. Yeah, it's a great question. I think you got to you got to be in Africa. You got to be in Nigeria. Go to Nigeria. I think like any business in the world that you build, you have to be present in that geography in order to build successfully in that geography. You have to understand the way that people um behave. You have to understand the cultural nuances, the differences. I think that's the number one thing is go there. Then spend time listening. Listen to the challenges. Listen to the problems. understand those problems deeply and then try to build and provide solutions around them. I'll give you a small example of what that looks like, right? So for like a lot of people in Nigeria don't have access to a lot of of internet data, right? So you know when it comes to plans that they've got um they can only spend a small amount on that and you know they have access to a smartphone and that smartphone will have apps, right? And those apps, right? If you think about, you know, large apps, you know, it can be up to a gigabyte, you know, two gigabytes, 500 megabytes, whatever it is. If you're a local Nigerian, for example, you're going to think very carefully about spending a gigabyte worth of data just to download an app to access a particular service, right? So when you're building an an app in that in that um uh in that market you you're thinking about well what are the the constraints associated with I probably have to make it super light right most people don't have access to a computer for example right most people might not have access to the app store so maybe actually it's a mobile based web-based app that I need to focus on and build right and now you're thinking a lot more about your user specifically and what you're building for that user and how to navigate the constraints assoc associated with that, you know, like when you think about what you know, how how much money does my customer have to spend on, you know, a software product or uh a financial services product, you have to think about where that spend goes to, right? Like what are they what are they what are people doing on a day-to-day basis? If you think of a business like moneypoint which is doing over 500 million in revenue in in in Nigeria, right? They thought very carefully about you know how to aggregate demand, how to make sure the point of sales service work, how to build up agency banking in order to provide material value to the end customer. It's it's about thinking through the user. So you know is there opportunity like you've already given all the statistics. I don't need to rehash that Victor right but like what is what is like so key that a lot of people get wrong is that just go take a plane take a plane go to Lagos spend time in Lagos you know in a keta and in Alaba international market and all these places you you're going to feel the energy and Nigeria is a great place that people are energetic they're enthusiastic they want to build so if I want to if I want to like um uh find talent in Nigeria uh where would I go what's your advice which college university Are there any good companies I can uh basically hunt um um my um uh first employees from given a for sure for sure. So if you look at the like for fintech is probably the strongest industry that is exists today in in Nigeria when it comes to the tech startup scene and there are a number of of successful ones I think you know your money points of the world your flutter waves of the world your cudas your pales you know there's quite a few that are mature you know piggy bank and then you've got you know smaller companies mono that's got acquired by flutter wave and like so many more and I like the startup ecosystem is great for finding that young rich hungry motivated talent what you'll notice actually there's bunch of hacker houses all around Lagos where you got like a bunch of engineers who are camped in these in these you know apartments that are hosted out and people are you know building things away trying to innovate and create for the local markets referrals right like you know who do you know who's built in in a certain in a certain ecosystem who can refer you connect you with great people all of that all of that really has a plays a huge advantage I would I would actually think you know like in terms of universities that some of the best universities uh it sort of locally I I would actually spend less time focusing on that. Um I never actually find that um uh universities or or credentials necessarily lead to the best hires. I think try to take a look at like what that person has done if they're an engineer, what have they built, what have they created, what are constraints associated that where did they used to work, what did their manager say about them, like you're going to find more depth of quality in there rather than necessarily focusing on, you know, oh this person got a first from OPA Femi or Wal University, right? that's not going to I don't think necessarily lead you to a great outcome. Okay. Okay. Good. Thank you. So, let's switch gears. Um, you started in high school in a in a school uh elementary, middle high, whatever in the UK and then you had both like university degrees in the UK and in the US. Uh, so how would you compare education? My personal view is like the entire education is broken. Although I'm going to attend [laughter] a summer executive program uh in two days uh at Stanford uh after many years I finally decided to spend like few months and like deep studying and uh like taking my away from myself away from business yet what if you think like what's bad about the UK versus the US and