Welcome to the Reboot Chronicles, connecting you to the world's top leaders and CEOs rebooting their organizations and themselves with revealing stories to help you prosper in unprecedented times.
I'm your host, Dean Tobias, and as a serial CEO who's led dozens of companies that created thousands of jobs and billions in revenue, my passion is uncovering powerful lessons that can inspire you to reboot your organization, your career, and your life.
Listen and subscribe wherever you get podcasts, or at rebootchronicles.com. I'd like to welcome Matt Oppenheimer to the Reboot Chronicle.
He's the CEO of Remitly, a financial services company with a cross-border payments app that enables millions of people to move billions of dollars around the globe.
Since taking the company public, Matt has been on a global growth tear, expanding the company into a billion-dollar market leader with over 2,700 employees in 170 countries, sending over $50 billion between people across 5,100 corridors.
And from what I've seen so far, Matt and his team are just getting started.Matt, it's good to see you. Thanks, Dean.Great to be here.Thanks for having me.
Yeah, I'm always a fan of a founder that can, I think you're 14 years in, probably feels like 40, who can go from zero to a billion, you're way beyond a billion in your forecast now, and take the company public, what I call the brain damage phase sometimes, and keep growing.
We've had other companies on that have done it, like Persistent Systems.Many of them have had to gone through reboots to get there, but you've been up and to the right, which is good.
You know, starting out, this has all been a trip down memory lane for me.I actually started my career at Western union, um, which back then was a telecom company on most of the satellites in the sky.
I had an incredibly poor top management and, um, but some really cool products.And later they rebooted themselves and noticed they had a money order business and started putting money into that, which is what they are today.
One of your competitors, of course.So, um, Looks like the, correct me if I'm wrong, but the cross-border addressable market's about $1.8 trillion and a lot of competitors.Is that why you started the company?It's a nice market to go after.
Yeah, yeah, totally.And, and the answer to that is yes.And before I answer that, it's just so fun that you have, you know, adjacency and experience in the space Dean and really excited to be on the podcast.So yeah, I mean, $1.8 trillion.
I mean, you just pause and think about the magnitude of that number annually is sent in cross border, person to person payments. And that is a big reason why I thought there was an opportunity.
And it was pairing that with the fact that I've traveled to close to 100 countries throughout my life.I've lived and worked on three continents.I saw how far remittances went in folks' lives.And yeah, you add it up.
I mean, it's multiples larger than even things like foreign aid.So it's a big problem to solve.And we're really proud to have started to just scratch the surface in terms of solving it.
Yeah, from what I know about the history, a lot of, I don't know if I want to call it corruption, but gouging was going on in that market, depending on which country and corridors you were talking about.
But there's also, it seems like you have no shortage of competitors and potential partners, you know, from Western Unions, to Walmart, to PayPal, to all the banks.
Sometimes their partner sometimes they're not so friendly and what kind of sets you apart from that.Massive group of traditional as well as always upstart center saying they can do the same thing.
Yeah, well, if you think about how most money is sent, a lot of it is sent varies depending on the country and the corridor, which is the pairing of two countries like you know, US Philippines would be a corridor.
But if you think if you look at how money was sent when we started the business and still largely isn't it's it's physical pack cash based locations.
And so what we enable our customers to do is use a mobile app or any digital device to link their bank account.
debit card and then be able to send money to over five billion bank accounts and mobile wallets across the globe as well as over four hundred thousand cash pickup location so the way we do that differently is one it's not cash based and two when you look at the platform is very simple.
This is something i learned after i started the business thankfully cuz i think if i had seen all the complexity before i started the business i may not have the audacity to start it.
doing instant transactions across the globe and across your hundred seventy countries now.
Wait more complex than meets the eye and having founded the business and getting to the place right now also tell you it's virtually impossible to do if you're small and so we got larger what it means is that ninety plus percent of transactions are delivered in less than an hour twenty four hours a day seven days a week.
95% of customers don't have to contact customer support.Those numbers keep getting better and better.And we keep bringing the price down because we can take out a lot of costs in the system as we get more scale, just like any payments business.
