Fintech Builders

What ToltIQ's co-founder — a former KKR CIO — says founders must never do when selling AI to financial services buyers | Ed Brandman

Ed Brandman⁠ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/ed-brandman] spent decades in global financial services before retiring in 2018. His last chapter before stepping away was at KKR — where he joined when the firm had just 390 people and left having helped build it into one of the most recognizable names in alternative assets. Five years later, a conversation with his son (now his co-founder) about the due diligence process pulled him back. That became ⁠ToltIQ⁠ [https://toltiq.com/], an AI-native platform built specifically for private markets. In this episode of BUILDERS, Ed breaks down a GTM that ran entirely on referrals for two-plus years, how a deliberate industry-first hiring policy replaced a sales team, and what founders consistently get wrong when trying to sell AI to financial services buyers who are already overwhelmed. Topics Discussed: * Why Ed and his co-founder targeted the front end of the investment workflow — not back-office ops — as the highest AI leverage point * The deliberate decision to staff 70% of the team, including engineers, from inside the industry * How ToltIQ generated 8–10 inbounds per week for two years with no outbound motion — and what finally made them add one * Running a 30-person team against a 100-person competitor using AI internally across the entire org * The three things Ed tells every founder trying to sell into financial services CIOs * Why the Frontier model providers (OpenAI, Anthropic) may be the biggest threat founders aren't pricing into their moat GTM Lessons For B2B Founders: * The highest AI leverage in financial services isn't where most founders look. Ed's conviction from the start — drawn directly from his time inside KKR — was that the front end of investment workflows (diligence, capital raising, investor relations, sourcing) would yield far more from AI than operational back-office processes. That's the opposite of where most AI vendors pitch. If you're building for a specialized vertical, time spent inside the industry isn't just helpful for credibility — it's how you identify where the real leverage is before you build anything. * Hire the domain, then train for the tool. 70% of ToltIQ's team — including engineers and the client-facing org — came from inside private markets. Ed's view: if clients can sit across from your team and feel understood before the demo starts, you've already cleared the biggest hurdle in enterprise sales. This wasn't incidental. It was a deliberate hiring philosophy from day one, and it scaled the business before there was a sales playbook. * Referral growth at this scale requires earning it, not engineering it. ToltIQ had no outbound motion for more than two years and was still fielding 8–10 inbounds per week by the end of 2025. Ed's explanation: the time they invested in onboarding clients — working through problems with them, being transparent about limitations, iterating in the open — made clients want to refer peers. In tight-knit professional networks like private markets, the quality of the relationship drives referrals more than the quality of the product alone. The referral engine sustained the company through 2025 and into 2026 before they felt the ceiling. // Sponsors: Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership.⁠ www.FrontLines.io⁠ [http://www.frontlines.io] The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe.⁠ www.GlobalTalent.co⁠ [http://www.globaltalent.co] // Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role.  Subscribe here:⁠ https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM [https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM]

How GradBridge is building distribution through school partnerships to reach students at the point of decline | Jen O'Donald

Every year, more than half of private student loan applicants get declined. Not because they're unserious about their education — but because they narrowly miss a credit cutoff. For upperclassmen and grad students already deep into a degree, that rejection often means dropping out. ⁠Jen O'Donald⁠ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenodonald/] spent 13 years at Sallie Mae, most recently running product, watching this gap go unsolved. So she built ⁠GradBridge⁠ [http://www.gradbridge.com/] to solve it — creating an entirely new category in student lending: the second look. In this episode, Jen breaks down what it actually takes to go from zero to live in heavily regulated fintech, how she managed a multi-stakeholder launch across a sponsor bank, servicing platform, and compliance stack, and why federal student loan policy shifts are reshaping the entire private lending market in real time. Topics Discussed: * Why half of private student loan applicants get declined — and what it costs them * How GradBridge identified and defined a category that didn't previously exist * The "circular reference" problem of building in regulated fintech and how to move through it * Coordinating a launch across a sponsor bank, origination platform, servicing platform, and compliance stack * How federal policy changes are shifting private student loan demand — and how GradBridge repositioned in real time * School partnerships and referral channels as the core distribution strategy * What "flawless execution" looks like in a zero-tolerance regulated environment heading into peak season // Sponsors: Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership.⁠ www.FrontLines.io⁠ [http://www.frontlines.io] The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe.⁠ www.GlobalTalent.co⁠ [http://www.globaltalent.co] // Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. Subscribe here:⁠ https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM [https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM]

