Building a Fintech Startup in the Dominican Republic | 🎙 The Nearshore Cafe Podcast

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Welcome everyone to another episode of the Nearshore Cafe Podcast.
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I'm Brian Sampson, your host.
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Today's episode is sponsored by Plug Technologies, P L U G G dot Tech, a great way to connect talent from all over Latin America to growing U.S.
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companies.
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If you're interested in building a company from the DR, Dominican Republic, understanding how fintech companies grow there, and talking to an amazing founder, this is going to be a great episode for you.
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We've got Ricky Michel from Wallet, which is a very interesting spelling.
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So maybe we'll start there, Ricky.
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Welcome to the show and tell us more about the naming of the company and the spelling of it.
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Thank you, Brian.
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And so honored to be here with you and your marvelous partner, uh, people that hear your program.
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But first of all, you provide a coffee, right?
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So I imagine at least at this episode, your coffee is from Dominican Republic.
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If it's not, it's not gonna be that good.
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I love it.
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I love I love the so I actually uh do this podcast from Hawaii, which is the only state in the US with uh with its own terrific coffee.
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Well, let's let's we got I'm gonna challenge you, you you on that, but yeah, right.
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It's it's it's a bad.
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So thank you.
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Look, the name was a little bit of challenging at the beginning because we built a fintech trying to solve uh liquidity problem for an unserved community, the gig worker community, the independent community, freelancers community.
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So remember the banking industry, the traditional banking industry didn't allow them to be part of their ecosystem because it was too complicated to understand their needs, their workflow, their cash flow model, and their FICO score wasn't that good because none of there were missed payments or miss remittance.
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It's because the way their income goes into their flow.
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But back to the name, we brainstormed and said, you know what?
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We want a wallet for them.
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We want a liquidity box for them, but we also need to trademark that name to become more secure and to become some to be a real brand, right?
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So we combine a couple letters in Spanish.
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We use the Spanish combination and we create the UALA T T.
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We substitute the W because if we put the W, we cannot trademark exactly.
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So we build a hybrid, let's say a Spanglish name.
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Yeah, and that's how we build the wallet.
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So if you are from the States and your native language is English, you can say wallet.
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If you came from the Latin American, right, you can say wallet also.
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But now it's it's wonderful because we have clients even from Malaysia, from Africa, from China, and they also said wallet.
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So it's good to to you know to host the whore, the whole the the whole purpose on one simple name and one strong name at the same time.
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So that's how everything starts.
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Amazing.
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That is one of my favorite naming stories, I think I've heard, and I've heard, I've heard, I've heard quite a bit.
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So I like thank you.
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Thank you.
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Well, let's let let's uh take it back a little bit.
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So my understanding is Wallet was founded in 2022.
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Is that correct?
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No, sir, in 2018.
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2018.
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I must have had uh no, but I know why you said 2022, and you're right.
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On 2022 was the first time we raised institutional funding.
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Okay, yeah, it was our biggest uh fundraiser, let's say round A, formally round A, because before the first four years, we were based on Angelin based investment uh and see investors that believe, and that's why you see that big you know sign behind me saying believe, because that was how we create the model.
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But in 2022, it was when we finally become a real structure and solid company because of that institutional investment.
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Take us back to maybe 2017, right before the the original founding of 2018.
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Where were you?
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What were you doing in life, and how did this idea even come about?
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Well, we need to walk a little bit more back because uh we we were we found this company, three friends.
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It was me and two more partners, and now we are I am the godfather of one of each sons.
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It's incredible.
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So we are compadrists.
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Amazing.
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So yeah, it was back in 2014, so we were doing a different kind of fintech model based on MCA world, also, but more as a uh ISO model, independent service officers, but it didn't work.
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So it was it was too too advanced, it was too complicated for that time.
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So for every loose, you you get a win, right?
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You get something special if you are keep your eyes open.
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And that's what we did.
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We took the best of that mistake, and by 2020, by 20 2015, yeah, we built the first framework of wallet.
