Oli Cavanagh and Charles Dowd, the co-founders of Strike, tell the story of the confluence of experiences and ideas that brought them together to launch Strike, getting a product live and raising an angel round in less than 3 months, the benefit of having done it before when you need to build a team swiftly, and the big road ahead for Strike.
MoneyNeverSleepsis sponsored by PAT Fintech, the training partner that demystifies fintech and digital finance for financial services professionals.
Strike is portable personal payment tech designed to make tipping, giving and paying convenient, safe and easy for all. Strike and its patent-pending technology has been successfully deployed in multiple verticals in Ireland and is expanding to a number of international markets.
HIGHLIGHTS:
Oli Cavanagh on moving fast: “I've been involved with a number of startups, but this one is really different to any of them. None of them have ever moved this quickly, and it's because we had the idea and within 24 hours Charles was building the product. We had an MVP very quickly and we were revenue-generating within three months.”
Charles Dowd on the confluence of technologies: “Technology hasn't really moved to where we needed it to be until very recently. We now have a ubiquity of mobile phones. NFC tech is available in almost all of them. QR codes are ubiquitous, especially in Asia. So now we've got this combination of technology on the doorstep when the pizza arrives that actually matches the problem that we're trying to solve.”
Oli on building the Strike team: “We were able to bring 13 people into Strike - six full-time and the rest part-time - normally it would take a long time to build up a team like that, and we did that in a few months, and they’re all fantastic.”
Charles on timing: “The pandemic has accelerated the density of the need, but it's actually a tipping point. This was a perfect combination of events that was ready to happen [and the pandemic just accelerated that].”
Episode title inspired by The Tipping Point by the Roots.
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