So, it's all those reasons customers use our product.
Yeah, and as phones have gone to hundreds of millions to billions around the planet, have you seen the location-based pickups and drop-offs declining and then
Device to device going up or device to bank account or whatever more electronic than physical.
Globally yes globally yes at varying paces and at varying magnitudes depending on the country like it's so different you know that the world's obviously a big place so there are different countries that i can in the dominican republic is an example.
It's unique, but a predominant way that folks like to receive money there is called home delivery.A courier comes and delivers cash to your door.In some countries, it'll be cash pickup, in some it's mobile wallets, in some it's bank accounts.
There is a broad global trend towards digitization, though, which is great.
Yeah, they like the feel of the cash.It's funny, when I first moved to Silicon Valley, the bank I was using was Chicago Bank.They didn't have a branch, so they used to bring money to me, which is always a nice feeling.
But like the Mexico US quarter, I bet that's still a lot of physical pickup cash and drop off.And, uh, we see that a lot in this country, but it's gotta be impacting your, your business.
What about these, uh, you know, the big nine banks have funded, uh, Zelle or Zelle depending on where you grew up.Um, you know, Venmo, that type of stuff.
Some of them, they've been very domestic focused, but what, uh, what's going to be the impact of those guys?
Yeah.Yeah.The difference between, and we don't do domestic transfers simply because the difference between domestic and international is, is, is so different in terms of, um, what needs to be done to deliver that instant experience.
Oftentimes with domestic transfers, you can leverage kind of domestic payment rails where internationally you really have to, you know, build a lot of those rails yourself.
And so that's what we've done and we've done better with, with, with more scale.So, um,
Yeah, different segments, even though I get that question a lot, Dean, because from a consumer standpoint, there's no reason the experience should seem that different.It's just the complexity to deliver it on the back end.
So that's why we don't see folks like Zelle offering an international payment capability.
Yeah.And they're still offering things for free to most clients, which is interesting.Um, so a lot of governance, a lot of compliance, obviously with international complexity was there.
So therefore you could carve out a business model, you know, the old pains and gains exercise.He went where the pain was.Um, so we have people like Western Union say they're at it in every country on the planet.
Are there countries you won't go into like, I don't know, Iran, North Korea, those kinds of joints.
Yeah, there are countries, you know, we are highly regulated, as we should be.I think that that's part of what it means to build and maintain trust with customers, which ultimately is what this business I've learned is about.
And as part of that regulation, yeah, there are certain countries that are on sanctions lists, or that we can't find partners that we trust to do identity verification and things like that on the disbursement side.
So we are in 170 countries, but we're not in every country partially for that reason.
Yeah, 170.Still got a ways to go.Yeah, I get it.I mean, like in Mexico, you've got all types of outlets from Walmart to OXO.You know, you probably can't find that kind of book.
consistent connectivity in some other countries, you're probably going to be more mom and pop shop, which is how a lot of the Western Union ones started out.So I was just doing a little back of the envelope here, looking off camera with my pen.
Um, so if it is a $1.8 trillion market, my I'm tagging your market share, probably three to 4%, which is great because you have nowhere to go, but up is, is that right?Yep.Just about 3%.Exactly.Yep. So as a growth guy, that's a good story.
Can we talk about your growth plans, growth innovation, how you approach it, what's it look like, what's next, what can you tell us about that you're working on?
Yeah, there's lots of opportunity for growth in our business first, which a lot of companies I think kind of struggle with, where is there any growth opportunity?For us, it's about where do we focus because there's lots of opportunities to grow.
And I break it down to a few areas.I mean, one is lots of opportunity to grow in the existing markets that we're in.Um, and I went back to that trust component.Yep.There is a reason that people still send money via physical cash locations.
And that is because they trust that local person or that local store in their community.And so the shift is happening, but the reason we're only 3% and have lots of room to grow in, in existing countries,
We've been in for a long time is because we're still building that trust and that's another benefit of scale right because.
