Name: The most important aspects to consider when company building - Lawrence Lin Murata, Slope
Uploaded: 2023-06-09T13:36:15.170Z
Duration: 422.59
Description: Co-Founder and CEO of B2B payments platform Slope, Lawrence Lin Murata, reflects on what he learnt from starting his first company, and how this affected his approach to starting Slope. He also talks about how complete responsibility and total ownership are two sides of the same coin, that make running your own company extremely challenging but satisfying at the same time.

FFo. 05 -Fintech Founders Int- Lawrence Lin Murata.mp4

FFo. 05 -Fintech Founders Int- Lawrence Lin Murata.vtt

English

{{00:00:09}}
Hi, I'm Lawrence.

{{00:00:09}}
Nice to meet you.

{{00:00:10}}
I'm a co-founder and CEO of Slope.

{{00:00:12}}
Slope is building B2B payments

{{00:00:15}}
B2B payments platform.

{{00:00:16}}
We're streamlining the

{{00:00:17}}
end-to-end B2B payments workflow.

{{00:00:19}}
Our long-term vision should digitize

{{00:00:21}}
the 125 trillion B2B economy.

{{00:00:30}}
Yeah, so my parents have a wholesale

{{00:00:32}}
business that they've been running

{{00:00:34}}
back in Brazil where I grew up

{{00:00:35}}
for more than three decades.

{{00:00:37}}
When Covid hit we, I saw firsthand how

{{00:00:41}}
painful it was for them to digitize their

{{00:00:43}}
business and how the existing solutions

{{00:00:45}}
didn't solve the problems that they have.

{{00:00:47}}
And we talked to several other

{{00:00:49}}
business owners and we've seen that's

{{00:00:50}}
a big pain point in the US in Brazil,

{{00:00:53}}
Asia, Europe, and other places.

{{00:00:56}}
And we also realize how the B2B

{{00:00:59}}
economy is really lagging the B2C

{{00:01:01}}
economy in terms of digitization.

{{00:01:03}}
There has been amazing progress

{{00:01:05}}
in B2C payments, but less

{{00:01:07}}
so in B2B payments there.

{{00:01:08}}
And it's a huge economy of $125 trillion.

{{00:01:12}}
Only $6 trillion of that is online today.

{{00:01:21}}
Yeah, so actually several times.

{{00:01:23}}
So actually we we did Y Combinator

{{00:01:25}}
back in summer 2021 and we got accepted

{{00:01:29}}
into Y Combinator with a completely

{{00:01:31}}
d different idea called Air Desk.

{{00:01:32}}
So we were doing Airbnb for office space.

{{00:01:35}}
So given Covid, a lot of companies had

{{00:01:37}}
anti office space and we're helping

{{00:01:39}}
them put that on the marketplace and

{{00:01:41}}
rent outro their smaller companies we

{{00:01:43}}
realized that we wanna go after our

{{00:01:45}}
big market that, and create big impact.

{{00:01:48}}
And we realized the market size

{{00:01:49}}
was not what we're looking for.

{{00:01:51}}
We actually had a list of more than

{{00:01:53}}
a hundred ideas that we explored over

{{00:01:55}}
the course of three or four months.

{{00:01:57}}
And we landed on which today's

{{00:01:59}}
slope actually in the beginning

{{00:02:01}}
of the Y Combinator batch.

{{00:02:09}}
Yeah.

{{00:02:09}}
I feel like for, us, the most important

{{00:02:11}}
thing, the early stages of company

{{00:02:13}}
company building was finding product

{{00:02:16}}
market fit and understanding the

{{00:02:19}}
yield economics and the market size.

{{00:02:21}}
To us at that stage, nothing matters

{{00:02:23}}
more than product market fit.

{{00:02:25}}
So the biggest hurdle and challenge

{{00:02:27}}
that we're always going through

{{00:02:29}}
is how big is this pain point?

{{00:02:31}}
Is there enough demand, enough of a market

{{00:02:34}}
size for this to become a large company?

{{00:02:36}}
And always being fast at iterating.

{{00:02:38}}
So understanding the timing of when

{{00:02:40}}
do you continue following down on path

{{00:02:42}}
and when do you have enough learnings

{{00:02:44}}
for you to iterate onto the next idea.

{{00:02:47}}
That was always the, main

{{00:02:48}}
challenge in the early days.

{{00:02:56}}
Yeah, I think we've done we've done it

{{00:02:58}}
really well, but actually a lot of these

{{00:02:59}}
learnings were from my first company.

{{00:03:02}}
My first company was

{{00:03:02}}
actually very, different.

{{00:03:04}}
I was really interested in

{{00:03:05}}
autonomous driving technologies.

{{00:03:07}}
And was very technology first.

{{00:03:10}}
I think the change in perspective that,

{{00:03:13}}
we applied to slope when we're doing the

{{00:03:15}}
exploration was understanding the customer

{{00:03:17}}
problem first instead of solution first

{{00:03:20}}
and understanding the business model and

{{00:03:22}}
the, ways this can become a big business.

{{00:03:30}}
Yeah, I think the one thing that

{{00:03:32}}
we learned is the the best VCs care

{{00:03:36}}
a lot about the story and care a

{{00:03:37}}
lot about who you are more than

{{00:03:40}}
just talking about the metrics.

