Faraz Kahn began losing his hair at age 21. Years later, when searching for startup business ideas, he focused on own experience. The result is Fully Vital, a direct-to-consumer seller of hair loss serums and supplements that he launched in 2021.

He and I recently spoke. We addressed his launch of Fully Vital and lessons learned afterward. Relying on agencies and consultants for customer acquisition is among his biggest regrets. “Don’t outsource revenue,” he says.

The entire audio of our conversation is embedded below. The transcript is edited for clarity and length.

Eric Bandholz: Give us a rundown of what you do.

Faraz Khan: I founded an ecommerce business in 2021 called Fully Vital. We make and sell hair wellness products mainly targeted at women over 40. I’ve been losing my hair since I was 21. I tried pharmaceuticals such as finasteride for a decade.

For years, I worked as a web developer and marketer in Los Angeles. In 2019 I decided to change careers and consider opportunities in ecommerce. I focused my search on longevity and being youthful. I started a podcast and interviewed leaders in the longevity field, but I wasn’t making money. So I looked at my own hair loss for ideas.

I researched extensively. Many companies sell stuff. I wanted to offer unique products to a broad audience. I went to international conventions. I flew to Thailand for a conference of hair transplant surgeons and stem cell experts. I learned enough there to realize the key to hair growth is doing many things simultaneously.

Working with physicians and scientists, I developed a serum and supplements for hair growth and density. Then, recently, we launched prodcuts for delaying gray hairs. I enlisted my friend Dr. Sandra Kaufmann, who’s written two books on longevity. She designed the protocol for delaying and reversing gray hairs. We now have two product lines.

I was new to ecommerce and didn’t know what I was doing. I’ve made a hundred mistakes, but here we are, still improving. I’ve got friends in the longevity space who are gracious enough to have me on their podcasts. Every time I do an episode, my messaging has gotten better. We discuss the science, how we developed our solution, and our target markets.

Part of my challenge is translating that authenticity into direct response marketing and Facebook ads. Our field requires education because many women, particularly, have tried many things for hair loss. We have to be authentic.

Bandholz: You’re offering subscriptions.

Khan: Yes. We’ve worked on the subscription offer to make it enticing, which involves educating the shopper. Our products take about 90 days to see results because of the hair cycle. With education, subscriptions have increased — about 40% in the last six months. Our goal is to convert 20% of all buyers into subscriptions.

We’ve focused much of our efforts on serum versus supplements because the margins are better. We need good margins to make advertising profitable.

Bandholz: What would you do differently if you could start over?

Khan: My biggest mistake was not focusing on Facebook ads, the cash cow for most direct-to-consumer businesses. I didn’t know Facebook and thought I wasn’t good enough. I’m not creative. I relied on agencies and consultants—with no results for those efforts. Our cost per acquisition exceeded $200, meaning negative margins. Then I went to Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas and met people profitably spending $10,000 per day on Facebook ads.

That led me to change my outlook. I got into Facebook, owned it, and began editing some of our ads. I learned when to change creative, how many hooks we need, and hurdles in the conversion path. I had to get in the weeds.

I’ve learned our strengths and differences from other sellers. Our messaging has improved. Facebook’s algorithm changes required us to double down on our messaging at every consumer touch point.

We tried TikTok Shop, but nothing moves the needle like Facebook. Now I spend most of my time there. Last fall, I retained an incredible creative strategist. She encouraged me to spend more on Facebook. It’s made a big difference for me to be involved in the details.

Don’t outsource revenue. That’s my advice to entrepreneurs.

Bandholz: Where can people buy your products?

Khan: Our website is FullyVital.com. I’m @FarazKhan1000 on X and @antiaginghacks on Instagram.

After securing licences in two significant European financial hubs, global payments firm Navro (previously known as Paytrix) successfully concluded a new funding round to bolster its reserves.

Its founder and CEO, Aran Brown, has spent the last 15 years scaling and transforming payments companies.

He has industrialised everything across FX, payouts, card issuing, payment acceptance, and open banking – and now he is using that experience, along with the founding team, to bring the Navro curation platform to online markets, so that complex payment flows are no longer a barrier to rapid growth and entry into new markets.

In this week’s In Profile, Brown delves into the company’s mission, recent achievements and the future of the fintech industry.

Tell us more about your company and its purpose

Navro launched to fill a gap in the market for an efficient, cost-effective, and streamlined international payment solution.  Up to now, businesses of all sizes aspiring to expand into new international markets have been faced with managing a diverse, complex and demanding range of service providers, payment gateways and regulatory authorities to move money from country A to B.

This drives up cost and adds friction.

In response, we have developed the world’s first payments curation platform, a new infrastructure approach that provides access to the best-in-class payment services – from payment acceptance to settlement accounts to payouts – in every region of the world, through one platform, one API, and one contract.

The transaction savings, speed and reduction in resource costs are dramatic.

What are some of your recent achievements you’d like to highlight?

