What Happens When You Solve the $80 Trillion Problem? - Donuts, APIs, and Innovation: The Orum Startup Story with Founder & CEO Stephany Kirkpatrick
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In this episode of Fintech Confidential, recorded live at the 2024 Money 20/20 event in Las Vegas, Tedd Huff and Stephany Kirkpatrick, founder and CEO of Orum, dive into the world of money movement technology. The discussion flows naturally, covering the many ways Orum is simplifying payments and enhancing access to funds. Kirkpatrick brings a unique perspective, sharing how her background as the daughter of an immigrant and a former financial planner shaped her understanding of money access and inspired her to start Orum.
Key Highlights
🚀 Making Instant Payouts Possible for Businesses
🍩 Time to Make the Donuts
💸 Why Wait for Money Movement?
💲 Real-Time Payments Without High Costs
🔒 Making Compliance Easy
💼 The Power of Clear Pricing
📊 CFPB’s 1033 Rule and Data Access
🌐 Stablecoins in International Payments
🏗 Building a Strong Product First
🤝 Trusted Partnerships for Reliable Payments
Takeaways
1️⃣ Apply Financial Planning Insights to Your Startup Vision
2️⃣ Keep Remote Teams Engaged with Simple Tools
3️⃣ Streamline Payment Solutions with Easy APIs
4️⃣ Enhance Security in Transactions with Verification Tools
5️⃣ Choose Strong Partnerships to Boost Your Business’s Credibility
Links:
Stephany Kirkpatrick
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephany-kirkpatrick/
Orum:
Website: https://orum.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/helloorum
X: https://twitter.com/hello_orum
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/helloorum/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/orum.io/
Fintech Confidential
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Podcast: https://fintechconfidential.com/listen
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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fintechconfidential
X: https://X.com/FTconfidential
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fintechconfidential
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fintechconfidential
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About:
Guest
Stephany Kirkpatrick is the CEO and founder of Orum, a pioneering API-based company enabling instant payouts across major payment networks. With over 15 years of experience, she has led digital product initiatives at major firms like Northwestern Mutual and LearnVest. Stephany, who began her career as a certified financial planner, founded Orum in 2019 to provide immediate financial access for businesses and consumers. Driven by her background as the daughter of an immigrant, her mission centers on enhancing financial freedom and efficiency through streamlined payment solutions.
Orum is a simple API for fast, reliable payments. Orum’s API solution delivers access to rails including Same Day ACH and standard ACH – and instant bank account verification. Orum allows businesses to launch instant payments and instant bank account verification in just days, without costly bank integrations or prolonged compliance. This in turn empowers businesses and banks to launch new payment experiences that attract and monetize more customers. Founded by Stephany Kirkpatrick and led by expert fintech operators from LearnVest, Square, N26, Klarna, Marqeta, and Stash, Orum has raised over $82 million from leading investors, including Accel, Canapi, Bain Capital Ventures, Inspired Capital, Homebrew, Acrew, BoxGroup, Clocktower Ventures, Primary Ventures and American Express Ventures. We provide the technology and expertise required to power a better financial system where everyone has the freedom to build to their potential.
Host:
Tedd Huff is the Founder of Voalyre, a professional services advisory firm focused on global payments and DD3 Media.
Over the past 24 years, he has contributed to FinTech startups as an Advisory Board Member, Co-Founder, and Chief Experience Officer, providing strategic and tactical direction for Global Payments OpenEdge, Heartland Payments, Nuvei, and TSYS, among others, focusing on growth while delivering innovation, process improvements and user experience-driven value to simplify the complexity of payments.
DD3 Media:
DD3 Media is a creation, management, and production company that delivers engaging content globally
Transcript
Welcome to Fintech Confidential, bringing you the people, tech, and companies
Speaker:that change how you pay and get paid.
Speaker:Stephany Kirkpatrick, Orum: our kids,
Speaker:they're going to look at us and be like, sorry, you use your account number.
Speaker:What is that?
Speaker:I say this advice a lot, and I think it's way easier to say than it is to do.
Speaker:Because fintech has more barriers to entry from a regulatory perspective,
Speaker:don't spread yourself thin.
Speaker:Hone your first product.
Speaker:not all revenue is a good idea Good revenue will help you
Speaker:unlock product market fit and the way that you get to scale
Speaker:Tedd Huff, Fintech Confidential: I am super thrilled.
Speaker:I finally get to sit down with The legend, Stephany Kirkpatrick,
Speaker:the founder and CEO of Orum
Speaker:Stephany Kirkpatrick, Orum: it's our five year birthday.
Speaker:Um, that means we're just halfway to an overnight success.
Speaker:at Orum, we are a remote company and we use a fun little thing
Speaker:in our Slack called donut.
Speaker:And it automatically randomly pairs you with somebody else in the company.
Speaker:So once a week you have a 15 minute donut chat.
Speaker:and that actually started five years ago when we started figuring out
Speaker:how to build a remote first company.
Speaker:The way that you send an ACH and the way a bank receives that is very
Speaker:different than the way you send a wire, which is very different than
Speaker:the way you do an RTP, which is also different than how you do FedNow.
Speaker:And it's gotten increasingly more complicated.
Speaker:I think in five to 10 years time,
Speaker:when we move money,
Speaker:we will have data Embedded in a way that today.
Speaker:We don't
Speaker:Tedd Huff, Fintech Confidential: Support provided by Skyflow.
Speaker:What if you could build fast, but not break privacy?
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Speaker:with just a few API calls?
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Speaker:How much more time would your team have to truly innovate?
Speaker:How much faster could you build and ship new features?
Speaker:How much more powerful could your app be?
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Speaker:secure and tokenized personal information like card data and payment details.
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Speaker:anonymization and advanced governance, your days of choosing between data
Speaker:security and data usability are over.
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Speaker:or need to go further to include CCPA, GDPR, SOC 2, and
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Speaker:Visit SkyFlowSecure.
Speaker:com today to learn how.
Speaker:Welcome to an episode of FinTech confidential leaders, a one on
Speaker:one series where I sit down with FinTech leaders to uncover their
Speaker:stories behind their passion, their expertise and their leadership.
Speaker:Today I am super thrilled.
Speaker:I finally get to sit down with The legend, Stephany Kirkpatrick,
Speaker:the founder and CEO of Orum.
Speaker:They're a fintech that has been revolutionizing the way
Speaker:that money is getting moved and the way people look at it.
Speaker:Now, her journey is something that has not only been inspiring,
Speaker:but is extremely impressive.
Speaker:She's, uh, A daughter, an immigrant and has dedicated her career to
Speaker:helping those with less have more.
Speaker:Now, her entry into financial technology and fintech in general was becoming
Speaker:a certified financial planner.
Speaker:So she hopefully she's got some good stock tips for me.
Speaker:She has also been found on Inc.
Speaker:Inc.
Speaker:Magazines.
Speaker:2024.
Speaker:top 250 Female Founders.
Speaker:and also, this year, she's celebrating the fifth anniversary of Orum.
Speaker:They founded in 2019 and they've been able to add reliability and speed to payments.
Speaker:But one of the things that I am just And I'm just enamored by the fact that you've
Speaker:been able to raise 82 over over 82 million dollars in financing to drive this mission
Speaker:forward and building that infrastructure that really aims to maximize the financial
Speaker:potential of every American household.
Speaker:Today, we're going to dive into Orum.
Speaker:We're going to dive into some leadership lessons from, from Stephany, from
Speaker:building this from the ground up.
