Maex Ament, Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Taulia

Hi everyone, thanks very much for listening. You are listening to a Warden FinTech podcast with, with Max, who is the co-founder of Talia. Max, thanks very much for joining us.

Thank you.

So want to quickly talk about your background. We've got a list of topics that I wanted to run through, but before we begin, before you'd co-founded Talia and become the, the head of strategy there, you'd, you'd start another company called Ebidas. And you've clearly spent a large portion of your career surrounded by entrepreneurs and technologists. Have you seen any type of trends or key characteristics of entrepreneurs that have made them particularly successful?

Yeah, so that's correct. I had a company before Talia, as you mentioned. The name was Abydos. And the first thing I have to say was back in Germany, beginning of the millennium, like 2000 to 2005 back in Germany. As a matter of fact, I was not surrounded by many entrepreneurs then. Germany is a— it changed now, but back in the days, Germany was not a very entrepreneur-friendly, startup-friendly country. Nevertheless, you're right. I mean, since then, moved to the US, spent quite some time raising money, raising venture capital, and talking to other entrepreneurs. And yeah, to the question, so what do I see? What are the characteristics? A few that pop up in my head, like persistency, right? The good ones I met, the good entrepreneurs that I admire, they never give up. Just, they try, they try, even if the idea is so out there and the feedback is so horrible and devastating, they keep trying, they believe in it. So persistency is the one thing. Passion. Although you will hear a lot that passion is not the only thing and passion is not a necessary ingredient, I kind of agree to some extent at the beginning. If you think about an idea, maybe the passion is not the most important thing, but once you formulate your idea, once you start, once you get into it, and once you develop that idea, I think a passion is at least super helpful. I would go that far that it is a key ingredient to be successful and make a change. Let's be honest, every single one that I know, every single entrepreneur, my co-founders obviously included, are super hard workers. So you just can't do it on the side if you wanna be successful as a startup guy. You just can't do it with the normal work hours. Let's be honest, you gotta work hard really in terms of hours, in terms of travel, in terms of multitasking. It's, at least in my experience, it's just hard work. The last thing maybe, most of the people that, get into startups that I think are successful and that I admire, they look at a bigger picture and they look not at a monetary outcome. So it's not about getting rich, because let's be just very honest here, if you want to get rich, a startup is not necessarily the right place. I mean, if you think about it, the failure rate is so high, you're just way more, way better off if you join a corporation if you want to get rich over the course of 10 or 20 years. A startup is not the place to be. So in order to be successful, in order to be Successful entrepreneur, there needs to be more than just want to get rich, much more. You want to make a change. You want to make the change. And the cheesy statement, you want to make the world a better place. Yes, to some extent that's true for pretty much everybody I know in that space.

Got it. And you sort of touched on this in what you just said, but what are sort of 2 or 3 of the biggest pitfalls you see amongst sort of budding entrepreneurs, you know, mistakes they make early on that sort of preordain them to failure, at least at the get-go.