what's the bad about the US versus the UK and sorry for putting it that way because I consider it broken and we will switch then gears to fintech which is also broken. so funny and you will need to explain that in your own words as well. I love it. I love it. I love it. It's a you know like I actually really appreciated that the the differences in both education. I got a lot out of it. You know like my background is quite different to a lot of people, right? Like I didn't go to a private school in the UK. You know, I went to a state comprehensive. It was actually one of the worst performing state comprehensives in the UK. It was a national documentary on how bad it was. Um and then you know I ended up going to the LSE to go study law and like that was felt quite formative for me. I think what I valued from the British education system was this rigor, this intellectual rigor, right? Like it was really focused on the details, right? And as a lawyer, details are everything, right? Like that's what I study, right? So when you when you're in front of a judge and you're making an argument, right? You got to make sure that you know exactly what you're talking about and and be be prepared. I think like law school gave me this immense preparation in the UK. And sort of when I went to the US and I you know I was at Harvard Law School like I was actually surprised at how unrigorous it was right like it was completely completely not in the details completely through gate I you know I I thought to myself I'm going to you know the premier institution in the world in relation to what I'm studying like why do I find it incredibly easy right like I did not find it hard at all but there was a flip side that I that I got from the American education system that I didn't get from the UK education system was this encouragement to be ambitious, you know, think beyond where you are. Go and build stuff. Go and build American dream. The American dream, right? like it was it was like the first time that I've had this like spiritual awakening on the inside of the things that you can go build and go create and go make and and you know I spent all of my time at the innovation lab at Harvard and doing computer science courses with David Milan than I did actually doing my law course and reading constitutional law you know and yeah you know I found it interesting but actually you know the idea of creating value in the world was was was you far far more exciting for me and I think that's I think that's the difference in the education system is probably you know at least At that level, I I felt like, you know, the UK had more rigor, more specialism. The US was far more broad. Um, uh, far far more interested in you being a more rounded person. Of course, I'm sure that like, you know, these institutions and and I felt it, you feel it when you speak to the wider community that people are incredibly talented, incredibly gifted across both domains. Here we're talking about relative differences in principles between these two geographies. But I guess if you had to tell me what's broken, I would say, you know, in America, let's let's get into the details a little bit more. And in the UK, let's be a little bit more ambitious. Okay. Okay. Nice answer as always. Um well, um a trained lawyer uh who were supposed to be in one of the top tier after Harvard probably top tier um um legal firms decided to become a fintech founder. But you also started first uh from what I remember at TEA, right? Uh um as an employee and uh um why was it tea? Why you decided to dedicate your life to fintech? Did it just happen? Uh I mean serendipity, right? you just found like something cool or you had like a a long-term kind kind of obsession with uh fintech because when we met I was really impressed by your uh pitch uh and uh that was also the reason why I decided to put some money as it was like amazing story like uh personal very personal story of why you do this right and I was trying always trying to find like in early stage uh deals um like an an obsession with a problem rather than just the solution. Uh and uh what was the obsession after such a successful um um path in uh your uh like career of lawyer like becoming a lawyer became something not interesting for you and why fintech? I think I think it's a it's a it's a great question. There's a lot wrapped up into that Victor to to be honest. I'm trying to think about where where do I start with the answer to this question. Um I I think like let's say the first pull into fintech really came from one of my one of my best friends at university who looked at sort of what I was doing and sort of said you're not ambitious enough. You don't think about the problems in the world at a large enough scale and that pulled me into the orbit of the founders of Stone Co in Brazil. So that was Andre Street, Eduardo Pontes um and they had basically built this um merchant acquiring business uh that did a point of sales systems out in Brazil for SMBs uh which listed on the NASDAQ for $30 billion. Uh it was Warren Buffett's first ever tech investment and the first time Bur Haway had ever anchored an IPO and these founders um were on a mission that just resonated with me especially because of my background. and they they sort of said just we're going to go to to Europe and we're going to go build um an equivalent business formemes across Europe. Um and here I was you know leaving Harvard Law School uh and joining them as an early employee employee number 12 on this thing that I just didn't have a real understanding or conception of at the time. Um, three and a half years later, you know, we