The average lifespan of a tech startup is seven years with only 3% of businesses making it past 10 years.
For TransferGo to celebrate a decade in the business, it’s a huge accomplishment and shows their dedication to employees, customers, and the overarching business.
Justinas Lasevicius, COO & Co-founder at TransferGo, shares the ingredients to success as well as where remittance is heading.
Join us as we discuss:
- Their recipe for creating a successful Fintech
- Solving challenges during multiple global crises
- The future of remittance during an economic slowdown
Their recipe for creating a successful Fintech
When Justinas first came to the UK to finish his financial degree back in 2008, he immediately faced the challenges around financial services that impacted so many back then:
- Little care for the customer
- Difficulty opening a bank account
- Complexity and cost of international money transfers
Finding a series of hacks to wade through the difficult financial setup, Justinas and some others who shared his pain teamed up to create TransferGo — providing solutions to anyone burdened by the current financial system.
“We truly care about our communities and customers; our vision is to enable them to climb up the opportunity ladder for better financial services tailored to their needs.” — Justinas Lasevicius
To celebrate TransferGo’s 10th anniversary, Justinas shares their recipe for success: A 5 ingredient solution plus a secret ingredient…
1. Customer retention: They want their customers to keep coming back. The way to do this is to provide an excellent product or service and customer support.
2. Diverse founders: Having a group of founders with a diverse skill set helps substantially in the early days of the company.
3. Early employees: Those first employees can help steer the company in the right direction for future growth. Take the time to pick the right people early on.
4. Investors: Get investors that truly believe in the mission of the business. So, when challenges arise, the conversation on how to fix the problem will be aligned.
5. Market timing: Finding the best time to enter the industry can make a huge difference in your success early on.
The secret Ingredient? Luck: While you can plan out each of the 5 ingredients above, luck is needed for everything to go smoothly. Not everyone can find investors that completely agree with the mission or enter the industry at the exact right time. When luck isn’t on your side, double down on hard work to get you where you need to be.
Solving challenges during multiple global crises
One of the biggest challenges that Justinas has seen since 2008 has been the process of de-risking in the banking sector for the money service business: According to Justinas, as banks were closing accounts, both for TransferGo and other Fintech players, it became very challenging to maintain or open new relationships.
To eventually solve this problem, TransferGo went around the market — finding alternative payment providers and gaining scale. At the core of the solution, however, was a strong, adaptable team. As we navigate through more recent challenges of high inflation, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the war in Ukraine, keeping adaptability front of mind will be the biggest component of your success.
“As Charles Darwin said, it’s not the strongest that survive, it’s the ones who are able to adapt and adjust to the changing environments.” — Justinas Lasevicius
Creating digital inclusion through financial service accessibility
In recent years, the digital transformation has greatly impacted the financial industry. How then, does a company like TransferGo think about navigating digital? For Justinas, TransferGo has always been about fostering financial inclusion.
To instruct customers on how to handle digital, the company has focused their attention on customer care — going as far as the CEO shadowing their customer care agents.
The future of remittance during a economic slowdown
All of the recent crises have created a huge problem for remittance recently. Historically, remittances were the most resilient flows relative to other types of flows during various global economic financial events. Even so, having a plan in place to offset any reduction is crucial:
“These negative impacts on the global level, to some extent, could be reduced or offset by more people moving into digital channels as well. The channels typically tend to be cheaper, faster, more convenient.” — Justinas Lasevicius
According to Justinas, whenever there’s a slowdown in the economy as it moves to a new cycle, there comes an opportunity to innovate.
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Until next time!