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It was something about the gig workers back then, just that the only gig work category that you can find was the Ricehare driver.
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Yeah.
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So we built a model around the Risehare drivers to provide them liquidity, fast, clean, not friction, in a friendly way.
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Interesting.
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And full digital, right?
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Nobody believed that that that could happen because they were so away from the system.
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They their their capacity to be, to allow them to become part of the system was difficult.
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Well, but if you want to be success, you need to build difficult things and become easier things, right?
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That's the only way you you build something.
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And back in 2017, I test you, I'm gonna challenge you if you tell me where we find, and I met that angel investor.
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I t I challenge you.
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Where does an investor through three chance, three strikes?
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I don't know if you played baseball, but I gave you three strikes.
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Okay, I do, I do love baseball.
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So, well right, I think that the two cities that probably have the most in the states are New York and San Francisco.
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Yeah, but not city, a place, in a specific place, a location, a place, a place.
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You can name it.
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A place.
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I'll take the easy guess and say a coffee shop.
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Strike one.
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But later on, I'm gonna tell you how important it is a coffee shop for us.
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Okay.
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You're so close because a coffee shop is so important for us.
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I love the uh I love I love where you're taking this interview.
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I like I like the guessing games.
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Let's say a restaurant.
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Strike two, my friend.
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Last call.
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Last call.
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I'm gonna say a baseball game.
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I love baseball, but not in a funeral.
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Wow.
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Okay.
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Yes, sir.
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So every you in why I said say in a funeral, because it was the reality.
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But my in the in this podcast is about mentoring, orient, you know, or do uh some kind of let's say advice to those entrepreneurs entrepreneurs that wants to hear how we build things, right?
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I was ready.
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My pitch, it was in my backpack, my back pocket.
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Yeah.
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So that funeral, that angel investor was almost retired.
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He was away just playing golf.
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He saw me, I saw him, he said, How you been?
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How you doing?
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How you been?
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He said, I saw you in the in the at the radio station in a program about entrepreneur.
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What are you doing?
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And I said, Well, I'm building some fintech, this and that.
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He tells me, you know what?
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Hey, my advisor always told me that every dollar that I spend in tech is a win.
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So I said, here's my man.
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So I pitch him at that place two minutes, and he requests me to go to his office, and here we are.
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Eight years later's wallet, it's more than a cash and pence.
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So my point here is to show how important it is to be prepared.
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That's how important is to be ready to shot, because it's one shot, and you will never know when it's gonna be that opportunity.
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So be ready.
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Yeah.
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Now, Ricky, when you were talking about the rideshare drivers, um, and you know, in the pre-show you said you spent a lot of time in the the States and then in the DR as well.
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Were you talking like Uber and Lyft drivers, or there always there was also like a whole string of kind of taxi cabs that were using apps?
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And yeah, tell us more about this.
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We transition it from the regular taxi-based cap drivers to the Reicher drivers.
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We live and die into that world for around, let's say, two years.
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Eating with them, walking with them, visiting their places, their spots where you can find their needs, talking with them.
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So we spent around two years working with that specific industry, and we learn a lot from from that industry, from that segment, right?
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From that niche.
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And after those two years, we built the perfect, let's say, POC to launch a product.
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And that product probably we right, we increased the size, uh, improved a lot of things, but it's the same core that we find back with those drivers, with those taxi drivers from the traditional taxi drivers through the Reichshirt drivers.
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So you're so right.
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You need to understand the full line, the full, the full circle.
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And that's what we did back in in 2014, 2015.
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Yeah, I remember that time.
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So I was living in San Francisco, and um I think you kind of saw this inflection point, probably even maybe a year earlier of 2013.
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Like, you know, in New York, the medallions used to sell for a million years.
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Yeah, yeah.
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You started to see one industry fall while the other industry rose.
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So a lot of anxiety, you know, stress, tension, and remember, they they were in a position where they can project their incomes for years.
