Stephen: We are back with another episode of Around The Coin. This is your host Stephen Sargeant. We speak to Elizabeth Rossiello about Aza Finance. This was a crypto slash fiat FX trading company founded in Nairobi in 2013. So we definitely talk about all the regulatory challenges they went to and what it's like building a woman founded business in 2013, in the continent of Africa, she talks all about, you know, microfinance and, you know, going to most impoverished places around the world and how she was able to get the technology and the financial inclusion to those spots. We also talk about what it's like being a woman in finance, in crypto, in tech, around the world.

And you guys will be surprised about some of the things that you end stories that you hear. We talk about, you know, her triangulation of growing up in the hood, but having that education and traveling the world and being a mother, I'd love this conversation, Elizabeth genuine and authentic, and we have a lot to learn from this conversation, so make sure you check this one out and show Elizabeth some love when this episode comes out.

This is your host, Stephen Sargent, the Around The Coin podcast. We have an absolute amazing guest.

This is not her first podcast. This is probably her 101st podcast, maybe this month. But we're going to talk from Elizabeth from AZA Finance, which was formerly known as BitPesa. Uh, Elizabeth, give us a quick intro.

I know you've done this a hundred times, but give us a little quick intro, then maybe tell everybody something that they wouldn't expect or don't know about you.

Elizabeth: Well, thanks. Thanks for having me. I'm Elizabeth. Founder and CEO of AZA Finance, used to be but passed out, would be the first cryptocurrency exchange in the world run by females, pretty cool, in 2013, and the first ever to trade crypto against mobile money.

Stephen: That's extremely, that's what I was going to talk about.

I think we'll get into a little bit about, you know, the woman founder journey, but talk to us a little bit about your background. It seems like you've always been in the area of international, uh, economic development. Talk about your early days. Like why, why did that interest you coming out of school?

Elizabeth: Well, as we say in our African teams, the last born is a special role in the family. And like, when someone's being a bit of a princess, we're like, okay, last born, you know, so I'm the last born of a big family. And I grew up in Queens, New York, which is just a loud, crazy place. Every single one of my neighbors is from a different country.

All my friends at school, in elementary school, spoke a different language at home, you know, they were speaking like Pashtun or Spanish or Korean or, you know, um, Chinese and it was just normal for me. I think Queens, New York is the county with the most languages spoken in the world, um, in the United States.

So, you know, it was really always exposed to me that I was not alone and there were a lot of other cultures and a lot of other places. And I was just very interested in traveling and as the freedom of the last born to go abroad to seek my fortune. So I always studied languages. I always spoke, I always studied other cultures.

I majored in German and Italian.

Stephen: Now, you've done some work with the World Economic Forum. I think most people know about the World Economic Forum. But you're in a very niche kind of center that you're, you know, running over there. Tell me a little bit about what the center is and the mandate maybe it has. And how it like connects with other world economic forum initiatives.

Elizabeth: Yeah, so a couple years ago, we were identified as what they call a technology leader.

Um, which is pretty funny when you're there, you're introducing yourself, I'm a technology leader. And then the people are like, that's a little full of yourself. I'm like, that's the name of the program.

So yeah, we got in through that. I used to call it like the baby CEO program. And they had a lot of cool founder, CEOs from, you know, automated automation and AI and like, we're the cool robotics, blockchain and drum stuff. And, you know, we got introduced to the World Economic Forum and what that means. And if you haven't worked in lobbying before, or you haven't worked in multilateral organizations, it might be a bit overwhelming.

My first job ever was working at the German parliament. So for me, after a decade in banking and finance, it was like coming back to that. I think a lot of founders and CEOs, especially when you're on the cutting edge industry, are like, why do I have to spend time doing this? But it is so much fun. Trying to bring people over, especially regulators.

That's what I was there for. Talking to regulators, talking to policymakers, making sure that in the next two, five, 10 years, the markets where you in don't have regulation. That's going to stop your business model. And it's always tough to understand how much time to spend on that. And so they named me the chair of the council, the co chair.

And for a couple of years, I led that blockchain council. It was very interesting. We had some very innovative founders and then some very big corporates like HSBC and Citi and Amsterdam having reps in that committee and, you know, hard to find common ground and, you know, It's interesting to get in a room because you kind of see what the incumbents are thinking.

You kind of see what the industry is thinking. And I think for me, I'm such an operator and obsessed with what I'm doing in my markets. It was interesting to see what's happening global. And they had a little couple side projects. They brought regulators from all over the world in to work on a CBDC project, and they had a lot of white papers that came out of that.

But again, if you do that full time, your business is going to lose out. But if you don't do it at all, your markets will lose out.

Stephen: That's so interesting. What were some of the discussions around AI? Cause you said this was a couple of years ago. There were some people for AI. Before, you know, what we've seen in the last two years, which seems like an increased amount of technology advancement.

What were some of those early conversations? Were they like, you know, trying to do like face replacement on video?

Elizabeth: A lot of intellectuals who are like, what are the ethics behind this? And like, what is the privacy behind this? And who's in charge of deciding? And I think you see that now with like what a lot of these, you know, I always call it like the iris scanners and the stuff that Sam Lantman is working on and things like this, like these eyeball stealers, like what, what, who's to say with what's allowed and like how are we going to stop the, you know, people who are not represented well and are having a voice from having their identification stolen for having their identity stolen.

Representative stolen. I think, you know, it always happens that the technology comes first and the regulation pulls it back and, you know, we just hope that people don't go totally bonkers and lose all their ethics, but, you know, my personal belief, not to sound like a libertarian, is that it's hard to hold back human nature, so let's see.

Stephen: I think you raise a good point. There's one thing that we want to happen with the technology. There's also another thing that people actually use the technology for, that we've already seen kind of come through.

Um, there's been some criticism, I think, about the World Economic Forum and some of their initiatives and maybe, you know, the fat cats around the world kind of controlling what everything happens.

What, what are your thoughts on that? And cause I know the theme was like rebuilding trust in the future. Do you think that the World Economic Forum kind of felt that? Outside criticism and really wanted to like focus on how can we trust individuals again, or like even the concept of trust in the system that we're in right now.

Elizabeth: Full disclosure, I am no longer a part of it. We decided not to continue our membership. So maybe that tells you how I feel about it. And, um, I appreciate the time I spent with the organization and I sat on the board of the advisory council. I mean, I've been deep in there. I, you know, I was pregnant, redhead, 30 years younger than a lot of people that were on the board, and one of the only women making a decision.

