"I went to Mexico City and I took her [my grandma] to the aquarium and Julie, she was the happiest woman in the world. She's in a wheelchair and you look for advice like, hey, abuelita, what's your advice in life? What can you tell me that I should do? And her advice was just to do things and travel and see the world. And I said, okay, that's good. Do you regret anything?

And she said, I only regret the things that I didn't do. Everything that I did, I'm very happy with it. And that's what happened with me and with the whole Payable journey." -Daniel Yubi, Payable Founder and CEO

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In this episode, Julie interviews Daniel Yubi, a fintech entrepreneur from Cancun, Mexico and the founder & CEO of ⁠Payable⁠. He started his career as a practicing lawyer, but eventually pivoted to follow his passion in product management. Since then he has spent over a decade developing fintech products in the US and UK, most recently leading product at ⁠checkout.com⁠. He was building platform payments for the best known fintech brands (Klarna, Revolut, Mollie) in Europe when he noticed the operational challenges finance teams were facing and saw an opportunity to start Payable. Listed as one of the startups that are disrupting the CFO tech stack, Payable is helping finance teams automate their financial operations at scale.

‎The This Week in Fintech Podcast: Daniel Yubi of Payable On the State of Payments and UK Fintech on Apple Podcasts

‎Show The This Week in Fintech Podcast, Ep Daniel Yubi of Payable On the State of Payments and UK Fintech - Jan 23, 2024

Apple Podcasts

• Moving to the UK and staying up to speed on payments. 2:00
  • What brought Daniel to the UK after growing up in Mexico.
  • From crypto to AI to payments, how Daniel learned more about fintech and stays up to date today.
• Where Payable fits into the payments space. 6:30
  • Thinking about fintech as a regulatory problem.
  • Reflecting on the regulatory environment in the UK vs other parts of the world.
  • Regulating money movement in a global economy.
• Taking the leap and becoming a founder. 12:45
  • How his abuelita impacted his views on life.
  • The process of hiring the right employees and company culture.
  • Measuring risks.
• High points and low points of his career. 19:00
  • Finding his first job in the UK.
  • How welcoming people have been broadly in the UK.
  • Hiring his first employee at Payable.
  • Getting used to lows and pain as a founder.
• European Fintech 23:00
  • A recent TWIF survey wasn't super bullish on European fintech, why Daniel is still optimistic.
  • How countries in Europe can be vastly different and some have built in advantages to launching a startup.
• Quick fire questions. 28:30
  • Something you can't find about him online.
  • Personal highlight from 2023.
  • If he could have dinner with anyone, who would it be.

Transcript

Julie: How long ago did you leave Mexico to go to the UK? Okay.

Daniel: Six years ago and it's fun because now I am to the point where I'm going to get British citizenship, which is pretty cool. Well, the passport actually, I can stay here for a bit, but yeah, just the only reason why I really want that passport is because every time I come back to the UK, I have to go as a mortal to talk.

To someone in the passport custom board. I just hate that. I just want to just go and scan it and just move on The reality is that the british passport doesn't really give you much maybe australia, but as a mexican I can go to australia and from europe Brexit happened, right? So I think if I was getting the french passport or austrian passport that would be more value than the british passport It's just that I hate going and waiting for like two hours since I can get over the the airport

Julie: You're too funny. What was the impetus for you moving to the UK?

Daniel: Fintech actually. So I was a product manager at Clip ages ago. So I was early I guess in the fintech space in Mexico, Mexico City, the company was in San Francisco, Menlo Park. And then, you know, maybe just in 2016 or so, the capital of fintech was more like Europe, the Monzo's, the Revolut's of the world.

So then I moved here just to, to drive the wave of fintech. And now I've been here for a couple of years now, I guess. And by the way, I know you from the internet, Julie, and also Orum. I know that all the team at Orum.

Julie: Oh yeah,

Daniel: yeah, yeah, yeah. Stephanie is an angel of ours as well. Payable. She's amazing.

Julie: oh very cool.

Daniel: Yeah. I love her analogy of how delivering money should be like Amazon Prime, UPS, FedEx, you know, it should move without really knowing who is really delivering the money to you, like, who cares if it's ACH, FedNow, whatever, right?

