00:11:18 · Adam Miller, Ben Pfisterer, Sachin
[00:11:18] S2: And if you kind of had that insight back in your NAB days, why did you join Square instead of building it yourself from the get go? Did you need to have that experience at Square to really figure out how to how to build Zeller for what it is today? [00:11:31] S0: Yeah. I think... I mean, if I look back, unfortunately, it was so many years spent at blue chip organizations, but I can truncate that down to a few... Very few small learnings. Half from realizing I don't wanna work there, I can realize how how much friction there is within an organization. And I think jumping from extremities to something like a tech high growth startup like Square, I wasn't there at the start, but I was there at about 300 people up to a few thousand. So I kinda saw a lot of change and a lot of growth there, including in sort of growing it from just myself in Australia. So I guess cobbling those two learnings together of a high growth startup that is clearly a rocket ship and I was joining it anyway, to a very bureaucratic and slow... You kind of got, alright. These are the parameters. This is this is what's wrong with the industry, and this is the potential that we could have. So I think those two learnings were very bad. [00:12:16] S1: And when we go to the start of the sort of founding formation of Zeller, I guess for the person that's not too into financial services, they see there's... You've got the big banks. They do a bunch of payment terminal stuff. You had Square, obviously, that you worked at, and then there's all the sort of zeros of the world. [00:12:31] S0: Yep.
00:12:31 · Ben Pfisterer, Sachin
[00:12:31] S0: Yep. [00:12:31] S1: How would you tell someone that didn't know this industry that well? What that sort of unique differentiation was that you had in mind for Zeller?
00:12:38 · Ben Pfisterer
[00:12:38] S0: Yeah. I think what we did... So after I left Square, I had a few months to work out what to do next. And one of the things I worked obviously, I still wanted to stay in this space, and financial services were my thing. I love payments in general as well, and I thought there's a lot of opportunity in Australia. And as I just said, like, the banks needed... They need competition. They absolutely do, and they're not getting it, and suddenly, some US companies come in. But but, ultimately, when you think about what we thought we'd solve for is, like, every business needs a business transaction account. Every business needs to accept, electronic payments because cash is disappearing. So we thought, well, what do they... If we wanted to be that main financial institution to these businesses, what do they need? They need an account, and they need to take money, and they need to spend money. They need to put it to work. So those are the three things about taking money, holding money, spending money was the genesis of being that, you know, the the the accounts, cards, and payment side of that business. So those three things, we've think, well, if we can do that for businesses, they can use it for anything. They don't have to go to one payments business, then get an account with a traditional bank, and then go and get payment facilities via a card company. Like, they can actually get all that once and signing up. So that was the general thing, that simplicity that altogether and getting better pricing, no locking contracts, better tech, better experience overall. And then from there, we just built out to another, like, 13 products since then.
00:13:56 · Sachin, Ben Pfisterer, Adam Miller
[00:13:56] S1: Sounds like that initial starting point was fairly simple. Like, you saw, like, what were the most fundamental things that people need in financial services and startups, and you stitched them together, but in a really good way. [00:14:06] S0: Very, very simple to say, but very, very hard to do. So that's basically three massive fintechs in one. So I guess the naivety of us starting at saying, yeah. Let's do this. It was probably on show there where we think build three, but that was the... That was also... That became a big trade of our business taking on those bold bets and making sure we can build big stuff. So, yeah, it was easy to say, but very, very hard to do, and we like building our infrastructure around products without relying on third parties if we can avoid it. So we built a lot of what we have today, which which which has boded well for us as we move forward. So we can go at the pace we want. We're a product engineering company. We can move quick. Most of our people we have working in our company are about doing products. I hate sitting still. I love building new products. I because of my background, don't wanna sit... Work at a company which is not building new products every day, and so that's kind of what we've done since the start. [00:14:58] S2: And I wanna go deeper into product in a second, but going back to when you started Zeller, you raised a bunch of money. You had a blank page on the kind of culture you wanted to build. How did you think about what would make Zeller become the most successful company in terms of culture?
00:15:14 · Ben Pfisterer
[00:15:14] S0: Yeah. Probably a bit contrarian on the culture debate because I've had so many experiences, and I just ultimately thought, well, I don't think you can fabricate culture. And I, you know, I've worked at the companies who have the neon lights on the on the... With the mottos on the walls, and I always found those ones tend to be the worst. And they tend to be... I'll put the light up so I don't have to actually walk the walk. So, yeah, for me, culture is just a coming together, an amalgamation of a whole bunch of different personalities, and whatever comes out of that is your culture. Yes. From top down, you can try to nudge it in the direction or influence it, but, ultimately, it's more of an organic thing. So often, people building business is what their culture to be away, but then something else gets spat out. And so, for me, I probably took all my background and experience and probably the lessons of places I hated working and what I hated about them. And so let's just not do that. And if we do the opposite of that, we should be doing something that's pretty good. And that's down to, you know, just being transparent and direct with people with having high expectations of what we wanna do, recruiting the right people who like being there, treating people fairly, supporting them to get... Become successful in the business, But just being upfront with what we're doing, like, we're very, very lucky to have raised a lot of capital. What we're trying to build and the problem we're trying to solve is incredibly hard. So we've got no other option to work ridiculously hard, love what we're doing, help each other, get the best out of each other, and do that together. So, yeah, just being upfront about that. We talk about it a lot. We don't shy away from it. We don't try to pretend something we're not.
00:16:40 · Adam Miller, Ben Pfisterer
[00:16:40] S2: Do you reverse pitch people when you're trying to hire them around the intensity of your culture? [00:16:44] S0: Reverse it? [00:16:45] S2: Yeah. It's like reasons you shouldn't join. [00:16:47] S0: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I I I call reverse pitch kinda scaring them off legit. So, yeah, I do. I often find myself in interviews thinking I literally sound like I'm scaring this person off, but I think the best people just love it. They embrace it. And they... And if if it's aligned with what we're doing... Because I don't wanna hire someone who doesn't like what we're doing or doesn't wanna be in the company that we've built. So I think you... You're you're better off to be up upfront about that. And Mhmm. If it does scare people off, that's fine. That's good. That works for both parties. But the people that know it and they walk in the door is no surprise that, hey. We're here, but we're moving fast. You got a lot of talented people around you. You're gonna feel a little bit overawed, but you're gonna be inspired by this talent as well. So we're taking on a huge challenge. We're a massive responsibility in the market. We've got a lot of customers now who have needs and are loving our products. Let's service them.