It's just, you know, do you want to fight against the current or do you want to carve a new canal? You know, sometimes you fight a little bit, sometimes you decide to go a different path. I published an article in the WEF blog discussing what I thought was Too small a representation of African voices. And, you know, they have a lot of stuff about global, global, global, but much of the African continent isn't represented.

And there are very few people coming from the African continent. Few regulators, few corporates, few businesses. And for me, it just didn't make a lot of sense. These are the markets that I care the most about. So it may be better to spend time where those places convene.

Stephen: What are your thoughts? You know, you talk about the African market.

Uh, you originally started BitPesa, which was, you know, crypto focused.

When did you even get introduced to crypto? Because you're talking about a woman found, crypto led, crypto native company, 2013, when most people, you know, by that time, even now, haven't read the white paper. What was your thoughts? You know, I think there was still Mt. Gox around that time. What were your thoughts of like, hey, let me introduce cryptocurrency as a form of transactions, payment, in a continent that many look at maybe not, never leading maybe the technological boom?

Elizabeth: Yeah, well, remember, I arrived in Nairobi right when mobile money was exploding. And it wasn't the very first place on planet Earth where we had mobile money wallets, but it was the place where the market penetration skyrocketed the fastest, and you had almost a complete monopoly of domestic transactions move on to M Passo, which is the Vodafone subsidiary, Safaricom's mobile money product.

And at that time, before the central bank could even blink, it All of the banks were settling via the Safaricom network, and most of the microfinance institutions, whom I was working, were settling and using it as their management information system. They were using it as their ledger, they were using it as their back office, they were using it as their customer messaging.

I mean, systemic risk was out the window, analyzing what that looked like. And everybody in the development world, everybody in the microfinance world were like, convening on Nairobi. To be like, what is happening here? And the neighboring markets, Tanzania and Uganda, were very careful not to have the same situation replicate.

And so there were very different regulations happening there. I found that super fascinating as like a policy person and a macroeconomic nerd. So it was a great place for me to be and work. And I worked across the continent in Ghana, also a big mobile money market in Nigeria, where there was no mobile money.

So when I first heard about Bitcoin, it was from a seed investor who took me to lunch and was like. You know, you're between gigs. Why don't you start something yourself? You have so much knowledge. And I was like, huh, okay, wait, you can work for yourself again. I think as a female and a mom, I was like, that's an option for me, you know?

And, um, I had a lot of privilege, you know, I had an Ivy league education. I had worked in investment banking, you know, I didn't have a job then, but it was a bit of a privilege at 21 to be like, I don't need a job. I'm going to start my own company. That's not easy for a lot of people who don't have savings or don't have parents to fall back on, you know?

So for me at 30, someone saying, you know, I'll give you a check. If you start this business, I was like, okay, this is what I can, this is the step I would need to get there. And so that was amazing for me. And, you know, I immediately reached out to a bunch of people, I found a product designer, I got a prototype together, I started talking about it to the head of Google Kenya, who eventually invested, and someone introduced me to Barry Silbert, and I think his brother found me on LinkedIn, and I was talking to Charles Hopkins.

LinkedIn for the win. Yeah, like a week, a week later. So it was just very early, and for me to have these people who, I didn't know who they were, Charles, um, and Peter Smith called me on Skype, it's so funny. Think about that. And Barry calling me in Nairobi being like, what are you doing down there? What's happening?

How cool is this? And it was my first exposure to like the tech industry and the crypto industry. People were just like, yeah, you can build anything you want. You can do anything you want. Why not go for it? How cool? Let me know how it goes. And so that was just really, you know, world opening. And the fact that people reached out to me and that's how we got started building and Bitcoin had just hit a thousand.

Uh, which sure helped with some of the media that we put out then. And then we went into like another, another valley and then up and down and a hundred times up in that sense. But, I think for me it was just really exciting and inspiring.

Stephen: And I remember this podcast is just over 10 years old. And you know, when I started listening to this podcast, you know, Bitcoin was at like 700 and Brian Romilly would talk about a 10, 000 Bitcoin.

And I remember like the laughter in people's voice, like 10, 000 seemed like an insane amount, like, Hey, everyone, you're lucky that even hit 700. So, it's so funny to kind of look back at those days. But let me unravel a couple things. You talk a lot about the hood, uh, about being a mother, um, and also being well educated.

Do you think that's kind of your superpower? Because you still can relate to a continent that may be underserved, you know, underprivileged, under, you know, under a lot of circumstances where money doesn't come as easy, similar to when you lived in New York. Um, but you're also educated enough to know some of the solutions that might fix those problems.

And being a mother, you might be maternal enough to know, like, Hey, these are some, you know, not some UI issues. These are some, like, you know, emotional, intelligent things that we're going to have to figure out here. Not just the kind of the, um, the usual product design things that everyone else is thinking about.

Can you talk to me or maybe triangulate some of those superpowers that you think have helped you in your life?

Elizabeth: Well, I have had limited access to finance myself, so clearly I understand it now, not on the same level as the women I used to visit in Malawi. So, I think I have always felt, oh, I'm low class, low income, oh, I'm way high class, high income.

I'm balanced between them depending on where I am. When I'm in Queens it's one thing, when I'm in Manhattan it's another thing, when I travel to Germany and they don't know anything about my class, but they know that I speak the language well and they give me a job at Goldman Sachs, now I'm on another level.

I travel somewhere else, people ask me what my dad or parents do, I'm on the low again, you know. I've moved between levels and I think Definitely given me a huge amount of perspective. I also have to credit my parents for humanity, instilling some humanity. They were social workers before they were, um, public education teachers and principals.

So they always work in the community. And my sister does too, my brother in law, my aunts and my cousins. It's like the family business. So I think, you know, that's something that was instilled in me. Even though I went to finance, I was like, you know, I obviously want to give back. Now, when I went to work in microfinance, I was.

Fascinated with just how much people can tolerate. You know, I saw such wild levels of poverty and levels of exclusion from finance. And then I saw people create businesses out of like a toothpick and an acorn and then like create a business. And I was like, Whoa, what am I doing? I have so many tools in my toolkit.

I'm not creating anything. I'm just taking a salary from some stupid corporate. And I was just like, wow, you can make something out of nothing. And I was so inspired, and also just, you know, everything is against some of these, um, populations that I visited, demographics that I visited. I was just so impressed.

And you know, in Europe, when we have a lot, um, and people complain about small things, I was just fed up with it. And I just, you know, was really attracted to that. Um, so 100 percent now. I think, also, as a female, I have been treated pretty gross in a lot of financial companies I've worked at. And, you know, it wasn't great being a 22 year old, and I just was disgusted with working there, honestly, with, like, what I saw.

