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Billie brings — Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) — to the B2B Market

Aktualisiert: vor 6 Tagen


Matthias Knecht, Co-Founder of Billie.io, sharing insights on B2B fintech disruption

picture via Pixabay

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This blog post first appeared first on old medium publication (https://medium.com/startuprad-io), and was moved to this blog with the relaunch of our website in summer 2024.

Klana is all built beautifully around the consumer. … but many merchants also want a B2B checkout and here Klana decided to partner with the leading provider in the space [Billie.io].Matthias Knecht, Co-Founder Billie.io

Executive Summary:

Billie’s business is disrupting the B2B market by allowing consumers to buy now and pay later. They are one of the most successful startups in Germany and they have raised more than 140 m US$ from well-known investors. It sounds like Billie may become soon a unicorn with all these hints being dropped about their future success. Learn more in our audio and video podcasts below.


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To do the risk management right is in a company like ours core IP.Matthias Knecht, Co-Founder Billie.io


The Founder

“I was raised in Germany, with a stint at Columbia University before moving to McKinsey. After working for them,” says Matthias (https://de-DE_.linkedincom/in/-matthiasknecht), “I left and started Zencap.” This company was eventually acquired by Funding Circle where he spent only one year of his time there; then on into Billie — together with cofounder Christian.

In our business model, you must manage the risk(s), but you have to make the decision about a transaction within milliseconds. You cannot first as a human analystMatthias Knecht, Co-Founder Billie.io

The Startup - B2B Buy Now Pay Later

Billie’s business is disrupting the B2B market by allowing consumers to buy now, and pay later. Their investors include Klana — one of Europe’s largest Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) companies for this sector with over 50 million clients across 500+ brands worldwide!The company also integrates seamlessly into Klana’s systems so that all client transactions can be done through Billie's platform while still enjoying advanced features such as payment encryption and loan pre-payment options which not only make financial services more accessible but give buyers peace of mind when making large purchases or taking out short term loans.

We knew Klana for some time and the founder Sebastian. The space is very small.Matthias Knecht, Co-Founder Billie.io

Venture Capital Funding

Billie is one of the most successful startups in Germany and they have raised more than 140 m US$ from investors like Creadum, Global Founders Fund (Rocket Internet), Dawn Capital, Speedinvest, Klana, Tencent, and Picus Capital. It sounds like Billie may become soon a unicorn with all these hints being dropped about their future success.


The Video Interview is set to go live on Thursday, May 5th, 2022



The Audio Interview

You can subscribe to our podcasts here.

We were once able to spot a fraudster by their preference for a certain type of cookies.Matthias Knecht, Co-Founder Billie.io

Billie is Hiring

Learn more on their Jobs page here:


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The Interviewer

This interview was conducted by Jörn “Joe” Menninger, startup scout, founder, and host of Startuprad.io. Reach out to him: LinkedIn Twitter


Automated Transcript for Hearing Impaired


[0:00] Startuprad.io is your podcast and YouTube blog covering the German-speaking startup scene.


[0:13] Music.



[0:20] Hey guys hello and welcome everybody this is Joe from startuprad.io bringing you today another entrepreneur interview this time is so to saythe second part of an interview because Matias is here my guess but actually I have been interviewing in Germanback in 2015 his now and then co-founder Christian when they have been starting the company send cap but before we get into all the storiesoff sent cap Billy and so on I would like to welcome Matthias connect co-founder of Dilly here in my podcast welcome.


[1:02] Hi Joe thanks for having me.


[1:04] Totally my pleasure we may say that Billy is a fintech headquartered in Berlin and you are officially the co-founder of the company.


[1:19] What what is your actual role or do you wear like a trillion hat.


[1:24] Joe oh gosh I think as a co-founder and I would call myself cool CO as well you are indeed wearing a trillion had.I think now that we are.A bit larger with 150 people we can already delegate some of the heads to some of our senior management team but indeed as a Founder I think you always responsible for at least half the company so they had to keep on sticking to my.I see I have I have been following you a little bit on LinkedIn and I can tell you have originally a backgroundin


[2:04] Engineering also with us some twists towards Finance economics and capital marketsand then you did a PhD with a stint at Columbia University so tell us how was New York where was your most lovedbreakfast nook and of course what did you write about.


