Welcome to another episode of Category Visionaries — the show that explores GTM stories from tech's most innovative B2B founders. In today's episode, we're speaking with Patrick Mollard, CEO & Co-Founder of Fipto, a blockchain payments platform that has raised $16 Million in funding.
Here are the most interesting points from our conversation:
- Origins of Fipto: Patrick identified significant gaps in international payments during his previous fintech experience. This realization led to Fipto's founding in 2022, aiming to merge traditional payment best practices with blockchain technology.
- Building the Platform: Fipto's journey to its first paying customer involved significant investment in product and tech, including building a core banking system and obtaining necessary licenses in France and Luxembourg.
- API-First Approach: Fipto initially focused on API solutions but developed a platform to better sell and demonstrate these APIs. Their ultimate goal is to integrate with third-party systems like treasury management systems.
- Market Education and Adoption: Educating the market on blockchain's benefits, such as speed, transparency, and cost-efficiency, has been crucial. They target early adopters and payment service providers while anticipating broader corporate adoption as regulatory clarity improves.
- Fundraising Insights: Patrick emphasized the importance of securing a lead investor to set the terms of the funding round, which simplifies and accelerates the fundraising process.
- Geographic Focus: Identifying ideal customer profiles and key payment corridors, particularly in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, has been vital for Fipto's go-to-market strategy.
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[MUSIC] >> Welcome to Category Visionaries, the show dedicated to exploring exciting visions for the future from the founders or in the front lines building it. In each episode, we'll speak with a visionary founder who's building a new category or reimagining an existing one. We'll learn about the problem they solve, how their technology works, and unpack their vision for the future. I'm your host, Brett Stapper, CEO of Frontlines Media. Now, let's dive right into today's episode. [MUSIC] >> Hey everyone, and welcome back to Category Visionaries. Today, we're speaking with Patrick Millard, CEO and co-founder of Fifth Hill. A blockchain payment platform that's raised 16 million in funding. Patrick, welcome to the show. >> Thank you, Brett, for hosting me. >> No problems. We're joking there in the pre-intro. I did a very American pronunciation of your last name. I butchered it. I didn't want to insult you with trying to say it with that nice French accent. So how do we properly say your last name? >> I think no doubt, but it's fine noise. >> All right, amazing, amazing. Patrick, let's dive right in. Talk to us about what you're building today. >> So today at Fifth Hill, we're building an infrastructure, a payment infrastructure that is an alternative to what is existing. I think we'll be discussing this later on in the podcast, but basically, the ambition is to combine the best practices of traditional payments with the best of the new technology that is being talked about a lot at the moment, being blockchain. >> Take us back to the early days, the founding of the company 2022. What was going on in your world that put you in a position to have this idea and decide to go out and build this company? >> Yeah, so from my previous experience, I was working for FinTech doing international B2B payments and actually made three statements that led to the founding and the creation of Fifth Hill. The first one is that I saw that international payments were still not up to the level of expectations of service of the corporate clients that do international payments in terms of speed, transparency, cost, predictability. That, to me, is linked to the technologies that are being used today, which is Swiss messaging broadly and correspondent banking networks. So that, to me, was the first statement. The second one is that we saw and I saw that there were new tools available to corporate clients to perform these types of flows, again, international payments. Mostly, those new tools were based on blockchain technology, which was interesting because structurally, they solve most of the payments I just mentioned, so speed, transparency, predictability, and cost. But they bring along quite a few challenges also for corporates that want to have access to these new type of tools. How do I open a wallet? How do I make sure it's done in a secure and safe manner? How do I make sure also that the flows I receive and send out are done in full compliance? And also, how do I get access to the corporate governance layer that I'm used to as a corporate? So about signature thresholds and things like that. So that was interesting also because that was something that was not existing. And the third statement is basically has become our vision is we're convinced that there will be more and more financial services based on blockchain technology in the future. So the mission of FIPTO today is to facilitate access to these new financial services to corporates. And talk to us about the time from when you launched the platform to when you had your paying customer, your first paying customer, you had revenue coming in, how much time passed? Actually, quite a bit of time because we are in, I think, a great industry with a lot of potential, but also quite complex. Building the platform required us to build a whole core banking system. So from a solutions perspective, it took quite a bit of time. We're 30 people today