Talk to me about this on earnings call yesterday but there was a customer example that shared that she loved using remotely with five friends and i use it so existing markets is one.
The second is new markets that we launched there's lots of opportunity in new markets.Add that we did we just recently launched though and i'm using example of that sub-saharan africa example of that.
And then the third is what I'd call like adjacent new use cases we can solve given the platform we built.And so right now our product is used for, you know, individuals, but there's no reason we can't offer it to what we call micro small businesses.
There are other companies that serve medium and large businesses, but if you think about sole proprietorships, you know, really small businesses,
work to customize our product so we can serve those customers better in terms of what we call KYB, know your business as opposed to know your customer.
But lots of opportunity to serve those use cases as well as deepen the last thing, the last fourth area is deepen relationships with our existing customers by broadening the services that we offer them.So lots of opportunities across all those areas.
Yeah, it's a classical mix of, you know, new products to new customers, new products to new customers, which is the harder one to go into.And current products to new customers and markets, you can actually hit on all the boxes.
I love SMB for you guys, because, you know, the amount of gig, the percentage of gig workers around the world, depending on how you count it, is over 40%, depending on how you're actually calculating it.
So that's where a lot of the money is transacted.Do you see it from an e-com kind of platform?It's like, okay, I've got a site, I'm selling stuff around the world.
You know, most of those people are using credit cards, but there's a lot of emerging, you know, economies where they're not doing that.Or is it more, cause some of that SMB is more, you know, in country versus cross borders.Do you see both?
It's a wide range but it is individuals who might have you know wonder that might be somebody moved from the philippines the us and has like one or two either contractors or employees in the philippines that there you know paying.
And so when are you trying to use our platform is the sole proprietorship owned by one person.
When they get to the compliance section to fill out their information, instead of having a name and address and social security number or tax ID, they need to enter in the business information.
It's those kind of very small businesses that we think we can serve well.
Yeah.That's why you called it micro SMBs.
Exactly. Can you mention governance and compliance or maybe i did it sounds like a boring topic and just handling it in the u.s.is one thing you have to do that across a hundred and seventy countries and varying degrees of quarter.
How do you deal with that i mean how many people do you have just working on that stuff.
Yeah, well, I assure you it is it is I view it as more exciting than than than boring, although some may view it as boring, you know, our second hire as a company was our compliance officer came from and came from Amazon where he was compliance officer for Amazon payments, and he was with the company for plus or minus 10 years.
Our current compliance officer used to be the chief compliance officer for Google.So first is you hire the right folks.Second, as a technology company, it's really important to
Productize as much compliance as possible which both decreases the risk is all centralized we're not dealing with physical cash locations for when customers give us money we're linking that to a bank account routing number and then making sure that our compliance team has all the tools and systems both to identify any sort of unwanted activity as well as.
make sure that we are you know have all the systems to do you know the various reviews so it's a constant journey but it's one that we are serious about me best a lot.
Yeah, and I called it boring just to kind of, so everybody would just listen up.
Cause there's so many, there's so many reboot lessons here about, you know, finding, um, you know, inside the boring zones, finding these opportunities to create markets, not just totally not just products and companies, but actually all new markets and ways for people to do whatever commerce things, all that stuff.
And to your point, and to your point, there are so many companies that have been started trying to help broadly e-commerce.We're a specific segment, you know, but broadly e-commerce with both, you know, fraud compliance tools.
And, you know, if you go to money 2020, which is one of the bigger FinTech conferences that happened, uh, this week, actually a lot of businesses out there to your point are being built in the quote, like boring area of, um, uh,
risk management, which is actually pretty exciting.
Yeah.Some of them are hacking away at it.I guess my point was, if you didn't invest in that, um, logic and commitment in your culture right away, you probably wouldn't be a billion dollars at this point.What about hacking though?We must get hacked.
Well, I mean, probably while we're recording this podcast, your company's probably being hacked every minute, but you seem like a big target for people to grab cash.Is that, uh, is that, um, an issue?
definitely invest a lot in our security, reliability, and our fraud loss systems.So yeah, I think that it's actually it's, it's more of an opportunity if you get it done in the right way.