My dad didn't treat women like that, so it was hard to see me and my female colleagues being treated like that. I just wanted something different, and I spoke out about it. And I think, you know, when we created the company, it was the idea of like, can we create something that is full of respect? And I think that's actually quite well respected in the cryptocurrency.

At least in the beginning, people had like, let's do a whole new way of life. Not just let's do a new product, but let's think about if we could restructure what it looks like. There was some sort of idealism. A lot of that's gone to sea, you know, gone to sea at this point. But, um, at least in the beginning, people were interested in that.

Stephen: What were you seeing in Africa? You talk about, you know, small towns, impoverished people. M-Pesa sounded like it was a groundbreaking technology at the time. What did you see that you're like, Hey, we can still improve here. Like M-Pesa is not going to be the end all, be all, we can still improve the way access.

We might be able to even reduce fees and transaction fees. Like, what did you see that others might've said like, Oh, M-Pesa is God. They broke the mold. Disrupted the industry. Let's just, you know, this is figure out ways to maybe build applications on top of that versus, you know, continuing to break that mold.

Just a few years later.

Elizabeth: Well, let me be clear. I was working in microfinance, so my job was to go to the communities that were at the fringe of financial access. We want to go to financially excluded communities, which means people who are not even financially active, they have no income, they have no remittance, etc.

So I was seeking it out. Now I lived in Nairobi, which is very cosmopolitan. And quite bougie actually, like experiencing this huge economic growth because it became the banking hub of East Africa. And when I went over to Nigeria, I was the poorest person in Lagos. I felt, you know, like my neighbors lived in these amazing places with these gorgeous cars and big successful careers.

So not all of Africa is like that. Um, but I think for me, it was like, how do we go between the two? We have such a cool technology with mobile money, but then the second you leave. The bubble of Kenya and you travel to Nigeria, you travel to Uganda, you travel to South Africa, you go back home to the us, there's no connectivity, there's no interoperability.

And that was a word interoperability that was really being thrown around a lot by a lot of the telcos and a lot of the companies being like, how do we make sure that you can change between the two? Now we would say like, you know, interoperability between blockchain, so back then it was between telco systems.

Yeah. And um, and then there was also the issue of the foreign exchange. And that was something that I was quite passionate about. So, you know, yes, you can maybe have interoperability, but then they would add on like a 9 percent FX charge hidden. And that was at the key of a lot of the high cost of remittances, the high cost of payments, the high cost of business operations.

I was paying a student loan in dollars and earning in shilling. So I was paying this high fee every month and arguing with my bankers about it. So I just thought like, what if we had better in depth activity and how do we make sure we can trade currencies? As well as easily as we can trade top up credits or you know, domestic payment.

So that's really where I got it, got excited.

Stephen: I love that. Curious about, you talked about several different countries within Africa. Why is there such a disparity between rich and poor in one continent? Like, you know, you go from one country to the next borderline and it's a complete difference. One, one country can get U.S. dollars pretty easily, one can ask for it and might get it two months later. Why is there such this separation disparity across the continent of Africa, in your opinion?

Elizabeth: I mean, Stephen, I told you, like, when I go from Queens to Manhattan, I see similar situations. And I mean, it's not a joke. My neighborhood is right next to Richmond Hill.

Which is, I think, the highest level of child malnourishment in America. You have a huge Sikh community there, and a lot of kids come over on chaperones, and you have a lot of kids in the school my sister works in. You have huge levels of child malnourishment. You don't talk about it, it's not publicized.

On the media, it's like somebody talking about football or something. But, you know, that exists in developed markets as well. We could sit here and talk all day about the media narrative of the African continent. I think also just, you're only 70 years out from colonialism. 50 years in a set of certain places.

These are very young countries that were burdened with a lot of crazy remnants of colonialism. The borders are not correctly done. They don't follow cultural, religious, Economic trade routes. They're just like drawn in the middle of nothing. You have like economic areas that are like severed from other economic areas, or you have like a harbor severed from all of the goods that need to get to the harbor.

You know, you have commodities coming in with no access. To a harbor. I mean, really, who knows what that guy was, how much port that dude was drinking when he drew the line, right? But, um, it doesn't make a lot of sense. So there's a lot of reasons why there's such different economic disparity. I think one of the problems that I focus on, one of the areas is the dominance of the US dollar and how that dollar dominance has really hurt the eco hurt. The economies in, in Sub-Saharan Africa, mainly more than in other regions. You don't see the dollar dominance as much in South Southeast Asia or in South America, and that's reason I think that we had double the cost of remittances and payments in Africa than we did in other emerging markets.

You see the World Bank issue loans in Rupee in India and refuse to do it in local currency on the African continent. So, you know, when you lend in a hard currency and you're earning in a local currency, and your local currency is devaluated, well, what chance? That's, you know, that's a shark loan, and I don't care if it's from the World Bank.

So, you know, I think there's a lot of reasons why we see, you know, Uh, the content suffer are a little bit harder than elsewhere.

Stephen: How does it for you? You're sitting here helping the communities, building out a microfinance ecosystem, providing almost every financial institution product that you can think of, and we're going to get a deep dive into, uh, as a finance and why you move kind of from crypto to like more as a broader fintech.

But you must see these companies, organizations, and in some cases, China, countries, looking at Africa and, you know, to, to steal the words of Ray Youssef who runs a peer to peer exchange in Africa. He almost said, like, people look at Africa almost like BDSM, or like, they look at it like, how can we conquer, how can we, like, they have so many people, how can we pillage these communities and extract as much as possible.

How do you see this from your point of view when you're sitting there helping and you kind of see maybe others trying to move in and take advantage of the sheer size of Africa and the population?

Elizabeth: Um, I think now we've seen some really cool trends, so we obviously have the, the Belt, One Road, One Belt initiative coming from China and East Asian countries to, to invest in the African continent.

And that's shown more like, obviously there's. Potentially a future colonization of these like commodity dependent markets, but you also see China buy Zambian bonds and support the Kwacha, which has been amazing. You know, obviously they've invested a lot there and there's a lot of human rights complaints about what's going on in those investments, but you also see that.

So I think They understand at this point that if there is going to be investment, these economies do need to be supported. So I think we have a slightly different situation than we might have had 200 years ago. I also really been, and I wrote about this, um, online, invigorated by the South American unicorns, the payment companies and the fintechs that are now coming into the African continent because they see this is the continent of growth.