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Right.
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Not for weeks, for years.
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Right.
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From that, everything explodes and disappear and goes to insanity to an insert.
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They don't know how to to build their their their new stage as human, as persons.
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So that's why we try to connect the opportunity around ride share for those taxi drivers that were kind of lost.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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You know, I wanted to ask about the because you know, you you probably have the almost like two different worlds in your head that you're designing for.
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You know, there's uh the DR and then there's the states, right?
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And what were what were things that maybe the ride sharing drivers had in common and and you know, where where might it have been different in those environments?
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Yeah, ride share driver, probably the majority of their, let's say, skilled, wearables, condition are the same.
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Yeah no matter where you are.
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Yeah.
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It's uh it's a hostler, it's a person that lives the street 24-7, nothing is easier for them.
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Yeah.
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Hardworking people, I think it so respectable people.
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Yeah.
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So you need to build, if you're gonna provide them some product or service, you need to build something that fits in their needs, in their lives, and their style.
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It's more custom made, more tailored style, if you want to be success.
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So that's since they won until now, and we fight for that, we improve our research, we we bring the best of the best to help us to build that customer fixed product with not mistake.
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Because it's about it's about trust.
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If you want to engage with the right shirt community or with the gig worker community, they need to trust you, they need to believe in you, and you need to show them that you're here to provide that extra mile for them.
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So honestly, it's not easy, but it gave you a lot of strain.
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It gave you a lot of hope when you work like that because you follow that.
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You follow you can you you you cannot just follow, you need to deliver some some trends and to rebuild the model consistently.
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Yeah, I really appreciate because I can I can feel you had a lot of empathy for your user and you really took time to understand your user.
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Did you build this mobile first, and maybe you could even kind of help us think through how you even design the interaction flow for that user?
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Well, yeah, the interaction flow, you remember when I when when I tell you, well, we spend a lot of time with them.
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So acting with them, their situations, we built the right interaction flow.
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When, how, when we're gonna solve that?
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Quickness, fast, no friction.
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Because remember, you're leaving your car.
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You eat in your car, you sleep in your car.
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And sometimes if you don't have something right away, it's the difference between accept or not, delete or submit a request.
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So the that that stage by stage, we build it with them.
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One of the co-founders also of Wallet used to be a driver.
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He used to be a uh car driver, let's say SUV style, Uber driver.
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He he spent his life in the meat, in the in all the stages of a uh driver life, right?
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So he also understands so well the life cycle of a driver.
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So remember, before it was a black car driver or a regular taxi driver.
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After Raish, everything changed.
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Right.
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Everything becomes different, more competitive, more segments to fill out.
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So that's why for us it was so important to build the first stage under the traditional drivers to understand their their world, and then from then move on to the next stage that was that was uh the right share industry.
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Yeah.
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Tell us more about building the company.
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So was it first officially founded in DR or the states?
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And how do you how did you think about where to put the team and so forth?
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Yeah, it's like found a company, a tech.
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If you want to become a hybrid model in between two countries, two worlds, right?
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You need to fund at the same time in both places.
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We incorporate, we create the LLC that hosts wallet in uh as a US company base because we serve to US uh customers, to US market, right?
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But at the same time, we build uh subsidiary to help the US-based company in customer support, in tech support, and all those factors and and bearables that you need to become success in in the management world.
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But back then was just two people in the R and two people in the US, and that's it.
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Yeah.
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But I think that the the key here, Brian, is to since day one, you need to decide the big picture.
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Even if you just have two peoples, but you need to see yourself with a thousand people, how the company is gonna be successful even at that level, it's to build the the first vision on the right way.
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And that's what we did.
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We built the company in parallel with the subsidiary in DR to support, and just two people in the US to launch the POC back in 2020, 2018.
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Yeah.
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Are your engineers in DR or the states or both?
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We have engineers in DR.
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Since they won one of the co-founders, Cesar Cabrera, he is our CTO, and he built a phenomenal team of engineers in DR in different categories.
