Zeller’s Ben Pfisterer: Australia's FASTEST $1B valuation, Cutting Bureaucracy & Why Banks NEED Competition

Zeller's bet that Australian banks leave businesses underserved

Zeller gives Australian businesses their banking in one place. Pfisterer argues banks innovate so little that companies must assemble accounts, cards and payments from a patchwork of providers. Zeller built all three itself, launched a finished product rather than an MVP because it was handling people's money, and hit unicorn status within two years.

Takeaways

• Zeller bundles accounts, cards and payments. Pfisterer says businesses need to take, hold and spend money, and that combining all three was simple to say and hard to do, essentially three fintechs in one. Zeller has since built 13 more products.
• Banks leave businesses to assemble their own tools. Pfisterer says banks do very little innovating, so companies cobble together solutions from third parties and SaaS providers. Zeller's bet is that all of it belongs in one ecosystem, and that Australian banks need competition they are not getting.
• Zeller shipped a finished product, not an MVP. Because it was handling people's money, Zeller built stable product and service from day one. 1,500 businesses signed up in the first month, and the company passed unicorn status a few months after going live.
• Culture cannot be fabricated from the top. Pfisterer says companies with mottos on the walls tend to be the worst. Zeller runs on transparency, directness, high expectations and fair treatment, and reverse-pitches candidates to scare them off. The four founders have never fallen out.
• He asks how deadlines can be hit faster. Pfisterer tells people to walk to his desk and solve something now rather than book a meeting for next week. He asks what a team needs to move faster and rejects three-month Gantt charts, but does not want people working around the clock.
• Startups get poor treatment from big banks. Opening an account at a big four bank took weeks, witnessed documents, a branch visit and a fax machine, which Pfisterer calls absurd. Zeller for Startups tailors features in return for feedback and gives investors read-only account access.
• AI will predict where a business is heading. Pfisterer expects AI to let financial services anticipate a business's life stages and lift the administrative burden off owners, which he admits sounds a little like big brother. He calls it his horizon theory, where the journey never stops.

Zeller's launch playbook

• Zeller went broad rather than narrow and did not ask customers what they wanted, building instead to its own vision.
• It sold direct only, with no intermediaries.
• An Officeworks partnership gave the brand a halo effect early on.