[2:27] That’s right July indeed studied at the castle Institute of Technology and I did my mastersin engineering and management that’s what it’s called so there it is a highly Technical and mathematical University so half of the studies were in engineeringM subjects electrical engineering mechanical engineering these kind of things the other half was in finance and economics so bringing books together was incredibly exciting for me that’s why why I chosethis this course of study andindeed after finishing University I then started out with Mackenzie and during these McKinsey years I took two years off to do my PhD.


[3:12] In learned back in Germany but then also half of the time at Columbia New Yorkand that was a very special time in my life you know like being a researcher PhD student taking part at PhD courses also MBA courses Columbia and then justexperiencing the city it was like in 2000 and I guess it was 2000.1011 when it was New York yeah I’m at my favorite breakfast place that is.Very special nice little place called Clinton Street Baking Company I hope it’s still existing I haven’t been for a long time it’s in Lower East Side and with an amazingpancake breakfast whenever you’re in New York you should try to check it out but you also need to bring a lot of time usually the cues in front of this place out.You like 45 minutes to an hour until just to get in to get your pancakes.


[4:05] Well I checked while you’ve been talking and Google says they’re stillin business absolutely I assume since you did such a lot of management like mathematical trivial Plus Engineering UMass skills have to be pretty good.Well I mean that’s I think that’s a given in these kind of course of study yes we you you need to go through it it wasvery very painful experience to be honest like working fluid but at the end I believe it paid off and then later on.Even though I didn’t know exactly why I was going through this at the time at University later on working at McKinsey or no hereadmire my second startup I think this kind of very structured way of thinking and instruction problems I think that helps a lot a little later on even thoughI probably couldn’t solve the equations that I did back in the days nowadays I think that’s that’s a time that has passed.I would be wondering what did he write about in your PhD thesis what was it about like numbers Theory or did you write something about something and non mathematician could understand.


[5:14] Oh you can actually Google it it I think it’s still on Amazon so it’s aboutindustry diversification so how large conglomerates diversify across different Industries and how Dynamic how the dynamism of markets is affecting.The success of diversify clone conglomerate so you know I was thinking about likeif you are a highly Diversified company with different business units in different markets are you affected by the dynamism the cycles ofthe different Market types that you are in I think one example back in the days was Zeman’s our very large German companythey on the one side produce power plants and turbines then they also produceour I see our bullet trains in Germany but then they also produced mobile phones so very different markets with them different MarketDynamics and cycles and how does this all fit together Under One Roof I think this was like the core thesis.


[6:14] And afterwards you joined McKinsey again but then you left.To Fount send cap can you tell us a little bit about what decision went into founding sin capand looking back now would you consider send cap a success or failure.


[6:39] Yeah the decision that’s went into founding my first company was I think a very simple one you knowbeing a consultant was was a great experience I worked for McKinsey for five and a half yearsand I was working for very different German companies usually Banks or other financial institutions players private Equity companies but also common factors and others and that was a great experience because you got exposed tovery exciting and complicated problems you’re working with an exciting McKinsey team but also on the client side with very very interesting peopleat the same time after a while I had the feeling that I was.Working on Solutions and designing and producing Concepts which we hope makes sense but then at the same time we were never really responsible for putting them into practiceright so you were like designing this amazing concept together with the client had a lot of fun doing so but then when.


[7:38] These Concepts got implemented and you’ll hopefully would at some point see the outcomes of it as a consultant usually leave the company so you were neveron the playing field butusually standing on the sidelines and coaching are trying to coach and that was something that I said after a while look I want to get onto the playing field I really want to be responsible forthe successful for the failures of my own decisions and that was when I think it grew within need to say look I want to likefound only my own company and these were the days when fintech became a word like it was.Like mid and late 2013 or early 2014 when we founded the company that was a time when some of the fintech the early fintech models came from the USto contact Europe and we became aware of this these amazing things that you could do with financial technology.And I think there was this kind of you know these kind of many things coming together on one sidethe technology area following company but in also the financial area.Which I was working on for Mackenzie and all together made up the the perfect time for me.


[8:53] I remembered this time and actually in 2014 I did the first annual fintech review which is still around today and is still published on the 25thof December in the morning and can you tell us a little bit about the story of Saint cap what you guys did andhow you ended up exiting.