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Those guys are special.
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Yeah.
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Because they they build with passion, with quality, with hyper-tech issues or former performing the best tools on tech right now, they put it together to provide to our customer base the best customer experience and and and you know the interaction we have.
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And we also use in the US third parties to supervise and to stress the platform, to stress the developers that we have in the Dominican Republic.
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But it's a like, oh, like I said, it's a hybrid, it's the combination.
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For example, right now we have a lot of our chief staff is in the US, and they all they all are from the United States.
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But now they feel like they are from DR as well.
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And they they act like that, and it's in their hearts, you know, and it's a cross-function, it's beautiful.
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It's it's it's the real marriage in between one country and another working for the same goal.
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Yeah.
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And in in wallet, we all work for the same goal.
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No matter where you are, in Hawaii, if you're in Hawaii, you're gonna be a uh believer.
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If you are in, let's say in Norway, you're gonna be a believer as well.
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So it's a it's a family and it's uh it's a way to think.
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Yeah.
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Tell us about the recruiting process, especially on the on the technical side.
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Were they mostly recruited from a certain university or different criteria you were looking at?
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Yeah, we use different criteria.
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The depends of which uh category we are looking for, or which gap we need to fill, or which area we want to reboost or improve.
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But we don't have any specific standard on university side.
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We believe more in your skills.
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Yeah.
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And we test when we are recruiting engineers or software staff, we test that.
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And no matter if you came from Harvard or you came from the base in junior institute, if you have the skill set, you're gonna be on board.
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Trust me.
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Yeah, yeah.
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It's it's it we we don't want to you know underestimate the talent.
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And that's that's really dangerous because you find, Brian, you can find kids from nowhere that gave you the biggest win as a company.
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So I respect that.
00:19:37.279 --> 00:19:41.440
And as a CEO, I try to, you know, to fill out the company.
00:19:41.680 --> 00:19:42.079
Yeah.
00:19:42.640 --> 00:19:47.680
Telling everybody do not underestimate estimate nobody because it's standards.
00:19:47.759 --> 00:19:47.920
Yeah.
00:19:48.160 --> 00:19:51.200
Remember what happened with Gatorade and Coca-Cola.
00:19:51.440 --> 00:19:51.920
That's right.
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That's right.
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That's right.
00:19:53.759 --> 00:19:59.759
You know, on that note, one thing I wanted to ask you about, you know, over the last, especially five, six years.
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is we've seen a ton of VC funding go to Latin America and a lot of kind of brand new startups.
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But before that big flood of cash, there was a lot more like consulting tech companies, you know, so they're exporting services, solutions type companies.
00:20:17.279 --> 00:20:30.559
And it's a little bit different, you know, say being a Java developer, dot net developer, you know, for working from DR or Buenos Aires or Sao Paulo for Bank of America, right?
00:20:30.640 --> 00:20:31.279
Or something like that.
00:20:31.519 --> 00:20:39.440
And you kind of need a different mentality, you know, to be an early stage startup and there's a sense of ownership and big scope.
00:20:39.519 --> 00:20:54.319
And can you talk about, you know, how you kind of built that technical mindset and like startup environment in DR, which I imagine, you know, doesn't quite have the startup scene of like a San Francisco where they're everywhere.
00:20:54.559 --> 00:20:56.160
Yeah, great question, Brian.
00:20:56.400 --> 00:20:58.319
Look, it's about eligibility.
00:20:58.480 --> 00:21:06.160
It's about how well you prepare your persona and your mindset to understand that the world changed.
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Right now, remember back, let's say 10 years, 20 years ago, Latin America as a support space, big companies, mid-side companies, just think in in Latin America as a customer support-based opportunity.
00:21:22.960 --> 00:21:25.519
But as you said off stage, right?
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When you told me 2020 was March, right, to say before and after I think after the pandemic, you know, the world shakes and explode and everything came back.