We incorporated in 2022 so we’re still pretty young as a company and in terms of achievements we’ve set ourselves some ambitious targets. In that time we’ve successfully completed a series A funding round of $18.3million co-led by Unusual Ventures, Motive Partners and Bain Capital Ventures and more recently in February 2024 we completed an internal funding round of a further $14million. With the majority of funds retained from our Series-A investment round, we are well-capitalised for growth in the years to come.

We also recently obtained an EMI licence from the Central Bank of Ireland, which, alongside our UK EMI licence has opened us up to global businesses that require gateway payment services for the UK, Europe and beyond.

That said, I’d argue that nothing feels like more of an achievement than signing our first customer and seeing them transact across our platform – a moment to savour.

How did you get into the fintech industry?

I started my career as a trainee at Travelex, I was the only non-graduate of a thirteen-strong cohort. We were tasked with creating meetings for the sales team. Those that survived the process were promoted to business development representatives with revenue targets. I absolutely loved it.

To this day, I can say that it was one of the most enjoyable parts of my career.  From that point on it was heads down focusing on revenue and moving into different parts of the business. My last role at Travelex was running its enterprise business, pre-sale to Western Union. Learning by doing is something that I’ve tried to instil in the DNA of Navro.

What’s the best thing about working in the fintech industry?

There are always challenges that need to be solved, that’s fintech’s raison d’etre. Sometimes those challenges come from legacy IT and banking, sometimes they come from fintech itself.  Take how open banking has helped to unbundle financial services. Fintechs have emerged to provide specific B2B and B2C solutions. While these unbundled solutions, digitally native from the get-go, deliver greater speed and simplicity, businesses are starting to struggle with managing multiple suppliers.

Now fintech pioneers are starting to extend their range of services into adjacent spaces, consolidating solutions and simplifying the end-user experience – a rebundling of core services under fewer suppliers.  For consumers, this will increasingly take the form of a super app, whereas for businesses it will be via a super API.

What frustrates you most about the fintech industry? 

From the consumer’s perspective, innovation is constant – from being able to shop via livestream on platforms such as TikTok, to receiving enhanced loyalty experiences via QR codes, user experiences are becoming increasingly intuitive, sticky, fast and convenient.

Look beneath the surface though at what’s going on from a payments perspective, and it’s a tangled mess – which is not surprising. Whether it’s card transactions or payments running over SWIFT, a lot of the e-commerce money is moving around on 1970s infrastructure.

Up until now, attempts to upgrade the systems for cross-border payments have been tinkering around the edges. It’s a huge ship to turn, but we’ll start to see the emergence of digitally-native, cross-border payment solutions that provide genuine and comprehensive global capabilities rather than the reskinning of legacy infrastructure.

How have your previous roles influenced your career?

I think whatever role you do it always influences your career in some way, good or bad. I’ve been very fortunate to have had great inspirational leaders around me, many of whom I can still call on today for advice or to challenge a decision I am thinking of making.

Each job has always taught me something I didn’t know before. Perhaps that’s because, most of the roles I have had have been unique situations, turnaround roles or with a clear focus on an exit or repackaging an offering externally. These types of jobs tend to be really challenging, but also super rewarding. I’ve learnt never to assume anything and whatever you are told, there is usually a surprising twist heading your way!

What’s the best mistake you’ve ever made?

I joined a company a few years back that wanted to diversify significantly into other vertical markets, but I hadn’t appreciated just how much technical debt was in that business – it was almost impossible to change. Even though we looked at acquisitions, it became really clear there was just nothing we could do to make it something else. Whilst I loved being the CEO, I gave up trying to make it something it would never be.

I learned so much in a short period of time and today apply the lessons learned to every decision that Navro makes; is what we are building for the long term? is it scalable? and are the foundations set in such a way that we can pivot into new areas as we progress through our business and investment cycle?

What has the future got in store for your company?

We’re just getting started. It’s fair to say that we’ve moved at such a pace to get to where we are today and have surprised most with what we have achieved, whether that’s investment, regulation, or partnering with tier-one banks.

Now those stakeholders are waiting to see what we do with the ecosystem that we’ve created, in particular how we now ramp and scale the business. So we’re very much heads down, not getting distracted by fancy new things or concepts that are outside of our current focus or ideal client profile – we just have to deliver and nothing else matters.

Of course, over time, we have a clear vision that Navro can be the settlement infrastructure that powers commerce globally. There is a lot to that, but we see a huge opportunity ahead to simplify the locality of both receiving funds and paying them out. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been in this industry, or how much change you’ve seen, there is still a tonne of work to do.

What are the next key talking points of challenges for your industry as a whole?

Regulation is rightly a key focus for the payments industry. Our approach has always been to provide a gold standard service and that means putting in the work to achieve compliance and licences in tier-one markets such as the UK and Ireland. Our intention is to achieve the same in Canada and the US.