[9:16] Yeah sure and you know I think like end of 213 beginning of 2014 this was a timewhen we’ve seen in other countries like especially us will also little bit the UK that some of the first business model of banks got disrupted by fintech thepayment players like PayPal and also clown I have already been found and were working on consumer payments but then came up Lendingmodels we had Lending Club in the US we have funding Circle in the UK concentrating on business loans but we had no real.Innovation here in Continental Europe so we said look why don’t welike try to work out how digital ending can also be implemented here and hopefully change the landscape here in Continental Europe and these were the times when we then.


[10:05] We’re working on these Solutions all these ideas and we teamed up with investors here inGermany amongst em rocket internet in our needs a and said look why don’t we bring this you to Europe and we have a very old school banking markets back in the days we had like one thousand three one thousand four hundreddifferent banks in Germany but none of them really was focused on using like new technologies tooldisrupt into the landscape and also to bring a more Innovative and streamline product to the market so that’s what we set out to do.


[10:39] And we focused on a specific type of lending we focused on small business lending so lending especially true these small and micro companies being a freelancer sole Trader or company with half a dozen or a dozen people whohalf probably a bit more difficulties getting a loan than.


[10:58] Mid to large-size corporates so this was a segment where I said look here Innovation can help in terms ofmore or less fully automating The Lending business and then also Distributing loans to these small companies and.I think for me you know looking back at these different periods in my life when I look back at the McInnes experience I think this was a time when I.Learned a lot with regards to the toolkit that I could apply later on like disaggregating problems working very analytically and this also shapedin a good way or a bad way my work ethics but then again itZen kept my first company which I found it together with my also now co-founder Christian Christian World here I think we just learned how to build a company you know.When he founded endcap we didn’t have a clueto be honest we didn’t know how it worked we didn’t know how to say we didn’t I didn’t even know what a seat you always or how product management works we didn’t know how to set up a finance department I couldn’t differentiate sales for marketing so there was like these very fundamental things that.Like in hindsight and really didn’t have a clue about so this were this was a very steep learning curve at the very beginning and we probably yeah we’ve done so many things wrong which however now benefits Us by you know second company.


[12:18] You eventually sold the company to funding Circle based in the UKD considered this a successful.


[12:30] Exit Looking Back Now or this for us was a tremendous successand and we didn’t even plan for selling or company that early right we sold them kept within the first two years of founding it and this was never planned like that we werebuilding the company we were president three countries Germany Spain Netherlands and had offices in all these countries in Berlin Madrid and Amsterdam.


[12:55] But then you know I was at one of these conferences I remember like it was yesterday when I was in New York at at a hotel close Times SquareMaj so-called landed conference and all these like new fintech Founders and CEOs are meeting their and then like the funding back then the funding Circle founder and CEO came up to me and say hey buddy is likewhy do we have a coffee let’s talk and we had a.Very good discussion about how lending would evolve how Europe and US the US should I need to change the disregard and then we started discussing.Why don’t we build like a dominant player together why don’t we combine these two companies finding Circle back in the days was present in the UK and alsoin the u.s. they acquired a company there to enter the US market so they have these two markets and we were present in all three European geographies and we are the fastest-growing player here so combining these two entitiesfrom a strategic perspective made a lot of sense so that was I think the trigger point to then enter in such an MLA processand at the end of it we indeed sold the company to funding Circle became part of the funny Circle management team and take their rest is history mmm-hmm but nonethelessyou then left.


[14:16] The company and I would be curious how you found the idea for Billy so at Billy we talking aboutbasically I’m a small Merchant I do have accounts receivable worth let’s say 100 years to make it easy and you pay.


[14:35] 97.5 for it but a half the cash now that’s basically the idea of factoring how did you start with this idea I mean.


[14:45] In terms of topics getting liquidity to.Companies you’ve been sticking with the same topic but how did he come up with this idea was it also something you wish you had when you’ve been an entrepreneuryeah absolutely you know weI’m doing the time at findings organs and kept we had so many ideas coming our way and most of them came from our customers asking us hey could you please help me with this so that problem in many of these customerscame to us asking us forcertain types of liquid solutions and back in the days we have installment loans as a product we could do six month long for one two three four five year olds but we couldn’t really have customers who said lookI want to pay my employees by end of the month I want to stock up my warehouse for the Christmas sale like these kind of short-term liquidityworking Capital Management problems we really didn’t havean appropriate product for we only had installment loans which is a good product in itself but it doesn’t solve all the problems of these companies so here it was clear that there was a niche in the market and next to this other companies also asked usif we can help them with their B2B payments they are paying out to their suppliers they receive payments from their customer and there was a lot of friction in these processes sincethe B2B payment processes in itself we’re not smooth not allowed not digitized.