Yeah, totally. I mean, talk a little bit about my experience. Raising money is one thing. There are businesses where you want to scale fast, there's a big market opportunity, you want to raise money. But it should depend on the problem that you want to solve and the company that you think you build and the market. It should not be the other way around. Let's raise some money and figure out what's out there. So I saw companies fail with that mindset, serial entrepreneurs even often, they just raised some money and then realized that is not a venture business, a venture capital business. That's one thing I want to mention. Bad hires. Oh my God, I made mistakes, so many, by just hiring at the wrong time the wrong people. Hiring too early is one thing. Getting the big guns in early, the VPs of sales, right? I remember when We raised our Series A. One of the first things we did was getting a VP of Sales in, and soon after, VP of Engineering. That was way too early. We didn't even figure out our sales process yet. So hiring too early the big guns, definitely a mistake I made, and I know it from many others as well. What other pitfalls? Again, from my example, some things we did great, but I know others did not so great, and some things at Talia we did not so perfect is focus. So I'm pretty proud what we did at Talia in terms of focusing from a geography perspective. So the first, what is it, 4 years of our existence, it was a North American play only. So our customers, we exclusively sold in the United States and Canada. It was tempting to go Asia. It was tempting to go back to Europe. I'm German, as you undoubtedly realize up to now. It was tempting to go back to Europe and yeah, go home to my home market, go to the UK and sell there. But we resisted that urge and stayed in North America for 4 years. And even when we then entered the European market, so to say, we focused there on the UK. So for 1, 1.5, 2 years, we only sold in the kingdom. And after that, Germany. So step by step and not taking on the whole world at once. Again, that's a lesson I learned from Talia because In between, we made some mistakes. We tried some other markets in Latin America and even in Asia to some extent. And good news is we quickly realized that it's premature and pulled out of those markets. So focus is a thing that other entrepreneurs tripped over a lot. Again, for some companies going globally immediately with a lot of funding might work, but for Talia, and I would say for many others, the geographical focus was important. And the same for product, by the way. It is tempting. There are so many shiny things out there. That you want to go after, that you hear from your customers, that the competition does, that you see on this trade show, and so on and so forth. But keeping focus on the product, on your core vision, is key. Again, at Talia, we made our share of mistakes, and if I could go back, there are some things that I wouldn't go after now. But overall, I would say we did a pretty decent job on keeping our initial vision and the focus on that vision going. What else is important? Letting go. That's the thing I learned in the last, I'd say, 1 or 2 years. Again, painfully, with painful lessons learned, is letting go. Like really trusting your fellow management team members, trusting your product team, trusting pretty much everyone in the company that they can do their job. And because I mean, the early days of a startup, in the first 1 or 2 or 3 years, you are involved in everything and you have an opinion on everything. But letting go, and trusting others to do their job. Again, it depends a little bit on making the right hires, right? But if you did that, letting go is important. And the last one maybe, there's this famous P word, the process policies, which for a startup guy, they sound horrible. And it is, let's be honest. I still have a hard time getting used to it, but it's a necessary evil. If you want to scale a company at the right time, you got to establish some procedures, some policies, and some processes. So I had to get used to that and I had to learn that the hard way.

Got it. You know, one of the points you made was about keeping your focus. And clearly, it seems like for a lot of startups, they try and diversify into new product lines or new verticals or new businesses, clearly just by virtue of the fact that they see those as being untapped markets. There's clearly an impetus to move beyond. When you guys were thinking about geographic expansion and thinking beyond the scope of initially what you conceived, what was— I mean, when did you realize it was now, now was the right time to move into a new market, or now is the right time to move into a different, you know, customer segment?

Yeah, there's no easy answer for that, but it's actually very analytical, analytical what we do. So if we think about a new market, we analyze the size. What's the— in my space, in our space here at Thalia, what's the B2B payment size in in that market? What's the cultural receptiveness for early payments, for discounts? So there's actually a very analytical process with 6 or 7 parameters that we put in to see what could be the next target market. And that's how we came up with, alright, it's not only nice because myself and my co-founders are German, but Germany is actually a great next market for Taulia because of size, because of culture obviously, because of language. And that's how we decided we give it a shot. And as I said, we did that a few times with some markets where, well, after a few months we realized it was a wrong decision. So I think the ability to, well, analyze up front, do your homework, go into market, but then monitor it carefully and having actually then the guts as well to get out of the market if it doesn't work, I think is important as well.

Got it. That makes perfect sense. So let's talk a little bit now about about sort of the founding of Talya. You and your co-founders had a vision and there was inspiration there. Could you talk about the key problem you were trying to address?

Sure.