Speaker:And well, Stephany, I want to welcome you to
Speaker:Stephany Kirkpatrick, Orum: the show.
Speaker:Well, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker:I'm excited to be here and I love digging into all the topics we're about
Speaker:to talk about, but especially for those that are listening, as you mentioned
Speaker:that it's our five year birthday.
Speaker:Um, that means we're just halfway to an overnight success.
Speaker:Tedd Huff, Fintech Confidential: Oh, well, yesterday we had the
Speaker:opportunity to sit down and have some great donuts at Donutique yesterday.
Speaker:We did.
Speaker:Stephany Kirkpatrick, Orum: And what else did we get to do?
Speaker:Tedd Huff, Fintech Confidential: Oh yeah, we got the matching
Speaker:outfits today going on.
Speaker:So we, we really, one of the things that I thought was really interesting
Speaker:and I didn't realize this until I started doing even more research
Speaker:is the Donutique piece of it.
Speaker:Was that inspired by your, your donut meetings at the office
Speaker:or was it the other way around?
Speaker:Stephany Kirkpatrick, Orum: That's a very good question.
Speaker:So let's back up and I'll give you a little bit of context and history.
Speaker:Um, so for those that are listening, I'm Stephany.
Speaker:I'm the founder and CEO of a company called Orum, and I'm
Speaker:so thrilled to be here today.
Speaker:Orum transforms payment technology for businesses, and we do that
Speaker:by revolutionizing payment speed, payment certainty.
Speaker:And payment orchestration.
Speaker:And that's all done via our unified API based solutions.
Speaker:And we'll talk more about what all that means.
Speaker:Um, but yes, at Orum, we are a remote company and we use a fun little
Speaker:thing in our Slack called donut.
Speaker:And it automatically randomly pairs you with somebody else in the company.
Speaker:So once a week you have a 15 minute donut chat.
Speaker:Um, and that actually started five years ago when we started figuring out
Speaker:how to build a remote first company.
Speaker:We raised institutional capital in the spring of 2020.
Speaker:I was barefoot in my five year old's bedroom, and every other VC out there was
Speaker:also sitting at home somewhere figuring out how this was all going to work.
Speaker:Um, so that's the genesis of Donuts at Work.
Speaker:Here in Money 20/20, using Donutique to build the Orum Cafe.
Speaker:First of all, credit to our brilliant, uh, leader, Greg, who runs commercial at Orum.
Speaker:Um, but we do that because we want to have a really rich emotional
Speaker:connection with our customers, our prospects, our financial partners.
Speaker:And everybody's here looking for something that's during the
Speaker:middle of the day, not alcohol.
Speaker:Um, they're looking for a way to connect, unwind, be joyful.
Speaker:And I don't know, I couldn't think of a lot of better things besides
Speaker:donuts to bring that to life.
Speaker:Tedd Huff, Fintech Confidential: So we talked about, you know, starting
Speaker:as a certified financial planner, you've had a couple of detours of some,
Speaker:a little bit of fun in the middle.
Speaker:Um, help us understand, you know, how did you go from the financial planner space?
Speaker:You spent some time at a Soul Cycle.
Speaker:Stephany Kirkpatrick, Orum: I did do that.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:And then,
Speaker:Tedd Huff, Fintech Confidential: and then, then Orum, like help us
Speaker:understand that, that not so linear path
Speaker:Stephany Kirkpatrick, Orum: Yes, the journey's not entirely obvious, and I bet
Speaker:for a lot of entrepreneurs this is true.
Speaker:Um, I did start my career as a certified financial planner, and
Speaker:as you said, I am the daughter of an immigrant who came to the U.
Speaker:S.
Speaker:with nothing, and most of my life was colored by understanding what it's
Speaker:like to have to decide which bill to pay, or what it's like to wait.
Speaker:Sometimes weeks, months for receivables to come into the small business
Speaker:that my parents were running.
Speaker:I just really like colored the way I think about the impact
Speaker:I want to have in my career.
Speaker:So I became a CFP and actually started focused in the advice ecosystem.
Speaker:So how do we help others who have less have more?
Speaker:Initially that was for retirement planning and then ultimately that was
Speaker:for financial planning broadly and I was very fortunate to work in In
Speaker:a technology role that allowed me to not just think about the impact to
Speaker:people, but the scale technology could provide to providing financial advice.
Speaker:And while I was at LearnVest, um, building what became the sort of IP
Speaker:for the company, so I'm the principal inventor and patent holder for the
Speaker:intellectual property we created.
Speaker:I had this really big aha, which is, you can get financial
Speaker:advice to the masses now.
Speaker:And you can get people excited to save and invest even small amounts of money.
Speaker:But what they're challenged by isn't behavior change.
Speaker:They're challenged by a fundamental flaw in the infrastructure
Speaker:that serves financial services.
Speaker:And so people would look you in the eye and say, I'd love to put money
Speaker:in a high yield savings, but I can't because I need to move it back to
Speaker:my checking account on a Saturday.
Speaker:If I have an emergency, I can't get there fast enough.
Speaker:And it's heartbreaking to think that, 2 trillion dollars sits idle
Speaker:in checking accounts for consumers, let alone what happens in businesses
Speaker:that could be optimized to build wealth, to generate savings.
Speaker:And so my insight was derived from being a financial planner, and that is why I
Speaker:ultimately built Orum so that we could build infrastructure that's going to
Speaker:fundamentally change financial services.
Speaker:But yes, there was a left turn, and
Speaker:I went to SoulCycle.
Speaker:Um, because as I thought about my career, and I hope for those
Speaker:listening, This resonates.
Speaker:I realized that I'd really only done two things.
Speaker:I'd done digital and that was powerful at the time and I'd done financial
Speaker:advice, but I'd never touched the supply chain hardware physical goods.
Speaker:I'd never understood what it's like to run a brick and mortar business.
Speaker:And so when I was leaving FinTech for a minute I was looking for three things.
Speaker:One, I wanted to be domiciled in New York City because I've
Speaker:been doing a lot of travel.
Speaker:Um, And actually, before that, my real number one was I wanted
Speaker:to work for another female CEO.
Speaker:At LearnVest, I'd been working for a female CEO.
Speaker:I wanted to find that again.
Speaker:I wanted to be domiciled in New York.
Speaker:And I wanted to work in a category I could get excited about.
Speaker:And so it led me to SoulCycle, taught me a lot.
Speaker:And as I turned to the next corner, to build Orum, a handful of folks that I
Speaker:built relationships with on the team and as partners through that experience
Speaker:ended up coming as early employees.
Speaker:And now a fair number of, uh, two members of the executive team and a couple
Speaker:other folks within the company are from the SoulCycle era, which is totally
Speaker:wild because we all were able to turn our curiosity into something that's
Speaker:now building an absolutely incredible new foundation for financial services.
Speaker:Tedd Huff, Fintech Confidential: What was that, that moment that like when,
Speaker:when you're at SoulCycle and you're ready to That decision point, I, I, I'm
Speaker:ready to, to take this next journey.
Speaker:I'm ready to solve this problem of money movement.
Speaker:What was that?
Speaker:What was that like?
Speaker:Stephany Kirkpatrick, Orum: Well, it was certainly an interesting moment
Speaker:in time because I had always kind of seen myself as a great number two.
Speaker:And I imagine a lot of people can appreciate the feeling of imposter
Speaker:syndrome thinking, I'm not a founder.
Speaker:You know, I'm not really going to go start a company by myself.