[16:11] S he stays so I think bringing these two together made a lot of sense so we decided to attend photo own company to tackle that some of the challenges and.The first challenge we wanted to tackle was indeed working Capital Management for these small and micro companies.


[16:27] And that is basically the idea on which I believe was built but it’snot the only product you doing right now but before we get into that just a little bit of the frame because we listened to across the world andwhich companies would be eligible for getting this factoring service this fast liquidity selling accounts receivable to you.


[16:54] Mmm Yeah I mean in terms of Eligibility we try to open it up for literally all the smes out there so small and medium-sized Enterprises our customers back then.We had an average like five to ten million in annual revenue could be as small as a freelancer but also could be as large as company with 50 people and 100 million Revenue so there was like.There’s like our Target segment most of the companies came to us because of course they want working capital financing but also because of the ease of the process we.Try to do the the customer onboarding fully automatically the invoice approvals the risk assessment all these kind of core capabilities that we built back in the days we try to build on fully automated basis and.


[17:43] We learned a lot of funding Circle and then cap we also learned a lot how not to build things so the second time around we said look the data infrastructure the list systems the refinancing The Collection process has all these things need to be as automated as possible right from the start right we didn’t want tobuilt old school banking processes which we then would need to digitize later on but we literally wanted to start in a fully automated way that’s how we built the company.But then as you already indicated we also like released other products that I think at least as exciting as the first one.


[18:18] And talking about this because you are doing something European unicorn called Clannad does this isbuy now pay later but in the B2B environment and first thought washmm that may be a competitor of kalana even though you’re not in the same market and then I was going on crunchbase and checking you out and Clan has actually one of your investors so at first I want to knowhow did you come up with the idea and secondly.


[18:52] Would they Frisk Lana is investor of first the product offering is it already crunch Bayside okay I need to check this out that that’s indeed right soKlonopin participated with a small ticket in our last funding round which we raised last year in 2021 and of 2021 so Clan has now indeed a small shareholder of Billy andas you said we are now concentrating our efforts on buy now pay later for B2B customers and how it came to this was alsotwo hours quite simple you knowwe had many customers back in the days coming to us and saying look you are helping these small medium-sized companies with financing their accounts receivable which is an amazing technology could you please also do this for me I’m selling my goods not online but not offline but online so I’mB2B online shop could you please do more the same thing for me and they’re it’s not just about liquidity it’s also aboutI’m fully automated ux optimized checkout experience about the whole accounts receivable management the payment reconciliation the incoming payments need to be matched to the open invoices but then also about Services which you can offer.To the buyers in such a check out I’ll come to that maybe a little later.


[20:06] So we were basically driven by customer demand and then said look we have all of the technology already why don’t we just like plug it into aonline check out and then create literally the first full-fledged B2B buy now pay later product so that was the beginning of itvery exciting Journey for us and.Coming out of such an idea it was at the beginning more as an R&D lab but we just test it out things and try to things but then weI’ve seen look the market demand is so massive for this product let’s really turn it into our main product let’s give it a nice and shiny user interface and start working with Distributing it toa lot of customers.


[20:46] Okay so the idea was first and then I did not answer your question I would be curious becausebasically you told me the product was first but then I would be curious did you find clutter in the normal pitch or did they realizeyou do something similar in the reach out to you yeah oh no you know the.


[21:09] Startups in Peterson is so small that most people know each other so it wasn’t like any formal picture so we know climate forfor more than two years by now and you know some of the sea level of Clan of you know Sebastian.The founder also personally so there was already quite a connection going on and you know I think also Kleine realized over time that they aretake the champion in b2c buy now pay later they have a massive proposition you can happen incredibly smooth product they have a nice clown I have to have more than 100 million customers likeconsumers on the climate app so it’s an amazing ecosystemthat they’ve built and they’re offering a lot more than just buy now pay later they have become by now and e-commerce shopping platform for consumers also offering credit cardfull sets bank account in many more seats so Kleine is centered around the consumer as a value proposition asas to call user and this is I think what they are what they want to build on they have Lady Gaga and Snoop Dogg as their as their brand ambassadors and have this crazy super nice pink branding so it’s all wrong the consumerat the same time I think what clown recognizes that if you have a merchant that you’re serving with your payment method.


