Raymond Lee

Flow is a clever bit of code that helps you boost conversions, stay compliant, and enter new markets fast. Accept payments using customizable components – all through one simple integration. Read more from our Senior Product Manager, Akin Kayim 👇

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Exciting to see Adaptive tackling the slow payments issue in construction with innovative financial management tools! 🏗️ It's clear their platform addresses crucial inefficiencies in the payment chain, benefiting small- and medium-sized businesses in the industry. The team has closed their $19 million Series A round—looking forward to seeing how they expand and enhance financial workflows for even more construction companies. 💡 A great example of tech-driven solutions making a big impact where it's needed most! 🚀 #ConstructionTech #FinancialInnovation #SMBs https://lnkd.in/eBJq3Q93

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There are learnings here. Not just in fintech space .. as GenAI gets more & more regulated, we'll see similar compliance & regulatory risk. BAAS began with the promise of "minimal regulation as a service". But that is never true. AI startups beware. https://lnkd.in/gfSYMSCv

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Had fun conversation with Sean Li 🎙about entrepreneurship and building products.

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It's incredible to see how two guys, fresh out of high school, not just dreaming big but making it happen.🌟 Their platform, which generates custom APIs from natural language prompts, is a game-changer. Imagine simplifying complex tasks like connecting e-commerce platforms to databases or orchestrating IoT devices with just a few commands. 🙌 It’s a bold step towards democratizing API development and making technology more accessible. Innovation isn’t limited by age, but rather fueled by vision and determination. Can't wait to see how their platform evolves and makes API generation more accessible and efficient! 🚀 #Startups #AI #Innovation #YoungEntrepreneurs #TechRevolution https://lnkd.in/dD_jGRNn

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Stripe held Sessions 2024, its yearly annual conference in San Francisco last week. Yes, there were a ton of announcements, including the return of crypto to Stripe, but the one that caught my eye was Stripe de-coupling payments from its software stack. This is HUGE, so let me explain. Historically, Stripe required its clients to use its payment services as a gateway to access its software stack such as billing, invoicing, and fraud prevention. However, this requirement has been removed to allow businesses to utilize Stripe's suite of services more modularly. This strategic pivot is intended to reduce friction for existing and potential customers who may only need specific components of Stripe's offerings, and not necessarily the payment processing solutions. Ok, so this means that you can use Adyen, Checkout.com or Worldpay as your payments processor and use Stripe as your Billing Engine! I distinctly remember how much of a hot button issue this used to be at Stripe and it's interesting how Stripe has come around to this outcome. At Xflow, we've architected our payments and product infrastructure very similarly to what Stripe used to do, which is that product and payments are tightly coupled. Maybe it's time to rethink this? For more details, check out the link to the TechCrunch article in the comments section. #paymentsinfrastructure #stripe #paymentsystems

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Just shipped more Stripe Billing updates to our changelog: https://lnkd.in/eqk6qUSa 1. Ignore any one-time changes to previewing subscription invoices 2. Add test clocks to existing test mode customers / subs in the dashboard 3. Get a bunch of additional data in Sigma & your own data warehouse via SDP to write custom queries 4. Create subscriptions with cycles of up to 3 years!

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If you had a great startup idea, should you keep it a secret? Are musicians natural entrepreneurs? In this episode, Seed Zeng and I chat with Yotam Rosenbaum, musician, YC founder, and investor. 👉 Listen on your podcast app: https://tr.ee/ZmRr5NjEtk

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A true delight learning from and talking to Kelly O'Shaughnessy about her incredible expertise in product management! Check out the newest episode on Witty: Women In Tech Talk To Yaz podcast.

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Carta Total Comp released our Q2 benchmarks yesterday. Overall, it looks like the market is starting to pick up again. We saw a 1% increase in salaries since Q1 and about a 4% increase in equity. We also found that the trend of other US metros moving closer to SF pay levels has tapered and even started to reverse itself in some cases. More details in our release notes: https://lnkd.in/dXejSFKY In short, we may be headed back to "normal" labor market conditions. After the insane growth of 2021/2022 and then the correction of 2023, maybe things are starting to settle out. I'm not one to make predictions about comp so we'll see what future updates bring, but as always these days there's never a dull moment when it comes to comp.