Julie: Well I'm glad you've heard good things versus bad things on the internet. It's always funny, one of the things they, speaking of Orum, that they do when you start, is on your first team call, you have to say something to the team about you that, You can't find it on the internet, and I was like, Damn it, like, everything's frickin online.

Like, this is what happens when you're a journalist. There's so much about you that's out there and everything. So I forget what I ended up going with, but I had to really think about that question, because there's so much stuff out there.

Daniel: It is insane, like, it's just so many things and how do you keep yourself up to date with everything? It's just crazy, right? And now with, Maybe a couple of years ago, it was like crypto and blah, blah, blah. And it's impossible for me to understand what's happening in sushi swap and whatever. Nice foodie plus swap word.

But now it's like AI. And it's like, oh my God, it's, it's hard enough to learn payments. The more you know about payments and cards and banks, the more you realize, you know, nothing. So yeah, so hard to keep yourself up to date.

Julie: Well, actually, that's a good question for you too, is just, how do you, how did you learn so much about payments and how do you stay up to date on it? Because I'm sure there's a bunch of people listening to this episode that, want to know more about it as well, including myself. Because even though I worked at a payments company, there's just never a way to know everything about it.

It's such a big and complex space.

Daniel: Yeah, I would say, I don't know. It's interesting because if you. If you listen, if you read and listen to. The known media like this weekend Fintech, of course 

Julie: I didn't tell him to say that either, guys, by the way.

Daniel: that's all right. No, he's great. Nik. Nik is also an investor of ours. I love him. And and also love these and Michael. Michael is a friend of as well and Michael Jenkins. And I have a community called Fintequila, which is Fintech operators drinking tequila. And Michael was one of the first early you know members of Fintequila.

Julie: that's hilarious.

Daniel: yeah. And I'll send you the website. We do have a website on top of Notion, which is very ridiculous. But I feel that this week in Fintech 11FS, I think Simon Taylor is really good on really Creating an opinion but I think the issue that I have with some of the journalists trying to think about their names, but it just feels like it's a recycled set of news.

Right. It's so I, I feel there's three things that happen in fintech, either people raising money. So everybody's talking about raising money or whoever raised money, then gossip about a company not doing well, or some issue in the leadership team in the fintech space, like a Revolut everyone is leaving and then everybody's talking about that.

But then the real interesting, amazing news is when someone is thinking about opinion and they do the research about the subject. So I can always write about ACH in the past, but maybe interesting piece will be, Hey, how would ACH FedNow and FedEx talk to each other if the backing system were whatever that could be, or what would happen if Swift changes tomorrow and inputs the new ISO file to every bank.

These are the things that are very unique. I would say, of course, very nerdy, don't get me wrong. But it's hard, like it's hard, like not everybody has time to write a fun, interesting subject in FinTech because we're busy trying to build FinTech. But yeah, I will say that a lot of the stuff that I try to do is just try to read.

Bunch of stuff and try to come up with my own opinion, but it's not that easy to really be up to date on what's happening in, in FinTech because sometimes a fail is a recycling of news with other news outlets, I will say. 

Julie: So how does your company, Payable, fit into the payment space? Kind of give our viewer a quick rundown of where exactly you guys fit in the, as we've said, massive payments ecosystem.

Daniel: we took a different approach to FinTech. I think when you define FinTech is [00:07:00] mostly a regulatory. Problem, right? You say, Hey, look, you want to create a new neo bank for vets. I love dogs. So if you think about Fintech for people that love dogs, it could be either two fold.

One is a new bank for dog owners. So you can share your expenses. So you need to have a bank license or whatever. Or you are building I don't know, like a billing product and managing appointments product for like a vertical SaaS for vets and same issue you have right on one side, you're onboarding users, people like us that we love dogs and then on the other is more like maybe freelancers or businesses would you need to do KYB or not your business?

So if you think about fintech in that case is okay, you have to move money. You need to make sure you know who they are. Okay. And then you add sort of services on top of it. The way I think about the future of fintech right now is fintech and money should be data. The problem is that the accessibility of the data is really hard.