[22:26] The most might have a b2c check out but they might also have a B2B checkout and if you’re only serving one side of the coin for many motions is not enough they also wantB2B the business check out to be served and here I think Kana decided not to try to build a known productactually they actually try to build it in Sweden and other countries but I think for them it was not the right Focus so they said look let’s partner with the leading provider in this space andjust integrate them into the planet clan of platform and that’s exactly what we did right we were in Long discussions with clone are weshowed our product back and forth and then we both decided that that’s a great partnership sobuy now just beginning of the year we finished our integration with katana so now clown our customers to the online shops that use Cana.They can use Billy as a pin method through the standing Klondike integration so there’s no separate digression quad we can just go live and serve.Business check out of each Clan emergencyand I think by doing so we have removed one of the major hurdles of implementing a new payment method that is the technical integration in the effort to really launch such a payment method in your checkout that’s all gone so thesePlanet Merchants can now use the B2B payments quite effectively and.


[23:51] I I would be curious how you do the riskmanagement for you said because buy now pay later includes a risk of course for you as well as for the client how you’re dealing here with the risk management andis it also like a very smooth automated process or do you still need a lot of risk analysts thereyeah oh joy I could talk for hours about this is this is probably one of we got time try to be as specific as I can this is one of the core I thinkIP intellectual property areas in a company like ours to to do the risk management.Write in such a product and this can make or break a company right if you do this right you can be very profitable you keep default rates low you keepcheckout conversion rates and end-to-end acceptance rates very high at the same time if you mess it uplook at this is a big balance sheet risk because then the scared of receivers and transactions are just blowing up in your face because you are taking over the risk of these transactions as such a provider so risk management is at the heart of what we’re doing and we have a data science team of nearly 2,000 people who is doing nothing else and then developingthese kind of machine learning models that are managing the risk to be buying so.


[25:13] I would actually even go a little bit further risk management is one part of the checkout experience and to answer one of your questions yes it needs to be instant there is no human.Manual decision being taken all of the decisions in the checkout are taken by our different bottles and risk management is one part of it you have another part which isidentification so identifying your counterpartyin the checkout is it sounds simple but it’s probably to be actually quite challenging and third is also you have limit systems like how much limit how much exposure can you accumulate against the counter party in the checkout so can you do.


[25:50] How did Euro 1000 Euro 50,000 100,000 Euro so what is the exposure you’re willing to accept against UConn party and these three systems identification risk management and the limit system staying to play together and all of themthen Define yourand to end acceptance rate which for us is one of the core kpis that we are trying to optimize for so coming to your question on risk management there areat least two major types of risk one’s credit risk the other one is fraud risk and fraud risk mostly comes fromidentity theft or other ways that you have like a like a buyer that is trying to fraud you like this kind of bloodthink about it black hat by us it just really want to get the product and run away so managing credit risk and fraud risk our key both of them require different data points and differentways of assessing it and if you’re looking at all introduction just as we dofraud risk is usually the major risk category not for all sectors but for most sectors if you think about that we are serving Electronics merchants or a demotion to have high-value Goods that you can easily be resolved here of course you havehigh risk that these transactions can be fraudulent so your fraud won’t need to be quite strong so how you do this and I can just explain some high level is.


[27:15] I’m actually using external data providers you using intern data you’re looking at the transaction type you’re looking at the.Also at the flow of transaction what is in the basket that is just being shot where does thethe income from which I which IP address is it can do can you not use device ID fingerprinting howtriple D to these transactions come into your system from a certain buying entity so there are many ways to look at this plus you’re combining this usually with different types of external data sources to thenDefine if or if not you think this is a fraudster and if you have not you think this crap dress can be accepted or should be rejected andyou don’t combining this all needs to happen within two to three hundred millisecondsbecause for the buyer it needs to fit instant so you cannot go back and say oh I have my analysts now looking at this this all needs to be instant and this is how the systems need to be trained.


[28:08] That means.


[28:11] You do pay a lot to Cloud providers for a lot of Computer Resources and I would be curious ifif you can talk about this what is the coolest product you are you are funding for merchants for example.