The pace of change, the high barriers to entry and ongoing regulatory scrutiny have created complex fintech layers where multiple providers power multiple platforms – payments orchestration.  This makes it harder and harder for customers to achieve the simplicity that is going to help their businesses operate smoothly and scale internationally. The challenge for payment service providers is to get as close to the source of payments as possible so that the service they offer isn’t a tangle of orchestration layers rather it’s a curated service that offers international payments and collections integration via a single API – this is what Navro does.

Showing traction and maintaining strong funding from the best investors has also never been more important, so much focus is on a runway of funding and capital requirements from regulators, and at Navro we never forget how lucky we are in this regard.

BGR is a media site covering consumer technology such as games and devices. Jonathan Geller launched the company in 2006 and sold it to Penske Media in 2010. He remains its president and general manager.

The site has long relied on organic search traffic, which it monetizes with advertising and affiliate commissions. But the tsunami of low-grade AI content has upended search rankings and thus BGR’s business.

He and I recently spoke. We addressed the future of search engines, the importance of branding, and more. The entire audio of our conversation is embedded below. The transcript is edited for clarity and length.

Eric Bandholz: Give us a rundown of who you are.

Jonathan Geller: I founded a site in 2006 called Boy Genius Report. We’re a tech-focused media company covering consumer gadgets, games, and entertainment.  Penske Media acquired us in 2010, and we’re now known as BGR. I’ve been running it since then as president and general manager.

Penske is a collection of media brands and businesses that include Variety, Rolling Stone, Robb Report, South by Southwest, Golden Globes, New Year’s Eve Dick Clark Productions, Billboard, and more.

Working with Penske has been amazing. Selling was a huge decision, although for me it wasn’t an exit. Penske told me, “Sell your business, come on board, and let’s run this together — build it and grow it.”

My journey with Penske in the ever-changing media landscape has been incredible. I’m having fun.

Bandholz: Ecommerce is hard, but it seems media is getting slaughtered.

Geller: Everyone’s feeling it. It’s challenging for many digital publishers. BGR is digital — a website monetized through ads and affiliate revenue. Other businesses in the Penske portfolio have revenue alternatives such as events and subscriptions. Some still do print and licensing.

The last year or two has produced 10 times the change as the decade before. We’re in the age of AI and spammy, low-quality content, and it’s insanely challenging. No one has any idea what the future looks like. Google’s CEO has no idea what this will look like in two years, and neither do the CEOs of Microsoft and OpenAI. Everyone can guess, but no one knows with certainty. We’re in the interim, trying to make the best assumptions and forecasts.

Bandholz: AI content has swamped Google and other search engines.

Geller: It’s a crazy turbulent period. AI went from 0 to 100 overnight. But that’s starting to simmer down. I think search engines will normalize. We’ve all regarded Google as a preeminent technology company. The last 18 months have seen a tsunami of AI-generated content and a ton of black hat SEO. Folks are trying to take advantage of the algorithm, throwing up content. And it’s working. They’re ranking, getting traffic, and monetizing it.

Google launched its latest core algorithm update a few weeks ago. Its primary goal is “tackling spammy, low-quality content.” Hopefully it resets organic rankings in a good way.

But over the next couple of years, having a strong branded search presence will be essential for sites dependent on organic traffic. Customers and prospects want to shop or access your site directly, which also signals to Google that people are searching for your brand. It has authority and satisfies search intent.

Bandholz: Google is lost. Organic search rarely produces meaningful results.

Geller: Media sites see the same thing. Search results are advertising-focused. The optimist in me says that this will reset. Google is making changes. There’s a new head of search — the previous person came from the ad side. Hopefully, it means the results are more organic-centric. But, to be sure, the broad direction is pay-to-play.

Google has long been a huge traffic driver, but so have Facebook, Pinterest, Flipboard, NewsBreak, and SmartNews. You might not have heard of some of those platforms, but they offer scale and traffic. At some point, there will probably be a traffic alternative to Google. Until then, capturing visitors from organic search will be very challenging.

So from a direct-to-consumer merchant perspective, publishing content to rank organically is increasingly difficult. But authentic content that speaks to your audience remains worthwhile. It’s another reason for folks to visit your site. But, again, optimizing keywords via, say, Semrush or Ahrefs is a much harder strategy.

I see Google’s ad products growing significantly with broad keyword match, Performance Max campaigns, and getting rid of cookies. Unfortunately, we’re in a black box organically.

Bandholz: Where can folks find you?

Geller: Our site Bgr.com. I’m @boygenius on X and @jonathangeller on LinkedIn.

BGR is a media site covering consumer technology such as games and devices. Jonathan Geller launched the company in 2006 and sold it to Penske Media in 2010. He remains its president and general manager.

The site has long relied on organic search traffic, which it monetizes with advertising and affiliate commissions. But the tsunami of low-grade AI content has upended search rankings and thus BGR’s business.

He and I recently spoke. We addressed the future of search engines, the importance of branding, and more. The entire audio of our conversation is embedded below. The transcript is edited for clarity and length.

Eric Bandholz: Give us a rundown of who you are.