built a $10 billion business across 25 countries, hundreds of millions in revenue over 300,000 customers. And I and I learned so much from that that time spent, right? Like going from merchant to merchant and and you know, really that that person in the shop, right, is is an immigrant, you know, like they are, you know, somebody who's trying to make ends meet for their family and they're just trying to, you know, and and I saw myself, my family in that story, right? and you know the vision of going against the big banks who are ripping off thosememes know it felt like I was I was a married to something which you know felt good at heart and then I was putting my energy and learning about something which was just which was bigger than me right and and touched so many people's lives and and like to draw it back like why is it so visceral for me personally right like um my business today is focused on crossber payments right um I I'm an immigrant myself parents are immigrants And one of the things that immigrants do is they send money back home, right? And and I had a particular situation in my family where sending money back home was a life or death situation. You know, either my uncle, you know, dies or he lives and that money needs to get sent across and you rely on intermediaries in this case like a western union in order to send that money across and when the money doesn't land it actually has real big consequences, right? and and that's separate from let's say the classic story of you know sending medical fees or school fees or whatever it is right that's that's something that was visceral for me that I felt right so when I when I build the company and when I'm doing what I'm doing it's like there's like several orders of magnitude that I'm interfacing with right there's like the base visceral level of like you know why does it money land why is it so expensive this makes no sense how are you helping immigrants how are you helping people who are trying to make ends meet contributing to the economy then there's like the the other level of like, you know, wow, like the intellectual difficulty that like of of the complexity associated with moving money like wow like why do you need so many parties? Why are there so many uh uh sort of uh uh payment protocols involve like how do you simplify that? Um how does regulation affect that? I mean with my background as a lawyer it was a natural way to just get excited about what was what was going on, right? Um, and then of course like the the feeling of a startup and you know working with people who are like-minded, who who are experienced, who knew what they were doing to go and build it. So when you tie all of those things together, I kind of think it was like a almost pre-ordained that I would that I would end up in this space. I actually tried to run away from from fintech at one point uh when when I was building it in [laughter] SF, but I just got pulled back in. So you like it's almost like I can't escape it. This is this is this is my story. This is I guess what I was brought to earth to do. That's amazing. And actually it reminds me my story because I was like an engineer uh when I uh started like working and I had bunch of like uh back inbakistan was bunch of offers. One from Proctor and Gamble, another was I think from Coca-Cola and the third one was from a bank. So I have chosen bank because that was the least I knew about. I thought, okay, I drank Coca-Cola. I just bought some Proxim Gamble products, I have a clue of what it is, but I never tried banking because frankly like even like being like already uh like post teenage uh like 20s like I didn't have a bank account yet as I mean I didn't need it. So I was okay I don't know anything about bank I never tried it. So let's go like work for banks and that how I decided and how that would just like build my destiny in a way uh uh and legacy. So anyways that's funny. So let's get back let's get now on Zuba you are baby. Uh so first uh you already said it's crossber payments. Uh so um if you can give a little bit of uh deep dive of what Zuba mission is and how you're going to uh build upon this mission uh and u I'm curious why Zuba what's what is it? What what is it for? Like I mean why Zuba? I like the name by the way but I don't know what is it or maybe you told me and I forgot but tell tell us. No absolutely. So um at Zuba we're building the world's most reliable bank. Um and we started out in the emerging markets because we felt that one of the core foundational problems with um banking services was was payments um especially payments into the emerging markets and out of the emerging markets and the sort of the geography that we started with was Africa because that had the highest remittance costs of anywhere in the world something around 9% 10% and the friction associated with settlement sometimes could be 7 days 14 days um and the name Zuba really comes out of our African origin really, which is uh Zuba means sunlight in Shona. And I kind of felt there was time to bring sun and energy back to the world of of payments, right? Uh a completely underserved, overlooked, downcast uh world in the emerging markets and bring the energy of Africa to the rest of the world. Bring the bring the energy of who, you know, I think when most people meet me as well, they'll probably say that I I'm someone who's got loads of energy and loads of enthusiasm. Amazing. I totally support that. Agree. I mean, personally, you are like a shining man for sure. That's very kind. Very, very kind. I appreciate that. And and so I kind of wanted something Yeah. that was authentic, right? And