But to your point, it takes the right culture, the right investment.And that's an ongoing journey, like we'll never arrived, so to speak.It's something that we constantly invest in, to try to make sure we're ahead of the curve there.
Yeah, and that's how you answer a question when you're a public company.We've had some cybersecurity CEOs, and it's a mess.It's an absolute mess out there.And you actually are solving some of those cross-border problems, really, with your platform.
You touched on culture, so everybody wants to know.You're Seattle-based, a little different culture from Silicon Valley, Chicago, New York, Austin, Boston. And you've got almost 3,000 employees.They're not all there.
I guess, what is your ideal culture?What have you evolved to?And how do you keep that going as you go from a billion to two billion?
Yeah, yeah, totally.So if you look at
A lot of companies say the word culture but i was trying to think of another word but it just came out so yeah no it's it's what it is the word we use to but i think it's more to define what we mean by culture at least which is.
How people interact and how people get things done in addition to what's being delivered right the outcomes.
So if that's the definition, I think that human interaction is complex, and a lot of companies get it wrong by saying, here are the five words we're going to put on a wall.
And to be clear, to the point of rebooting and learning, we did that at the beginning.Like, we had a value called relationships.
The challenge with a value called relationships, as opposed to now a more comprehensive list of remotely values that you can see on our site, is the fact that if you put it to the test, the way I put it to the test is what I call the bookends.
You integrate it into the performance review system, and you interview it into the interview system.
And processes and it was really hard to be brief to say hey this person is really good or not so good relationships but it's more specific if you look at our values is that three minutes involved into things like.
Constructively direct is one of our values or be a compassionate partner is one of our values. And those are more concrete examples for the interaction that we expect at remotely.
And so for us, it's about defining the values, you can see those on our site, it's a longer list, it's about integrating them into those bookends.And then what I say is the magic in between.
And then it's about refreshing those values every year to not having them be memorizable, and always viewing them as a growth mindset.Like I, I
work on my own development plan every year i share with company there's always a value or two that i'm working on and so those are a few thoughts i can talk a lot about values and culture but it's constant journey and i think we've taken a slightly more intentional approach to it.
Hey man i like the refresh that's good seems like you're very open uh honest blunt culture as well but yeah how to interact and how to get shit done is probably
What comes to your budget and mention the word family people usually mention that culture and i go yeah how did that go on your last layoff.So family is interesting what you can act like when you're not really really a family.
So many other things to get into this growth journey, because as you go to two billion, maybe talk about your partner network, the value of the partner network, because some of the companies I rattled off are actually partners, not competitors.
And how do you see that mix helping you double the size of this company?It seems like the partnership play is pretty important here.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.If you look at where partnerships come in across the kind of ecosystem where we operate.We collect funds in about 30 countries.So customers can send from Europe, Canada, US, 30 countries around the globe, right?
And there are partners that are important.Like if you look at partnership with Visa that we've talked about in order to collect funds, a lot of bank partners to be able to collect funds.But we also separately where we collect funds are
a regulated money transmitter.
And so we do a lot, we built a lot of our own infrastructure on the origination side for the disbursement side, which is in over 100 countries, well over 100 is, and that's in, you know, Philippines, India, Mexico, countries across Africa, Latin America, etc.
We partner to your point with some of the names you mentioned, like if you're sending money to Mexico, you can send it to a Walmart location.
That's just one of many partners, but we have partners across the globe that enable us to send to those five billion, as I mentioned, bank accounts and mobile wallets and over 400,000 cash pickup locations.So partnerships is important for us.
And I think as we've gotten more scale, we've gotten a lot of expertise on how to actually forge those partnerships, do the integration in a way that's very customer centric and deliver a service that's fast and at the right price.
Yeah, because some of those, so back to Walmart, it's always fun to pick on the big dogs.They're a partner, but also Intra US, it's a big cash pickup joint.I've picked up money at Walmart before for things we've sold on, we were moving or something.