Why up to 50% of Savvy Wealth’s marketing budget goes towards experimentation

Savvy Wealth⁠ [https://savvywealth.com/] is an AI-enabled platform for independent financial advisors — solo operators and small teams — that handles everything from CRM and billing to compliance, investment management, and financial planning. In this episode of BUILDERS, I sat down with ⁠Ritik Malhotra⁠ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/ritikmalhotra/], Founder & CEO, to get into the GTM mechanics behind selling into one of the most trust-locked markets in financial services: advisors who don't just buy software — they move their entire business. Topics Discussed: * What Ritik took — and deliberately inverted — from watching Brex scale from ~$5M to $100M in revenue in a single year * Why Savvy's GTM motion is structurally closer to recruiting than B2B sales — and what that means for team design * How a data science-driven "likelihood to move" model shapes top-of-funnel targeting * What's actually driving growth: brand trust and advisor word-of-mouth over outbound * Why cold email and conference booths underdelivered, and the experimentation framework Ritik runs instead * How Savvy deliberately blends adjacent-industry sales talent with wealth management insiders * Why the "AI replaces the advisor" framing gets the value prop of human financial guidance fundamentally wrong * The long-term vision: a fully vertically integrated operating system for financial advisors, orchestrated by proactive AI agents // Sponsors: Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.io The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co // Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. Subscribe here: https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM

How Monet used Facebook groups to sign up 7,500 content creators before building the product

Jacob Casson⁠ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakemcasson/] spent years trying to solve cash flow for the entertainment and media industry — influencer agencies, production houses, film and TV — while nearly running his own company into the ground twice. In this episode, he breaks down how ⁠Monet⁠ [https://monet.money] evolved from a creator banking product into a financial back office and lending platform, how he recapitalized under a hostile takeover attempt, and why the UK media industry is one of the most defensible fintech niches nobody is building for. Topics Discussed: * Why traditional lenders systematically misprice influencer agency risk * How Monet ended up inside Coldplay's global marketing payment flows * The pivot from creator-facing banking to agency financial infrastructure * Surviving a hostile takeover attempt and engineering a recapitalization * The decision to stay UK-focused in 2025 and what it would actually take to enter the US * Expanding into film and TV debt: tax credits, pre-sales, and broadcasting license fees * Raising debt vs. equity: why conflating the two is a costly fintech mistake * The founder psychology of performing better under pressure than in calm // Sponsors: Front Lines — Silicon Valley's leading Podcast Production Studio. We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. Mention you are a listener and get a 10% discount.⁠ www.FrontLines.io/Podcast-as-a-Service [http://www.frontlines.io/Podcast-as-a-Service]

How Palla Financial navigates selling to banks with no standard buyer: from remittance teams to CEOs | Enrique Perezalonso

The cross-border payments market remains stubbornly difficult despite billions in venture capital and countless smart founders attacking the problem. The core challenge isn't technology—it's economics. Western Union's margins weren't exploitative greed; they reflected the brutal reality of cash distribution networks, compliance infrastructure, and dual-country regulatory overhead. Palla Financial cracked this by inverting the entire model: instead of fighting for expensive US-based senders, they partnered with Latin American banks to let recipients pull funds. This approach taps into the world's largest remittance corridor ($160+ billion annually flowing from the US to Latin America) while sidestepping the customer acquisition bloodbath. In this episode, ⁠Enrique Perezalonso⁠ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/perezalonso/], CEO of ⁠Palla Financial⁠ [https://www.palla.com/], breaks down why recipient-driven payments eliminate distribution costs, how they rebuilt their product three times based on bank feedback, and why the "no CAC" embedded model still requires massive partner investment to actually work. Topics Discussed: * Why cross-border payments remain broken: dual-country regulations, cash distribution economics, and two-sided transaction complexity * The shift from cash-based infrastructure to digital rails and its impact on unit economics * Palla's pull-based model: embedding payment requests inside bank apps to flip sender/recipient dynamics * Revenue mechanics: $3 consumer fees, FX markup economics, and interchange/revenue sharing with bank partners * The buy-vs-build calculus for banks and why a Central American banking group returned after a four-year internal build attempt * Creating a new category and watching competitors attempt to copy the embedded approach * Selling into banks with no standardized buyer: navigating from remittance teams to CEOs depending on organizational maturity * The reality of "indirect" CAC: why embedded distribution still requires heavy investment in partner success * Implementation failures and the shift from hands-off best practices to consultative partner enablement GTM Lessons For B2B Founders: * Flip expensive distribution by attacking the other side of the transaction: While competitors burned cash acquiring US-based senders in saturated corridors (US-Mexico, US-India), Palla partnered with recipient-side banks in Latin America. * Target buyers who already tried and failed to build: A Central American banking group spent nine months evaluating Palla, decided to build internally, then returned four years later. This wasn't poor execution—it was competing priorities, lack of scale economics, and the reality that cross-border payments isn't their core business. * "Embedded" and "no CAC" are myths without massive partner investment: Palla initially provided best practice guides and light coaching, assuming banks would naturally drive adoption. They saw "lackluster results" until they became "more and more hands-on," shifting to consultative implementation with proper incentive design and accountability frameworks. * Use speed to rebuild the product in real-time with customers: The product Palla launched bears little resemblance to their original vision. They rebuilt features "hand in hand" with bank partners, leveraging their advantage over large competitors: no bureaucracy, hunger to make it work, and speed. // Sponsors: Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership.⁠ www.FrontLines.io⁠ [http://www.frontlines.io] The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe.⁠ www.GlobalTalent.co⁠ [http://www.globaltalent.co] // Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. Subscribe here:⁠ https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM [https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM]