00:00:00 · Ben Pfisterer, Sachin, Adam Miller
[00:00:00] S0: We work hard. We are not the company forever, and that's okay. If you are giving your all to this company and absolutely promise you that we will be there for you. [00:00:08] S1: You've built this company, a billion dollar company, within two years. What were the sort of low points of Zeller? [00:00:14] S0: The one moment which I really kind of got a bit nervous was I remember going to bed that night and just going, oh, shit. Is this thing gonna work? [00:00:22] S1: What did your go to market look like that resulted you in getting tens of thousands of customers within just two years? [00:00:28] S0: In the first month, 1,500 businesses signed up. We didn't ask any customers what they wanted. We said we got a vision of what we wanna build. It was build day. If we got this wrong, we can pivot quickly. [00:00:37] S2: If we were to go inside your mind, Ben, what would surprise us most about your internal monologue? [00:00:42] S0: I struggle with this question because I think [00:00:45] S2: That's Ben Pfisterer. He built the fintech Zeller into a billion dollar company in just two years, making it the fastest growing startup in Australia. But behind the success, it's a relentless drive, brutal honesty, and a belief that technology will redefine financial services.
00:00:45 · Adam Miller, Ben Pfisterer, Sachin
[00:00:45] S2: That's Ben Pfisterer. He built the fintech Zeller into a billion dollar company in just two years, making it the fastest growing startup in Australia. But behind the success, it's a relentless drive, brutal honesty, and a belief that technology will redefine financial services. [00:01:00] S0: Technology and entrepreneurship is the future of this country, but we in the startup community get treated like crap. So the the thing that we realized are like, wow, we got validation of what we're building at the very, very start. We hadn't actually turned around and solved it for the other startups yet. So how about we do a two way deal here? We launch a product, which is Zeller for Startups. We tailor a lot of features and functionality for them, but in return, we ask for their feedback. We're a product engineering company. We can move quick. [00:01:25] S2: How do you actually build that cultural space? [00:01:27] S0: I don't wanna look at meeting rooms and see them full of people just having one on ones updating each other on what they're doing. Complete waste of time. When people say, hey. I'll set a meeting up with you next week. I said, well, why don't you walk up to my desk and ask me now? Let's solve it right here. Let's just keep moving, and go for it. Run as hard as you can at it. Have no excuses. Give it your best shot. [00:01:42] S1: What what do you think not enough people understand about this entrepreneurial journey? [00:01:46] S0: Wow. Okay. I think
00:01:46 · Ben Pfisterer, Sachin, Adam Miller
[00:01:46] S0: Wow. Okay. I think [00:01:55] S1: Today in the pod house, we've got Ben Pfisterer of Zeller with us today. Ben has a very unique mark of building a $1,000,000,000 company within two years, which is just a pretty insane stat when it comes to the Australian startup ecosystem. And very recently, they've just announced Zeller for Startups, which in the startup world is a very, very needed initiative. So we're gonna dive into that and Ben's story. So thanks for coming on, Ben. [00:02:19] S0: Thanks for having me, guys. [00:02:20] S2: I I said to Ben a little bit earlier before we started recording that I just... I think we feel really insecure because we've been around for thirteen months now and nowhere near the growth that you guys are getting, so really keen to dig into a lot of the lessons. But, Ben, we love to kind of start off with going deeper into the drivers of a person and their character. And something that's interesting to us is how would you describe your younger self, and were there any characteristics of younger Ben that would give clues to what you would become later in life?
00:02:52 · Ben Pfisterer, Adam Miller
[00:02:52] S0: That's a hard one to answer. I think... I mean, I look back. I think at the time when I was young, I was relatively competitive, so that's probably something that came through. And I had the outlet of sport, which helped me on that front. And getting into a selective school at Melbourne High, I got to compete there and then sort of realized that the standard of schools like that was ridiculously high, and I was more mediocre than, excelling. So, there was a bit of that. I love I love the art and design. I was constantly into that. I thought I was gonna be an architect one day and the whole principal. So I enjoyed that part of it. But, yeah, relatively uneventful, very comfortable upbringing, which which is pretty cool, but, you know, with a German dad and Aussie mom, in a very sort of nice suburb. But, yeah, I think, ultimately, I kinda saw my dad starting his own business and doing that, so kinda thought that was the way you do it. Mom was kind of like a... I don't know how you describe her, so like a no bullshit kind of person, and so she didn't sort of, you know, bow down to the the the traditional ways of leading a career, never forced me in a particular way, so I took my own path that way. But I think probably the competitive thing and the design things are the two things that just sort of shine through. [00:03:59] S2: Are they are they surprised about kind of what you're doing now and the amount of success you've had?
00:03:59 · Adam Miller, Ben Pfisterer, Sachin
[00:03:59] S2: Are they are they surprised about kind of what you're doing now and the amount of success you've had? [00:04:05] S0: I think most parents don't really... I I probably do get what I do now. I've been working for Square, I think, was there for six years, and it probably took four years to realize what that was. So I think now that they're kind of getting a little bit more... Yeah. My my parents like to keep all of me and my siblings humble, so there's no there's no gratitude or... No. Sorry. Not not wrong word. There's no, you know, applauded or anything like that. It's just, you know, we're just part of the family, so it's all good. [00:04:31] S1: When I look at those two traits, so being competitive, I can see how that's very needed for competing in such a fiercely competitive industry where you've got all these regulators. You've obviously got the big banks, and that love of design, I see, has been really important because you're you're in hardware, so... And you wanna create beautiful things [00:04:46] S0: Yep. [00:04:46] S1: For end consumers. How would you say competitiveness and that love of design is really manifested in this sort of Story Zeller?
00:04:46 · Sachin, Ben Pfisterer
[00:04:46] S1: For end consumers. How would you say competitiveness and that love of design is really manifested in this sort of Story Zeller? [00:04:53] S0: Yeah. I think the competitive side is that you're not scared of competition. I think that's probably a trait you have to have to be a... To be an entrepreneur and particularly a tech startup because incumbents are very ominous things, and they're... Particularly in the financial services space, if you were scared of competition or taking it on, you just wouldn't do it. Just way too hard. So, having that sort of... You know, and the ability to just look past that and the belief that you can build something to really change and, you know, sort of disrupt... I don't know they were, but disrupting comments is really critical. And design for me, it's critical. And we build software, hardware, like the onboarding flow, every part of the dashboard, all the apps we build. I'm very, very strong in that. We're a product led business. We love design. We have a strong design team. So we think particularly in our space, which can be really commoditized and boring, bringing an element of beauty and design element to it as well is something that isn't there. So, yeah, it's a sort of a passion of mine and the design team as well. So we enjoy injecting that into everything we do.