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My guest today is Ben Gleason, Co-Founder of Kamino, a financial hub that powers the operations and growth of Brazilian startups and scale-ups with integrated finance products, services, and software. Kamino is backed by Inspired Capital, GFC, Picus, Flourish, QED, and Gilgamesh Ventures among others.
We sat down to record this episode live at Money/2020 Las Vegas - the Super Bowl of fintech!
Ben is also a serial fintech entrepreneur and one of the OG tech founders in Brazil, having previously founded Guiabolso, which sold to PicPay in 2021.
In this episode, we discuss:
The remarkable positive impact that FinTech in Brazil has had, in terms of financial inclusion and customer service, and why there's still a massive opportunity in the region.
“Even the big banks have gotten better in terms of their digital apps, their services, offering more competitive pricing… whereas in the past was really terrible, because there was no competition. They've been forced to actually to improve as well.”
Ben started building his first startup, GuiaBolso, back in 2012. The Brazilian ecosystem was nascent, and he encountered some crazy challenges, including a lawsuit that reached the Supreme Court. How did they persevere?
"We had to build all of the bank account aggregation technology… a personal finance app… a financial product marketplace and it was over years and years... And actually, we ended up getting an investment from Credit Karma and the founder, Ken… basically said, ‘day one, I plugged into FICO scores; day two, I plugged into an ad network to distribute credit cards; and day three, I had revenue.’ Were like, okay, well, for us it was one year, two years, three years."
The inspiration for Kamino and how they're helping entrepreneurs hit the ground running and start building much faster than ever before.
“We're really thinking about how do we solve the frustrations that we went through, that we felt still haven't been solved, even as the rest of the ecosystem has really evolved incredibly.”
Advice for entrepreneurs navigating a down market, why he is so passionate to help female and underrepresented founders… and a lot more!
“I've spent a lot more time mentoring and investing in underrepresented founders - women, minorities, also socio-economic minorities - and I think that's where I can really have a bigger impact with people that don't necessarily have the network yet, but have incredible stories and skills, and they've clearly overcome adversity.”
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Miguel Armaza is Co-Founder & Managing General Partner of Gilgamesh Ventures, a seed-stage investment fund focused on fintech in the Americas. He also hosts and writes the Fintech Leaders podcast and newsletter.
Ben Gleason, Kamino Co-Founder – Raising Capital in a Frozen Market, Tough Founder Lessons, & Fintech's Incredible Impact in Brazil