Jonathan Geller: I founded a site in 2006 called Boy Genius Report. We’re a tech-focused media company covering consumer gadgets, games, and entertainment.  Penske Media acquired us in 2010, and we’re now known as BGR. I’ve been running it since then as president and general manager.

Penske is a collection of media brands and businesses that include Variety, Rolling Stone, Robb Report, South by Southwest, Golden Globes, New Year’s Eve Dick Clark Productions, Billboard, and more.

Working with Penske has been amazing. Selling was a huge decision, although for me it wasn’t an exit. Penske told me, “Sell your business, come on board, and let’s run this together — build it and grow it.”

My journey with Penske in the ever-changing media landscape has been incredible. I’m having fun.

Bandholz: Ecommerce is hard, but it seems media is getting slaughtered.

Geller: Everyone’s feeling it. It’s challenging for many digital publishers. BGR is digital — a website monetized through ads and affiliate revenue. Other businesses in the Penske portfolio have revenue alternatives such as events and subscriptions. Some still do print and licensing.

The last year or two has produced 10 times the change as the decade before. We’re in the age of AI and spammy, low-quality content, and it’s insanely challenging. No one has any idea what the future looks like. Google’s CEO has no idea what this will look like in two years, and neither do the CEOs of Microsoft and OpenAI. Everyone can guess, but no one knows with certainty. We’re in the interim, trying to make the best assumptions and forecasts.

Bandholz: AI content has swamped Google and other search engines.

Geller: It’s a crazy turbulent period. AI went from 0 to 100 overnight. But that’s starting to simmer down. I think search engines will normalize. We’ve all regarded Google as a preeminent technology company. The last 18 months have seen a tsunami of AI-generated content and a ton of black hat SEO. Folks are trying to take advantage of the algorithm, throwing up content. And it’s working. They’re ranking, getting traffic, and monetizing it.

Google launched its latest core algorithm update a few weeks ago. Its primary goal is “tackling spammy, low-quality content.” Hopefully it resets organic rankings in a good way.

But over the next couple of years, having a strong branded search presence will be essential for sites dependent on organic traffic. Customers and prospects want to shop or access your site directly, which also signals to Google that people are searching for your brand. It has authority and satisfies search intent.

Bandholz: Google is lost. Organic search rarely produces meaningful results.

Geller: Media sites see the same thing. Search results are advertising-focused. The optimist in me says that this will reset. Google is making changes. There’s a new head of search — the previous person came from the ad side. Hopefully, it means the results are more organic-centric. But, to be sure, the broad direction is pay-to-play.

Google has long been a huge traffic driver, but so have Facebook, Pinterest, Flipboard, NewsBreak, and SmartNews. You might not have heard of some of those platforms, but they offer scale and traffic. At some point, there will probably be a traffic alternative to Google. Until then, capturing visitors from organic search will be very challenging.

So from a direct-to-consumer merchant perspective, publishing content to rank organically is increasingly difficult. But authentic content that speaks to your audience remains worthwhile. It’s another reason for folks to visit your site. But, again, optimizing keywords via, say, Semrush or Ahrefs is a much harder strategy.

I see Google’s ad products growing significantly with broad keyword match, Performance Max campaigns, and getting rid of cookies. Unfortunately, we’re in a black box organically.

Bandholz: Where can folks find you?

Geller: Our site Bgr.com. I’m @boygenius on X and @jonathangeller on LinkedIn.

Wayne Lloyd is the founder and CEO of fintech scale-up Smarter Contracts, builders of the blockchain protocol which powers consent and permissions management platform, Pulse.  

Understanding how Lloyd was able to find his footing in the fintech industry, we sat down with him to discuss his recent achievements, best mistakes and how Smarter Contracts came to be.

Tell us more about your company and its purpose

Smarter Contracts have built Pulse, a blockchain and machine learning-based permissions management platform. It provides organisations with the ability to capture, store and automate the management of every type of data permission, regardless of the regulation it falls under, via a single orchestration layer.

Pulse also forms the governance layer of additional products and services that we are already building and intend to launch later in 2024. Combined, they take permissions management, AI governance and data strategy to a newer, higher level. For this reason, we like to say that Pulse serves to put the trust in data and ethics into AI.

What are some of your recent achievements you’d like to highlight?

There is so much going on at Smarter Contracts right now but the achievements we’re able to highlight at this stage include:

• We recently closed £2.65million of funding and given how difficult market conditions have been, this is something we’re very proud of.
• Our latest version of Pulse has just gone live in a marketing and PR agency, BIG little LDN. It selected Pulse because it has an initiative called BIG Shot, its own in-house Gen Z and Gen Alpha advisory board which requires it to process the data of young people. Mindful of this, the company wanted to process data with the highest standards of compliance and security and given our delegated consent feature, ideal for delegating children’s consent to parents, it selected Pulse. We hope that BIG little LDN’s use of Pulse will set the precedent for other agencies to follow suit.
• Contracts have just been signed with an SME lender, we’re just about to start a project with one of the world’s largest healthcare companies and are in conversations with one of the largest advertising agencies. We’re not able to say more than that at this stage however, official announcements will be released in the coming weeks ahead. What this means is we’re now scaling the company, which is very exciting as it shows the demand for the product and services we offer.
• We’ve grown the team with some outstanding talent. We’ve recently appointed industry leaders such as Leda Glyptis PhD, Jamie K Leach, Ghela Boskovich, Atul Mehta and Harry Webber-Brown just to name a few.