So I think gone are the days where people are just coming in and running amok. We also have very strong. Markets like in Nigeria, in Ghana, in Kenya, in Senegal, in Canada, in South Africa. We see a lot of strong local markets, a lot of forward thinking regulation coming over the border, 50 crypto licenses just issued in South Africa in the last few months.

I think, you know, there's a vast license available in Central Africa. So I think we are seeing progress in the way that other regions are interacting with the continent.

Stephen: What are your thoughts? Like, you start there in 2013, 2014, you're standing up, uh, basically a crypto exchange. Um, what were the regulations like back then?

Uh, how difficult was it, or did you spend the majority of your time educating regulators and working with them to construct fair regulations for the entire industry, not just for yourself?

Elizabeth: I mean, like, back then it was nuts, you know, we were lobbying all the time and people would say things like, well, who is Mr.

Bitcoin or who do you belong to, you know, and we were like, like, we're literally talking to people who don't even have a computer or a laptop in their office. So I think for us, it was really, you know, starting at scratch. But again, do you fight against the ocean? If you just, you know, we met some people who were like, well, we're going to wait here and just lobby and we'll start when it gets fixed.

10 years later, a lot of these markets don't have regulation. So I think the idea was like, how do you work with existing regulation and get going and get product and get traction and maybe, you know, alter your business model a little bit. That's why we started trading fiat. And, you know, that's why we started doing payments.

That's why we started facilitating remittances. So just like, what can we do right now, um, keeping in mind where we're going, and what can we, you know, invest in so that our future business model is protected. I think if you do, again, like we said in the beginning, if you do too much of one or the other, you're gonna, you're gonna suffer.

But, you know, I wrote one of the first white papers to the Central Bank of Nigeria, and Eight years ago, with like a guy from the Stellar Foundation. We were there by ourselves at this huge Central Bank of Nigeria workshop for four days. You saw my video, which is hilarious of that. And now it's just coming forward.

There's a lot more cooks in the kitchen now. I was just like at an event and some dude from the big four was like, Oh, I worked with the Central Bank of Nigeria. And I'm like, really? So I think it's exciting that it's not all on our shoulders. We're not the only ones working towards it. Because it is too much for a fintech or a startup to carry by yourself.

Stephen: As a founder, what were some of those early challenges that you had? Or maybe like one of those mistakes where you're like, Oh, I didn't even think about this. Regulators came knocking at the door. You might've had to turn off a feature or a function. Do you have any of those stories where like, Oh, I didn't, I didn't know..

Elizabeth: Yeah, I mean like, we very publicly sued Sefericom, which was absolutely idiotic.

I laugh now, but only after a lot of therapy. You know, that was the stupidest thing. We were like, how dare they cut us off, you know, like, who do they think they are? I think I had like 50 cents in my bank account. I don't know what I was thinking. It was like the biggest monopoly, held up the whole Kenyan stock exchange, you know, huge financial investor.

And I was like, but I write morally. Pairs, you know, that was, that was a big hilarious lesson, um, and I ended up having to shift and market more in Nigeria, which was a blessing in disguise afterwards. Um, but I think, you know, people give you crazy advice. Someone was like, it's not a fight without a punch, get in there, go for it, you know, and that might've served that person who gave me that terrible advice.

Um, you know, what I don't think either of us realized, Safaricom or Repessa at the time, was how the practice. And the government was going to get riled up, because at that time, the word cryptocurrency and the word Bitcoin was really touchy. So, our little fight got on the front page of the newspaper. And our little fight, the poor CEO of Spartan had to answer questions about it at an earnings call, which was televised in Kenya.

And like, I had to take out a full page ad in the newspaper to apologize. I mean, it got wild. And, you know, Luckily, the news cycle goes quick over there, but I mean, that was a lot for a first year .

Stephen: Do you think that, you know, let people know, though, that like, Elizabeth ain't here to just play around, like, she's going to come at you a little bit stronger?

Do you think everyone remembers like, oh, that was the girl? That was the woman that sued, you know, the largest, uh, company in our ecosystem.

Elizabeth: I think everybody's pretty unanimous that that was dumb. I don't think anybody was like, that was a bad business decision. You know, like, again, I'm not 14, this isn't, like, middle school, I'm not, like, scrapping in the schoolyard with, like, Vaseline on my face, you know, like, this is a really stupid business decision that put the team at risk, and lesson learned, it's not all about what you want or what you think is right.

Stephen: Talk about that team though. You're talking about, you know, first year startup. You have this idealism of all, you know, women founded, women run. Talk about your first few hires. Was it kind of like, Hey, my close friends. Hey, people that like will ride or die with me, no matter what happens. Cause I think a lot of founders and, you know, entrepreneurs that listen to this show.

You know, really have tough times with the first couple of hires, which could make or break a startup. Can you tell me a little bit about it?

Elizabeth: First person was definitely my very good friend, Charlene Chen. And I remember convincing her on my balcony to join. And she was like, what are you talking about? And I was like, come, I now believe I can create my own company.

I've changed my mind since last week and I've been enlightened. We can do this. You know, all of our male friends are doing it. We can do it too. And she was kind of like, have, you know, did you take some drugs? Like, well, why do you suddenly think you could do this? And I had to be like, we can do it together.

So she was definitely there. And we, you know, we cried and laughed and celebrated and we had a wild ride of it. I think we had another early employee, um, Amy Ludlum, who really built up our finance function, our trading function. Similar to us, she was an American that came over and that was like three of a kind.

But, you know, we didn't want to run a bunch of Americans that were like, okay, now how do we scale this? And then we had Shiko Noguchi come over, our first hire. And a great story because, you know, Shiko was right out of school. She just came back to work for us after a double maternity leave and like four years away.

And she's leading our whole marketing team. She helped me set up this podcast. And, you know. I feel like she's almost like a daughter in her wedding and, you know, she didn't know who we were. There wasn't a lot of trust. She responded to like a phishing email at one point.

Bitcoin to some rando, but like we grew together and we learned together and our first three employees are still with us. And you know, we have 98% retention rate at the company and of course people have left a long way. We've been doing this for 11 years, but it was really important to make sure we're together.

I think those early crazy volatile times being in the newspaper, you know, people who were like, this is whack got out quick and people who were like, Okay, this is insane, but we're here for you. You know, you like really dug bonds, trauma bonds. So, I think we just kind of decided what kind of company we wanted to be pretty early on.

And because Charlene and I had such similar experiences, not really being respected as women in our other work, we were like, this is a place where we want to learn how to respect. And I don't think I was a good boss in the beginning, but along the way have learned. Through a lot of mentorship and a lot of coaching and, you know, a lot of lessons learned.