and so Zuba felt authentic, especially being, you know, a Nigerian Japanese. Um it just made sense. Also, it's a four-letter uh name with a com associated with it. So, you know, there are also consequential benefits associated with that. Um but but I guess all of that just ties to our mission, right? It ties to like what we're trying to do, right? We're trying to do three things really. And I think honestly uh sort of it's it's really that simple. Number one, make sure money moves at an affordable cost, right, for all parties involved, right? Um ideally it's free in in my view. Uh the second is make sure it moves fast. So make sure it actually uh happens as quickly as possible. In many ways instantaneous settlement if the alternative is cash the movement of cash is instantaneous right when someone has so how do we make sure on a digital level we pretty much have the same experience. Mhm. Um and the third thing I think is reliability right which is I think the core product of what we have which is um when you send that money at the affordable cost you want to make sure that it actually arrives at the destination that you expect it to. Um so you know the challenges associated with fraud or the challenges associated with convenience and risk and compliance you know that's core and foundational part of the product. So when I think about like what are we trying to do like it's it's really those three things like it's super simple. So it's free instant and reliable. Uh let's let's start with let's deep dive into free right I mean there is nothing free in this world unfortunately. Who is paying? Tell me. [laughter] Yeah. So, so this is this is the one of the most interesting questions I think that exists today, right? Like who is paying to today? Today it's the customer paying which is completely unfair and like you know I I don't think that world it should exist uh anymore, right? Because the way I see it is that that's a tax on hardworking people because you know the people who pay the tax. It's the theme owner, right? It'sme owner who's an immigrant who has to send money back home. That's who's paying the tax. that doesn't feel unfair especially because they get taxed anyway right there's there's so many there's so much tax now when I engage with that philosophically someone's got to pay right like you said right somebody's got to pay because you know moving money is is expensive right there's there's costs along the way um stable coins has fundamentally in my opinion changed the cost basis of of transactions um because what's happening is the blockchain is enabling the movement of money at a percent of a cent as a gas fee. Um so the the cost of of moving um a digital a tokenized um uh uh currency is is almost negligible, right? Like it only really matters at like some extreme scale, but but really it it doesn't matter anymore. So if you move the financial system on this new protocol or rail, stable coins, and that's how I see it, by the way. I see it as a protocol or a then what you've done is that you've enabled instant well you've enabled instantaneous almost free transactions right it's pretty much free if you think about it right like if if if we move money um and we use a stable coin as a sandwich mechanism to do it we're not you know it's pretty much free the cost that you incur or or when you on and off ramp right so when you convert a fiat currency into stable coins and vice versa and eventually those on and offramp costs are also going to fundamentally decline. We're seeing the the movement at a regulatory level, right, of you know, is a stable coin money, is it EFD, what is a tax, what does a tax basis look like for it. I think the direction of travel is that we're we're going to we're going to get there or at least the on and off ramp providers are going to return the cost to zero because there's going to be no acred benefit from doing anything other than that, right? Especially at volume and scale. So I think the world of free is pretty much coming. Um maybe some people might make some money along the way to zero but um it's not me. It's it's just you know basic demand. But I are you also providing off-ramp on ramp service or only moving money. So if you do like if you control the whole like value chain you can at the end do off offramp and on-ramp free uh uh knowing where else you can make money right. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So, so again, so why do we say we want to be the world's most reliable bank? Like what's the story behind that? What's the mentality? I think there's a lot of players out there who are like stable coin native orchestrators or whatever. Like like with all due respect, I don't think that's where the world is going. Um I think what matters more is kind of what Revolute has done, right? Which is own the customer relationship. be as close to the customer as possible because if you are close to the customer, you get to meet their needs, right? Like and an infrastructure, right? And payments infrastructure is just a part of the prerequisite, the basic requirements that you need in order for the customer to perform a particular activity, right? So yes, today we offer on and off because that's the way the world looks like today, right? And we got to meet our clients needs where they are. But tomorrow, our customer is going to want to do more than on and off ramp. They're probably going to want to hold a tokenized deposit. They're probably going to want to have a yield against that deposit. They're probably going to want to invest that money. They're probably going to want to get access to credit. And our job