How did you get into the fintech industry?

It really depends on what you define as the fintech industry. I fell in love with crypto and blockchain technology back in 2016. However, at the time crypto was very much ostracised from ‘mainstream fintech’ for one reason or another. Nonetheless, it was obvious to me that crypto and blockchain would become a major component of a new and more streamlined financial system.

I fell into that fintech world because I wanted to offer different products to my investment banking clients in emerging markets. They were struggling to effectively integrate centralised software platforms into their environments. Many of the problems they had were in the back-office, so I was keen to find ways of automating that which led me to blockchain.

What’s the best thing about working in the fintech industry?

For me personally, there are a few things that I love. Firstly; following on from the previous question, I love that the DeFi fintech world is becoming increasingly entwined with TradFi fintech. I get a buzz from seeing how far the market has grown and matured since the early days.

Secondly, I love the working alongside the founders and innovators that work so hard to make it happen. The energy of the industry makes it an exciting place to be.

What frustrates you most about the fintech industry?

The lack of liquidity and financial help that is available. It really holds organisations back from building brilliant projects and services.

How have your previous roles influenced your career?

My previous jobs have influenced my career in so many ways. In a previous role, I effectively ran a company, within a company and was responsible for standing up subsidiaries around the world. This meant not just setting up the subsidiaries, but finding potential clients, managing the P&L, doing sales, marketing, building a team, delivering projects, building relationships with partners, vendors etc.

I did all of this in a very high-pressure environment and in tough places to win business – think Russia, Turkey, Israel, Japan, Thailand and Hong Kong to name a few – so it gave me a very good education in what it takes to set up a company. I was never under any illusions as to how much hard work is involved.

Following that, I worked for an organisation that delivered digital business transformation projects for corporations. During my time there I was taught about the importance of UX and customer-led design and that has really influenced the way I think about the products we build at Smarter Contracts.

Experience at MBNA

Perhaps the most important influence; however, was my first job at MBNA. They operated under a set of company precepts which I believe have become well known in academic journals. They were adorned across the walls of their buildings and were sat above the doorways of the offices we worked in, but the one that is etched in my minds at all times and has had the biggest influence one me is “Think of yourself as a customer”.

It probably sounds a bit cliché, but the way they made you think about the customer was like nothing else I’ve seen in any other company. It almost made you feel a deeper level of empathy for the customer and it’s always with me to the extent that I have introduced precepts to underpin the culture of Smarter Contracts.

What’s the best mistake you’ve ever made?

I turned up for a meeting in a pair of shorts. At the time, I thought it was going to be an informal meeting with someone who just wanted to learn about blockchain over coffee, but when I turned up at the hotel, I was directed to a meeting room where the CEO of the company was sat flanked by their lawyer and COO and an actual use case they wanted to solve.

I won’t disclose the content of the meeting, but I did walk out with a contract. My understanding is that one of the contributory factors to walking away with a deal done that day was because I had the confidence to walk into a meeting in a pair of shorts, they couldn’t doubt any of the advice I had given them. That mistake really set Smarter Contracts on its way.

What has the future got in store for your company?

We have a lot to be excited about.

We’re launching new products features that will further enhance the value proposition of Pulse®.

• We’re also launching our own digital asset in 2024.
• We have new partnerships to announce, which will enable us to scale the company at a greater velocity.
• We’ll begin working with global corporations, something we’ll be talking more about in the coming weeks ahead.

What are the next key talking points or challenges for your industry as a whole?

We need regulatory certainty in a number of key areas, such as data protection and digital assets.

I also believe we really need to address the lack of liquidity in the financial services sector as it’s becoming increasingly more difficult for Fintech’s, given the current economic climate.

Mike Tecku first appeared on this podcast in 2019 as an Amazon marketplace seller. Shortly afterward, he sold that business, a maker of floormats. He retired, became bored, and in 2022 launched Momentum, a direct-to-consumer nutritional shake producer. He and I discussed that venture last year in his second appearance.

He’s back. Momentum Shake is flourishing, as is Tecku. He’s evolved from the nuts and bolts of making money to achieving a purpose, building a team, and self-improvement. “If I’m not growing, I’m dying,” he told me.

Our entire audio conversation is embedded below. The transcript is edited for length and clarity.

Eric Bandholz: Your entrepreneurial journey is impressive.

Mike Tecku: Growth gives me meaning and a sense of being alive. If I’m not growing, I’m dying. The American dream of not having to do anything runs counter to human nature. When I retired, I got good at golf. I read many books but could not shake the urge to solve problems. I’d be in a store and think, “This is an interesting product. I wonder if I could make this.”