Speaker:Um, and, you know, I am not only a female founder, which, you know, realistically
Speaker:does mean that there's less venture capital available, but I'm also a
Speaker:non technical founder, so my biggest hurdle to overcome was, I don't write
Speaker:code myself, I can think technically, uh, but my strengths are in commercial
Speaker:and go to market and product and other things, so it was intimidating, and what
Speaker:really pushed me was somebody saying this is a worth building idea, and if
Speaker:you want to continue to have impact, And I kind of went back to my roots.
Speaker:In financial advice, we could reach millions of Americans.
Speaker:Um, by building infrastructure that powers the way money moves, you can
Speaker:reach hundreds of millions of American wallets, businesses, and consumers.
Speaker:And that is what ultimately tipped me to say, Impostor
Speaker:Syndrome, you go back in a box.
Speaker:I'll get a coach for that, which I did, and I love my coach.
Speaker:And I took the leap of faith.
Speaker:Um, That said, I really encourage folks who are kind of at the
Speaker:precipice of thinking about founding a company to consider three things.
Speaker:One is, are you set up financially to stop getting a paycheck?
Speaker:Like, do you have an emergency savings?
Speaker:Are you ready to go out and do six, nine, 12 months without drawing a salary,
Speaker:because that may be what it takes.
Speaker:I think being financially prepared is really important.
Speaker:Um, number two, are you thinking about something that you want
Speaker:to spend 10 years on Right.
Speaker:We're five years into Orum.
Speaker:And people are just starting to know who Orum is.
Speaker:By the time you hear of a successful company, they're ten years in.
Speaker:And so if your idea doesn't compel you, then you're going to
Speaker:find yourself really struggling.
Speaker:And the third, and I think really important thing is,
Speaker:is there a venture scale?
Speaker:You mentioned how much money we've raised.
Speaker:I'm very proud of that.
Speaker:It's also terrifying to think about the expectations to return that
Speaker:money, not times two, not times three.
Speaker:People want exponential returns.
Speaker:And the reason I'm convicted that Orum is venture scale is because when you
Speaker:think about money movement, which last year there was 80 trillion dollars
Speaker:moved via ACH, our 50 year old workhorse system, 1 percent of all money movement
Speaker:was on the new real time systems.
Speaker:If you think about transforming payment technology for businesses, the
Speaker:impact of taking that 80 trillion and making it faster, smarter, data rich.
Speaker:It's six times bigger than Visa's global business last year.
Speaker:That's how I know that it's a venture backable, scalable thing.
Speaker:And it is sometimes slow and sometimes hard because we work in a regulated space.
Speaker:But it is infinitely worth it.
Speaker:And it will drive me for another ten years, if not longer.
Speaker:Tedd Huff, Fintech Confidential: Hey, Ted Huff here.
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Speaker:You've talked about the impact to the consumer wallet.
Speaker:You've talked about infrastructure.
Speaker:Help us understand Who is the target that you're, you're trying to serve directly?
Speaker:Stephany Kirkpatrick, Orum: Well, let's break it down into products and then
Speaker:we'll talk about who uses those products.
Speaker:So today, under our unified API solutions, we have one product
Speaker:called Deliver, which is our unique direct to Fed money movement API.
Speaker:It moves money 24 7, 365, and it's got RTP, FedNow, ACH, same to ACH, wires,
Speaker:and, uh, New visa direct products in it so that you can use a simple solution to
Speaker:actually think about payment optimization and payment orchestration, right?
Speaker:So we can do things like offer bank rate pricing because we work directly
Speaker:with the federal reserve bank, right?
Speaker:We don't go through layers and layers of technology with other folks.
Speaker:We do every available processing windows.
Speaker:We speed up the time that money is available to move and we optimize when
Speaker:businesses want to move money fast or slow depending on what they are solving
Speaker:for Um, and then we offer something really unique, which is that you can track
Speaker:transfers down to the penny in our portal.
Speaker:So you can settle, reconcile, and always know where the transfer or
Speaker:the dollars are at any given time.
Speaker:And folks love our products because they can integrate in two weeks or less.
Speaker:So understanding kind of how we operate is important because then
Speaker:we can talk about who buys it.
Speaker:Let me tell you a little bit about Verify and then we'll come back to the the
Speaker:buyer Verify was born out of our business customers telling us over and over again
Speaker:that bank account verification is a broken solution that they aren't able to use
Speaker:because in the business world, folks that run PNLs don't have the banking log in to
Speaker:use something like plaid or an aggregator.
Speaker:And they don't want to think about whether or not it's two o'clock on
Speaker:Friday before NACHA window cutoff, right?
Speaker:They just know they need to pay suppliers and pay vendors and make payroll.
Speaker:And so Verify allows us to take what we built in deliver and actually take
Speaker:advantage of building on top of, not just using money movement, but building on
Speaker:top of faster payment systems like RTP and FedNow to communicate in the real
Speaker:time networks about the account status.
Speaker:So we check the status.
Speaker:We check if the owner is engaged and then we can confirm whether or
Speaker:not the name on the account matches.
Speaker:So when you put those two things together, you have payment
Speaker:speed and payment certainty.
Speaker:Now, we spend a lot of time in lending and billing.
Speaker:And the reason for that is because those are two places where you find
Speaker:the problem that I call time to money.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:There is a reason why having faster and 24 7 availability of
Speaker:money movement is really critical.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:So in lending Issuing the loan to the lendee, the recipient of funds, shouldn't
Speaker:be gated to nine to five on Monday.
Speaker:That's just not how the world works anymore.
Speaker:Um, and there's so many iterations of lending, for example, that are in
Speaker:B2B, where the magnitude of impact to move funds quickly is very meaningful.
Speaker:And on the accounts payable and receivable side and billing,
Speaker:we see the same thing, right?
Speaker:There's an objective to better align payables and receivables
Speaker:and not have to send out.
Speaker:You know, with 3 to 7 days lead time, a payment that's no longer going to
Speaker:sit in your account and earn interest.
Speaker:You can actually maximize both the way you think about the interest rates
Speaker:you're accumulating the dollars that you have in the bank, the time in
Speaker:which you make payables and so much of financial services looks different when
Speaker:you don't have to ask the question how fast or how am I going to move money?
Speaker:And you can just simply say it needs to be instant and we'll take care of the rest.
Speaker:Tedd Huff, Fintech Confidential: That really comes into the point of
Speaker:really looking at what the cashflow management side of the house, like
Speaker:how, how do I maximize the usage of it?
Speaker:How do I get it to where I need to be?
Speaker:You hit on all of those different things, but as, as I, I want to drill back in,
Speaker:we've talked about the products, right?
Speaker:Do we Verify in the bank accounts?
Speaker:We're moving the money all, all as well.
Speaker:Um, and you, you've also mentioned that it's developer centric.
Speaker:Stephany Kirkpatrick, Orum: Indeed it is.
Speaker:So
Speaker:Tedd Huff, Fintech Confidential: who are these developers that are looking at
Speaker:these APIs to do this and, and where's it getting injected into the ecosystem?
Speaker:Stephany Kirkpatrick, Orum: Well, the, the thing to think about is that there's
Speaker:really three constituents, right?
Speaker:There's the buyer, which is typically somebody in a product role who is thinking
Speaker:about having a payment experience or a money movement experience embedded
Speaker:in their products and solutions.
Speaker:And so that's the person that typically comes to the table, finds Orum, and
Speaker:is analyzing how to bring something new into their product suite so that
Speaker:it can be differentiated, so they can lower costs, there's a number
Speaker:of things they're solving for.
Speaker:The person that buys the product also has to align with the
Speaker:person that's going to integrate.
Speaker:And so yes, we are developer friendly.