at FIPTO. Took third of the company is product and tech. So we invested heavily in that. And also, we are licensed. We are a regulated industry. So we needed to obtain the licenses required to operate. So that's what we've done in March 2023 when we got registered as a virtual asset service provider with the AMF in France. We also recently obtained our registration as of us in Luxembourg. So all in all, we were able to launch a real first version of the platform and the solution early this year. And we got our first paying customers in Q1 of this year. And how hard is that working in an industry like blockchain, where there's just a lot of volatility, even just from 2022? I guess the volatility has been positive, probably, right? From 2022 to today, it's been good. But the year is leading up to it, a lot of volatility. What's that like building in an industry where there is so much volatility? Yeah, so for us, volatility, when it's a bear market, we say we're not too impacted because we're building on the technology behind it. So the blockchain and we at FIPTO are totally agnostic of the tokens that our clients want to use to perform their payments. So in a bull market, I must be honest and also say that we are not that much impacted, although, and I will come back to that later. I think for us, what the critical point is adoption. And obviously, in a bull market, that's obviously a positive when institutional, like BlackRock are investing heavily in ETFs and things like that. That's obviously a supporting factor for us. Makes a lot of sense. This show is brought to you by Frontlines Media, a podcast production studio that helps B2B founders launch, manage, and grow their own podcast. Now, if you're a founder, you may be thinking, "I don't have time to host a podcast. I've got a company to build." Well, that's exactly what we built our service to do. You show up in host and we handle literally everything else. To set up a call to discuss launching your own podcast, visit frontlines.io/podcast. Now, back to today's episode. And what's that go-to-market motion look like? How are you acquiring customers today? So that's from the assumption as obviously being an important focus area for us. We started by building the solution as an API first solution. So basically today, crypto offers three main APIs. One that enables our clients to open wallets in the coins and tokens they want to use to make their payments. And also, obviously, Ivan accounts in euros to be able to send us the funds in order to use cryptocurrencies afterwards. So that's the first API, so management of wallets. And Ivan accounts, the second one is converting from one token or currency to the other. And the third API is receiving and sending funds out of these wallets and accounts. So that was the focus API first. But then we realized that actually selling an API is very difficult. So we developed a platform that is the first client of our APIs. And the logic behind that is that we are convinced that in the end, our ideal go-to-market strategy is to be able to integrate our APIs into third-party systems and softwares that are actually used by corporate clients. So for us, treasury management systems are great targets. And we are actually working today with Kiriba to integrate our solutions in their solutions. So that's the idea. But again, we build the platform to be able to sell it to customers in order to convince the players like Kiriba and other TMSs and potentially ERPs that they should actually integrate us. And yeah, from our experience, that's the only way to go. What about marketing from a marketing strategy perspective? What does the strategy look like right now? Or what are you thinking it's going to look like as you move ahead into the next six months, 12 months? What's that marketing strategy going to look like? Yeah, so we are convinced that we need to be seen as reference actor in our field. So we are focusing very much on content and creating useful context for our clients, also fostering adoption, as I mentioned. So that's basically what we are focused on today. We also see that a lot of our business is done through events. So a lot of marketing efforts around these type of things. But yeah, content and LinkedIn ads are probably the two focus areas today for us. What about from a competitive landscape perspective? How do you think about the competitive landscape? Is it this blue ocean where there's a large market there that you have to try to convince to get bought into blockchain? Or are you battling for a small share of the market that's crowded? And there's a lot of competitors in the space. So I think from a competitive standpoint, there are a few actors in the market today, which for us is reassuring because it means we're not the only ones convinced by the trajectory and where we're heading. The fact is that today we see that obviously most of the first clients we have on the platform are early adopters. So clients that are actually exposed to web 3 and the blockchain from the activity they are actually doing. So those are clients you actually don't need to convince. The adoption is already done and they are testing the flows on the platform. So it's great to have them and we'll be happy to grow with them. We also see that there is strong adoptions from the payment experts of the world. So payment service providers, they are the ones that see the advantages of the blockchain in terms of speed, transparency, cost, predictability, everything that I mentioned before. And that's a very large market with a lot of volume. So that's where we're focusing on today. And in the future, in my view, obvious that all corporate clients