as a banking platform, as a business, is to make sure we enable that business or that consumer to grow, right? To grow their wealth. And like and we and like the way I see us is that we are in the business of growing wealth. And actually for the most underserved community in the world, which will be the most powerful economic force in the next hundred years. And uh well um I understood that the solution for fast and instant uh uh and for uh free is stable coin which I very much agree with and we are big believers in stable coins as well. Uh what about like relability? How do you make sure that that's reliable and fraud is like inevitably going to grow in financial quality? I believe and I'm looking for like a solution. I'm scared. You must be scared too, right? I mean, I'm looking for a solution in the US that would solve my um uh my vision like my problem and like in in en in en in en in en in en in en in en in en in en in en in envisioning the uh uh like uh huge huge fraud um wave uh with all this AI and stuff, right? So what's your rails to prevent uh fraud and be 100% reliable? What's that? If you can just uh deep dive a little bit on that because I mean you constantly say we are building most reliable banks. I think 10 years ago relability was less of a problem. Now I believe uh my prediction is in 2016 we will have record-breaking numbers on fraud in the US. I mean in the world overall but it will be like uh only beginning unfortunately of uh the wave of fraud uh which will definitely come into financial world very soon and I think banks have no solution to that at least the solution which I engineer wanted to be right for sure and and I I think the way I think about reliability is um definitely on a broad spectrum like and there are different again orders of magnitude and layers, right? So like for me, reliability extends from the very moment that you engage with Zupa as a customer, right? So the very moment we have that first interaction with you, how do we make you feel, right? That that moment that like h how quickly do we onboard you, how quickly do we give you that premier service? And then you know how how do we make sure that when you get your first transaction you have that wow moment of like this was an easy experience all the way to that moment where something bad like where something you know uh you want to grow your business and then there's the moment where something bad happens right um because that always happens right like that you can't sometimes escape it where something bad happens and what do you want you want someone to be there for you to to to have a conversation with you to take care of you to make sure you're your hand you're handheld and today in the age of AI that doesn't happen right you get put to some form of AI agent and And real people don't want that. They want real human service. So for the first thing for me is like let's just be human about our interactions and recognize that on some level, right? Reliability means being there for someone. Now what does it mean on a technical level, right? What what like what does it mean in terms of I guess as an engineer, how do I prevent fraud? The reality is that you're going to have to get AI to fight AI, right? Like that's that's that's where we're at, right? And then there's about, you know, the way that the blockchain can help with with cryptographic security, quantum resistance, privacy preserving technology. There's things that we can say on the blockchain. And I think that's probably what the uh acceleration in quality of technology enables us to do is that the blockchain enables us to to do things that we probably couldn't do as well in the fiat world. That creates a more uh uh uh secure ledger. And that ledger being the principal form of of activity that we're able to dictate relationships between different counterparties, right? When when the cryptographic hash is the layer of trust that exists, then the reliability can be a lot stronger than than you might ordinarily see to today. So on an engineering level, we today are building out a lot of complex systems, thinking around like where the future is going to be and and how you battle that on a cryptographic level. Um, and then also balancing to be honest the thing that we think our customer cares about which is like even when something goes wrong who's there? Mhm. Good. Good. Well, amazing. So, let's continue to speak about Zuba for a moment. Uh, you mentioned Western Union. Western Union was established uh back in 1800s and guess what they were uh sending and receiving cash, right? that what they're doing for uh almost 100 maybe 60 years now maybe 180 years I don't know exactly but for long and doing more or less the same uh technology oh I don't want to exaggerate it they still like little bit better than was 200 years ago now they have all bunch of like mainframes and stuff uh but um uh you also have quite competitive competitive edge with like stripe uh PayPal's pioneer here which is like amazing Israeli company in payments and bunch of smaller competitors. Um so it's very crowded but on top of that why Western Union exist for 200 years just because payments have what is called strong network effect right when once you are there like in uh at scale uh it's really hard to break this uh pay this uh network strong network effect how they call it. So um what's your answer? Why Zuba? And um do you see all these like pioneers and PayPal and stripes of this world probably Western Union might be a victim uh of Zuba but uh how you see others who are very technologically advanced and we know that uh Stripe is doubling down