Speaker:However, we also offer no code options.
Speaker:Because many, uh, financial services companies who are not fintechs, right?
Speaker:Um, where a lot of the concentration of lending and billing sits, are spitting out
Speaker:a NACHA file, and that's all they have.
Speaker:And they're probably not going to invest in technical change.
Speaker:So we can take that NACHA file in our no code option, and actually break apart
Speaker:all the components of the information supplied, and route it on faster payments.
Speaker:So we're not only interoperable with RTP and FedNow, we're also
Speaker:configurable in a way that doesn't require engineering work, right?
Speaker:But if there are engineers, we want those constituents to be excited that they
Speaker:can literally build an integration to Orum and set up a full multi bank, multi
Speaker:rail payment stack in two weeks or less.
Speaker:And then the third constituent is what I call the user, which is somebody who has
Speaker:to track, settle, reconcile, organize, run reports, think about the treasury
Speaker:and payment operations components of having payments embedded in a business.
Speaker:And at the end of the day, that person becomes infinitely more important as you
Speaker:look ahead to what's on your road map, how you're going to do renewals, right?
Speaker:So it's not just the buyer and the process up front, but it's really for us deeply
Speaker:embedding with our customers, listening to their feedback, and ensuring that
Speaker:all three constituents have maximized the time and the effort they spend and
Speaker:have gotten something really valuable that they can ideally point back to
Speaker:the business and say, We've cut costs because we have bank rate pricing.
Speaker:We've identified a new way to monetize with faster payments.
Speaker:And Oh, by the way, we were able to move engineers out from underneath
Speaker:managing three or four different bank integrations, um, to new projects
Speaker:that generate growth for the business.
Speaker:And we did all that without changing.
Speaker:In fact, enhancing the way we move money.
Speaker:And so for me, that's exactly the combination we're looking for.
Speaker:Tedd Huff, Fintech Confidential: So.
Speaker:All of this sounds fantastic, but we know that none of this stuff goes super smooth.
Speaker:Stephany Kirkpatrick, Orum: Well, you say that, but you haven't integrated
Speaker:to Orum, so, you know, bring it on.
Speaker:Tedd Huff, Fintech Confidential: Well, I mean, talking about the, all the
Speaker:different legacy rails and some of the newer rails, even though they're newer,
Speaker:they still have a lot of the same baggage as, as the legacy platforms and a lot of
Speaker:the different ways that it's looked at and managed and, um, Um, especially when
Speaker:you start thinking the bank risk side of the house, they still want to treat it
Speaker:similarly to the, to the legacy pieces.
Speaker:What would you say was the, the biggest gotcha that you had when you were going
Speaker:through the process of putting all these different pieces together, something that
Speaker:you didn't expect to be as complicated or as difficult as it turned out to be.
Speaker:And then we'll, we'll start there.
Speaker:Stephany Kirkpatrick, Orum: I mean, there's been many surprises.
Speaker:I think all entrepreneurs would tell you the way they think it's going to
Speaker:go and the way it goes are different.
Speaker:Specific to your question, though, I think that's what's been probably most
Speaker:interesting and you're very right, right?
Speaker:The way that you send an ACH and the way a bank receives that is very
Speaker:different than the way you send a wire, which is very different than
Speaker:the way you do an RTP, which is also different than how you do FedNow.
Speaker:And it's gotten increasingly more complicated.
Speaker:And so the fact that we've We have spent many years building the
Speaker:logic to think about the smartest, best way to move the transaction.
Speaker:And we've optimized for payment rails that are very nascent, right?
Speaker:There's very, very minimal utilization still of the newer systems, not
Speaker:because they're not valuable, but because it is a sea change to move
Speaker:11, 500 financial institutions from one way of working to another.
Speaker:So right now, um, the RTP network's reporting about a
Speaker:million transactions a day.
Speaker:So about 30 million transactions a month.
Speaker:So you can imagine that being first movers on a system that itself
Speaker:hasn't matured has taught us a lot.
Speaker:Like what happens if there's an outage?
Speaker:Is there an outage at the RTP level or is it at the bank level?
Speaker:How do you know if the account you want to interact with is actually
Speaker:eligible for an instant payment?
Speaker:Well, that's why we built Verify.
Speaker:So there's been a lot of learnings just around incorporating the actual
Speaker:specific mechanics And right now, I would say, yes, we are all seeing the
Speaker:benefits of faster payments, but we're not realizing yet is all the things that
Speaker:the Fed built into FedNow and TCH built into RTP, which is the messaging layer.
Speaker:And so, as we're going to, we're going to talk crystal ball later,
Speaker:but as I look ahead, I think that's a very important part.
Speaker:It's fun and sexy to talk about faster.
Speaker:It's really important to talk about seven days a week with no holidays and 24 7.
Speaker:But what becomes critical is the combination of moving money with data.
Speaker:And that's why I think these networks are, they are absolutely the future.
Speaker:When I talk about kind of the sea change that's happening, I often think
Speaker:about, well, you know, how long ago was it that Uber started hit the market?
Speaker:And if before Uber, I said to you like, Hey, Tedd, it's going to be completely
Speaker:normal to have a stranger in a strange car that you've never been in, pick
Speaker:you up at your house, have your phone number and know where you live and
Speaker:drive you somewhere, you would've thought that was absolutely bananas.
Speaker:And now it is the most common best way.
Speaker:I mean, I don't know what's happening in the rental car market,
Speaker:but it can't be pretty, right?
Speaker:Because Uber's really just made it so simple.
Speaker:And I think that's what's happening, but that was 10, 15 years ago.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:So you've got to kind of think about as we're changing things,
Speaker:the benefits are very obvious.
Speaker:Um, and we're going to continue to push boundaries.
Speaker:It's why we spend so much time partnering, um, with TCH and with the fed.
Speaker:And We're going to keep making sure distribution and access is easy.
Speaker:Today you have to go to a bank, that bank has to have APIs.
Speaker:If you're lucky, there's a select few.
Speaker:Jamie Dimon funds a very rich technology budget because he can
Speaker:not that many banks have that.
Speaker:And so we want to be the partner that allows access in a really simple way so
Speaker:that businesses who are building something can take advantage of the ways in which
Speaker:you can optimize money movement and they don't have to go spend 2 million dollars
Speaker:in 2 years Figuring out how it works.
Speaker:That's my job.
Speaker:Tedd Huff, Fintech Confidential: Well, and you talk about the optimization, you
Speaker:know, one of the discussions that, that I've had a couple of times as we look
Speaker:at the faster payments and we look at the, the push to card functionalities
Speaker:and, you know, when do we fall back on ACH and all these different decision,
Speaker:decision points in here to try and figure out what's the best way.
Speaker:What has Orum done to help those folks that are sitting on the
Speaker:other side trying to figure out, do I, how do I get it there now?
Speaker:How do I get it there later today?
Speaker:Like, how, how are you helping them make the decisions of, do they have to
Speaker:figure out what they're going to use?
Speaker:They actually don't.
Speaker:Stephany Kirkpatrick, Orum: That's the beauty of it.
Speaker:So think about Amazon, right?
Speaker:Same day delivery.
Speaker:Your packages now literally come Saturday and Sunday.
Speaker:And sometimes they come between like 5 and 7 a.
Speaker:m.
Speaker:Like you have so many ways in which you can get a package.
Speaker:And what Amazon did is they took FedEx, UPS, Postal Service, Oh, by
Speaker:the way, they put their blue van, little Trojan horse out there, and
Speaker:then they hired a bunch of drivers to, like, close the loop on final mile.