I got depressed when I wasn’t working on anything. I could feel myself shrinking. About a year into that, I decided I needed to re-embrace being an entrepreneur. That’s just who I am. Those are my gifts. I wanted to use my gifts and strengths, and now I had the privilege of using them in a way that I wanted, not just to survive or make money.

The world is constantly changing. To make something perfect is impossible, but you can pursue it by continually adjusting. The farther you get along, the more precise the destination is, and the more attuned you are to your goal. You gain knowledge and make better decisions. When you’re really into something, you’re continually growing and perfecting your art.

Bandholz: How does a company strive for perfection?

Tecku: You must develop trust with your customers so they know you have their best interest at heart. If we change the flavoring of our shakes, customers worry we’re making it cheaper when the reality is the opposite. You must be transparent with customers and communicate that you want to add more value without increasing their costs. It’s essential to zoom out beyond supply and demand. What advantage can you bring to the market besides making more money?

I want to produce a product 10 times better than everybody for the same price. Most businesses are just media and marketing platforms. They don’t touch the product. If they’re doing anything at all, they’re selling commodities. I want to make something that is a masterpiece and stacks much value into it.

That wasn’t happening with our outsourced manufacturer. I love those people, but they can’t innovate at the speed I want. I can cut costs by 30% when I take over manufacturing. I can shrink cash flow, increase quantity, reduce costs, and improve quality. The only way to do that is through owning the manufacturing process.

Bandholz: What are the pitfalls of in-house manufacturing?

Tecku: The first step is believing it’s doable. I spent 10 years thinking manufacturing was complicated and beyond my expertise. But I had to start questioning myself. Why can’t I assemble a team of intelligent, hardworking individuals? Why can’t I solve those problems?

The goal is to make manufacturing easy. If I can build something simple and scalable, it will be more secure and reliable. I like to forecast five to seven years down the road. What are my goals? I want to scale to a hundred million dollars. What does that look like in the number of units I need to make a day and the machines capable of that?

I’m buying machines to simplify and reduce the chance of error. We can’t eliminate mistakes, but we can streamline processes, steps, and inputs. The machines I’m buying should be able to make a thousand bags an hour with one employee. That’s a scalable system.

Bandholz: You have a single SKU earning thousands of dollars monthly. You’re not touching it. There’s beauty in that.

Tecku: It is beautiful because it frees me for growth and improvement. Recall the old phrase, “Work on your business, not in it.” That can’t change. You have to be on top looking at the pieces. My job is decision-making. I want two hours of hyper-focused thinking every day.

Constantly executing is not the best use of my skills. Some people are way better at it. I consider all components of the business to be assets. The manufacturing facility I’ve been building for the last six months is an asset. I want it to run perfectly without me. That involves the machines, the space, the team — every decision.

Bandholz: I struggle with shifting from the execution role into strategy and decision-making.

Tecku: I try to check with my team to see if they need something from me. I have to remind myself this is what they’re good at and that they appreciate my trust in them. If you want to create independent people who think for themselves, you have to let them fail. My job is to determine the next step. There’s no right path. It requires a lot of walking around, reading books, talking to folks, and paying attention.

Bandholz: Where can folks follow you?

Tecku: Our site is MomentumShake.com. I’m on LinkedIn.

Mike Tecku first appeared on this podcast in 2019 as an Amazon marketplace seller. He then sold that business, a maker of floormats, shortly afterward. He retired, became bored, and in 2022 launched Momentum, a direct-to-consumer nutritional shake producer. He and I discussed that venture last year in his second appearance.

He’s back. Momentum Shake is flourishing, as is Tecku. He’s evolved from the nuts and bolts of making money to achieving a purpose, building a team, and self-improvement. “If I’m not growing, I’m dying,” he told me.

Our entire audio conversation is embedded below. The transcript is edited for length and clarity.

Eric Bandholz: Your entrepreneurial journey is impressive.

Mike Tecku: Growth gives me meaning and a sense of being alive. If I’m not growing, I’m dying. The American dream of not having to do anything runs counter to human nature. When I retired, I got good at golf. I read many books but could not shake the urge to solve problems. I’d be in a store and think, “This is an interesting product. I wonder if I could make this.”

I got depressed when I wasn’t working on anything. I could feel myself shrinking. About a year into that, I decided I needed to re-embrace being an entrepreneur. That’s just who I am. Those are my gifts. I wanted to use my gifts and strengths, and now I had the privilege of using them in a way that I wanted, not just to survive or make money.

The world is constantly changing. To make something perfect is impossible, but you can pursue it by continually adjusting. The farther you get along, the more precise the destination is, and the more attuned you are to your goal. You gain knowledge and make better decisions. When you’re really into something, you’re continually growing and perfecting your art.

Bandholz: How does a company strive for perfection?

Tecku: You must develop trust with your customers so they know you have their best interest at heart. If we change the flavoring of our shakes, customers worry we’re making it cheaper when the reality is the opposite. You must be transparent with customers and communicate that you want to add more value without increasing their costs. It’s essential to zoom out beyond supply and demand. What advantage can you bring to the market besides making more money?