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Super proud of the amazing work our product & engineering teams have done in the past 3 months. Say 'Hi' to the Backbase Spring '24 release - our most complete release until now! Too much to name, but some of the highlights: Retail Banking 💸 👉🏻 Order New & Virtual Cards 👉🏻 Pockets to make savings easier and reaching life goals faster 👉🏻 Support for M2M transfers 👉🏻 Financial insights dashboard Business Banking 👔 👉🏻 Unified approvals: all tasks pending approval in one overview 👉🏻 Personalized SME & Commercial Dashboard 👉🏻 Highly configurable accounts & product overviews Digital Investing & Wealth Management 💰 👉🏻 Positions+, allowing clients to view additional information on positions and allocations 👉🏻 Value aggregation, giving clients access to a holistic overview of their wealth 👉🏻 Market events on charts 👉🏻 DI Trading, giving clients access to the stock market in a user-friendly way Digital Onboarding 🏦 👉🏻 Improved support for business relations such as KYC for UBO’s and control persons 👉🏻 Resuming business applications 👉🏻 Retail integrated account opening for a seamless transition between application and first usage of new products Digital Assist 👩‍💻 👉🏻 Create payments on behalf of customers 👉🏻 Seamless case management 👉🏻 Appointment booking supported by JRNI Digital Lending 💵 👉🏻 Introduction of a loan explorer enabling customers to explore various loan options from a single platform        👉🏻 New loan calculator enabling customers to clearly see how much their monthly payment will be 👉🏻 Managing multiple in-flight applications in one place Kudos to all our teams! Let's go! 🚀 https://lnkd.in/ej4PhczF  #backbase #retailbanking #businessbanking #digitalinvesting

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Callbacks are the backbone of any asynchronous architecture. And for essential services running at population level scale, the callback platform is mission critical - Be it execution of payment mandates, or our daily Merchant Settlements process to ensure a merchant gets their earnings on time, or digital coupons with precise expiry times - we schedule and handle 2 billion + daily jobs with clockwork precision using Clockwork - our in-house scheduler! https://lnkd.in/g8V78WD5 This detailed blog captures how we designed Clockwork for scale in line with our key value of simplicity breeds scalability Our tech blogs are aimed at the engineering community so that we can share our learnings on how to address the challenges of building essential services at scale. If there is any particular topic you would like us to blog about, tell us in the comments below! #tech@phonepe

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Founder friends - if you're thinking about raising this year, Jason's approach is the most genuine and pragmatic one I've come across in a while. He's relaunching the program in a new format - check out the sesh to learn more! ✨ LAUNCH EVENT for Adamant Fundraising I've taken everything we learned working with over 200 founders and helping raise $311M across 3 years of a cohort-based course, and made it better. The new program is called Adamant Fundraising and it is far more accessible than our old cohort-based training. -- Timing - instead of only offering it 3 times a year, we've made it rolling enrollment so you can join at any time of the year. -- Cost - we changed our pricing significantly to make it affordable for the earliest stage founders. -- Community - we've enhanced the community element to make it even more impactful The Event: On Tues, May 28 at 1pm PST, we're hosting a free streaming event to launch Adamant Fundraising and help teach founders what holds them back from fundraising successfully. On top of that, we will be giving away some incredibly valuable gifts to everyone who attends live so make sure to RSVP and hold the time on your calendar. https://lnkd.in/eyHZ_CF7

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It’s THIS article (the second one in the post below): https://lnkd.in/dEdPxy62

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If you were asked how much merchants in the US pay in transaction fees each year, would you have guessed $172 billion? That's with a B! For small businesses and fintech companies alike, it's critical you: 1. Understand what these fees are and where they are going 2. Get a grasp on the legality (and suitability) of passing fees along to the consumer 3. Consider managing transaction fees alongside a payment optimization partner We explore all three points in Astra's latest guide. Link in comments! ⬇️