Speaker:And as a consumer, all you care about is whether or not the package is going
Speaker:to arrive on time and how certain, like, how fast and how certain.
Speaker:That's how we should be thinking about money movement.
Speaker:It's my job, as we build Orum, to think about what are the rules that live within
Speaker:each of the networks, and what can you definitely do and definitely not do.
Speaker:When can you reverse a transaction?
Speaker:What if you send a payroll file and it's got an error?
Speaker:Well, ECH lets you, like, fix that.
Speaker:But RTP doesn't.
Speaker:So you're not just optimizing for speed.
Speaker:You're thinking about size of transaction.
Speaker:Who's sending?
Speaker:Who's receiving?
Speaker:What time of day is it?
Speaker:What's the, like, purpose of the transfer?
Speaker:Um, have we had confirmation from the payee that they know the money's coming?
Speaker:I mean, there's many, many things that you're optimizing for.
Speaker:And via our API or our no code option.
Speaker:You, it is as simple as saying ASAP if speed is important to
Speaker:you and we will do the rest.
Speaker:So orchestration is a big part of our business because nobody wants to have
Speaker:to build the decisions that go into increasing complexity of managing
Speaker:risk, speed, cost, reversibility.
Speaker:And the rule book for NACHA is, I don't know how many pages it sits on my desk.
Speaker:It's, you know, five inches thick.
Speaker:That's the kind of stuff you have.
Speaker:It used to be bigger.
Speaker:It used to be bigger, right?
Speaker:They've like worked on it.
Speaker:So unless you have a chatbot with AI like scanning that and telling
Speaker:you the answer to everything, which certainly is not the case, you have
Speaker:to really fundamentally know how to operate every network differently.
Speaker:And I just think it's too high of a barrier of entry and too high cost for
Speaker:every single financial services company to have to try to figure that out.
Speaker:And that's exactly why we've done what we've done.
Speaker:And the way we think about it right now.
Speaker:Tedd Huff, Fintech Confidential: I'm curious to get your perspective, you know,
Speaker:I've sat down and worked with a number of treasury management professionals and
Speaker:a lot of times it's less about the speed and the ease and more about the cost and
Speaker:as you called it certainty of delivery.
Speaker:How are you, how are you delivering the understanding of
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Speaker:Stephany Kirkpatrick, Orum: Okay.
Speaker:You know, it's such an interesting question because in treasury management,
Speaker:you're often working with corporate funds.
Speaker:So you're sometimes asking and answering different questions than you might be
Speaker:within the rest of the business where you might be handling your customers funds.
Speaker:So I do think that sometimes there's a differentiation between those two.
Speaker:Um, I think cost is pretty transparent, right?
Speaker:Um, we offer bank rate pricing, which means the way that we determine pricing is
Speaker:to coordinate with our financial partners and the Fed in particular and TCH.
Speaker:And so what we're not trying to do is obscure and hide costs.
Speaker:What we are trying to do is make sure that there's value and people can understand if
Speaker:you want it faster, it takes a little bit more time and money to make that happen.
Speaker:And so as we've made that investment in the faster payment system.
Speaker:You know, it's a couple cents more than an ACH, but here's what's great about it.
Speaker:It travels with data.
Speaker:It's certain.
Speaker:It works at night and on the holidays.
Speaker:So people are willing to pay for that certainty.
Speaker:Um, And in other cases, as you mentioned, sometimes you want to
Speaker:slow down one leg of the transaction.
Speaker:Like you want to let it settle, hang out in your account for
Speaker:a day or two, maybe a week.
Speaker:And that's the beauty of our system is you can break up your debits and credits and
Speaker:you can think about them very differently.
Speaker:So we're thinking about optimizing exactly what treasury managers,
Speaker:payment operations, leaders, um, and business folks need to think about.
Speaker:So it's not just.
Speaker:Move it faster, right?
Speaker:It's really a very complex equation of optimization and orchestration
Speaker:Tedd Huff, Fintech Confidential: So recently you've made a couple
Speaker:of announcements, um, for some partnerships, help, help us understand
Speaker:what drives those types of partnerships.
Speaker:One, one, I believe is with a bank.
Speaker:Um, and, and like, what, what, how, how do you choose the partnerships?
Speaker:I mean, at, at, at a leadership level, how do you, how do you all.
Speaker:Come together and go, yeah, that's the right, that's the
Speaker:right partnership for us.
Speaker:Stephany Kirkpatrick, Orum: Well, we're very careful and selective
Speaker:about who we partner with.
Speaker:So I'll start with that.
Speaker:Having grown up in regulated financial services my whole career, I know, and
Speaker:I knew when I started Orum that we needed to make very careful choices
Speaker:because we wouldn't get a second chance.
Speaker:And when you're establishing a brand and you're establishing
Speaker:trust with your customers, it's easy to have a great website.
Speaker:It's easy to have great products.
Speaker:And the minute something goes wrong, it's very easy to have a customer say,
Speaker:I don't want to work with you anymore.
Speaker:And so our partners are very much an important part of thinking about our SLAs,
Speaker:how fast, how long, how's our uptime.
Speaker:Um, and they're also really critical in terms of how they're regulated,
Speaker:where they spend time in the market.
Speaker:You are the company you keep, right?
Speaker:So we want a select group of partners that are, um, premium in every
Speaker:way, because it is important to us.
Speaker:That we don't make any decisions that could risk the way somebody's
Speaker:trust gets built with us.
Speaker:Because moving money is the most high value, high risk
Speaker:endeavor you could take on.
Speaker:Because we're talking about payroll.
Speaker:We're talking about wages.
Speaker:We're talking about insurance dollars.
Speaker:We're talking about healthcare providers getting paid.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:And I just take that very seriously.
Speaker:And that's colored everything we do from a partnership's perspective.
Speaker:Tedd Huff, Fintech Confidential: I'm not going to go all the
Speaker:way into our crystal ball.
Speaker:We'll end with that piece of it.
Speaker:But I do want to understand your perspective on how the future of
Speaker:payments, the future of fintech is getting impacted by the regulatory environment.
Speaker:As you mentioned, you came from a highly regulated environment to begin with.
Speaker:How are you seeing the future?
Speaker:The announcements, uh, recently we just had the announcement of the,
Speaker:of 1033, it finally got released.
Speaker:How are you seeing things like that impacting the, the way in which
Speaker:people approach these products?
Speaker:Stephany Kirkpatrick, Orum: Well, regulation is sometimes on your side
Speaker:and sometimes a little bit more of a headwind, and it sort of depends on the
Speaker:political environment, what regulator, what part of the landscape you're in.
Speaker:What I think is particularly interesting right now is that many different types
Speaker:of regulators, um, not exclusively the CFPB who put out 1033, are endeavoring
Speaker:to figure out how to increase, um, certainty and manage risk between novel
Speaker:innovative concepts being built by fintechs and the banking system that
Speaker:supports their ability to do a lot of that, whether it's hold deposits or
Speaker:transfer money and issue credit cards.
Speaker:So, I think we're still in the early innings of what will be probably a fairly
Speaker:big amount of regulatory sea change.
Speaker:But those regulators don't always have to coordinate efforts, and
Speaker:they certainly probably won't.
Speaker:With 1033 specifically, I think it's a double click into, um, something
Speaker:that's existed for a while unofficially, which is, hey, at this bank, where
Speaker:I've put my trust and my dollars and probably my direct deposit for
Speaker:my payroll, I have data locked up.
Speaker:And for a variety of reasons, I might want to give that information to somebody else.
