Welcome to the first episode of The Founder Files where we have 4 guests at once!
Today we get insights from the founders of paymenow, a fintech that has pioneered earned wage access in South Africa.
Learn how they chose private equity over VC to secure the right investor, hit key milestones for early profitability, and simplified an incredibly complex product to unlock growth.
We also dive into hard lessons from geographical expansion and how they turned mistakes into a scalable model.
This episode is packed with insights on scaling smarter, staying lean, and building for success.
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This episode is brought to you by Metavolve.
Metavolve turns highly capable African founders into confident business leaders by helping them develop clear and comprehensive business strategies that make building a great sustainable business less complex. Reach out to our team to learn more: https://metavolve.co/
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00:00 Introduction
03:51 What does paymenow do?
14:08 The founding story of paymenow
19:44 Challenges in the 0-1 journey
27:32 How does the money flow in the business?
30:22 paymenow’s first investor
48:49 Staying focused on the right thing before breaking even
53:45 Paying school fees when expanding to Namibia
01:02:07 Pros and cons of using a licensing model
01:13:12 Product development approach to deal with complexity
01:25:24 Complexities of having a multinational customer base
01:29:36 Making the app data-free
01:31:42 The future of paymenow
01:34:12 Why paymenow has no COO