will use blockchain technology in some way of shape to perform their flows. And that's a 200 trillion revenue market. So it's a youth market. What are those conversations like with the market as you're educating them about blockchain? Is the sentiment there? Like, do people get it? Are they bought in? Do they believe? Or does it still take a lot of convincing and persuading? I think things changed quite heavily over the last. So we created a company two years ago. I think it has already changed quite a bit. So as I mentioned, I think there are the categories I mentioned. So the clients exposed to Web3 and blockchain. They don't need convincing and the adoption is already done there. On the PSP side, I think that's already done as well. If you look at larger corporates, I think that the discussions we have today are quite different from the ones we had two years ago. They are all convinced of what blockchain can bring to them. And they also see very specific use cases where they can use blockchain, whether it's repatriating funds or optimizing their internal flows or adding an alternative payment method, for instance, or even paying suppliers in complex geographies. So they see the real strength of this new technology. And I think adoption there will be facilitated when they are able to convince their legal departments, compliance departments that they can go for it. And I think there the fact that regulation is becoming more and more clear is helpful. The fact that institutional players, again, like BlackRock and others are investing heavily in the field is interesting. And the fact that stablecoins and potentially in the future, central bank digital currencies are being investigated. And stablecoins are gaining a lot of fractions. Traction is very interesting. This show is brought to you by the Global Talent Co., a marketing leader's best friend in these times of budget cuts and efficient growth. We help marketing leaders find, hire, vet, and manage amazing marketing talent for 50 to 70 percent less than their US and European counterparts. To book a free consultation, visit globaltalent.co. How do you think about the market category that you're in? What is that market category? For us, we're building the alternative payment infrastructure to what is existing. So don't have a real name for it, but that's where we see us. Now, as I mentioned there in the intro, you've raised 16 million to date. What have you learned about fundraising throughout this journey? Throughout this journey and the previous one, I think what makes a huge difference is your ability to convince a lead investor, whether it's for your free seed round or your seed round or even in later series. I think what is paramount is to be able to convince one lead investor that will put the key items of the round on a piece of paper, on a term sheet. And from that point, everything seems a lot easier. So I think that's really the most important thing to focus on is to make sure that you have that relationship with an investor and that will actually make your round and your life a lot easier. More founders that are building B2B blockchain technology, what advice would you have for them just from a go-to-market perspective based on everything that you learn? I think it's important to identify where your market is. I think from our experience, we didn't focus enough on our ICPs and defining our ICPs quickly enough. So really determining who are ideal customer profiles and where they were being based in France. And it seemed to us obvious that it was Europe, but actually we see that the corridors where blockchain payments make the most sense are corridors where the existing technology are maybe less relevant. So it's on countries in Latin America, in Africa, in Asia, and also between those geographies. So performing payments between Latin America and Asia. So I think the most important thing is probably to really identify where your ICPs are and also from a geographical standpoint where you need to be focusing on. Now, final question for you. Let's zoom out three to five years into the future. What's the big picture vision look like here? For us, what's important, as I mentioned earlier, is to be able to integrate our solutions into third-party softwares. And I think the big picture is also that we want to start with payments because that's probably the most obvious use case for blockchain today. We want to be at payments, what internet was at email. So really facilitating almost point-to-point payments. But we are convinced that there is a whole world of new financial services that will be used by corporate clients based on blockchain technology in the future. And again, we want to be the actor that facilitates access to those financial services for corporate clients. Amazing. I love it. All right, Patrick, we are up on time. So we'll have to wrap here for founders that are listening in that want to follow along with your journey. Where should they go? They want to follow us. So they need to go to our website, www.fiptow.com. And we're also on LinkedIn, obviously, and we can be followed there. Amazing. Patrick, thank you so much for taking the time. This has been a blast. Thank you, Brett. Have a great day. This episode of Category Visionaries is brought to you by Frontlines Media, Silicon Valley's leading podcast production studio. If you're a B2B founder looking for help launching and growing your own podcast, visit frontlines.io/podcast. And for the latest episodes, search for Category Visionaries on your podcast platform of choice. Thanks for listening, and we'll catch you on the next episode. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