Speaker:Maybe it's for buying a car and getting a loan, and there's cash flow based
Speaker:underwriting information that would prove that I pay my bills on time
Speaker:and be additive to my credit score.
Speaker:So I think it's an unlock that is going to, in this case, be a propellant to
Speaker:have more consumer rights, and that's what the CFPB is always thinking
Speaker:about, with regard to access to data.
Speaker:I think we're probably going to be looking at things evolving, like Reg E,
Speaker:which is specifically for ACH and ACH debit transactions, potentially needing
Speaker:to evolve because it's highly abused, and it leads to a substantial amount of
Speaker:fraud and cost in the payment system.
Speaker:So I'm interested to see where all of this goes, and I'm by no means a
Speaker:regulatory affairs expert, but we do ensure that we spend a lot of time
Speaker:with our counsel at Paul Hastings.
Speaker:Chris Daniel and team keeping current, um, and making sure that we're in
Speaker:lockstep with our financial partners, their regulators, which spans everything
Speaker:from the OCC to the FDIC and beyond.
Speaker:And just really putting in the work to work with the system and not against it.
Speaker:Tedd Huff, Fintech Confidential: Yeah.
Speaker:I was, I was really wanting to understand, like, how are you seeing it in the
Speaker:beneficial, not, not the detrimental side, but the beneficial, how are
Speaker:you, how are you seeing that moving?
Speaker:Orum and the technology forward.
Speaker:Is it opening up new opportunities?
Speaker:Is it in a direction that is helping you see things maybe in
Speaker:a slightly different way that you thought may not have been possible?
Speaker:And it's gotten increasingly more complicated.
Speaker:Stephany Kirkpatrick, Orum: You know, I'm always eager to
Speaker:see how we react to final regs.
Speaker:And so, you know, this was a particularly fast moving set of regulations.
Speaker:There are others that are being worked on now that won't maybe move as quickly.
Speaker:I think Rohit had a timeline and an objective and a really clear
Speaker:remit to like get this done.
Speaker:And yeah, I think it's probably going to open up access.
Speaker:So I see it as a, you know, generally a positive thing.
Speaker:I'm interested to see, you know, as the crypto landscape evolves and
Speaker:stable coins, I'm sure you're not reading my notes because that's where
Speaker:Tedd Huff, Fintech Confidential: I'm going next.
Speaker:Stephany Kirkpatrick, Orum: I'm certainly not, but we're sharing a brain, Tedd.
Speaker:I love it.
Speaker:You know, there's so much of value to be had in stable coins.
Speaker:And so I'm very interested to see how, you know, let's say like the FDIC
Speaker:and, uh, SEC started to rethink some of their initial concerns with crypto
Speaker:and how we can take advantage of the blockchain capability and the sort of.
Speaker:Stable coin assets.
Speaker:I wouldn't be surprised if there's a future state in which a stable
Speaker:coins, a part of the Orum back end.
Speaker:I don't know when that might be, but it's not crazy, right?
Speaker:Particularly for things like cross border.
Speaker:So it's just a very interesting time.
Speaker:And in every moment when it feels chaotic, because regulators are feeling a certain
Speaker:way, it just means there's opportunity.
Speaker:Tedd Huff, Fintech Confidential: So we'll go ahead and make that shift over
Speaker:to, you know, the discussion of, you know, how are, When you're looking at
Speaker:all these different technologies, I mean, we've had the discussions, um,
Speaker:throughout the industry, uh, off and on and up and down and everything kind
Speaker:of ebbs and flows as it normally does.
Speaker:But when we look at any sort of cryptocurrency, any sort of
Speaker:blockchain technologies, you just mentioned that you see stable coin
Speaker:as being a potential item that gets added or gets used more frequently.
Speaker:But what do you see the overarching impact of these?
Speaker:Blockchain technologies to the industry and and how how you all are
Speaker:looking at approaching the market
Speaker:Stephany Kirkpatrick, Orum: Well, the blockchain piece in particular is super
Speaker:interesting I think especially if you are looking at folks like what Figure
Speaker:is building from a HELOC perspective So if you're getting a home equity line of
Speaker:credit the way they're thinking about the sort of provenance of information
Speaker:within the loan itself That is a big game changer from an infrastructure perspective
Speaker:to think about where lending might go Um Stable coins are interesting because,
Speaker:well, I can see a future in which we factor them in and probably we're not
Speaker:done innovating on ways to move money.
Speaker:I don't think FedNow and RTP were like the last frontier.
Speaker:Um, I think what is true is that inside the U.
Speaker:S., currently, the need for stable coins as a form of money movement is lesser.
Speaker:Because we're lucky to have the U.
Speaker:S.
Speaker:dollar be stable and reliable.
Speaker:And where you see stable coins being really valuable is speed
Speaker:of money movement cross border.
Speaker:And or currency stabilization, um, and providing the ability to, for people
Speaker:to hold a USD who live outside the U S so that's not on our horizon today
Speaker:to go cross border, because I can only see so far into the future and with
Speaker:80 trillion dollars needing to go from ACH to fully optimize, I got years
Speaker:and years of work ahead of me, but, um, we believe that as new forms of
Speaker:money movement become relevant to our use cases, we'll just build them in.
Speaker:And like we did last year with FedNow, we added it.
Speaker:None of our customers had to make any changes to take advantage of it, and
Speaker:we just automatically incorporated into the waterfall of logic.
Speaker:And that's what we'll continue to do as there are more types
Speaker:of different payment mechanisms.
Speaker:And I sure hope we're not done innovating.
Speaker:We're just at the very beginning, I think.
Speaker:Tedd Huff, Fintech Confidential: I do want to jump into really understanding
Speaker:some of the leadership lessons that you've learned during this.
Speaker:You'd mentioned, you know, getting the coach and, and really
Speaker:kind of working through that.
Speaker:I'm a great number two, um, piece of it.
Speaker:What are, what would you say are like the top three things that you've, you've
Speaker:pulled out of it from your transition through each one of these roles?
Speaker:And heck, even over the last five years, Oh, I've learned
Speaker:Stephany Kirkpatrick, Orum: so much.
Speaker:So let's start with having a coach, right?
Speaker:Um, I think sometimes, Particularly startup founders find it unusual.
Speaker:Like, what would you do with a coach?
Speaker:And like, how does it work?
Speaker:And if you look at the best athletes, Tiger Woods, name whoever you want, right?
Speaker:Um, they all train, they all work to be better at the thing they're good at.
Speaker:And as a leader, you're never done working on the things that will make
Speaker:you a great leader because the business you're running is going to change
Speaker:if not every six months, every nine or 12 or 18, because you're growing.
Speaker:And so I think having a coach that is versed in leadership and specifically
Speaker:in many cases, the entrepreneurial journey is a massive unlock.
Speaker:I've been working with my coach, Steve, for, um, the better part of
Speaker:three and a half, almost four years.
Speaker:So not since day one.
Speaker:And I wish I had known him on day one.
Speaker:I think I would have made a lot of decisions differently.
Speaker:Um, so coaching is really important to me and I recommend it to all entrepreneurs
Speaker:because that person is fully independent.
Speaker:They don't have a financial outcome based on equity, and they're not married to
Speaker:you, and they're not your mom, and they're not on your team, and they can really be
Speaker:objective and be looking out just for you.
Speaker:And I've learned a lot about board management, about how I handle my imposter
Speaker:syndrome, about just continuing to put in the work, and some of the best things
Speaker:that come out of that is that I'm a better listener, and I'm more patient, And I ask
Speaker:questions without questioning the person.