Being points for merchants.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, so I'll start with the previous company and on a high level, what we did there kind of made it natural to come up with Talya. So my previous company, as you said, the name is Abydos. It was a pretty boring workflow company, I want to call it, AP automation. So we went to large corporations, the Intels, the Apples, the Kelloggs of the world, and yeah, sold them a workflow solution so their invoices, their incoming invoices, their accounts payable, the millions of invoices they get every year, they can be automated. So they get them into their ERP system, SAP, Oracle, whatever it is, Faster, more efficient. So that was the previous company. So helping big corporations getting a handle on their accounts payable, right? AP automation. We sold that company in 2006, but realized then between 2006 and 2009 that there's actually one thing that we did achieve but didn't take advantage of, didn't help anyone, is like, all right, we help those big corporations to get invoices, incoming invoices processed faster. So the Apples of the world were now able and ready to pay those suppliers, the suppliers who sent the invoices, earlier. So they could, but nobody did. I mean, why would you, uh, why would Apple pay a supplier early if the invoice is a net 30, a net 45? Then you pay after 30 or 45 days. I mean, you and me, we, we don't pay our credit card or our mortgage early. We pay on exactly the date that is on the on the credit card statement. The same for invoices. So we realized, oh, there's something wrong here. We now help to make it possible for large corporations to pay early. And the flip side, we know that, especially after 2008 and '09, that small and medium businesses starve for cash. They want to be paid earlier. They don't want to wait 60 days. And after things like Basel III and Dodd-Frank, those companies did not have access to liquidity anymore, those small and medium businesses. So wait, wait a moment. There are companies that could pay early, have billions in cash lying around. Just think Apple again. And on the flip side, there are those suppliers that want to be paid early. So we brought those two together, and in the meantime, we actually put more bells and whistles on that. So actually, if there's an Apple that doesn't have cash, we can help as well because we're just leveraging the credit rating of Apple to access liquidity on our own. So in essence, we help out suppliers of large corporations to get paid earlier And the large corporation can use their own cash or third-party cash. So it's a classical win-win. We don't have many of those, but it is a true one where buying organizations win by putting their cash to work potentially, and the small suppliers, small-medium businesses win by accessing liquidity to rates that are incredibly favorable. And how does that work? Why is there a win-win? Because there is never a free lunch, right? Well, because historically the banks were there in the middle and pretty much dipped and participated from both sides, from the large corporations and the SMB. By taking the banks somewhat out of the equation here and connecting the large corporation Apple with their tens of thousands of suppliers, you were able to have both parties benefit.

Perfect. And that's actually a great segue to the next question. So you mentioned banks and how they were traditionally involved in these transactions. So just thinking about the competitive dynamics here, So you've got banks who are, you know, they've got the ability to lend, and then you've got companies like SAP and Oracle that are so embedded in the ERP of some of these largest corporations.

How come—

I guess it's a two-fold question. First is, how come banks didn't readjust more quickly to what you guys were doing and try and emulate it? And then the second question is, is how come SAP and Oracle— I mean, what's the rationale behind why they haven't necessarily gotten too involved in the space yet?

Yep. Let's start with the banks. Just to be perfectly clear, there is a nice coexistence as well between what we offer at Telia to our customers and a bank solution. So we have customers, plenty of them, that offer a traditional bank solution that's called supply chain finance, reverse factoring. They offer that to the top 10, 20 suppliers of a large corporation, and then Telia handles the other 10,000 or 20,000 suppliers. So that's my first statement. There is a coexistence possible. The second one is with the banks, that while we eliminated in some cases banks, we still use banks for what they do best, like lending. So banks are not technology players. They're just not. They don't have the technology, they don't have the knowledge, nor do they have the intention to be that expert on the technology side to actually go deeper into the supply chain. They're perfectly happy to go after those 10 or 20 suppliers. We at Talia not. We want to go after all suppliers. We want to offer to all suppliers beneficial payment terms, but we still use banks for the payment itself and for the funding. So from that perspective, we kind of reduced a little bit the banks to— I want to call it their original purpose, if you want, of being the money provider, of being a really, really reasonable and cheap source of cash. But we are the technology provider. So that's on the bank side of the house. And to your question, why are banks not going on theirself there? Well, they don't have a real interest to go there. There's not a lot of money to make compared to their other offerings. So there's a little bit of innovator's dilemma here, and we talk about that again when we talk about SAP or Oracle in a minute. And there's just a regulation and cost problem that banks have, like historically very locked in and into their established old-school processes. So it's impossible for them to get rid of their paper processes of onboarding suppliers in our world. So they stop after 10 or 20 suppliers because it gets just too expensive to onboard, validate KYC and AML a supplier. With technology, you can solve a lot of those things. Again, I'm not saying there's a shortcut for regulations because there isn't, but with technology you can make it much, much, much smoother, simpler, and faster. To your question on why is an Oracle or an SAP or who else is out there, a Workday, not going into our space? A few things to that. First one, I mean, one of my most famous books that I read many years ago is The Innovator's Dilemma, because I mean, they look at their existing customer base, they see what their customers demand, and their sales guys get the quota on that. And that's what the engineering team and the product team builds. So looking outside of the box is pretty hard for large corporations, for the SAPs of that world. Many of them, especially in an area like fintech. I mean, think about it, Oracle, SAP, definitely not fintech companies, right? Software companies trying now to be software as a service companies, but being financial plays, being fintech companies, they rather partner, and that's what they do. Many of them, they look for players in our space and try some partnerships with them. And I don't think there's a a lot of surprise here. If they see those partnerships work, there will be acquisitions and consolidations as well in that space where the cash-rich ERP players will acquire some companies and add their solution. And like history told us, likely fail because it's not that easy just acquiring a company and put it into the portfolio. Very often that is not a success. So yeah, those are some of the reasons why Oracle, SAP are not in our space with their own solution.

