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I sat down with Mike Saraswat, Co Founder and CEO of Stoa, an entrepreneur who went from building a marketing agency to taking on one of the hardest challenges in fintech.His latest chapter took almost 30 months of fundraising, around 2,000 investor approaches and 300 meetings before Stoa closed its $2.4M pre seed round.But that resilience was built much earlier.Mike tells the story of spending nine days at Cannes being rejected while trying to finance a film, nearly losing his life in a motorway accident, then getting back into the car, driving to his meeting and winning the project.We also explore what years of chasing difficult problems taught him about failure, momentum, founder obsession and coming back faster when things go wrong.Today, he is building Stoa, a fintech challenging the way people think about idle cash and giving customers a different way to get value from money sitting in their accounts.Timestamps00:00 Introduction00:38 Raising $2.4M after 30 months of fundraising01:09 2,000 investors, 300 calls and mostly rejection03:33 Who Mike was before becoming an entrepreneur06:15 Why he has always chased difficult problems08:39 Starting his first agency in his early 20s09:23 Why raising money for a movie nearly broke him12:33 What he learned from successful fintech founders14:58 Why founder obsession matters17:21 Why success is not only about money21:02 The difficult moments that shaped Mike23:01 Facing serious illness in his early 20s24:03 Nine days of rejection at Cannes26:00 How to shorten the window of despair28:10 Resilience, momentum and coming back faster31:19 The motorway crash he walked away from34:10 He survived the crash and still won the project34:29 Why defeat only becomes defeat when you stop35:00 From agency owner to building Stoa36:00 The enormous problem of idle cash39:22 How Stoa actually works41:13 More than 200 benefits and the future of the platform42:44 ClosingJoin the ExecDNA community and get early access to the platform.👉 Join the community and waiting list: https://www.execdna.comMario RivasFounder of ExecDNAHost of ExecDNA PodcastLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariorivassanchezMike SaraswatCo Founder and CEO of StoaWebsite: https://stoa.moneyWatch ExecDNA Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3804Om0XrGG1gNRsev6DlU#execdna #entrepreneurship #fintech #founderstory #businessmindset