So I think as you're, as long as you're willing to grow and be, you know, take accountability, you know, like, yeah, that wasn't cool of me. I think a lot of bosses I see even now just always think they're right or like not really ready to take accountability. I think that shows weakness and I think that instills trust and shows a lot of strength.

So yeah, those values are still there.

Stephen: Where do you think you struggled with? You mentioned, hey, not being a great leader. It's kind of hard. You know, you're managing three people. Now you have to manage maybe 180 people, maybe even more. Where do you think you struggled early as a boss? Was it maybe delegating tasks that you wanted to control everything?

Uh, you know, micromanaging. Uh, to your point, maybe just kind of taking accountability, like, Hey, it was my decision to go sue this company. Uh, we're all going to have to deal with the consequences, but I take responsibility. What do you think you lacked that you've grown a lot in the last 11

Elizabeth: you know, not to get too personal, but like, you know, I had a one and a two year old at home.

I was, you know, a nine hour flight away from my family. I was in a marriage that ended soon after. It was a really tough time for me. Work was so stressful. It was like a whole new, and everything was on my shoulders. Just didn't know how to manage stress. And so I think I was like taking stress out on my team or being like, what?

You know, too much. I put myself under a very, um, strong microscope and I'm like very, you know, analytical of myself and my own performance. And I, I did, it was maybe way too harsh on my team. And then over the years I was like, people are not going to trust you, not want to work with you if you're not. So learning how to really.

Build that trust and manage your stress.

I think a lot of people in planet earth don't manage their stress. Take accountability for it, right? Isn't that what everything on Instagram tells us? So like if we're really careful and everybody comes to the table responsible for their own actions, here we go, built together.

We have a rule in my household where you're not allowed to bring negative vibes to the dinner table. And my teenage daughter has revolted and said, she doesn't feel like positive vibes all the time. And I'm like, neutral vibes are allowed. Just no negative vibes. I think that's what I learned through the year.

Stephen: I love that.

Elizabeth: Neutral vibes. Okay. Talk to me. Try to be positive.

Stephen: You know, some people might listen to this podcast, especially women, and they might hear what you said, you know, one and two year old trying to run, you know, a startup against some of the biggest companies. In the, uh, in the continent, uh, living away from them.

Talk to me a little bit maybe about, I hate using cliche terms, but you know, there's gotta be somewhat of a mom guilt. You know, your, your, you said that your relationship kind of deteriorated a little bit after. Talk to me how you dealt with.

Elizabeth: Just in general, when we're talking about mom guilt and working.

I have been very lucky that I started the company in a place where child care was affordable in Kenya. Let's make no qualms about it, I would never have been able to start this company with young children if I didn't have affordable child care, so that was a privilege. Having a check to start out, day one, privilege.

Having, you know, already been 30 years old and having some experience, privilege, and having child care was a privilege.

And even now, um, yesterday I won a FinTech Leader Award and I immediately sent it to my, my amazing nanny so I'd say, and I was like, this is from, thank you for, to you. So it's almost impossible to do this alone.

And a lot of men who do this rely, who have kids, rely on their spouse or somebody else. I don't think they talk about it or get interviewed about it, but they're 100 percent relying on someone else. You know? All these men who were at this event last night who were not going home, I'm like, and they're all talking about the kids, I'm like, well, who's with the kids?

You know? So I think planet Earth, there is always somebody helping out, um, if one person is out and one person is not. I think as women, we're expected to be us, so we're asked about it all the time. And I think, you know, I don't spend any more time away from my kids than, uh, pretty much any man in this industry, who also has kids. And I would actually say I probably spend more time with my kids.

Stephen: I remember there was a CEO that said, that was saying like, Oh, you know, I have six kids, but you know, the reason for my success is all these automation, uh, products and tools. And I remember LinkedIn kind of said like, yeah, but who's waking up at like 3:30 in the morning when your kid has a stomachache? Like, Let's get back to the real, the real hero here. But you mentioned you received the check, although that is a privilege. You know, I was just talking on LinkedIn yesterday about how women don't like to be on the public stages. They like to be behind the scenes.

For the most part, I hate to generalize, but I think we can see that. We can say that confidently. A lot of people would see that check and not feel like they're in a position to be like, Oh, I'm going to quarterback this. I'm going to be Tom Brady. I'm going to run with this. Talk to me about that, because there might have been, I don't want to say imposter syndrome, but there might be like, Hey, I've never done this before, now I have people invested in me, which I think even makes it a little bit more, I don't know, Is that more pressure on you, that you have someone using their own money versus you potentially risking your money?

Elizabeth: Well, I don't know what women you're hanging out with, or you talk about, but all my female friends are, you know, stars. And I went to a very good high school where everybody was super smart. And I went to very good college programs, and stipends, and went to Goldman Sachs. Every woman I came across was a superstar.

There weren't a lot of women, but the women that I did come across were there. And all my female friends are, like, you know, running the Ethiopian Cotton Exchange, or, you know, running the Red Cross. So I have a lot of amazing women in my network and even Charlene was incredible and Amy Ludlum was incredible.

So. We were all just like, yeah, thank you. You know, it's not like we didn't want it. It's like, no one was going to give it to us. So let's be clear. I wanted it. You know, I just know I went up to the same job as a lot of guys in my circle and didn't get it, even though I had years more experience. So I was ready for the spotlight.

I was ready to get something done. And like, by the way, in a lot of my jobs, I was doing all the work and not getting recognized for it. So I think it's the absolute opposite. I think there's so many women who are over prepared, over qualified, and not being handed the microphone and getting to do it. And still, even, you know, yesterday at this dinner and all this week at these meetings, you still meet a lot of people who act bonkers.

In terms of gender relations, I think it's still a very big problem.

Stephen: I won't get you to describe what bonk, what you find bonkers is, but early on in 2013, you're still dealing in the African continent.

A lot of things are new transactions and the way people are sending and receiving funds. What were some of the big, do you remember some of the big financial crime concerns?

I'm assuming you had to stand up a compliance department. What were some of the trends or concerns or, you know, maybe early thing trends, typologies that you saw from a financial Kremlins?

Elizabeth: So early on we were doing, um, retail payments and remember at the time we were using mobile money on one side of that, which has pretty stringent AML KYC components.

So we actually felt pretty comfortable. We had, you know, in person verification for every SafariCon account. We had phone date of birth, address, identity card attached to it. So, honestly, my transactions were, had way more people seeing it a lot globally. Um, as we scaled, we obviously incorporated even more.