And the guy's like, well, I'll send the money via Walmart.I'm like, what?And sure enough, they gave me a wad of cash.I didn't even know they had that business.
But the, this coopetition thing is interesting, but so you're 170 countries, 30 are really the originators.Is that because that's more of the economic channels?
That's where the money's being accumulated and then sent to places either where they came from or what?I mean, that's how Western union in Mexico works.Mostly a lot of it's southbound traffic versus northbound.
Is that still playing in your algorithms now?
Yeah, yeah, a lot of if you look at our core service, it's folks sending money mostly from developed countries to developing countries broadly.
And the reason that it flows that way is yeah, you think about like a Filipino who's who moves to the US and Part of the reason our customers have moved to a new country is to build a better life for themselves and their family back home.
And so our customers make these inspiring journeys and then they use the term duty, obligation.People are sending to their family members, their parents that they're away from, their kids that they're away from, their close loved ones.
And it's for basic living expenses oftentimes or it could be for, you know, University tuition, a wide range of things.
So that's why the money flows there and the stories behind our customers journeys and the impact that remittances make are just unbelievably inspiring.
And you see that mix changing over time as you look at the next five years and how you want to grow more originating countries or intra country?
I think, yeah, I mean, I think our vision is really to transform consumer cross-border payments.And so I think that it can be expanded beyond developed to developing countries and the infrastructure we build enables us to do that.
Yeah, and SMB wouldn't hurt that as well.What's been some of the biggest challenges you've faced?I can almost rattle them off from a PowerPoint deck.I mean, you've probably seen it all over 14 years, but yeah, what's been your toughest?
Yes so many um i would say.Couple examples come to mind and this is true for any growth company and you know that dean from your experience to in terms of you know various growth companies even part of but i think that.In the very very early days.
I started the business after living in Nairobi, Kenya, and I saw how far M-Peso, which was one of the mobile wallets there, had really transformed domestic financial services.
So I moved back to the US, got a license first in the state of Washington, because you have to get money transmission licenses in pretty much every state individually.
And we offered a product to send money to, we chose the Philippines first as our market because it's for a bunch of reasons.Yeah.It was our first country.And so, um, and a lot larger and more expensive than Kenya.
And we said, okay, well, the vision is going to be sending money from, you know, bank account or debit card to a mobile wallet.And we partnered with a mobile wallet there.Um,
Nobody wanted to use it like nobody used it because the market just not had mobile wallets adopted never remember.
You know my co-founder and i can see that a little bit in washington we set up like a physical location actually interact with customers that was outside of like a old school legacy remittance provider.
Customers want to use them we went to the philippines we really got to know what you know how commerce was down there and people just weren't using the mobile wallet and so we had to pivot to a wider range of disbursement locations but those pivots were hard because the whole pitch and vision of the company those early days were hey send money from a mobile phone to mobile wallet now the fascinating thing is fourteen years later.
mobile wallets in the philippines of completely transformed how financial services are done there now that is a very popular disbursement option is to send money into a gcash wallet.
But we were just too early and so we had to pivot and you can't change customer behavior in certain areas but.We're right we're just too early and by kind of pivoting and adjusting. Eventually, that has happened in the Philippines.
But as I mentioned, it's different in every country.And we've had to adapt to that as we've grown the business.Other challenges growing a company and raising capital and all those, I can talk about those and tough times.
Raising capital, that's always fun.They never want to give you the money when you need it.It's usually now when you're doing great.What would you run into there?
Well, the nice thing about where we're at now is, you know, as a public company, you know, we posted last quarter, our first quarter that was positive from a net income standpoint.And, you know, overall, we have a really strong balance sheet.
So it's very different now in terms of, we want to always explain our vision and the value and make sure that the investors know that, but it's different when
as a subscale payments company when you're raising a series B and series C, because at that point we were reliant on capital.We were very much reliant on capital to accomplish the vision.And to your point- And a risky venture at that point too.