I want to produce a product 10 times better than everybody for the same price. Most businesses are just media and marketing platforms. They don’t touch the product. If they’re doing anything at all, they’re selling commodities. I want to make something that is a masterpiece and stacks much value into it.

That wasn’t happening with our outsourced manufacturer. I love those people, but they can’t innovate at the speed I want. I can cut costs by 30% when I take over manufacturing. I can shrink cash flow, increase quantity, reduce costs, and improve quality. The only way to do that is through owning the manufacturing process.

Bandholz: What are the pitfalls of in-house manufacturing?

Tecku: The first step is believing it’s doable. I spent 10 years thinking manufacturing was complicated and beyond my expertise. But I had to start questioning myself. Why can’t I assemble a team of intelligent, hardworking individuals? Why can’t I solve those problems?

The goal is to make manufacturing easy. If I can build something simple and scalable, it will be more secure and reliable. I like to forecast five to seven years down the road. What are my goals? I want to scale to a hundred million dollars. What does that look like in the number of units I need to make a day and the machines capable of that?

I’m buying machines to simplify and reduce the chance of error. We can’t eliminate mistakes, but we can streamline processes, steps, and inputs. The machines I’m buying should be able to make a thousand bags an hour with one employee. That’s a scalable system.

Bandholz: You have a single SKU earning thousands of dollars monthly. You’re not touching it. There’s beauty in that.

Tecku: It is beautiful because it frees me for growth and improvement. Recall the old phrase, “Work on your business, not in it.” That can’t change. You have to be on top looking at the pieces. My job is decision-making. I want two hours of hyper-focused thinking every day.

Constantly executing is not the best use of my skills. Some people are way better at it. I consider all components of the business to be assets. The manufacturing facility I’ve been building for the last six months is an asset. I want it to run perfectly without me. That involves the machines, the space, the team — every decision.

Bandholz: I struggle with shifting from the execution role into strategy and decision-making.

Tecku: I try to check with my team to see if they need something from me. I have to remind myself this is what they’re good at and that they appreciate my trust in them. If you want to create independent people who think for themselves, you have to let them fail. My job is to determine the next step. There’s no right path. It requires a lot of walking around, reading books, talking to folks, and paying attention.

Bandholz: Where can folks follow you?

Tecku: Our site is MomentumShake.com. I’m on LinkedIn.

In H1 2023, only 2.2 per cent of venture capital deals were completed by female-driven fintechs: a harsh drop from 4.9 per cent in 2022. Highlighting ways in which this alarming gap in investment can be closed, we spoke to Vivi Friedgut, founder and CEO of Blackbullion.

A former wealth manager, Friedgut is a regular public speaker, author and passionate advocate of fintech for good. She was also named in FinTech Magazine’s Top 100 Women. To understand more about her career and the importance of financial education and inclusion in fintech, we sat down with Friedgut to learn about the financial wellbeing platform, Blackbullion and how it is democratising finance.  

Tell us more about your company and its purpose

Blackbullion is the financial wellbeing platform that houses UK support funds, scholarships and grants for students. We partner with over 75 universities, colleges and businesses across the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa to proactively support student financial wellbeing. Today, over 1.2 million students can access Blackbullion’s platform.

Our vision is to become the all-in-one money management space for students that supports them before, during and after their studies. Ultimately, helping every student to develop financial skills and confidence for life.

 What are some of your recent achievements you’d like to highlight?

Our Funds Management System (FMS) was designed to power financial inclusion and revolutionise access to funding. It’s a fully customisable fintech solution that simplifies and accelerates how students discover and apply for funds. It’s evolved into a world-class application system that’s truly student-centric, genuinely helpful, fun and easy to use. So far we’ve awarded over £20million in funds to students via our FMS.

My team! We’re 26 as I write, and growing. It’s just a hugely talented, dynamic group of people that believe deeply in what we’re trying to achieve.

How did you get into the fintech industry?

Financial education has always been an obsession for me. I started my career in finance as a wealth manager, spending almost a decade managing the wealth of high-net-worth families and individuals. I noticed how the clients who understood money – had a degree of financial literacy and education – made this work for them. But as I helped the wealthy become wealthier, I wondered what would happen if financial education was accessible to everyone? That nugget became Blackbullion.

As the business evolved, I could see the value of extending the impact of financial education using the best of fintech as a powerful mechanism to help people.

What’s the best thing about working in the fintech industry?

The dynamism and innovation in fintech is unlike what I’ve seen in other sectors. It means it’s possible to make changes that are implementable, wide-ranging and rooted in a solid data foundation. Which is what we needed to bring to power the change Blackbullion wants to make.

The sector is rich in partnership opportunities and there’s more ease around collaboration. I’ve always believed that collaboration is a great way to accelerate your mission. This year saw us launch partnerships with both Bud and Currencycloud and we’re looking forward to developing this workstream more in 2024.