You know, I had been working with microfinance companies on their AML KYC before, so I think we almost overdo it. I think we're known in the sector for having very tight compliance and not being like, let's go fast and break things. They're like, let's, you know, do it well so the reputation of this sector and this region changes.

Stephen: That's amazing. Now, 2019, you decide to move from BitPesa and more expander services, maybe you can explain a little bit about what that expansion is. But see, at the time, crypto is now mainstream in 2019. We just got through, you know, one of the, you know, one of the biggest bear markets after, you know, mainstream crypto gets onto CNBC and everywhere else.

And you decide not to double down on crypto, but to expand your services. Kind of go through that thought process. Uh, and how, what were you thinking at those times?

Elizabeth: One big misunderstanding of this entire sector is that there are the same amount of buyers and sellers of crypto in each currency market.

They're not. So what you end up with is many, many cryptocurrency exchanges that have currency exposure. Now, if you're trading in liquid GA currencies. Super, you can get out of the dollar or position with the sterling. If you're trading in emerging market positions, you're holding a local currency. Most often they're not, and that currency is devaluing.

So you need to trade out of that. So if there's no crypto buyer that wants to buy that cryptocurrency, you have to sell it to a fiat buyer. So year one, we were like, there's no way we're going to do this without losing money unless we also do transactions in fiat. Because, you know, we can sell as much as we want, but then we're holding cryptocurrency.

You know, it has to be two way. And there was not an order book that developed in emerging markets. That was matching. So then somebody's holding the bag and a lot of exchanges went out of business early days and even still like launch, not realize that. And then go out of business in a year or two. So it was necessity and it is still today necessity.

We believe the best model to enable exchanges and the use of stable coins and things like this are to make sure you can trade in and out of any currency. And we see it like a currency. All currency should be liquid, emerging market currency should be liquid. And if you want to be, make a big deal in the world, these cryptocurrencies have to be liquid.

Stephen: And in 2019, you, you know, you rebrand, you're offering a different set of services. You're ready to take on the world and the world says, Oh yeah, by the way, uh, there's going to be a global pandemic where people can't be running around with money like they used to. How did this impact your business? I'm assuming positively, but maybe let me know how it impacted your business and some of the trends that you saw happening either during the pandemic and that you see either maintained or kind of gone away after we've gone a little bit more in person over the last, I'd say 18 months.

Elizabeth: From year one, we were already trading fiat because we were getting out of our local currency position. So it was all along, we were always a hybrid company. There is no secret sauce. You can't do 100%. Doesn't work. Anybody who says you can, look at their book. So we were already, already trading fiat and cryptocurrencies.

And then we just rebranded because the word It was actually very associated with Kenya, and a big part of our business was in Central and West Africa. We also were buying a company in South Africa. We wanted a more global name. Um, everybody was confusing us with M-Pesa. Pesa means money in Swahili. And there were hundreds of startups.

With the word PESA. Also, the word BIT wasn't really a friendly company at the time, so together BIT and PESA was a terrible branding. So, we rebranded because of that. Um, we had an API product, which does mass payouts. We still have that today, that was already in place at the time, so you can buy and also sell.

We have a collections feature, and then of course we have our OTC product for Treasury. We've had these products pretty much from year one, so for about nine years. We've obviously perfected them and iterated on them. But we're doing the same thing we started out to do, trading African currencies, whether we use crypto or fiat or stable coins or whatever.

The idea is that you lower the cost of trading in across Africa.

Stephen: You acquired, you talked about acquiring a company. I don't know if you were talking about TransferZero, um, but around that time, you also raised 2. 5 million from, uh, Tim Draper's VC firm. Uh, what was the process like acquiring a company while you're still a fairly new company?

Uh, cause I think a lot of companies and founders look at like, Hey, we can acquire this, add to our customer base or add this technology, but I'm assuming it's not as easy as everyone thinks it is. Can you walk us through that process a little?

Elizabeth: Yeah, we've actually done two acquisitions. One was TransferZero in Spain, and one was eForev, Exchange for Free in South Africa.

Very different reasons, very different companies. One was basically for a license. We got some key employees who were still there, but it was really for the license. They had a great Bank of Spain license that they had held for over a decade. And in South Africa, it was also for the team, it was for the revenue, the clients.

As well as the licensing facilities. So I think, you know, you have a budget for a project, market entry project, or customer expansion project, and you're always asking yourself the question, should I build this or should I buy this, you know, and if I buy it, is it going to be, you know, a snap or is it going to be 24 months of rewriting the code?

And, you know, if I buy it or all the employees are going to go, are they going to stay, are the clients going to go, are they going to stay? So again, it goes back to those same principles. Do people want to work for your company? Does the company you work for attract or repel people? You know, are they going to want to stay?

Does it attract or repel clients? Do they want to stay? You know, it's one thing to buy somebody, but you can't force clients or employees to stay. You have to really be creating something valuable that makes the most, you know, sense. And, you know, both of those acquisitions were amazing. We added a lot of value.

We added a lot of our licensing. Um, capabilities onto continents for that. So for us, it was a big, long process. And I think it also shows our maturity as a company. We, we went to meet quite a lot of companies and we were, you know, flirting with a lot of them, are they the right one for us, but you really have to understand, you know, can you integrate the company after you buy it?

Stephen: That's super interesting.

We talked a little bit about, you know, underserved or unbanked communities, especially in Africa and even in, I think the US I think 5% of Americans are underbanked or underserved. You know, when Bitcoin first came to the main stage, everyone said that it's gonna bank the unbanked and bank the underbanked.

And those numbers don't seem to have been reduced by 'em a lot. A lot of companies are saying, Hey, we would be able to. Bank the Unbanked, but it's the KYC, it's the regulatory requirements, it's the compliance. That's really what's holding us back as a bottleneck. What are your thoughts? Do you feel that we've, you know, in the last 11 years, we've been able to bank more underbanked or underserved communities and people?

Or do you think we're kind of still at the same stage because of factors outside of your company and maybe other companies control?

Elizabeth: I can't really speak to other presidents, but I know for sure when the telcos were introducing mobile money, they invested heavily in physical infrastructure. Yeah. They set up kiosks all across the country, they splashed so much money putting them in regional, uh, rural areas, giving POS devices in rural areas to get people connected, to take pictures and like little devices to take pictures of IDs, getting people to sign, figuring out ways to do it for our communities that were at the furthest reach, uh, of financial activity.