So what we do at [00:08:00] Payable is, we connect to corporate accounts for businesses. So in this case, let's say you are very famous that that you have many, many, Places across the UK, Europe, where you're helping a bunch of veterinarians to grow and, and, and help them with their services. So what you have is you have maybe a bank account in the UK like Lloyds.

Another one is Bank of America in the US. Another one could be a bank in the Nordics. All of these things, like bank accounts and data that is not really talking to each other and the reason is because getting access to those accounts is extremely hot So what we did at payable is we took an approach of fintech as software As passed through in some way meaning we do not have a regulated ad license.

We are not a bank. So the CFO can connect all the bank accounts. They can do treasury and reconciliation. Meaning, how much money do I have in this bank account, in this bank account, in this bank account? Okay, brilliant. This is all the money [00:09:00] movements that I did to help all these beautiful docs in the world.

Okay, how do I do consolidated reporting? Oh, yeah, we did a cross border payout to Julie in Mexico and the indoors was maybe in, I don't know, USD, trying to close the books in there is extremely hard. So it's a very interesting approach because we believe, I say that fintech should not, not be a regulatory challenge only.

It should be. If you are a global company, how can you have access to your finances and corporate accounts globally? But we're not regulated. We're just software. We bring all your banking data into a beautiful dashboard for you to reconcile move payments and as well as just have all your cash in a single location.

Julie: What is the regulatory landscape like in the UK right now? Just because I'm very familiar with what it looks like in the U. S. from my time at Orum and just being in FinTech in general, but I'm, I'm very much less familiar with what it looks like for you.

Daniel: Yeah, it's massive, massive difference. I love, I love my, European and UK fellows where there's regulation [00:10:00] that allows people to have more holidays, more lifetime balance, and a lot of you know ability for them to just in companies have more time off here because of the employee's law.

But on the other side, when you're also in the payment side or innovation side, there's a lot of laws that you need to follow to compete, I would say. So an example of this, let's say you're a marketplace. The marketplace is in the U S you want to. Connect vets with people like us that we love, dogs.

That's very easy. You get an FBO account. That account just is mixing all money for Julie's money that is going to be paid out to Julie. But there's no real regulation that you need to follow. You just have an account, they're separate. You put the money and then the bail happens and happy days. Here in the UK and Europe, there's something called PSD 2 and they're just creating PSD 2.

3, which is another set of rules where basically says that if you are. Holding money that belongs to someone else in this case, you as a marketplace or a platform, then you need to be regulated or have an, a [00:11:00] regulated entity. So if we are in the U S when back into the U S market. You can have Checkout.com or Stripe to deposit the money into your account, and then you can do the payout, or you have more, ability for you to have some level of experience. An example of this in, the U. S. is Modern Treasury. Modern Treasury, which is doing something similar to us in terms of bank connectivity, payments, APIs.

They, one of the customers, ClassPass, they get the money in their account. Non monetary accounts, you know, ClassPass, bank account, and then the payout happens through ACH or whatever rail. Whereas here in Europe, that is not possible. Because if money goes into the bank account, let's say Julie paid for something for the vet, or Airbnb charged a host or whatever, That money cannot be in your bank account unless you have a safeguarding account.

So safeguarding account is a particular legal account, few corporate banks give you, so you have protected funds. An example of this will be with the FTX [00:12:00] problem where all money should have been safeguarded in the UK, right? Like it's, it needs to be safeguarded. Of course they did some dodgy things there.

So what happens in this case is that a lot of startups, they end up using like I don't know, like equivalent of unit or banking as a service providers here in Europe, because they have an account that is protected for the customers, but just to keep it simple, there's PSE2, that means that if you are a marketplace, you cannot just Put money that belongs to someone else have to be regulated or use a regulated entity.

Does that make sense?

Julie: It does. It does. And it, you know, payments in general is such a complicated thing, even though you had experience in it, what finally made you. Decide to start your own company because Being a founder is really hard so what was it that made you finally make that decision 

Daniel: it is the hardest option possible. And I remember listening to a podcast from Tom Blumfield from Monzo. And even though he [00:13:00] had an amazing exit, he said, I was naive and if I knew the pain and what it will take to bring monster to the world I would have not done it and it's interesting now because of course I am naive and of course I didn't know and I still believe in what we're doing so we're still building it so probably more pain will happen in the next couple of months and years, but I'm just excited because this you are naive.