What frustrates you most about the fintech industry?

Historically it’s been about how you make money cheaper and faster. Coming into fintech from edtech too, I found it less mission-driven. Or that brands find it harder to tell their mission story. I don’t think you can succeed as a fintech if you’re not making your customers’ lives better. I’d like to see more in fintech for good, for sure.

 How have your previous roles influenced your career?

I set up my first business teaching neighbourhood kids maths when I was six; every step I’ve taken has moved me to this point. Obviously, my time as a wealth manager gave me the spark of the idea around financial inclusion through financial education.

They say that starting a business is the biggest self-development journey you can go on. As a founder too, there’s been so much learning as the company’s grown: one minute you’re managing a HR issue, the next you’re looking to close a round of funding.

Ultimately, I started Blackbullion as the founder of an edtech startup and I’m now CEO of a fintech scale-up that operates in five countries. The company’s growth and my career path have influenced each other.

 What’s the best mistake you’ve ever made?

Refusing to get a male co-founder despite being advised to at many crossroads points in Blackbullion’s story. I’ve always had a very clear vision of where I wanted to take the company and I was concerned a co-founder would dilute that. I don’t think we’d be where we are today if I’d gone down that route.

I have a track record of making seemingly controversial decisions. Such as, acquiring The Scholarship Hub two years ago in the middle of a funding round. It’s an incredibly promising revenue stream and it further amplifies our mission and reach all while taking us into the global talent space as well as integrating social mobility into our financial inclusion goals.

What has the future got in store for your company?

Our goal is to become a globally recognised financial wellbeing brand, as we strive to build a culture-driven business and expand our scholarship proposition.

Our Funds Management System underpins so much of what we do as we create a future-proof, truly digital end-to-end solution to support students to discover, apply for, and receive funding.

More efficiently distributed funding – with embedded education – is a solution that has applications far beyond education. Everything from small emergency funds at university all the way to universal credit is where this could go.

What are the next key talking points or challenges for your industry as a whole?

Fintech has had a really good run. But ultimately, the deal environment has slowed down considerably in the last two years. While we’re still seeing businesses secure funding, extensive due diligence and longer cycles are very much at play – with much lower multiples. I think 2024 will start to turn the tide but not till the second half or later.

We are going to see founders and teams double down on efficient user acquisition strategies, the employee experience, and revenue growth. As the sector “grows up” it will focus even more on critical metrics and less on vanity awards or spot-the-next-unicorn. Fintech will stop being the fun, rebellious little cousin and become more of a legacy player, albeit a more user-centric one. Fintech will take the financial services forward, and challenge the status quo to truly engage with the next generation of customers.

Zooko Wilcox is stepping down as the CEO of Electric Coin Company, the team behind privacy-focused cryptocurrency Zcash (ZEC).

ECC announced a change in leadership on Monday, with Josh Swihart promoted to replace Wilcox.

Swihart previously worked at ECC as one of the firm’s vice presidents of growth from October 2018 to August 2023 but took four months off working as a part-time investor at investment services firm Denver Angels in Colorado, according to LinkedIn.

“We feel confident in Josh’s leadership — in finding product-market fit, unlocking new partnerships and collaboration, improving Zcash usability and increasing adoption,” ECC said in a Dec. 18 post.

“In addition to a vision for ECC and an optimistic passion for Zcash, Josh has a strong entrepreneurial, technical and product background,” the firm added.

I cannot begin anywhere else but to give my thanks and respect to @zooko. He breathed life into Zcash and has been its flag bearer – not just for the project but for human freedom. He is a hero.

— Josh Swihart (@jswihart) December 18, 2023

Swihart said the firm will focus on increasing Zcash’s utility through user-focused products over the next few months and to better position ECC financially.

Wilcox — a self-described “human freedom maximalist” — reflected positively on his time building Zcash from the ground up in a Dec. 18 Medium post:

“It has been an incredible experience, and I’ll always be grateful that I had the opportunity to live out one of my science fiction dreams in reality.”

However, Wilcox said it was best for him and the company to part ways. “I don’t think this conflation of Zcash with me personally is healthy for me, and I don’t think it’s healthy for Zcash,” he said.

“Zcash’s role in human history is, and will be, much bigger than any individual,” Wilcox added.

The Zcash co-founder conceded that he had clashed with Swihart on how to best take Zcash forward, but said the two never disagreed on “why.”

Related: Binance was wrong to boot Monero, Zcash and other privacy coins

Wilcox will remain in his role as a director on the board of the Bootstrap Project, the parent company of ECC. Alan Fairless, Christina Garman, Michelle Lai and Zaki Manian are also on that board.

Zcash is a privacy-focused blockchain and cryptocurrency that was launched on Oct. 29, 2016. ECC was founded two years earlier in 2014.

ZCash is based on Bitcoin’s codebase and, like Bitcoin (BTC), has a fixed supply of 21 million coins.

The news had no material impact on ZEC’s price, which is currently at $28.8, according to CoinGecko.

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