on stable coins as well, right? Uh and um they're really deep in this but not only them, right? So, how why why Zuba may may still uh thrive and build something and how do you like think of uh like like your competitive uh edge uh versus those like uh top tier attack uh uh payment comments? Yeah, it's it's a great question. I think we're we're living in a fortuitous moment in history. um you know very much like in AI where you're seeing a lot of builders come into the space and and it grow. I think stable coins is is generating the same level of of activity because I think it is a fundamental technology which is going to change the world and I think what we have that the other players don't have is that we're building um with clay at that time where actually it's very wet um and that's that's pretty exciting for us. So being stable coin native means that we get to do unique things like say stable coin preunding right and that means our ability to scale products in multiple places in the world. Uh having stable coins as float management means optimized treasury lower requirements. um having stable coins means access to larger amounts of liquidity on a transaction level settlement like it like the native element of what we're building and the regulatory arbitrage that is created as a result is a is a unique proposition in time that allows us to do stuff that other private parties don't have. The second thing is that enables us to go into markets which are traditionally underserved and be able to scale combining AI and the blockchain. That means that we can go to Africa today, spin up a product, create massive volumes, grow a business, and do it in a in a way in a scale that has that sense of of speed, right? And it's just a speed that the larger whales just can't compete with. They just can't compete with our ability to execute. Um, unless they devote their entire organization's resources to it. And even then, you've got like, you know, it takes 12 months to release a product or 15 months to release a product. And that's why actually some of the clients that you mentioned, the customers you mentioned are becoming some of our clients, right? So that's that's what's pretty cool about what we're operating, right? We we will be the infrastructure that will fundamentally change the way the world looks. But beyond infrastructure, actually, we're going to go and be the the the the person, the partner to our customers, right? We're going to be the partner to the business. We're going to be the partner to the consumer and we're going to help them grow. So when I look at it as like you know why Zuba like why do you come to us it's because I think of of of one thing and one thing alone that I want our customers to think about is that we care right the competition for us is irrelevant our focus is our care to you when we say that we want to be the most reliable bank in the world we mean it that means human touch human care even in the world of AI and crypto it's about delivering when it matters and I think that's what people care Okay, sounds sounds amazing and I do agree. I I think that that where people well businesses sometimes like forget that everything comes from like customers demand in a way, right? And the pain points which you capture really nicely. Uh so I think um I would dedicate my last uh uh part of uh this episode uh uh back to yourself uh you as a founder, your inspiration. Uh so uh let's go back to Desai Senu and um uh deep dive a little bit into your personality. So uh you founded so far three companies. Um so uh what did you learn? What was like three main uh uh things you learned about building companies? Um anything very specific? I want you to like be straight to the point. Yeah, I think number one is is that um building companies is actually all about the people. Um so um great companies are defined by the quality of people that you have around you. and the more quality people, the more you can do and the more you can stretch. Um that's the hardest challenge I think um of of building a company. Second, I think is a focus. Um great companies are built I think by being um disciplined around um what you want to achieve. I I think Steve Jobs said focus is not about what you say yes to, it's about what you say no to. And that's really hard in a startup. You have to understand what matters and then you have to go and absolutely kill it uh and win and dominate for your customer. Um and the third thing I would say is um being obsessed. Um I think I'm obsessed about the problem I'm solving. I'm obsessed about my customers pain points. Um the emotional toll that it bears on me. um uh I think uh people wouldn't appreciate or understand um the hours I work in order to ensure that I solve that problem and I work for my customer. I think people don't have a sense of the orders of of magnitude associated with that and how hard I push. Um because fundamentally um winning matters, right? And if I don't win, then my customer isn't helped. Um, and that's for me at the end of the day where my joy, where my excitement comes from and why I'm dedicated to wi to winning. Like I like I I I I the idea that someone will out compete me, outwork me, out hustle me for this outcome is like an alien concept to me. And when I see someone pushing against that, I I do everything in my power to to push against it. That's amazing. So let's deep dive in every uh bit of it. So people uh how do you choose candidates or where what's your what's your uh way of uh learning about people? uh you have uh to have a lot of trust uh like prior to speaking to a person but you also have to mistrust