Speaker:And so many things that I will continue to work on, but I'm
Speaker:really excited, have become natural as I've just put in the work.
Speaker:Um, number two, I have a 911 list.
Speaker:Like I by no means know all the answers.
Speaker:I mean, when I took a left turn and went to build bikes that go nowhere, I did
Speaker:not know anything about the business.
Speaker:So I had to ask a lot of people for a lot of help.
Speaker:And your networks are a really valuable asset, and people love when
Speaker:you call on them for their expertise.
Speaker:So build a 911 list of people that, like, will have seen around the corner.
Speaker:They know what's next.
Speaker:They have the domain knowledge.
Speaker:They've been in your shoes, but they've done it twice before and you haven't.
Speaker:And I just find that is one of the most powerful things.
Speaker:One day I was trying to study a problem about, like, how do ATM machines,
Speaker:when you put your debit card in, know that it's your bank account?
Speaker:And so I was like, I need to find the answer.
Speaker:And of course I wouldn't know, so you can only Google so much.
Speaker:So I called on my 911 list and somebody said, Hey, meet this person.
Speaker:They run the biggest ATM network in the country and they'll answer your question.
Speaker:And that's so satisfying because it speeds up my ability to find the answer.
Speaker:And for that person that I'm asking, they're delighted to
Speaker:tell you and help you out, right?
Speaker:Like give and you will get back.
Speaker:Um, and then I think the third leadership component that I talk a
Speaker:lot about is a team is not a family.
Speaker:Orum is not my family.
Speaker:I love Orum.
Speaker:I love working with the team.
Speaker:But teams are very different.
Speaker:Family you would do anything for.
Speaker:You would make room for anyone.
Speaker:You would bend over backwards.
Speaker:You just behave very differently when you think you're a family.
Speaker:And a family makes it sometimes too personal.
Speaker:This is business.
Speaker:I run a company.
Speaker:It is a for profit entity.
Speaker:We need to make money.
Speaker:I need to be smart about the bottom line.
Speaker:And decisions we have to make sometimes are really hard.
Speaker:Sometimes it's not working with a teammate.
Speaker:That doesn't make them a bad person.
Speaker:It just means it's not a fit right now.
Speaker:And the more as an employee you can see yourself as on the team, you can remember
Speaker:you have to earn your spot on that team.
Speaker:You have to play your spot well.
Speaker:You got to stay in your spot.
Speaker:And if something changes and you don't like it, it's not personal.
Speaker:So having that mindset that we're connected and a team is a very powerful
Speaker:force of nature is so important to me.
Speaker:But remembering every day, it's not a family.
Speaker:And when I have to make hard decisions or managers and people
Speaker:leaders have to make hard decisions.
Speaker:We don't want it to be about that familial component.
Speaker:Um, and I know that's a little bit controversial and a little bit different
Speaker:than how some people think about it.
Speaker:Um, but that's worked really well for me.
Speaker:Tedd Huff, Fintech Confidential: How do you manage that, especially
Speaker:with having a full remote team?
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Speaker:Stephany Kirkpatrick, Orum: Compassion.
Speaker:Empathy.
Speaker:Everybody's human.
Speaker:Somebody's going through a hard time, they're having a bad day.
Speaker:Somebody may have had a death in the family or be sick.
Speaker:You don't know everything about somebody at work just
Speaker:because they walk in the door.
Speaker:And you won't know everything about them, although you might know different things
Speaker:because you work in a remote setting.
Speaker:I tend to know more about people's home lives than I probably would have.
Speaker:We certainly see if somebody has like painted the wall or moved locations.
Speaker:You see people's kids.
Speaker:And having the compassion and empathy is critical.
Speaker:I think it's very important to check in, how are you doing?
Speaker:. That's a different question than like, you might normally get asked
Speaker:if you just walked in the door.
Speaker:So we do really think about employee experience, employee engagement.
Speaker:I think engagement's a great proxy.
Speaker:If you are engaged, that means that you understand what
Speaker:you're supposed to be doing.
Speaker:You're giving the autonomy to do it well.
Speaker:And you're getting feedback that it's going the way you thought it should.
Speaker:And if you're not getting those signals from your people leader, it is on
Speaker:you as an employee to go find out.
Speaker:Hey, are we aligned?
Speaker:Here's what I'm thinking about it.
Speaker:Does that match?
Speaker:So, you know, there's no shortage of challenges in remote, but
Speaker:there are some real benefits.
Speaker:And we've made this a feature, not a bug.
Speaker:Um, and I think just ultimately having compassion and, and being professional
Speaker:in every setting is really critical.
Speaker:Tedd Huff, Fintech Confidential: how do you take that into the
Speaker:decision making process on what to do, when to do it, how to do who
Speaker:needs to do it, help us understand from your leadership perspective.
Speaker:how do you lead the people to do the right things at the right
Speaker:time with the right resources?
Speaker:Stephany Kirkpatrick, Orum: Well, two answers.
Speaker:One is I hired a VP of people when we were 20.
Speaker:So a lot of people do that when you're like 80 or a hundred or 200.
Speaker:Um, she was head of people at the time.
Speaker:She's since been promoted, and that is my way of investing in making sure
Speaker:that we make the right decisions to have the people at Orum be the right
Speaker:people at the right time for right now.
Speaker:And that's a nuanced thing, because as the business changes, what we need changes.
Speaker:So I started with that, and then I come back to just thinking about, hey, if
Speaker:we're gonna move in a new direction, launch a new product, build something
Speaker:different, hire a team, you have to kind of go back to first principles,
Speaker:which is to understand, do we have anybody already here that fits the bill?
Speaker:Do we need to hire from outside?
Speaker:Can we build a system that promotes from within?
Speaker:And I try to really take advantage of the talent base we've already developed,
Speaker:with subject matter expertise and domain knowledge, and use that to our advantage.
Speaker:So you'll find that people at Orum sometimes move teams, or they get promoted
Speaker:in a different area, and that's us taking advantage of really exceptional talent,
Speaker:but also realizing, like, when we don't know something, and we do need to hire
Speaker:from outside, we know how to go find that.
Speaker:Um, and so it's, you know, it's always a balance, but having somebody who
Speaker:really focuses on people strategy unlocks me to do what I'm good at,
Speaker:which is to think about having great financial partners, great commercial
Speaker:partners, great investors, and it unlocks her to ensure that the team is
Speaker:always as best it can be, optimized to do the right work at the right time.
Speaker:So that means thinking about org design, it means thinking about
Speaker:employee growth, it means thinking about great people leaders.
Speaker:Um, and so there's a lot for me that goes into it.
Speaker:Tedd Huff, Fintech Confidential: Well, I do want to dive in.
Speaker:Um, and of course I had to bring the crystal ball with me.
Speaker:What I want you to do is I want you to look into this fun crystal ball here
Speaker:and, and, and tell us what is it you see in the next five to 10 years in
Speaker:FinTech and how does it look different?
Speaker:Stephany Kirkpatrick, Orum: Oh man, that is a really wild question.
Speaker:So I think in five to 10 years time, as I said, kind of earlier in the show,
Speaker:you'll What are the biggest changes is that when we move money, which is an
Speaker:increasingly important part of fintech?
Speaker:We will have data Embedded in a way that today.
Speaker:We don't we will be able to send an accounts payable Or receivable,
Speaker:you know invoice inside of the payment mechanism So the kinds of
Speaker:software that need to get built but today our big businesses like bill.
Speaker:com Might look fundamentally different.