I guess. I saw my grandma. What is it like 3 weeks ago? I went to Mexico City and I took her to the aquarium and Julie. She was the happiest woman in the world. And, you know, she's all she's in a wheelchair and. You know, you look, you look for advice. Like, hey, grandma, abuelita. She looks like Coco, by the way.

You're going to watch Coco. It's amazing. So I said, look, abuel what's your advice in life? You know what should I do? What do you, what can you tell me that I should do? And her advice was just to do things and, and travel and see the world. And I said, okay, that's good. Do you regret anything?

And she said, I only regret the things that I didn't do. [00:14:00] Everything that I did, I'm very happy with it. And that's what happened with me and with, with the whole payable journey. I, I wanted to build something. We saw a problem. We still pretty much checkout come we gain con conviction or earned conviction from investors and customers and the market.

And there was this point with Razvan my CTO, where we have to do this because if we don't do it, somebody else will. Yes, it's extremely hard. It's very painful, but now I know whatever the outcome is. I don't have the, what if the, what if it's what sometimes kills you because it's something non uncontrollable, right?

Whereas now we, we made that choice. I already understand how to do 500 to 2000 employees in and checkout comma or any other big companies. So if I ever need to join. And get a job back. I know how to do it. So I know that what I've done from here to this point, I can do it again. But if I didn't do the company, what if [00:15:00] we try to do that, right?

And that is the reason why there was a measured risk of going for it. A massive market a big problem and complex problem as well. Like this is a hard problem to build. I was saying that to your friends, like, Oh my God, corporate banking. Finance, FinTech, it's just like every single area, B2B, enterprise sales, it's just like, Oh God, I took the hardest problem to go and solve for, but at least I know what it takes.

And whatever happens now, I know the avenues and the, the, the journey to build something and put it to the world. So, so yeah, that's the only reason. Massive market, great team, great opportunity, but mostly the driver was. So,

Julie: What do you think has been the key? You said like, if you needed to go build a company to the size again, you could, what have been the keys to the success that you've learned in order to, to get to this point?

Daniel: yeah, I would say that you know, investors say, can the founder [00:16:00] hire, can the founder build? Can the founder sell? Sorry, can the founder build? Can the founder sell? Can the founder scale? And it's like a bit of a video game, right? You try out something, you know, Don't get there. You go back to where you are and you keep doing this until the feedback loop becomes faster, and then you get to the next stage.

The key thing here, of course, hiring an amazing team. One of the best things we've done is hiring a great team. Whenever we hire the wrong person, it's been an expensive, very, very expensive mistake because you just learn what not good looks like.

Julie: Well, how long does it usually take you to figure out, like, alright, this was the wrong hire? Is that, like, do you find out pretty much right away, or does it normally take you, like, 6 to 12 months, and you're like, nah, this just wasn't the right fit?

Daniel: So I think there are different dimensions to this. I think when you understand the domain, it's quick. You can see that in a couple of weeks, max a month, two months. We have no three months of experience here in the UK. That's pretty quick when you don't know the domain enough. So when you are the CEO and you try to understand what [00:17:00] good looks like, that's the issue.

So I come from a product background, so I can understand. Good. Great. Looks like on the sell side at the beginning of the journey, I didn't really know what to look in an amazing salesperson. You talk to friends and and they give you a proxy of things and they tell you more or less what it is. So maybe you increase the bar from where you were to a little bit more, but the, the way you navigate.

With the questions and the experience of knowing this person is actually great, it's really tough. I remember hiring this person, this person wasn't great to be honest. It was really bad, it was one of the worst hires I've ever done in my life. And and, but I learned what really, really bad looks like.

Then on the next hire on this role, then I was like, I know what it takes to do certain things because I've done it. Now, this new person I'm going to put in front of my mentors. So I got mentors after the mistake. Then, even in the interview process, I put this person in front of my mentors to see if this person could So yeah, [00:18:00] you need to work with what you have, but normally you should be able to, to tell in a couple of months, nine to 12 months.

I think it's a very long time for someone to realize that they, did the wrong hire. I think when that happens, I think there are two things. One, you overcompensated what you're going to build, what you're going to do. So things change. So. It's just what it is and it's on cost and it's

Julie: I think that's probably a lot of what the layoffs were the last few months and stuff, or the last, probably, like, year.

