Sep 15, 2026 · 30 min · 11 segments
In this episode of the Give First podcast, David Cohen sits down with Matt Oppenheimer, founder and chair of Remitly, the cross-border payments company he grew from a mall booth into a billion-dollar…
Matt OppenheimerGuest
David CohenHost
Brad FeldHost
Yeah, well, you know, my view as an entrepreneur, and I, I always knew I wanted to start a company, was find a problem that for me made a difference in the world and two, uh, one, made a difference in the world, and then two, uh, was just a big enough problem to make a, you know, uh, to build a venture backed, backed company.
And so for me, I took the road less traveled really in search of that problem.
So I was working for Barclays Bank in Nairobi, Kenya, and I was running, um, I was head of mobile and internet banking initiatives for Barclays Bank Kenya.
And the problem, not the solution, but the problem that I saw was that sending money myself was expensive, inconvenient, all stuff that we know.
And at the same time, there was a mobile wallet, this was fifteen years ago, but called M-PESA, that's transformed domestic financial services in Kenya.
And so it seemed like the right time to build, you know, a, a new way to send money internationally, and there's two trillion dollars that's sent every year.
[lip smack] Now, to your point about how the solution, not the problem, but the solution has evolved and changed.
Let's just build like a search engine to make it more transparent." And we pivoted in the first month, um, for reasons that I can get into.
We then pivoted from just mobile wallets, um, to a wide range of financial services, or sorry, a wide range of, uh, of disbursement options.
And then, um, we've expanded our vision to transform lives with trusted financial services that transcends borders, which is broader than just payments.
And so I, I highlight that because the problem was what I faced in Kenya and what my friends fa- faced, but the solution I think is incre- incredibly important for entrepreneurs to be very agile and nimble on the solution, but to have this like grit and tenacity on a problem that they're so super passionate about and for me it was cross-border financial services were just broken.
Like, I think you have to be obsessed with the actual problem, and you almost have to be willing to just toss the solution out and do something different, right, once you, as you go through it, and that's the hallmark of pretty much every successful company.
And when it's not, it's kind of like you just hit a seam and got lucky right away, right? It's, you, you very often don't have it.
Yeah, well, you know, my view as an entrepreneur, and I, I always knew I wanted to start a company, was find a problem that for me made a difference in the world and two, uh, one, made a difference in the world, and then two, uh, was just a big enough problem to make a, you know, uh, to build a venture backed, backed company.
And so for me, I took the road less traveled really in search of that problem.
So I was working for Barclays Bank in Nairobi, Kenya, and I was running, um, I was head of mobile and internet banking initiatives for Barclays Bank Kenya.
And the problem, not the solution, but the problem that I saw was that sending money myself was expensive, inconvenient, all stuff that we know.
And at the same time, there was a mobile wallet, this was fifteen years ago, but called M-PESA, that's transformed domestic financial services in Kenya.
And so it seemed like the right time to build, you know, a, a new way to send money internationally, and there's two trillion dollars that's sent every year.
[lip smack] Now, to your point about how the solution, not the problem, but the solution has evolved and changed.
Let's just build like a search engine to make it more transparent." And we pivoted in the first month, um, for reasons that I can get into.
We then pivoted from just mobile wallets, um, to a wide range of financial services, or sorry, a wide range of, uh, of disbursement options.
And then, um, we've expanded our vision to transform lives with trusted financial services that transcends borders, which is broader than just payments.
And so I, I highlight that because the problem was what I faced in Kenya and what my friends fa- faced, but the solution I think is incre- incredibly important for entrepreneurs to be very agile and nimble on the solution, but to have this like grit and tenacity on a problem that they're so super passionate about and for me it was cross-border financial services were just broken.
Like, I think you have to be obsessed with the actual problem, and you almost have to be willing to just toss the solution out and do something different, right, once you, as you go through it, and that's the hallmark of pretty much every successful company.
And when it's not, it's kind of like you just hit a seam and got lucky right away, right? It's, you, you very often don't have it.
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