{{00:03:41}}
Of course metrics are important.

{{00:03:43}}
It's important to have

{{00:03:44}}
strong business fundamentals.

{{00:03:46}}
But they care about why are you doing

{{00:03:48}}
this, what led you to this and why do

{{00:03:51}}
you think your position to solve this?

{{00:03:53}}
One thing that we also care a lot

{{00:03:55}}
about when we talk with investors

{{00:03:57}}
is that they're aligned with us

{{00:03:58}}
in terms of the long-term vision.

{{00:04:00}}
We believe that every single successful

{{00:04:01}}
company has had their ups and downs

{{00:04:04}}
and the right investors will will

{{00:04:07}}
be helpful whether things are going

{{00:04:08}}
well, whether things are going bad.

{{00:04:11}}
I think it's as much of an opportunity

{{00:04:14}}
for, you to be able to partner with

{{00:04:15}}
investor, but it's also an opportunity

{{00:04:17}}
for that investor to partner with you.

{{00:04:19}}
So one advice for founders is

{{00:04:22}}
to not sell yourself short.

{{00:04:23}}
That you are actually giving your,

{{00:04:24}}
giving investors an opportunity

{{00:04:26}}
to be part of that that journey

{{00:04:28}}
and to get returns out of that.

{{00:04:37}}
Yeah, I feel like the most challenging

{{00:04:38}}
thing is the responsibility that you take

{{00:04:40}}
on very often there's no right or wrong.

{{00:04:44}}
It's not black and white

{{00:04:45}}
when you're making decisions.

{{00:04:47}}
Sometimes you might not have

{{00:04:48}}
consensus within the team.

{{00:04:50}}
But you need to keep on moving fast

{{00:04:52}}
and make decisions and take home

{{00:04:55}}
responsibilities if things go wrong.

{{00:04:57}}
So, I think the weight of that

{{00:04:58}}
responsibility, when you have the team,

{{00:05:00}}
there's people's people's people's

{{00:05:04}}
Jobs and wellbeing on the line.

{{00:05:07}}
And I think that's always a, massive

{{00:05:09}}
responsibility that I, don't take lightly.

{{00:05:18}}
Yeah, I think it's actually the

{{00:05:19}}
other side of the coin to that to

{{00:05:21}}
the responsibility   aspect is that

{{00:05:23}}
because you have so much responsibility,

{{00:05:26}}
you also have a lot of ownership.

{{00:05:27}}
So you might actually be able to you

{{00:05:30}}
might have your own perspective on how

{{00:05:32}}
you wanna run the company, and that

{{00:05:33}}
might be different from other, how

{{00:05:34}}
investors tell you to run a company.

{{00:05:36}}
How other founders in Silicon

{{00:05:38}}
Valley tell you to run a company?

{{00:05:39}}
And I think that's been

{{00:05:40}}
really important to us.

{{00:05:41}}
It's just say true to ourselves and

{{00:05:43}}
to our intuition and to our values.

{{00:05:45}}
And I think that has paid off over time

{{00:05:48}}
and that is the most rewarding thing

{{00:05:51}}
being able to have full control over that.

{{00:05:58}}
So our long-term vision is to

{{00:06:00}}
digitize the vitro B economy.

{{00:06:02}}
So there's 125 trillion in vitro B

{{00:06:05}}
transactions that happens globally

{{00:06:08}}
offline and only 6 trillion out of

{{00:06:11}}
that 125 trillion is online today.

{{00:06:14}}
So there's a massive opportunity

{{00:06:15}}
to digitize that economy.

{{00:06:16}}
We want to build a

{{00:06:17}}
category defining company.

{{00:06:19}}
Just I think a great analogy and company

{{00:06:22}}
that, that we aspire to be like is Apple.

{{00:06:25}}
And we love how they build great products

{{00:06:27}}
and then they build great products

{{00:06:29}}
that build on top of that ecosystem.

{{00:06:31}}
We see ourselves that way.

{{00:06:32}}
So we're starting off with B2B

{{00:06:33}}
payments and streamlining the whole

{{00:06:36}}
end-to-end workflow and as we, we

{{00:06:38}}
work for that problem, we also realize

{{00:06:40}}
there are other pain points that will

{{00:06:41}}
help move these businesses online.

{{00:06:44}}
And we want every single product to

{{00:06:46}}
be built on top of the foundation and

{{00:06:49}}
on top of the data infrastructure that

{{00:06:50}}
will build for the previous product

{{00:06:52}}
and for them to enrich each other

{{00:06:53}}
instead of being a standalone endeavors.

painful it was for them to digitize their

didn't solve the problems that they have.

And it's a huge economy of $125 trillion.

Only $6 trillion of that is online today.

So we were doing Airbnb for office space.

Is there enough demand, enough of a market

exploration was understanding the customer

the, ways this can become a big business.

Fintech Founders

Case Study

Co-Founder and CEO of B2B payments platform Slope, Lawrence Lin Murata, reflects on what he learnt from starting his first company, and how this affected his approach to starting Slope. He also talks about how complete responsibility and total ownership are two sides of the same coin, that make running your own company extremely challenging but satisfying at the same time.

Leadership

Fintechs

Fintech

Fintech startup

Fintech start up

Financial startup

Financial start up

Digital payments

Paytech

Payments

Startup