and uh not trust everything right and it's like a very delicate ba balance you have to inspire but you have to check that this person is the real one right so and it's so uneasy now to uh know whether this is a real one or not like so how do what's your like um brain work around that. Are there any tips? How do you do it? Yeah, for sure. My my Dagistani co-founder Max, who you know, um he always says trust but verify. Um which I find to be a very good uh concept of of engagement. Um and really because um AI has equalized the playing field for a lot of people. Um so the only way to know someone is sharp is to spend time with them like and that means working with them. So we actually have work trials where people come in and they spend a couple of days maybe a week with us and they're working on something that's live that's critical for the business and and we see how they get it done and actually we actually set impossible tasks. So we set task that we kind of expect you to actually fail at but we want to see how how you fail. [laughter] Amazing. That's amazing. I read it in your article by the way uh that uh I mean you do not speak failures when uh if I remember it right. I mean if you are stretched I mean you could not say you failed right? If you got to a limit or beyond the limit, is it a failure? Like if you tried hard to make it under two hours like your maron distance and you made it 2 hours and 1 minute, you failed to deliver in a way, right? But you still are in like best three or best four runners in the world, right? Uh so uh if you stretched, you could not fail, right? You can only not like exactly meet uh your particular goal but that is not called a failure right failed is when you do something what you expect like a result upon and uh you do not deliver that might be failure right an accident on the road might be a failure right but if you're in formula one player uh you could not fail you could just a little bit underd deliver honestly I I resonate so much with what you're saying because the way I would I would position it is that true failure for me is if you give up, right? Like that's that's that's failure, right? Like like but if you're persistently going against a goal like no matter what pushing that's like keep going you keep it like failure is is learning you know it's infinite learning. You're learning to get better. feel like I if if my desire is to be you know the greatest of all time that's an everlasting pursuit right [laughter] like being the greatest of all time is like you know first you get to the mountain but then you got to stay on the mountain you got to keep on going you got to you know how do professional athletes the best in the world the number one how do they maintain that consistency again and again it's it's by the it's by failure right like Michael Jordan says he's you know he's a lot he's missed more game-winning shots than he's won you know Roger Ferro talks about missing losing more points than he's won. But it what you know like it's it's you got to fail to win. I kind of feel like it's it's it's a it's it's a direct relationship. It's impossible to do one without the other. So So your advice is spend as much time as you can before committing, right? And give like most difficult task you can to see how this person behaves, right? How persistent he is, how creative he is. uh and uh look into his eyes whether he have uh uh tears uh because of uh his failure or because he tried hard and spent sleepless nights uh on doing this right trying this. Yeah. And uh talking about discipline. So discipline is what uh can you describe it in more like discipline uh you can just perceive discipline in so much different ways. Uh so what the discipline is for you? I think I think again Max my co-founder is is a is is is a example in my opinion of of discipline and focus because I think because of his engineering mindset as well. I think there's like you know there are concerned constraints uh that you that you have in order to achieve a particular goal and how do you manage achieving the goal in the particular constraints. uh therefore you need to strip things down to their first principles, their basic orders in order to actually get to accomplish your goal. If you're not disciplined about this, you will basically make a number of mistakes because you'll be uh performing on multiple vectors of of organization. Uh and that's not a a good uh or positive outcome for for anyone. So like at least the way that um uh I think about it uh at least the way that I have organized my mind around it is like trying to maintain uh a level of of focus uh in relation to activities. So there are hund there are 100 million things that we can do but what is the single most important thing such that by doing it everything else either becomes easier or unnecessary. And once you start organizing your decisions against this matrix and this formula, you start to get actions that are much sharper and much quicker. And the discipline is about the maintenance of that principle because there are, you know, there's often a whole bunch of stimuli that comes in your way, right? There's a whole bunch of things that are happening at any given one point in time. It's a startup. If that wasn't happening, then you know, are you even moving fast enough? So, it's happening all the time. your abil it's your ability to maintain a north start maintain the focus you know like uh my I for Max I think I'll give a silly example right um for him uh if we say that we start work at 9:00 a.m. then let's make sure we're in at 9:00 a.m. Of course, if you have a long day, you have a