So, you know, in doing it in refugee camps, also doing it in urban areas, how do you do it at scale? How do you do it at cost? So much effort was in the onboarding, or what the crypto community calls on ramping. That really wasn't an investment at all for many, many crypto companies until recently. You know, early days, a lot of these companies had very clunky UX, very clunky connections to even deposit.

Even if you really wanted to register and you wanted to deposit money into your wallet, it was very difficult. It took days. You know, so I don't think there was the same investment. Either the capital wasn't there or the brain space wasn't there. I don't know, but that definitely held back a lot of people from getting on board.

Now that a lot of companies have invested phone companies in getting phones in the hand of more people, and a lot of those wallets are intrinsic to those phones, a lot of the work has been done for the crypto community. And now, you know, these people are now onboarded. But I think, you know, that was really missing from the early days.

Stephen: That's interesting. You talk about going into so many different communities.

Have you ever been scared? Like, I think you're disrupting the biggest companies around the world. You're in a lot of countries where are pretty high on what would be called the compute, the corruption index. Uh, were you ever worried about disrupting this industry in this continent?

You know, you know, maybe taking, you know, some of the market share from some of the initial, uh, competitors in the industry, what are your thoughts around that, any fears, or is this just business as usual for you?

Elizabeth: Are you American? Eric's president is a felon. I mean, like

Stephen: I'm Canadian, but like, I think we can I think we're probably in the same I think we're still in the same realm with Justin Trudeau, to be honest.

Elizabeth: I guess if you're from like a middle class neighborhood in America, things look easy, but if you're not, life is pretty hard in America too for a lot of people, you know? Um, I didn't, I mean, communities where I grew up, you know, I, I saw a lot of, you know, it's not fair that these kids get into these schools and we can't.

It's not fair that this person gets promoted and we can't. It's not fair that my mom has a college degree where we came from and here she's a cleaning woman. You know, I didn't see America as very fair at all. Not from the perspective of where I stood, not the communities I lived in and worked in. Not at all.

So, I don't think it's that different from America. I mean, maybe from some places in Europe where I live, like in Germany, where there's a high level of social services. But even there, you know, one of the largest Turkish cities is Berlin, and a lot of those families are undocumented, and they've been there for 60 years.

So, I mean, there's unfairness everywhere, if you open your eyes to it, so I don't think I was really phased to any of the unfairness on the African continent, I just kind of saw it as similar to everything else I saw. You know, I think people get freaked out if, like, the ketchup tastes different, or, like, the taxi takes a different route.

You know, looks a little different. Like, I think people in general are inflexible. I mean, famously, one of my Senegalese employees, we sent her to Nigeria for a month and she didn't eat because she didn't have the same flavor of food as home, you know. I think that freaks people out, but I think if you get over that part and you're just flexible and you look for the commonalities.

That's at least my philosophy. So not a lot really scares me anymore.

Stephen: So you're looking at the people that bring like their own ketchup to Mexico and kind of like, ah, you guys need to get over there. That's the group of people. We spoke so much about Africa. You've been in places like Qatar just a few months ago.

What are your, you know, what are you seeing emerging in this FinTech? We see Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Doha, a ton of other Middle Eastern countries. Obviously the UAE and Dubai is focused a lot on crypto metaverse. What are your thoughts about these, uh, you know, uh, jurisdictions and maybe your emergence in these jurisdictions as, uh, as a finance?

Elizabeth: Yeah, well, we had a license in the sandbox in Abu Dhabi in 2018. I think we're like in the third cohort. It was a very different place than when we just went recently. So Abu Dhabi and SADA, the A2GM team, and then we worked at their end. It was fabulous, honestly, and what they're doing right now. Also, the progress has been incredible, like all the services they're providing, FinTech.

All the help with, like, introductions and corporates and banking. I mean, it's mind blowing, the progress in just a decade, so it's very exciting to see that. Obviously, tons of East Africans live in the Middle East, and we just opened Egypt in January, and a lot of Egyptians are, you know, connected to the Middle East, so there's a lot of trading corridors, payment corridors, remittance corridors.

We'd love to see it. We'd love to see these regions grow. I think it just undermines our thesis from day one, which is that South South trading, or, you know, trading outside of that between America and the rest of the world is going to become more and more important, you know, Africans will be the largest population at the turn of the century, and so all these trade corridors we see with Asia, the subcontinent, Middle East, even South America and the African continent. It's really exciting to see how that's all developing.

Stephen: That's amazing.

I want to take the last few minutes to talk about your found your journey as a woman. Uh, you know, I'm a supporter of the Association for Women in Crypto. One of the, you know, initiatives is kind of like, Unmantle Your Panel, where they're kind of tired of seeing just men, especially when it's like six people on the panel, it's all men, they all kind of look the same and come from the similar background, but they all have a big company name underneath their title that happens to usually sponsor the event.

What are your thoughts on this? Are you seeing things differently? Maybe in the industry events that you're going to around the world? Or are you saying this is still a problem? You're saying you have a bunch of women that they're ready on the drop of a dime. They can speak. They're ready to go. They have no imposter syndrome.

So, do you still see there a problem with some of the events you see organized, or are you even participating?

Elizabeth: A hundred percent. I mean, I know readily when the organizer is female or not. I mean, you can tell immediately what it looks like. And I think you have like, people being like, wait, is that Token Woman?

Or like, you know, and then I get up there and then I'm talking the most or I have the most facts and they're like, oh wow, you know. I think it's still very gross, planet Earth and the way we treat women, honestly. Like, I was just at an event and I was overqualified for the panel and someone came up to me before we started and he's an exec at a big bank and he goes, so you're the woman?

And I was like, Urgh. How do you have a job still? You know, like I think it's still so wild how much bias I face. And I was just talking to one of our best investment bankers and he's like, you know, Elizabeth, I didn't realize this until I started going to meetings with you. And I'm like, yeah, it's wild.

I don't think people believe me, they think I'm exaggerating or they think I'm just a loud mouth. But it is every day still happening. And I think, sure, anytime you give the microphone to a female voice or a woman of color or a person of color or somebody besides the same old dudes, it's great. You know, and you know, if there's quotas to get us on the stage, fine.

Better than having us not there at all. You know, I think. Any effort we have to make things more fair and more voices heard is, is a good thing. And I just think, you know, the industry can be a little gross with these, like, bikini girls, um, yeah, etc. But, like, I've been working in finance for my whole career and I've seen a lot of gross things.

I think, you know, what I would love to see is more female execs, more females on the board, more female decision makers. Then we might see the culture turn a little bit and be, you know, less gross to women.