Yeah, exactly.We were definitely sub.I mean, we were tiny.I don't know our exact revenue, but we were tiny at that point.And a lot more risk.And so those were tough because you get the
50th no from an investor and keeping the confidence in the vision while seeing that we had to raise money by x date in order to not run out of funds.
Different ballgame in terms of stress at that point and also more stressful than like the super early days because the very super early stage, you know, it's like three co-founders, you all kind of know the risk you're getting into and in series B, series C, we were like 50 or 100 folks.
It was stressful.And so... It's a big burn without the revenue. Yeah keeping my head on my shoulders and.
Maintaining that confidence, maintaining focus and long term vision because investors can kind of, at that point, I remember if I showed a sniff of fear, then it was investors can pick up on that.
And so just staying grounded, having an amazing team around me, and then just perseverance.I think that's an often under appreciated entrepreneurial trait.Some folks think it's all about the idea.
A lot of it is grit, tenacity and perseverance, something that I actually our customers have that I'm very much inspired by.
I needed that in our Series B, Series C kind of phase, because without that, I don't think we would have gotten those fundraisers done.
And since we've gotten them done, had the capital, it's been a great return for those investors, and it was critical for us at the time.
Yeah, sounds like you led through some tough times.How would your folks describe your leadership?I don't want to use the word style, but just your approach to growing the business.
I would say one of our values that was in our last we got refreshed but for the purpose of this podcast is it is a reboot the reboot of our values we added a value called lead authentically and.
I think that yeah i think i think that's i think that's a key part of my my my leadership style and we actually remove the value that was be transparent which i think authenticity and transparency are different and authenticity is something one can live up to as a leader for transparency.
Not just for CEO, for everyone.You have to use judgment in terms of what you're sharing, not only for managers, for, you know, people on the team.And so I, I would say authenticity, lead authentically is probably what, what some folks would say.
And having a growth mindset and owning when I've made mistakes and, you know, can and need to improve.
Cause I make mistakes a lot. Yeah and as a CEO you know some of us have run private companies and transform them into public what was your biggest.Challenge that was a big shift for you personally what was it like would you learn.
Yeah i think i think not all private companies not all public companies are the same and what i mean by that is.
You know, for a closely held private company that had, you know, three investors, closely held investors, very different than where we were at.We had raised hundreds of millions of dollars over, I don't know, eight plus rounds, probably.
And so there was, people didn't call it investor relations, but there was still a lot of like, work that I put into making sure I was communicating and interacting with our investors, private investors, but investors in a, in a thoughtful manner.
And actually, if you go back to the very early days, Unconventionally when we raise even like a seed round i would send like a quarterly.Quarterly like newsletter to our investors just keep them informed and so i think that in that respect.
When we went from being private to public, there's still investor interaction, investor relations.I'd say the biggest difference is there's just a lot more structure to being a public company.You have a quarterly earning cycle.
You can talk to investors during the open period after that.After that, you can't chat with investors, so it's 100% heads down.It's still pretty heads down even when it's during that open window of being able to chat with investors.
But that cyclicality has pluses and minuses to it.But it's just a different type of investor relations, even though people don't call it investor relations as a private company.I think it's actually really important as well.
No, I like what you did there.That's pretty core reboot advice.It's like act like a public company long before you are, even if you never are, because some companies really shouldn't go public.But if you act that way.Totally.
Not maybe the expense side of it, but yeah, it kind of paves the way.Any quick advice you give to people that want to come work for you?
Any quick advice I would say one would be look at our values and make sure they align with you know who you are as a leader and you can add elements of where we can do better in some of those areas that they resonate is probably the right word.
And i would say that really is a place that like our values are no particular order but customer centricity is number one.And i'm except that it's in no particular order except customer centricity which is number one and so i what i would say is.
There's a lot, you know, different companies have different things that motivate the team and the leadership.
And I do think there's an element of authentic care about our customers, who they are, what their journeys are, the impact the service makes in their lives and their families' lives.
So the advice I would have is have a connection and passion for the mission that we're on.I like it.
Thanks for joining us today, Matt.Appreciate it. Thanks, Dean.Great to see ya.
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