Financial technology

I joined Girl Stage Venture Fund Georgian, where we were investing in B2B SaaS, which now people started calling vertical SaaS.

There, I was actually lucky to be an early stage investor in Shopify, and I witnessed firsthand this evolution of a pure play SaaS company into practically payments and fintech.

Can't take any credit for what happened.

Tobi is an exceptional entrepreneur, and he drove this transition all by himself, and we were just lucky to have a front

row view into this

But I continued to invest in SaaS software in different industries.

And during pandemics here, I actually made a jump into an early stage fintech fund where I was investing in payments companies, insure tech, lending tech, banking tech.

That's where I started to develop a thesis around embedded finance.

Welcome to FinTech's DEI Discussions podcast series.

We are here today to celebrate the wins, raise awareness of the challenges, and walk the talk for inclusive change across the entire financial technology industry.

Today we are joined by Shannon Nutter, board member, financial services executive, and co-author of Walking on Broken Glass.

It's been such a pleasure talking to you today.

And I'm really, really excited to see the success of the book and urge everyone to get on the waiting list or to buy it if it's out when you listen to this.

So, Shannon, thank you so much for joining us on FinTech's DEI Discussions.

Let's listen.

Let's learn.

I was working in financial control.

And then I found a course at the time called financial technology because I knew that I wanted to also go to school, even though I was coming on a family basis.

I wanted to just go to school.

I felt it would help me integrate better.

So I chose a course called Financial Technology and I gave my all to it.

I chose more of tech-related, is it optional? Yes, so I did more of the tech-heavy parts.

And I did stop to understand the Contemporary Banking in Europe and all of that.

and I work in the payments bubble now since I would say roughly around 10 years.

It all came down when I was starting my career, I worked long time for IBM and then changed from IBM to a business partner of IBM and that got procured by a larger group and that group decided to do more business in FinTech payments and then also capital market space.

So they combined a couple of companies in that space and I was in charge as managing director of that company.

And then in March I changed to DPS.

and I work in the payments bubble now since I would say roughly around 10 years.

It all came down when I was starting my career, I worked long time for IBM and then changed from IBM to a business partner of IBM and that got procured by a larger group and that group decided to do more business in FinTech payments and then also capital market space.

So they combined a couple of companies.

in that space and I was in charge as managing director of that company.

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And...

FinTech was a very strong angle in India, right? Generally because of the population, the potential for credit.

I think most FinTech companies eventually land up there.

You've seen that with PhonePay, you've seen that with Google, Cred, all of them, right? We had probably spotted this back in 2014 itself when we started out with Shiller that the only way FinTech companies in India, which are consumer facing is going to make money is on the credit angle, right? Like you should be able to engage in lending and then the payments data and everything associated with that becomes underlying information for underwriting, right? So, yeah, we were nearly on the verge of shutting shop because Google Pay and Phone Pay launched UPI way before Chiller did.

And typically when you have two big guns entering into the market with significant backing, a third player does not immediately get funded, right? So the only viable option for us became like, you know, selling.

And luckily enough, Truecaller had its ambitions because it had a sizable user base built up already in India.

actual user base, user level referrals, recommendations, etc.

It's almost all organic growth.

It is allowed to change.

And I will tell you that working these last three years with a, you know, large FinTech company as a brand spokesperson, I have seen it every year.

We have meetings about what the brand objectives are, what the brand messaging for the year is.

And so it's so incredibly normal.