you have things that you want to get done, blah blah blah. Sure, you may come later, right, at 9:30, 9:40, but you you begin to give yourself um leeway, like you begin to uh uh to to to to relax, like no focus. It's about it's about your ability to do hard things, to maintain consistency, and to to to enable success. Michael Phelps turned up to training every day for 365 days a year on Christmas, on New Year's, on Easter for the 1% gain. So if you don't have discipline when you turn up even when things are hard, how are you going to achieve success? So this is this is something for me which uh I think is a is is so important. Well, I can I can push back a little bit. My best engineers when I was a tech founder and CTO, my best engineers were uh not those who were amazingly disciplined. They came to the office late. Uh sometimes they could have spent weeks doing nothing and even oh my gosh playing computer games. But I knew that they need it because they are constantly thinking through a problem and then they come up with a brilliant solution. So sometimes you need like this people who may observe a lot without doing and then bum done something amazing, right? So uh and and this is not a disciplined approach, right? Uh so you just need to have people uh like that as well. So how would you perceive those? So so I I like to so I again I look at it as like there's micro levels and then macro levels. At a macro level, the discipline of what we do as a business really matters, right? Like the focus, the north star, where we're going, that really matters. At the micro level, right, what does the engineer need in order for them to be successful? That's about understanding your team, right? Like if you know that John, for example, goes on these crazy vendors and you need six weeks to come through with something which you're going to completely destroy, that's your understanding of John. But understanding of John in relation to the goal that you're trying to to achieve, right? And the discipline that you have as a discipline as an organization as a macro level in order to achieve the goal. The discipline on the individual level, right? Um in my in my view like that type of person can't exist in an early stage startup. Uh because because the the business can't enable that person to succeed, right? As it as as a business grows, you have a big stage. Exactly. you you have many more different people and and then you can afford to have a John you know who goes on a bend there and you know you you've organized it in your system to enable success. Uh so that's how I I look at it. Eventually, I I I I was an investor in Uber and um I met Travis Kalanic, founder and CEO at at Uber uh I think back in 2013 or so, maybe in 2012. And um um uh somebody asked him at some meeting u what's what's like your kind of corporate culture and Uber was already big by then. And I think it was 2015 or something was like multi-billion dollar company already. And he really put it very nicely. He really loved the question. He said, "Can you imagine like an like like a corner of a total order and an opposite order uh corner of an total chaos and then there is a tiny line in between which is neither chaos nor an order and that where our corporate culture is. So it lies on this very tiny line which is dist distinguishing both which I really loved. I think that's exactly where we try to find the balance between like everything. But I totally agree that I loved your approach to people. I think like having a person working for you for a while on the most complex task and seeing how he fails or he or she fails not without without failing but how like he stretched and that that exactly where you want to be with this person right so um yeah so my last last question is back to Zuba and um um I wonder how would you um describe Zuba's success so going forward five 10 years whatever horizon you put uh Zuba is a successful company what is it in words and maybe you can give some numbers uh because numbers speak for themselves so what is it um I I think if people think about who they want to use as their banking platform of choice their most reliable growth partner uh uh the business that puts more money in their pocket than takes out of it. Um that's how I want my customer to think about Zuba. I want us to be uh a business that, you know, survived for hundreds of years. Uh doing those three things that I mentioned really well, affordable cost, um instant settlement, reliable, uh you know, do the basics super well. I really believe in that. I think there's a there's a huge value. It's undervalued today. Um, you know, showing care, treating people as you wish to be treated. These these values are so uh uh underrated in today's society. Um, and I want I would want Zuber to be known uh for this. And then if you ask me where does that take us, I think that takes us to being a terrain, you know, a trillion dollar business. I think that's the minimum requirement today, especially when we see what SpaceX has done. I think we will go beyond payments and banking. I think we're going to be uh building critical infrastructure, energy projects, uh roads. Um I think we're going to be doing a lot. Um and and I think that's what that's what excites me. Amazing. Thank you very much. Um and it was amazing uh discussion with one of the most talented people I met uh Josiah Sanuk who is a founder at Zuba, my friend. And this was uh a podcast ventures from the belly brought uh to you by R136 and I'm Victor Aloski. Thank you Desai. It was really amazing discussion. Just love it. Thanks for having me Victor. It was a pleasure. Thank you.