Daniel: Yeah. A hundred percent. Or the other aspect is you hire for something that it was short sighted for three months. So this person did the job. scale, but then scale enough beyond the nine months. And that's always a hard balance. When you're a pre seed company like us, investors, it never says, look, hire for 18 months, but the world is changing so much.

So how do you do that? Right. So sometimes if you hire someone to junior or, or depending on what type of role, then they just [00:19:00] learn too quickly and then they just want to. Yeah, they cannot scale.

Julie: Yeah, it's kind of sticking on this a little bit. What would you say would be a high point and a low point, not only just at Payable, but in your career entirely?

Daniel: So high point and low point. So I will start with low point in finding a job in the UK was extremely hot. Like people don't know this when you're an immigrant and a foreigner and, and, yeah, just it's so hard. Second as well, maybe now I say water instead. Waters the water. The way I learned English and the way I learned product management and business was in the us so pushy.

Saying water, dude, and just communicate and navigate in a very different way to, to the UK. So it's, it's so fascinating because there are similarities. I will say Spanish and Mexican were similar, but the, the, the essence of the report is so different. And so you [00:20:00] have this person as a programmer in a successful Mexican company known in the U S maybe not as known as it is now.

Clip is like one of the biggest acquirers and Mobile PO as a point of sale system now, but maybe that time it wasn't so I had a good background in paper But when I went into the interviews at the time I don't know. I just, they, they, they didn't get product. They, they didn't get the San Francisco PM approach and product development, product first approach.

It was very delivery focused and a very like product owner, top down . So when you're applying to so many jobs and you're getting a lot of no's, because also this was before Brexit, so I was competing against. Europeans, Spaniards, like everybody, plus the visa, sponsorship of a visa, plus not understanding how people speak.

I remember I was in this interview where this guy had a British Chinese accent, but not like British, like proper born in here in the UK, but just like a. Very hard to understand accent. And he was a zoom call without a video. And I couldn't understand you to what he was saying. Like I actually had no idea.

So [00:21:00] imagine how uncomfortable that is. He kind of hung up on me actually on the call because he thought I was taking the piss, but I wasn't, I just couldn't understand what he was saying. So for me, that was a very low point because he's like, Oh my God, I think I am great. I think I know how to do product.

I've done really well in my career. I don't great stuff, but I'm not finding my fit and my foot or I couldn't find where to go. So I think that would be the, the the lowest. I think the highest the highest, I think there's just too many. I think it's just, I'm very grateful for. How welcoming as well has been here in the UK, but from, of course, getting investors backing me up in this journey, the first employee, Nick, who believe in us when we had nothing, the first you know, probably bill that it was wrong and it was like horrible.

And then nobody. Care and then we made it and then we had the first customer and is, is amazing as well. And then the second customer, and then we increase the value of the contract. Then we got a free trade, which are various, like the chime or the Robin hood of of the, of the UK. [00:22:00] There's a lot of highs.

I think when you are our founder in a company, I think the lows just. It's all so hard for me to explain the laws in the company, because when I thought there was a very big low, there's just another bigger low. And like, it just happens to get worse and worse and worse. Like, I don't know, like, I don't know how to explain it.

It's just more like you get used to the pain as a founder. So what I thought was tough a year ago is like, Oh. So easy, you know, I remember a customer saying no to us and I was like heartbroken or not having the person I wanted. I was heartbroken and then you move on and then the same customer or the same person comes back to you and says, I want to work with you.

So yeah, I think there are too many lows for, for payable, I guess, to, to, to try to navigate though. But for any founders listening, I will say you get used to, to the, to the lows.

Julie: So we, I don't know if you saw this, but we [00:23:00] recently did a survey of our members as well as some experts in the space to ask them, you know, what the outlook is for FinTech more broadly. And there's, there's good news for you and bad news for you. Good news is they're very bullish on payments. Bad news is they're very Bearish on the UK and Europe.

Do you like, what would be your counter argument to the, the bearish aspect? And would you issue any caution about being super bullish on payments more broadly? 'cause it feels like payments has been doing pretty good for a long time.

