This article is part of Fintech Leaders, a newsletter with over 36,000 dreamers, entrepreneurs, investors, and students of financial services. I invite you to share and sign up here!
I sit down with Peter Lord, CEO & Co-Founder of Codat, a universal API for small business data. Founded in 2017, Codat now has more than 200 corporate clients and has raised over $160 million from JP Morgan, Canapi Ventures, Shopify, Plaid, Tiger Global, PayPal Ventures, Index Ventures, AmEx Ventures, and more.
In this episode, we discuss:
Leaving his past employer to build Codat and solve some of the technical challenges he was encountering at his old job.
“I was looking for a solution like what we've built it at Codat, and couldn't find it in the market and decided to start a business to solve that problem.”
His ambitious vision for Codat to become the go-to infrastructure for the small business economy to share data and how Peter plans to get there.
“We are creating a much better understanding of SMBs by leveraging more data, and really creating seamless experiences for SMBs. I like to contrast it to the types of experiences we see as consumers. I can book a reservation on OpenTable for a restaurant, that will just automatically appear in my calendar… it's that type of seamless interaction that we are trying to create for small businesses.”
International Expansion vs Industry Vertical Expansion. Since launching in 2017, Codat has expanded to several countries and is now serving many industries. Find out which one is harder and why.
“I would say that, yes, geography is probably the hardest part of the challenge of connecting to all SMB systems around the world. We're currently building an integration to a German market leader in the bookkeeping space, and there are challenges around language, different formats for filing accounts in different regions, different types of tax around the world, and then there's also different behaviors when it comes to SMBs.”
The future of fraud-fighting and why real-time data can help small businesses get access to credit, especially during a challenging economy… and a whole lot more!
“At its core, what we're able to do, is give lenders the confidence to make decisions on businesses that they would otherwise not be able to underwrite... We do that by enabling the SMBs to leverage their own data. And this is particularly important for young and growing businesses when the market conditions are less preferable.”
Want more podcast episodes? Join me and follow Fintech Leaders today on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app for weekly conversations with today’s global leaders that will dominate the 21st century in fintech, business, and beyond.
Previous Episodes You May Enjoy:
Miguel Armaza is Co-Founder & Managing General Partner of Gilgamesh Ventures, a seed-stage investment fund focused on fintech in the Americas. He also hosts and writes the Fintech Leaders podcast and newsletter.
Peter Lord, CEO/Co-Founder of Codat – Raising $160M to Unlock Small Business Data, How to Plan Your International Expansion, & The Future of Open Banking