00:08:37 · Sebastian Johnson, Mark Swan
[00:08:37] S0: And what balance would you say at the moment you're striking between being product focused to kind of fill more of those gaps or to automate more of the back office processes versus now being at the point where you're ready to go to market and scale and sell? Where's the balance lie at the moment? Are you still thinking we've got so much more to build until we can capture a lot of the market? Or have you got to a place where you're thinking we're saving enough core use cases that we could just sell this for a period of time and keep building in the background, but that enough is a solid product? [00:09:09] S1: Yes, scaling is always a little bit like a two by two matrix. You have a product, you have something that is adding value and that's what we have today. And for that, you scale across the market and you sell to every RIA across The US and get them to have the same benefits that our customers today have. And so dimension number one is scale number of customers that are benefiting from Nevis. But equally and at the same time, you're also scaling the depth of the product offering. So we are going to be building rapidly more and more modules, which are getting added into the Nevis platform so that we can begin automating more workflows and delivering more value to our customers. So you always have to do both. [00:09:53] S0: Yeah, yeah. I want to talk about the round itself. So Sequoia has led this round. They also led your seed, if that's right.
00:09:53 · Sebastian Johnson, Mark Swan
[00:09:53] S0: Yeah, yeah. I want to talk about the round itself. So Sequoia has led this round. They also led your seed, if that's right. [00:10:01] S1: Correct. So so we had we have three investors who were invested in this round in 35,000,000 series a. We have Sequoia Capital, Iconic and Ribbett. Sequoia, I think, needs no introduction and actually probably nor did the other two as well. But Sequoia have backed some of really category defining firms. And so it's a true privilege to be working with them and having worked with them from the very beginning in our seed round. Iconic know this wealth management space better than anyone. They are a leading venture capital and growth focused firm, but they also have one of the leading wealth management firms or run one of the most leading wealth management firms serving some of the most respected families across The US. And then Ribbit, they know this FinTech space better than anyone. They really are the leading FinTech investors. And so we think that they're the perfect trio to begin to support Nevis and really kind of take us to this next level. And so we're incredibly privileged to be working with all three of them and have them on board. [00:10:58] S0: And what would you say unlock this round? You know, what was it that gave the investors a conviction that they needed to come with you on this journey?
00:10:58 · Sebastian Johnson, Mark Swan
[00:10:58] S0: And what would you say unlock this round? You know, what was it that gave the investors a conviction that they needed to come with you on this journey? [00:11:07] S1: We're accelerating fast velocity, velocity, velocity. We're working with some of the top customers. And we think that now is the right time to actually come out of stealth, help actually help many more customers and continue to execute at speed with all of the products that we're building. And so this really gives us that ability to accelerate and continue to ship product and also benefit more customers as we expand. And really, that was what we saw as part of this round and what they saw on the opportunity as well. [00:11:39] S0: And why was now the right time to come out of Stealth? You've obviously been building Stealth for a while, seeing good traction. What made you think, okay, this is the time that we are ready to go big in the market? [00:11:50] S1: Yeah. The pool is so strong. Our website before we launched was a video of the Scottish Highlands that said nothing other than request a demo in the bottom right. And I had dozens of sign ups every single week reaching out to me and asking, what is Nevis? We're very interested. We keep hearing about it. And when you get such a pool and validation, you have to come out and the opportunity is so strong that we wanna take advantage of that and also really make sure that we're benefiting a huge market out there. And so there are many more firms that can benefit from Nevis, and so we wanna be helping them. And and the pool is so strong.
00:11:50 · Mark Swan, Sebastian Johnson
[00:11:50] S1: Yeah. The pool is so strong. Our website before we launched was a video of the Scottish Highlands that said nothing other than request a demo in the bottom right. And I had dozens of sign ups every single week reaching out to me and asking, what is Nevis? We're very interested. We keep hearing about it. And when you get such a pool and validation, you have to come out and the opportunity is so strong that we wanna take advantage of that and also really make sure that we're benefiting a huge market out there. And so there are many more firms that can benefit from Nevis, and so we wanna be helping them. And and the pool is so strong. [00:12:30] S0: And was that word-of-mouth? Was that advisers telling other advisers about this? [00:12:34] S1: Yeah. It's primarily word-of-mouth. Yeah. [00:12:36] S0: Wow. That's amazing. Like, what more could... What more validation could you ask for, right, than your your existing pilot customers telling other people? I also wanna about your background. Right? All three of you, the co founders, you're all ex Revolut. Yeah. Honestly, probably... You know, I've only been doing these fundraising interviews for about three months, and it's like most of them are ex Revoluters. Like, almost every other week, we're seeing another group of amazing ex operators come out of Revolut, raise a big round to tackle something generally in the fintech space, but not always. You know, we're talking about Allen and Fuse. [00:13:07] S1: What
00:13:07 · Mark Swan, Sebastian Johnson
[00:13:07] S1: What [00:13:08] S0: is it about Revolut that is creating this whole new ecosystem of of operator turned entrepreneurs? [00:13:15] S1: It's an incredible... First of all, it's an incredible company, number one. And so... But number two, it was an entrepreneurial spirit. I always talked about Revolut being in a fantastic meritocracy. It didn't matter who you were, what your role was, if you delivered value, you got promoted and you got more responsibility. And I think that type of culture breeds a level of entrepreneurship. Whether that is Alan Chang from going and finding Fuse, Fernando Torres with Dollar App. Like, there's incredible, incredible people who I think thrive in that environment. And that environment was created by Nick, and the founders and Vlad as well. And it's a phenomenal place to be. When I decided to join Revolut, knew honestly exactly what I was going in for. Wanted to get that very fast acceleration of career growth, but a lot of opportunity to responsibility and ability to deliver impact. And that was exactly what I had. So it was an amazing place and it's no surprise to me that it's a founder factory. If you could just create an ETF of ex Revolut founders, could be quite positive. [00:14:25] S0: Yeah. And I I actually know some people who are ex Revolutists who were senior or who have done really well now who pretty much just exclusively invest in people they know from Revolut. And and you look at their portfolio, and it's an amazing portfolio.
00:14:25 · Sebastian Johnson, Mark Swan
[00:14:25] S0: Yeah. And I I actually know some people who are ex Revolutists who were senior or who have done really well now who pretty much just exclusively invest in people they know from Revolut. And and you look at their portfolio, and it's an amazing portfolio. [00:14:41] S1: I I think there's also a unique combination of what Revolut taught you was to really be really focused on, you know, there was a core value of deliver why and deliver really exceptional products and have incredible product taste and really understand what the end user wants. And so I think on one side of the spectrum, you've got this just amazing taste product, deep focus on high quality. But then on the other side, it's all about execution, execution, execution. And execution eats everything else. And I think that Revolut was a place where both of those things were held very important. And as a result, I think a lot of people learn that playbook of build amazing products, execute aggressively and do that to kind of grow fast and ideally build big businesses. [00:15:34] S0: And that's what you're applying today, I guess.