Daniel: Yeah, as being someone that let product checkout come and I think those car payments and now I'm in the bank transfers world. Do, I don't know, does the world need another Klarna and another Another Strava, another checkout, another payout. I don't know. I think the effects of cross border payments is really complicated, but you still have Currencycloud, they're great companies solving the problem.

I do think maybe, yeah, the tech could be better. The APS could be [00:24:00] better. So there's always going to be an angle to it, but payments is crunching. You crunch margins, right? You, you, you go to the bottom line to try to find. Whoever is the cheapest. And I think that's one of the one of the interesting things where companies will go to Stripe and pay for a high fee because they don't have the technology to build things in house.

Then they go into checkout because now they can be regulated and build things in house. But then there was checkout to go cheaper and that's just the play. So. I am bullish in the, in, in a world of like, yeah, payments needs to happen. And a hundred percent, I believe that every company should have a payment angle because it's just an extra revenue channel.

It's just a great experience. You don't have to go to different providers to try to solve that. On the other side, I don't think we need to have many other striped checkouts and agents and a lot of founders doing this. And I'm thinking, well, I don't know, like, why, why now? About being bearish on the UK and Europe, I guess, [00:25:00] yeah, I think there are different parts of that view.

I would say that if you are someone from the US, the level of workaholism and focus of capitalism or maximizing value or creation of value will be. And that is something that is ingrained in the American culture. In the UK, it's better than France. France is tough. Like, Final France or Spain. And I don't get wrong, why is that the, the employee laws are just, they're just very different.

So I'll give you an example. This is a very good example, actually. Capitalism, I would say, is the bid for someone to create value, where you can charge money and when that happens, it's the time for good for everybody. Like, it just raises everybody, I would say. It's not a zero sum game. So if you're in the [00:26:00] U.

S. and you raise money, 500k or whatever, from YC, you can hire people really quickly. Meaning, quickly means Hey Julie, I have this idea. Do you want to come along in this journey? And you say yes, and then you leave Unut or whatever company you are, Robinhood, and then you join the company and then you go for it.

In maybe two weeks, you're already with us doing something. In the UK, there are companies that have three months notice. So that means that if I want to hire Julie from, let's say, Stripe, you won't be able to join us next week or in two weeks. You have to. Wait three months to happen before you join the company.

Why? Because they want to give the chance to the employee that if the employee gets fired, they have to pay the employee three months of payment in lieu or just being there. So even if you quit you have to still wait a couple of months, even though your tour of duty is a new one so from

Julie: like an eternity. That's an eternity in [00:27:00] startup land.

Daniel: Three months is another company.

Julie: Mm-Hmm.

Daniel: All right. So from Creation of value, that stuff, right? You have a, you, let's say you have a green light on two companies, one in the UK, one in the US, who's going to be able to hire faster and create value faster than the European counterparts. And that's, that's not only a regulatory point of view.

It's, I would say it's in the mentality as well. It's a different way of living, of working. A Stripe let a lot of people go I've heard. They weren't able to let, not everybody, like some of the people in France go. So, they're still part of payroll, but they're not working with Stripe anymore.

Because it's really hard to, you know, fire someone in France. So, yeah, and I think that's maybe a bit of a Of a view of, of, of the world, but if we go back to being a bearish, being bearish in UK and Europe, it's, it is a massive market. Like it's, UK and Europe is a. [00:28:00] Same size than the U. S. So, of course, it's a lot of opportunity to go and build here, but you need to be aware of the nuances of every country, employment law, regulatory law, payments law, fintech law, whatever, whatever, whatever, but I, I believe, of course, in UK and Europe but I understand why someone will say, Hey, let's be bearish on UK and Europe compared to maybe the other markets.

Julie: That makes sense. So we're going to do a little like personal quickfire ish round at the end here. I'm going to start with the question Auram asks everybody when they start. What's something about you that you can't find online?

Daniel: So, what's something about me that you can find online? Well, I used to be a hardcore musician. So yeah, so I start playing the mento guitar, but then two of my friends started a, literally a hardcore band. And so when I'm cleaning the flat or I'm trying to get a lot of stuff done, I listen to Vin Sevenfold.