Got it. That makes sense. So changing gears a little bit here, sort of harking back to the days where you and your co-founders were just starting Talia and seeing to where it is now with over 250 employees, book of business that includes some of the most well-known blue-chip clients. When you think about some of the most difficult aspects of scaling the business from where it was to where it is now, What would you say sort of the few big ones have been? Now you mentioned just keeping focus and staying true to the vision and being sort of disciplined with the hiring, but what else sort of did you come across that you did not necessarily anticipate would be problems?

Sure. So we touched on some of them before. You mentioned the focus again, not going after the next shiny thing. We, on the hiring side of the house again, so tiring too early is one thing, but hiring too early the big guns is one thing, but hiring too late is another thing. You gotta acknowledge that at a certain time of your startup, when you reach a certain threshold, and that threshold is not like it's 90 employees, it's different for every startup, but at a certain time, there are some roles that you need to fill that you didn't need before. Hiring them too late can be equally as poisonous or as painful for a startup as hiring someone too early. So getting those in at the right time. At the right time, having— let's do examples here. Having a chief marketing officer, someone that thinks from a marketing perspective, big picture, is important. Having someone that thinks globally. So we're in a very comfortable position that myself and my co-founders, we're German. Germans in San Francisco. So from that perspective, we have a, a little bit of an unfair advantage of thinking not only on the US market, but always think about the global market. And not only from a sales perspective, by the way, because I said before, we focus very strongly on certain markets, but our product is used by small, medium businesses in 160 countries. So all over the world. So having that mindset of a supplier in Italy, uh, will use our software very differently than a supplier in China. Or a supplier here in the United States. And that's a mindset we grew up with, and it's a mindset that we kept and put it into our product, into our rollouts, into our implementation process. So those are some of the things that we learned. And again, just to be fair, we made our share of mistakes as well on the way, but I think we might have been a little bit better than just, American-focused startup.

That makes sense. So when you think about sort of the fond memories you have of starting the company and sort of the collective history of Talia, was there ever an instance where you and your co-founders just looked at each other and thought, this is, you know, you guys come across a big problem and just looked at each other and said, this isn't necessarily something we can solve, we might have to pack up here. Did you guys ever have a moment like that?

Oh, absolutely. I mean, I cannot name any of the big customers, but we did say no to a few really, really Fortune 50 companies that had their requirements. And at a certain time in the sales process, we just were honest to ourselves and told them that we're not the right solution for them. Maybe a year or two earlier, when I look back, I would have tried to make those customers happy, but with the right maturity, we were able to say no to certain customers. And it hurts. It's painful to say to one of the biggest companies of this planet that we're not the right fit for them, knowing that they will likely go with the competition and knowing that our business is very sticky and probably I'm not getting another chance of talking to those customers, at least in the next 5 to 10 years. So that's super painful, but it's a great lesson as well if you do that. To say no because this is just not the right fit. And from a product perspective, from a scope solution perspective, we just cannot help you. So those are definitely happened in the past where we said no. As I said before as well, there are expectations from partners as well. So we get inquiries of partners want to work with us again on the financial side of the house, banks, card companies, and Yeah, you gotta look in each other's eyes and think about carefully if this makes sense, if you really wanna invest the time to work with a bank, with a financial institution at this point in time, and go into a certain market and expand your product, or if you just park that, or yeah, and then say no to those companies. And we did that, I would say, pretty well.

Got it. So again, wanna shift gears here to talk a little bit more about strategy, Talia, and you're currently the Chief Strategy Officer. And one of the things that we've seen with companies that have strategy teams that come to Wharton to talk about what strategy roles are, it's clear that strategy means very different things at very different companies. In some instances, it's more execution-focused versus in others it's more high-level, setting the strategic direction of the company. So with that said, what does it mean to be the head of strategy at Talia? What is sort of your mandate?