[28:30] Specialist equipment for a haircut for docs for example and secondly what was the most outrageous fraud you can fraud attempt you can rememberwhile he’s had 20 or 22 exciting questionslet me answer the second one first the modal most outrageous fraud on this product we have satisfactory product that we have different types of work but on the buy now pay later product we once suffered.Fraud attack from a number of fraudsters who seem to have launched a coordinated fraud attack against our systems against some of the many shops we are integrated with thefor some of they have figured out where Billy is managing the checkout and then probably try to attack.All of these check out at once it is that what it look like they are all came from certain geographical region in Germany it was a city of Hamburg like we have like many attacks from Hamburg in a certain given period of time and these fraudsters tried to.


[29:30] Buy high-value goods and while.The merchant worshiping the gods to try to changing delivery addresses to some other addresses or to some Park shots you know to them other like.


[29:44] Receptive areas where you can easily get the package and then run away with it without necessarily needing to identify you right so I think this is onefraud attempt where people try to reroute packages to other areas and just grab them run away andwe have spotted it luckily quite quite early on then identify the forces and shut down the fraud attempt but this you can see this as a little spike in our default default curve.That’s that perform that happened and for us I think it’sit’s not so much critical that these prototypes happen you’ll always have them is always a cat-and-mouse problem right that process try to be smarter than you then you catch up men.Other fraud patterns emerge the important thing is that you areon the one side fast enough to recognize the product ends but s also have certain limit systems or other checks in place so that ifsomething like this hits you he doesn’t completely destroy your company but you should never be exposed to certain fat finger risks versus on the you have like a couple of zeros more in terms of fraud than you will you will you have this something with that may not happen to your company and.I think that the most exciting fraud product you know there was one yeah I probably can tell this one story.


[31:03] There’s one company that we serve or one version that we serve that’s told us look we have one fraud pattern that we know of.But for some reason we can’t prevent there’s this one fraudster who is continuously stealing from us but he always puts a package of cookiesinto his basket so for whatever reason I don’t know why this rods are puts a package of cookies in this basket and then tries to first so it would be actually pretty simple to spotthis Foster whenever this package of cookie is someone’s passage probably reject the transaction but for some reason the merchants wasn’t able to do it because it didn’t have the systems to go through bathroom case then we jacket on certain like line itemorder based on certain transaction which something of course we can do but the merchants could they just don’t have the infrastructure so this was I think a funny thing spotting a falsehood by their preference for certain type of cookie.That sounds pretty good we have been digging quite a lot of deep into Billy and I would have now a few questions looking more a little bitat the future of course right now the important question many people asking isare you guys currently hiring when you have such a lot of high-end computer equipment and stuff to do.Oh yeah we are we have completely opened doors right hiring is literally one of our major challenges to get.


[32:29] Top 10 and on board as quickly as we can we are hiring across all the levels from sea level down to analyst and also working students so the doors are very wide open especially for all Talent literally across departments from engineering to productSteven tool Finance Marketing sales operations like literally across all the different departments we have doors are wide openwe are sitting in Berlin civilians I’ll headquarter we have started like as probably many companies did during the covid and amick to start all the hiring remotely just to get access to more talent and we can also employ people.Some fluid multi so here I think the opportunities are unlimited believe thatvery very exciting stage of its of its company life so everybody who wants to join us is highly welcome to just sent sent the city over.


[33:19] HmAlso talked about your funding you have pretty published pretty well published Sirius B and C or C already under your belt and I’m just looking through the investors here key on doorbecause Capital attend send kelana as we already said speed invest Global Founders fund so pretty.Interesting investors you raced progress a little bit over I would say 130 million years.As of today because I.Can’t get the data for your Sears a or seed investment so that is very likely and the question with a such funding numbers is always when will you be a unicorn that’s right so this is finding numbers you mentioned are our directionally correct alsothe investors are are correct.