00:21:38.079 --> 00:21:46.880
But when everything came back, big companies, mid-site companies understand that they need to look for out of their shorts.
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They need to walk away from their shorts.
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And that's when Latin Americans flowed because the talent was there Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires, Chile, Santiago Chile, DR, we have a ton of kids that went to the United States, prepared themselves full time in the best schools possible you can possibly find.
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And they came back to their countries and stayed there.
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That the asset what was there it was just about to discover those assets.
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And I think after 2020 that was the real situation.
00:22:22.559 --> 00:22:30.319
Many companies push back like you did you went to Buenos Aires and you explore a lot of potential opportunities over there, right?
00:22:30.559 --> 00:22:44.640
And I you probably have some good connection there that for whenever you need them for a project, for a proposal, you're just gonna knock that door because you know that door is already is ready to host whatever you give them.
00:22:44.799 --> 00:22:51.839
So I think after the pandemic everything changed Latin America become not just the hub for customer support.
00:22:52.000 --> 00:22:59.839
It becomes the biggest hub for BPO business process outsourcing in the world right now.
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Not just for United States, even for Europe.
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Now Asia is putting their eyes in Latin America to become the interface in between United States, Canada market and them why because we have the same time zone we have good English level and in the tech side we increase our knowledge our capacity in a huge mode after the pandemic so everything makes sense.
00:23:28.880 --> 00:23:57.039
That's why you see that aggressive aggressive wave to to Latin America and investment and new tech for example you know that right now the two biggest remittance platform digital platform for remittance from the United States to Latin America were found in Latin America and now they are based in the United States one is Felix and one is Tupana.
00:23:57.759 --> 00:24:14.720
It's based on stable coins but it's those are fantastic that going incredible incredible high why the hybrid between Americans Latin Americans co-working to together it's impossible not to to lose with that combination.
00:24:14.880 --> 00:24:31.039
It's impossible yeah Ricky I want to um shift to something a little more fun yeah although I'm I'm having a lot of fun I'll say but thank you a lot of our audience has never been to DR play tour guide for us.
00:24:31.200 --> 00:24:54.160
If they go where do they need to go what should they eat I'm gonna tell you something and don't take it don't take me you know arrogance but this is a reality like the Argentinas say our our mead the steak from Argentina are the best and I mean we are the perfect spot you to discover where everything starts in the new world.
00:24:54.319 --> 00:25:22.240
In DR you're gonna have the first road the first port the first former street the first building the first market the first church the first university and many the first of the new world so that's that's something that I invite everybody to visit my beautiful country because and but the must and must the the the secret weapon is how warm and friendly we are.
00:25:22.480 --> 00:25:26.559
We love to see that great smile that you have right now in Hawaii.
00:25:26.720 --> 00:25:38.640
We want to see that but in the art land the only problem is that after you visit the R, I don't think you're gonna have a different destiny for at least for if you want to go to Peach Place.
00:25:38.880 --> 00:25:40.640
Love I love the confidence.
00:25:40.880 --> 00:25:41.519
Yeah.
00:25:42.000 --> 00:25:46.720
Ricky this has been a lot of fun I really appreciate you coming on the show.
00:25:47.039 --> 00:25:53.440
Thank you talking about the gig economy what you're building I wish you and the wallet team the best of luck.
00:25:53.680 --> 00:26:01.039
Thank you I just want to leave this for your audience and for the people in Latin America that hear this program.
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I think you have to believe in if you are an entrepreneur you need to build something that nobody's doing think in your needs and when you're thinking your needs you're probably gonna build something special because from your needs it's when you when you discover your needs it's when you really build something amazing so believe let's make it happen.
00:26:23.759 --> 00:26:38.160
Wise words wise words by Ricky will thank you again thanks to our listeners and our sponsor Plug Technologies P-L-U-G-G dot tech great way to connect talent from all over Latin America with growing U.S.
00:26:38.240 --> 00:26:42.480
companies this is the Nearshore Cafe podcast we'll see you next time