Let's be very honest. As you said, we're like approaching 300 employees. So a head of strategy at Talia is certainly very different than being the head of strategy at— I'm looking out of my window— at PG&E or Salesforce, right? Completely different, different role, different scope. What does it mean for me? I'm still very, very deeply involved when it comes to anything strategic, product innovation. Let me give you an example. So There are some projects obviously over the last few years that we look at when it comes to those shiny things I mentioned before. Well, we're not going with our full product team into one of those new shiny things, be it the blockchain, being chatbots, being whatever you wanna name. But nevertheless, we look at those. And so I'm spearheading some of those initiatives where we prototype, we pilot, we partner, and on a project basis, and then decide pretty quickly, sometimes not as fast as I wish, but pretty quickly whether this is something that we want to pursue from a strategic perspective or not. So there are those projects in the product area as well as in the partner and sales area where we look at certain partners, throw out some pilots there we work with, and see if this makes sense. So from that perspective, that's certainly one piece. The other one when it comes to strategy is, Although I try to be as market-facing as possible out there with customers on conferences, prospects, and so on, there is a whole part of the organization, the sales team, the marketing team, as well as product that are way more often out there. So part of my role is to digest all the input that I get from the market directly as well as our employees that are market-facing and make sense of them. Make sense of them, and then come up with a more corporate strategy of what things we should go after. Again, that might be product-related, that might be sales-related, that might be geography expansion-related. So to your question, it's a mix of having those little projects where we try out things and then taking the ingredients from the field and formulating a bigger strategy. Again, I want to emphasize, I am not the chief strategy officer of Salesforce, so it's still very hands-on and changing every day here in a small startup.

Got it. So in certain companies, it seems like the strategy is dictated sort of in the ivory tower by a few executives, and then everyone else at the company just goes and executes on that. But it sounds like it's much more— I guess the way to describe it is bottoms-up, Atalia, where you're taking a lot of market information, talking to your sales team, product folk, and your customers, and sort of synthesizing that in building a product strategy based on what you're hearing?

So, I mean, the ingredients come from the field. And again, while I'll try to get as much information as possible direct firsthand myself, it would be foolish not to include your employees that are out there, your partners that are out there. So those are the ingredients, right? You get them, you put all of them together, but you need someone, and either that's a dedicated role like myself or the management team or a group within the management team, you need then some part of the organization to have the bigger picture and put those together because the individuals out in the field, they come up with great ideas, are very passionate, but well, they don't know the whole picture. They come up with an idea that works great for North America, but it would be fatal for Europe if we pursue that avenue. Well, you need someone, and that's currently my role, that gets those ingredients, gets those ideas, and then makes globally sense of them. So it's both. It's the field with the input, but I think you need someone on top or somewhere up that has a strategic hat on.

Got it. You know, it seems like it's a very cross-functional role. It's a very impactful role. But I guess you're getting all these data points from people in the field. How do you then translate that into actually effectuating change at the company or in product? You know, what's sort of the the link there. Basically, how do you get buy-in from everyone? You mentioned it's a fast-growing organization. There are close to 300 people now. How do you get everyone to buy in?

First of all, again, 300 people is not that much, so it is much easier to have a direct conversation with the leadership team or whoever is involved in the discussion, but the communication is key here. Get them involved early and make them aware that you think about certain topics, that there are certain pilots running. If you just come at the very end with a result, let's say we— I'm just making an example right now— we look at the blockchain and a little team does some pilots, and then 3 months down the road I go to my chief product officer and tell him that's the way to go, it's harder to get buy-in. It's much smarter and much easier early on to involve my counterpart, tell him at least about the ideas, and Yeah, and likely, very likely he has some ideas as well in that area. And then later on when the pilot or prototype is done, getting his buy-in to then move or not move into that space is much easier. So get those parties involved early, don't ignore them, get feedback from the field as I said before a few times. Those are some of the very basic things that at least I do and I feel are successful.

Got it. Now just putting on sort of the big picture hat here, what's your sort of perspective on the trends in sort of the supply chain financing industry? What are the key sort of secular trends that you're seeing that are going to continue to grow sort of your area beyond where it already is?