Speaker:They might not exist at all because the model will be changing And I think
Speaker:the way you manufacture and distribute financial services products on new
Speaker:infrastructure is going to change in ways we almost can't imagine.
Speaker:But if you just go back to if we only had data while we were doing
Speaker:a payment, what would we build?
Speaker:That is the unlock of taking faster payments from today, just being about
Speaker:speed or in some cases, you know, time and day of the week and really making a
Speaker:transformational part of fintech I wish I could see further in the specifics, but
Speaker:I know that data with money movement is going to be the game changer for every
Speaker:FinTech who might not need to do certain things the way they're doing them today.
Speaker:And certainly I think our kids, so maybe not 10 years from now, but
Speaker:you know, in the future, they're going to look at us and be like,
Speaker:sorry, you use your account number.
Speaker:What is that?
Speaker:They're going to pay with their email.
Speaker:They're going to pay with their phone number.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:And so the Zelle directory model, while still also early, is a great signal
Speaker:on the ease by which we're going to start to think about transacting,
Speaker:taking down barriers of entry, and ultimately also preventing bad
Speaker:actors from getting into the system.
Speaker:You know, it always made me laugh, like, the most critical thing about your bank
Speaker:account, which is the account number, is printed on your check, which is
Speaker:literally a physical thing you could lose.
Speaker:Losing my debit card is way lower risk.
Speaker:I can just immediately say I lost it.
Speaker:Losing a blank check much harder.
Speaker:So I just think we're going to go through so many kinds of changes
Speaker:all tied back to data that can increase payment speed and payment
Speaker:certainty and help us build better.
Speaker:Tedd Huff, Fintech Confidential: If you were to give another fintech
Speaker:founder one piece of advice that they could, that's the only piece of
Speaker:advice they could take with them going forward, what would it be and why?
Speaker:Stephany Kirkpatrick, Orum: I say this advice a lot, and I think it's
Speaker:way easier to say than it is to do.
Speaker:Um, be very, very focused in the beginning.
Speaker:Because fintech has more barriers to entry from a regulatory perspective,
Speaker:and because you have to meet certain criteria to be in financial services,
Speaker:um, don't spread yourself thin.
Speaker:Hone your first product.
Speaker:If you're focused on selling to lenders, . Sell to a hundred lenders before you
Speaker:sell to somebody that's not a lender and just stay steadfast in working with your
Speaker:board In the fact that not all revenue is a good idea Good revenue will help you
Speaker:unlock product market fit and the way that you get to scale Like a Chime or a Cash
Speaker:App is to be Literally laser focused in your core customer and your core product
Speaker:for as absolutely long as you can Which means frequently saying no You To the
Speaker:temptation to build more things faster.
Speaker:And I think that's where, in fact, in FinTech in particular, you can
Speaker:get over your skis very quickly and not realize that you have too
Speaker:thin of a layer of compliance or not enough, you know, support for
Speaker:something in the fraud ecosystem.
Speaker:And so those are the things that I, I really come back to over and over again,
Speaker:because I think it's, what's going to make for the ability for you to quickly
Speaker:figure out, do I have product market fit?
Speaker:And if I do, then how do I start to scale it?
Speaker:Tedd Huff, Fintech Confidential: So that leads me to a different question.
Speaker:It's like, how, how do you know when you have a company,
Speaker:not a product or a feature,
Speaker:Stephany Kirkpatrick, Orum: such a timely question, because so much of
Speaker:AI right now feels like features and even, you know, over the last five
Speaker:or 10 years, a lot of, you know, tech things have become features, not
Speaker:companies go back to venture scale.
Speaker:Can you build a business with this?
Speaker:That's going to get you to 200 to 300 million dollars of revenue,
Speaker:at which point you could consider an IPO or an alternative exit.
Speaker:And when you're standing there proud of yourself getting to your first one or two
Speaker:million in run rate revenue, do the math.
Speaker:What do I have to believe on number of customers, on cost of
Speaker:acquisition, on, you know, which incumbent might get there first?
Speaker:Um, and be really mindful of how easy it might be to replicate
Speaker:the thing that you're working on.
Speaker:Because if that's true, it's likely a feature, not a, not a business.
Speaker:Tedd Huff, Fintech Confidential: We, we had, I've had this discussion.
Speaker:It was interesting.
Speaker:I was at another conference and, and we just started to see as, as I
Speaker:was sitting down with a handful of founders of their companies and most
Speaker:of them are, are, are very deep.
Speaker:Um, like an Orum, you know, you guys have a lot of function, a lot of
Speaker:feature, a lot of value gets provided.
Speaker:And that was the conversation that we were having was realistically five or six of
Speaker:these people that were presenting their company probably should just get together
Speaker:and,
Speaker:and build a singular end to end product that can actually service versus
Speaker:just being that one little piece.
Speaker:And And then the reason why I bring that up is you talked about
Speaker:getting super, super focused.
Speaker:And I think there are cases that you can get so focused that
Speaker:Stephany Kirkpatrick, Orum: right.
Speaker:The market's too small.
Speaker:Tedd Huff, Fintech Confidential: The market is just too small.
Speaker:No matter no matter how much you think.
Speaker:Well, this everybody could use this.
Speaker:Well, yes, everybody could use this in this thing.
Speaker:In that thing.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And this company in this product in this feature on I think that's that's big.
Speaker:The biggest piece that, That I've been seeing over, over the last,
Speaker:I would say probably over the last two years it's been really bad.
Speaker:Stephany Kirkpatrick, Orum: I think you see a lot of that because
Speaker:of how capital was deployed.
Speaker:And so it's kind of very obvious right now, which means there's probably
Speaker:going to be some great consolidation.
Speaker:I'd also kind of add the finer point, which is if you can land with a wedge
Speaker:and in a year's time expand to another feature that's going to drive more
Speaker:revenue and lock in that customer.
Speaker:The way we think about that is, bring.
Speaker:all of your payment business to us and we'll continue to grow what we
Speaker:offer to you so that if you were already working on, you know, let's
Speaker:say, um, ACH somewhere else and you wanted to start on RTP with us, you'd
Speaker:be incented to move everything over.
Speaker:It's a better system.
Speaker:So landing and expanding, increasing contract value, adding something
Speaker:like Verify, which we did almost a hundred percent of our customers.
Speaker:Looked to us and said, Oh, you've added a thing.
Speaker:I wasn't able to solve on my own.
Speaker:I want to buy that.
Speaker:So it leverages you to charge more, own more share of wallet,
Speaker:um, increase net revenue retention.
Speaker:So those are the things that if you start narrow and focused, you should hear
Speaker:good signal on the necessity for your buyer to continue to work with you and
Speaker:buy more of the thing you're selling.
Speaker:And so for me, it often just comes down to monetization and consumption.
Speaker:And are you thinking about it from a growth perspective
Speaker:in the right way over time?
Speaker:Tedd Huff, Fintech Confidential: Stephany, I appreciate you sitting down
Speaker:today, especially ending on that note.
Speaker:Uh, this has been very, very helpful to understand where Orum's going,
Speaker:how it fits the different pieces and parts, especially the way that you've
Speaker:approached building out the organization.
Speaker:Uh, it's been very, very helpful.
Speaker:And I really appreciate your time today.
Speaker:Stephany Kirkpatrick, Orum: I loved being here.
Speaker:Thanks so much.
Speaker:Tedd Huff, Fintech Confidential: Thanks Steph.
Speaker:And if you haven't already, go ahead, like, share, subscribe,
Speaker:and go to fintechconfidential.
Speaker:com and sign up to be notified when this and all the other
Speaker:favorite episodes get released.
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