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⌛ The deadline for YC’s S24 batch is April 22! I get a ton of requests for application feedback, so I’ve consolidated my advice here: 𝐓𝐞𝐚𝐦 > 𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐚 + 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬 Your idea will change; that’s what it means to be pre-product-market fit. A bet on an early-stage company is a bet on the team to iterate rapidly and figure it out; think of your idea and your progress as useful evidence. Don’t be discouraged if you feel like you haven’t made enough progress, because the amount of progress you’ve made is not nearly as important as how fast you made it. In other words: “slope, not intercept”. 𝐁𝐞 𝐬𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐞. 𝐁𝐞 𝐝𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭. Explain your idea clearly in 1-2 sentences: who are your users and what problem do you solve? Avoid jargon, marketing-speak, technical intricacies, or an exhaustive list of features. Tacking on “...with AI” or “...with blockchain” is not any more helpful than “...with computers”. Bad: “We are transforming the global software development industry with a revolutionary AI platform that streamlines the SDLC for tremendous efficiency gains using cutting-edge LLMs.” Better: “We’re a developer tool that automatically reviews code and fixes bugs.” 𝐊𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐮𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐬 You should feel like an expert on your users, and have some unique/contrarian insights about them. You’ve hopefully identified a “hair-on-fire” pain they have, and you’re building a product to fix their problem. It’s hard to spend too much time talking to your users. Interviewing 50-100 people seems like a good place to start. If you’ve talked to less than, say, 10-20, it might be hard to know you’re solving a real problem. 𝐊𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐲𝐨𝐮’𝐫𝐞 𝐠𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐲 What’s your path to $1B in revenue? Keep it simple. You don’t need a 5-tier pricing strategy and a multi-year product roadmap, you need to know roughly how many potential customers you have and how much they’re likely to pay (bottom-up analysis), and how big the overall market is (top-down). Reasonable estimates are OK. Remember, the VC model is based on a power law of startup returns, where one huge exit makes up for all other investments going to zero. This makes a tiny chance at becoming a $10B company quite valuable, and a high chance at becoming a $50M company surprisingly useless. 𝐒𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐥𝐲? Emphatic yes! YC was an awesome experience for us and every YC alumnus I’ve asked so far - it changed the trajectory of our startup. Even if you don’t get in, we found the application process itself was valuable and forced us to think deeply. If you’d like some eyes on your application, send me a message - I’m happy to help!

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Did you know that 68% of small businesses report having cash flow problems, and many small businesses rely on the owner's personal funds to stay afloat? Relay exists to solve this and the best part is it's actually working! Which makes this announcement even sweeter: We raised a USD $32.2 million Series B round. What does this mean? - More spend management tools to improve financial visibility - More products to give small business owners flexibility - More integrations to streamline operations - And ultimately more businesses making better and smarter financial decisions Exciting times ahead! PS We're hiring: https://lnkd.in/gMT2mN25

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🎙️ Excited to share a recent convo I had with Justin Wolz on #FounderWellness and #Burnout. Reflecting on my last ten years in tech and especially these four intense years as a founder, I’ve learned a lot about what keeps us going in high-pressure roles. At Ambient, we're focused on Chiefs of Staff, Heads of Ops, and Founders—people who thrive in ambiguity and uncertainty. Through my conversations with many of you, it's clear we share many of the same challenges and strengths. ✨ These roles demand courage, as they often involve stepping into the unknown and solving complex problems before they're fully defined. Ambiguity is where you SHINE! ✨ 🔥 Building #RESILIENCE is key, and it's something we talked about a lot on the podcast. I think there are valuable takeaways for anyone who’s navigating high-stakes environments. 🥂 Cheers to all #ChiefsofStaff #CoS #Founders #BizOps #COO

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🤔 It may be an unpopular opinion, but I think it's always best to be first to the party 🥳 Innovation is the engine of growth, and the partnership between MikMak and DoorDash is a testament to this principle. This first-of-its-kind integration is a game-changer, revolutionizing how consumers shop and brands sell. Imagine this: you're scrolling through your favorite social media platform, see an ad for a product you love, and within moments, you can have it delivered to your doorstep via DoorDash. This is the power of MikMak's integration with DoorDash, a seamless fusion of social commerce and on-demand delivery. But this partnership isn't just about convenience; it's about empowering brands with valuable data and insights. MikMak's closed-loop attribution provides a granular understanding of consumer behavior, enabling brands to optimize their marketing strategies and drive sales. 🚀 This is the future of omnichannel shopping, a world where every interaction is a potential purchase, and every purchase is a data point. MikMak and DoorDash are leading the charge, and I'm excited to see where this journey takes us. 🗞️ Read the Press Release here: https://lnkd.in/e-VqFtSb? #MikMak #DoorDash #Omnichannel #ecommerce #innovation #marketing #attribution #data #insights #partnership #futureofretail

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