So the first one is actually, if I take one step back and not only talk about supply chain finance, about But about small business lending in general, like providing liquidity to businesses around the world, I think we saw the proof points already that a symmetrical view on things, and let me explain in a minute what I mean with that, a symmetrical view on things is the winning theme. So if I'm a small, medium business and I'm completely in isolation, try to get funding for an invoice, an early payment, I factor my invoice, or I try to get a line of credit, It's extremely expensive because, well, guess what? Nobody knows a lot about this small and medium business and the risk is pretty high. So those isolated non-symmetrical views, I think they're helpful. Don't get me wrong, they're helpful. They have their place, but they're not the holy grail. They're not the final solution. The final solution is to look holistically, symmetrically at a supplier and their customer, the buying organization, and then leverage the cash of the buying organization or the balance sheet of the buying organization or leveraging the credit rating of the buying organization and let that trickle down to the entire supply base. I think that's what we see as the winning theme of this bidirectional view on things. That's the first one. The second one is, and now going really into supply chain finance, is providing flexibility to a buying organization, a customer, of using their own cash if they're cash rich, if they're Apple and have $200 billion lying around, if they are a German company or a Swiss company where there is negative interest rates right now on the cash that they have at hand and allowing them to use their own cash when appropriate or using third-party cash if not. So that flexibility to change, to combine, to mix and match is definitely a trend we see in supply chain finance. And the last one I wanna mention is having a solution that, because banks play in that space for years, so we didn't invent that, But having a solution that is not only addressing the largest of the largest suppliers, the IBMs of that world as a supplier, no, a solution that addresses the entire supply chain where even the guy that puts up the Christmas tree once a year, that guy can be paid early and have access to liquidity at favorable rates instead of 30, 40% annually with alternative solutions which can kill a business. So I think those are some of the trends that we see. And obviously, I mean, not hiding it, the blockchain is something that everybody looks at. So do we. I cannot share more at the moment, but obviously there will be change, there will be impact. It won't happen tomorrow, but probably sooner than we all think. Got it.

So with regards to blockchain, and I know you'd intimated this just now, it seems like there have been waves of of Bitcoin and blockchain through the hype cycle now. It certainly seems like there's more of an impetus for blockchain rather than Bitcoin as sort of the—

Absolutely.

So I just want to get your sense. How do you separate sort of hype from reality there? I mean, what gives you confidence that it's actually going to be something that a company like Talia can actually take advantage of in the future?

Yeah, it's a good question. So first of all, you're absolutely right. I mean, we're not talking here about Bitcoin. Because Bitcoin, nice, great first application on the blockchain, was a great proof of concept and a great proof. And that's my first statement. So Bitcoin proved that the blockchain approach actually works with all the ups and downs and all the problems that we saw and still see. I think the technology itself is now proven as an immutable distributed ledger. And what gives me confidence that that this will be a revolution in the trade finance world. I could say, but it's not a true statement, I could say that I see so much activity and every bank jumps on that right now that there must be something. But if I would go after that, I think that would not be a great indicator because banks, like every company, go after the shiny things as well. So no, what gives me confidence is actually by looking into that as a company myself and being in that space for years. And seeing, really, really understanding the technology advantage that a blockchain approach for trade finance will bring. So it's not what theoretically could happen, but looking really things that already out there that happen today, not in a large scale, it's all prototypes and pilots, but seeing that actually work and then it doesn't take a lot to extrapolate that to a corporate scale. So that gives me confidence on the blockchain. But back to the question in more general, Am I 100% sure that the blockchain will solve and revolutionize the trade finance? I'm not. There's huge risk with every new technology, but I do think we— I give it a higher probability than some of the other things that we saw in the past.

Got it. Makes sense. Now, a couple more questions. One is, So if you think about what's happened in fintech over the last year, year and a half, there have sort of been two pushes and pulls. On one hand, the likes of Lending Club, On Deck, Prosper, a lot of the quote unquote tech-enabled lending businesses have lost their luster. Part of that emanated through Lending Club's sort of what happened with Lending Club in February, March of this year. And part of it's just by virtue of general sentiment towards the fact that interest rates are going up, and these companies haven't really existed in a down credit cycle, so there's not as much investor confidence in that. And then on the other hand, within fintech, you have verticals within fintech. You think of like regtech or insurtech that are growing very quickly and are attracting a lot of attention. I guess overall, if you think about the industry, I mean, it's lost its luster a little bit. What's to give MBAs who want to go into the industry more confidence that it's actually fintech in the way we think about it and see it now is actually an industry that's going to be able to withstand any sort of bust and is actually an industry that's here to stay?

Sure. So first of all, you said it already. There is not— fintech 5 years ago was a term that Covered a few companies. Fintech now is dozens of different verticals within fintech, be it insurance, be it retail banking, be it supply chain finance, be it whatever, right? There within fintech, there are now all those flavors. And you're absolutely right, the lending space got a little bit of a bad rep, let me put it like that, at the beginning of the year. Rightfully so, by the way, rightfully so, because what we saw at LendingClub and some others, yeah, it was a little bit overheated. And there were definitely some things that were not conforming and not according to regulations. So from that perspective, there was a little bit of a, yeah, correction, I would say. In addition to that, you have to say that in January, February, and March, when the Lending Club problem happened, the market by itself was extremely shaky, and not only for fintech, but just for software as a service and for investments in general. So then having that problem that LendingClub had together with a general funding environment just accelerated the, let's say, the spot on fintech as potentially being an area that is not as growth— there is not as much growth potential as they thought. So from that perspective, we see, especially in the last 3 months, that things changed. It recovered substantially. So you saw some funding rounds. And obviously we're in the market and always looking at the multiples, the liquidity available changed. So while it was a necessary correction and it was great to look at certain things, I think we're through that. And the main thing for me is, I mean, if you're a company with a PowerPoint concept in the fintech area, I think it's pretty hard right now. And it's right that it's hard. A year ago, it was perfectly possible to raise millions just on a PowerPoint. In the fintech area. Now, yeah, things like solving a real business problem, as we do at Taulia, and having real paying customers, as we do at Taulia, helps obviously substantially to differentiate yourself from the rest of the field. So that's a little bit, if you ask me, if I'm a Wharton fintech alumni or looking for a job, there's something to be said to go early in a startup because you learn more. But if you're looking for more security, look for a little bit of an established company, established being 3, 4, 5 years in, that has proven customers and proves a real problem out there and someone is willing and ready to pay for that.

Got it. And that is possibly the best segue to the final question, which is, you know, a lot of the people who are going to be listening to this podcast, you know, are prospective entrepreneurs and they are people with MBAs that are looking to transition to sort of fintech, smaller disruptive companies, either in sort of a more entrepreneurial role, whether they're founding a company or whether there are going to be employees like 3, 4, 5, or 6. Given that you've got that perspective and co-founded a couple very successful companies, what's the advice, say, if you had one or two things to tell MBAs or budding entrepreneurs, what advice would you give?

So it depends a little bit on your risk profile, right? I mean, I'd say if you want to play it a little bit more safe, then a more established startup, Talia size, 5 years in, is maybe the place to be. You do, you will learn a lot as well here, but you will learn not as much, is the wrong word, but not in as many areas as you go join a startup in year 1 or year 2 where You're the first of 10 employees or something like that where you pretty much sell, build the product, and support the customers all at the same day. So you learn all of that. So if that, that's the first thing. So what's your risk profile, your personal risk profile? Um, because yeah, in an established company you definitely, uh, uh, can learn a little bit, uh, just in one area, but it's safer. In a startup with 10 employees, well, chances are a year later this company is no longer with us. But the learning is higher in a smaller company. That's the first thing. If you aspire at one point to be an entrepreneur and have your own startup, then definitely I would recommend at least spend a year or two in a company like a startup. It doesn't really matter then in that case if it's early or mid-stage startup. But just from my experience, just jumping directly from school, maybe obviously there is a lot of work experience, but getting some fintech experience from, from one of those startups before you build your own one, I think is, uh, advisable and, and helpful. That's at least my take. Um, so, uh, and if you go into the startup world, especially, especially if you, if you an entrepreneur and want to build your own company, don't do it for the money. I mentioned it at the very beginning, if you want to get rich, startups is not the right thing. Startups just literally, you look at the numbers, don't make you rich there. So There are some exceptional outcomes, but probability-wise, if you do it for the money, that's not the place to be.

Got it. All very, very helpful, Max. Thank you so much for your time. This has been really great to have you and to get your perspective on entrepreneurship and supply chain financing. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Thanks.

Thank you. All right, have a great day, Max. Thank you.

Okay, bye-bye. Ciao.

All right, bye. Thank you.