Atreyu just really. Emo screaming music that [00:29:00] yeah, nobody knows. So I think if, if I, yeah, any, anybody who's working with me or my team, so anybody that knows me here, listen to the music I listen, they'll be like, are you okay? You're having, you're having some issues, Daniel.

Julie: What's a personal highlight from the past year? Or 2023, I'll say. Basically the past year.

Daniel: A personal highlight from last year. Well, I don't even know from, from, from one is, I don't know, a couple, let me think about this and I can give you a better answer. Just maybe to clarify highlight and like anything or something great or something positive

Julie: Something just not related to payable.

Daniel: okay. Cool. Oh, yeah, so one of the highlights is that started climbing last year Well this year actually the year hasn't finished in 22nd of January was the first time I went to to climb and two weeks ago I climbed not a whole of it the tallest wall in Latin America.

So it's 36 meters. I was able to get to 22 meters in one go. [00:30:00] So I'm very excited and proud of that. My goal is next year, if I can compete, I don't think I don't want to win. I just want to. Say okay, I was able to compete and get into a competition for a bit. So this is one of the highlights that I, that I love and just makes me so happy to just be able to get out before I was doing some exercise like running or gym, but I will always get distracted when I go and climb.

I don't really think about work. So that's, that allows me to. Kind of step back and think about yeah any other problems when I saw when I see them again

Julie: Very cool. Have you seen the movie Free Solo before?

Daniel: Yeah, it's amazing. I've never seen it. It's so good. That guy's insane. I just

Julie: He really is. He really is. That makes me not want to climb though, because I get scared just watching him do it free solo. I'm like, you literally don't have anything saving your life right now.

Daniel: It's insane. But on the good side though now he has a daughter and now he's been more mindful of his Risk [00:31:00] appetite, but it's crazy. It's crazy.

Julie: If you could have dinner with anyone dead or alive, who would it be?

Daniel: There's going to be such a cliche, but I will have a dinner with my granddad. He passed away during the pandemic and yeah, I would like to ask him as well. Hey, how, how was life? What do you learn, but just spend time with him. I think we're being great. I couldn't go to his funeral because he was doing COVID.

So he was there to COVID. So, so yeah, it's, it's a little bit of annoying one because I would have loved to spend more time with him, but he was in Mexico city. I was here. But yeah, no, no business person will change for me the ability to just spend time with someone that, you know, brought me to this world and just get all the wealth from his experiences, which is something I never really did.

I hang out with him and he was hilarious, but I never really asked him the, you know, the tough questions.

Julie: The other one I had was, what kind of dog do you have and what [00:32:00] is their name?

Daniel: So his name is Aristoteles. So he's like a bit of a Yorkie. But like a street dog of Mexico. So he's hilarious. Funny enough though, this is another highlight actually. So I brought him from the UK to Mexico. So from, sorry, from Mexico to the UK, he was here for five years and I just brought him back to Cancun and I keep making the joke that I did a reverse relocation of an executive.

I just brought him back to my family so I can focus in payable right now because you know, having my dog is just being completely chaotic to have my dog right now, but it's a beautiful dog.

Julie: Last question. When you're like going through a hard time, or like just need someone to talk to, who is that person that is like your go to to call?

Daniel: Well, that's such a tough question because I would say depends my partner, she's amazing. She also works in different startups and she has a lot of experience as well in a Scania company. So she's amazing. She listens, but give An opinionated view of the world, which is always [00:33:00] good because I think you can have a partner that says you do you, I don't care.

I don't want you to do a company. I want you to be always here or together helping you navigate those conversations because it's always important. So that's one that I will say my go to second will be depending on what it is. I have a friend. His name is Parker. He's one of my mentors, Kay from Omnipresent as well.

There's great people that I can just give him a call a cash, one of our investors as well. So I'm just very lucky that I have the right set of people to give me the right support. I don't think there's someone that could give me all the wealth that I would need. But if I have to choose just someone will be my partner.

Julie: All right. Well, Daniel, thank you so much for joining us. I appreciate this. And otherwise stay tuned for more episodes from a twist, new podcast. We're consolidating everything into one. So this is your go to for all things FinTech.

Daniel: Thank you, Julie. It was great to be here.