[34:12] We’re missing one of them the last round was led by Dawn Capital so Dawn is like one of our latest investors on the Block heretogether with tents and and Clan are they made up this this fantastic round and you knowJoe I’m indeed I’m not chasing valuations it’s probably weird to hear that but variations is justone of the outcomes of the work we do so for me it is very important that the company is always well capitalized I really I cannot stand the feeling of running against the wall so that’s why the Catalyst company in such a tremendous way we have all the capital in the world to invest nowinto the product into our peopleand into internationalizing the company I think this is what you’ll see next so in terms of the use of funds we are fully focused on Germany where the market leading playerB2B been open later in Germany and Rule I thinkactually this over the course of the next one and two years so you’ll see a lot from us here in this market but then since the customer demandsare ubiquitous across Europe so you’ll see these B2B demands for such a payment solution everywhere that’s why we’ll bring the solution into more countries together with our partner clonal but also together with other partners so I think this is.


[35:27] Where we are investing behind usually as you know with other startups launching new country is unprofitable so youreally liking to invest in the country you’ll probably opened off as you hire the people to invest in sales marketing into the country but then over time these countries will dig themselves out and become contributors to the overallcompany so I think this is.Where how the funds will be used and you know I don’t want to like go into depth of predicting when and how unique on status will be reached for me this is literally an outcome of the work we do you see.


[36:00] Last year I guess you’ve seen.Very high valuations in the startup sector coming from precede see day to pre-ipo mean even the IPOs we’ve seen I think we’re were tremendously expensive let’s put like thisand what you’re seeing already this year at this valuations have come down it started with the pre-ipo the late-stage guys and.


[36:21] Came over to growth notes to us his ba and I’ll see Kris it so you’ll see I think we see them pieces are still very expensive but I trusted you also see valuations come down a little bit over there sothe macro-environment the public market valuations they are tricking down also the venture capital and chained down to the precede companiesby saying so what I’m saying is I think it’ll be it’ll be probably a little bit more difficult for most companies to raise right now and to achieve these Sky High valuations that we’ve seenfrom last year however I also consider this to be a bit more of the healthy environment right having seen companies with.


[37:00] I don’t know more than 100 x Randy multiples is just like it probably unhealthy kind of valuation expert expectation so this has come downI’m not saying that we’ll never get up to these kind of levels of variation again just because there’s so much liquidity in the market that also needsto search for an exit somehow however I think in the next 12 to 18 month you’ll see some are depressed valuations to probably moreit’s a bit of a mean reversion right there probably a little bit more towards a long-term being dead but you’ve seen last year bottom line is unicorn valuation is nottotally impossible for you and we’ll see it sometime down the road this is what I’ve taken from you and would you be nonetheless open to talk to International investors if they see this.Interview and are interested in Billy oh yeah you know we never stopped talking to to potential investors I mean we are.


[37:56] We’re incredibly well capitalized at the moment so I’ll run right it’s like I don’t know him like it’s like you can couple of years to be honest with you keep on burning like we do at the momentat the same time we are very opportunistic like we coaching as you talking to investors investors understand us we have a lot of inbound demand so I am not talking to all of them butespecially the ones that I find interesting or we have already pre-existing relationships so this is something that’s going on and we will.Fundraise when we think the time is right that can be very soon that can be little later in the process I think again since we arewell capitalized we have all the time in the world so I’m not rushed by anything at the same timethe best fundraising always happened when you don’t need the money right so that’s why we keep our eyes open we keep on executing we are really headstone trying to out execute anybody else in the market and then at some point they will be right time and then we are very open to accept new friends yes.


[38:52] Great andonly thing left for me to ask you everybody who would be interested in a job can you give them a URLwhere they canfind out more in case they are just listening to this on a on any internet radio station and don’t have any URL or something at handoh yeah absolutely I think you should just Google Billy dot IO and then jobs and then you’ll find out job page it’s very prominentand you can just apply thereright so I think it’s also the job that you find the current openings we try to update them as frequently as we can sometimes they’re more jobs open that we could put on the website just because it’s changing so rapidly soif you are working or if you’re interested.In all these areas especially engineering product data science even operations sales marketing and other functions just look at the website or contact us directly by sending your LinkedIn profile or your civitas I think we’ll definitely okay.And you’re open to remote.Jobs as well and for everybody who’s watching this or listening to this on one of our channels go down here in the show notes there will be a link.


[40:06] To the website of Billy and all the other information Matias I have been bothering you with questions for more than 40 minutes now which is.Little bit unusual on the longer side of the interviews and unless I enjoyed it a lot because I’m also a fan technique and.Thank you thank you very much for all the time and hope to have you back in sometime maybe when your unicorn.


[40:41] Music.


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