Stephen: How do you see it? Because I'll be completely honest when I go to an event, I look to see if there's other black people, black professionals there.

I'm interested to see like, hey, is this, is my community or people that look like me and sound like me and come from the same places as me, are they here? And why aren't they here? And why aren't they on stage? What do you see when you see a panel of like six men or you see these conferences having AI, AI women speakers, just so they can get the sponsorship dollars in the door and then these people don't actually exist, does it give you a visceral reaction or are you kind of like numb to it?

Elizabeth: Yeah, I'm sure it's similar and you know what it's like. I mean, I travel with a lot of my colleagues who are African, and they're like in the corner talking to the one other African person, just like I'm in the corner talking to the one other female. I mean, just yesterday, uh, two days ago, that event for SableCoin, and the whole breakfast room, and I'm a speaker, I'm like a headphone speaker, one of the senior people there.

There's all these little standup tables. Everybody's turning their shoulder to me and I end up like being like, I guess I'll talk to this one woman who's alone. And I go over to her and we're like, hi, let's chat. And she like, does nothing related to what I do, but we spent like 30 minutes and you're like, do I have the mental energy to be like, push my way in?

Meanwhile, other guys are like making welcoming signs. So it's just all these micro things. I know I sound like a millennial on Twitter being like microaggression, but it's real. It happens. And. If we don't pull each other in and pull each other up and someone has to speak loudly about it, it won't change.

And, you know, I hope it gets better. I think people are a little bit more embarrassed when they get called out for it. That's progress, I guess.

Stephen: Embarrassed to like issue apologies, but I don't know if we've changed behavior altogether. And, you know, I'm probably at fault a lot of the times too, not realizing some of the words I'm using or things that I'm saying. So I'm definitely not, you know, a part of this team. I'm trying to be part of the solution or at least, uh, raise some concerns that, things that I'm seeing that maybe others wouldn't tell a woman like, Hey, like I hear you guys talking.

You don't want to do content. You're too scared to post about your, you know, you want your message to be perfect. Like, at least let's try and get over that because you're some of the most intelligent people I'm thinking where you have men that are like, I can speak about any subject, any day, no preparation.

It's like, eh, not, not really. But you spoke to an amazing woman, JB Leverton, the other day I saw on your LinkedIn post. Uh, and you were pictured a few months ago, and you, you talked about, you know, AI and, you know, the role it plays. I'm curious, uh, what is your thoughts about AI and how we're maybe using it within your organization, or how are you seeing others use it that you're like, oh, this is kind of interesting.

I can see eventually we being able to encompass this in what Aza Finance is doing.

Elizabeth: Yeah, I think what Jim knew, you were talking about how you can have these data centers be also used for the AI industry and like if you're spending on the investment of a data center and you want to be able to use it for multi sector, you know, revenue generation or diversify your revenue streams, that's what it's for.

Super high power processing for AI and things like that. That's why we're talking about that together. I think for us, you know, transaction monitoring obviously is something where we're going to use it. I also just think there's a lot of people yapping about Gen AI that don't need it yet. So we'll get there.

I mean, we have a lot of like little tools, I guess. It's exciting, but I wouldn't say it's like driving our core business. And most people who say that it is, I think are just lying.

Stephen: Do you feel like you need an Elizabeth AI to like, maybe handle some of the interviews and respond to the same questions that you're asked over and over again?

Elizabeth: No, I'm like the guy you described. I can, I can, uh, make an answer pretty quickly. I mean, I'm still American, regardless. So, I think for me, it's easy.

Stephen: That's hilarious.

Elizabeth: Um, my CFO was always using AI.

Stephen: I want to end this conversation on stablecoins.

Stablecoins account for almost two thirds of transactions. You mentioned it.

I'm sure, you know, if you're settling crypto transactions, you're using it as some part of your backend, but we're seeing like regulators are really trying to scrutinize on stablecoins, maybe in your jurisdictions that you're operating in, is stablecoins even part of the conversation yet? Or are you still worrying about like, how can we regulate regular digital assets and cryptocurrency as a whole versus like getting down, you know, specifics like niches down on stablecoins?

Elizabeth: No, a hundred percent. I would say almost all of our crypto demand has moved to stablecoin, not because I wanted to, because the customers have asked for it initially. We were, you know, Bitcoin max is, we only sold Bitcoin and customers asked us for Ethereum, and now obviously people just want stablecoin.

So you know, we're, we give it to the people what they want. I think it's been pretty wild to see the growth of the top stable coins and see how quickly they gain market caps. I think that tells us something, that tells us people still want a fast 24 7 settlement, um, that's not as volatile. I think that's what the user wants, right?

So, everybody else who thinks they're USPs or something else, not what the user wants. Look at the runaway success here. So, you know, that's been pretty exciting for us. And also a lot of those transactions are going between, Africa and Asia. And it's just easy, easy to settle on a Sunday. It's easy to settle on a Memorial Day, Monday holiday.

Um, and the volatility is not there and the liquidity is there. So I think that's been the big trend for us in the last few years.

Stephen: And what are you interested going into 2024, 2025 with as a finance? What are you interested in? Like what new features, what new use cases, maybe your customers are coming out with, you're like, Oh, we're going to double down on this.

We can see the demand for it. What are you excited about within your own organization?

Elizabeth: We're pretty boring. I mean, we're FX traders, so we have one big goal, which is to make African currencies more liquid. That's our number one goal for 11 years. We don't follow the hot new thing. We trade what it works.

DeFi seems to be something people want to settle against, we'll trade it. If something else comes up that looks good and has stability and is liquid, we'll trade it. But, you know, I think the key to success if you're running a business is, unless you have soft bank level of financing, is to stay focused.

And, you know, that's the most exciting for us. Once you're crypto native, it doesn't really take a lot to trade other things. So, you know, I think the biggest weaknesses in a lot of these businesses that say they're crypto businesses are the normal business part. Governance, hiring, team retention, processes, protocols, customer acquisition, scaling.

I mean, these are the things that are the hard part. You know, integrating into a blockchain takes hours. So, you know, that's the whole point of it. It makes life easy. So that's not the part that we struggle with.

Stephen: So we're not going to see any meme coin or inscription marketplaces anytime soon?

Elizabeth: No, I mean, I don't launch tokens either, you know.

Like, we do wholesale FX, so people have always been like, look at this, watch Bitcoin for me. I'm like, I don't have an order book. It doesn't work in my market. It's not balanced. So when your coin has market dominance, people want to do a million dollar trades in it. Sure.

Stephen: It seems that you've obviously been in the industry for over 11 years. You have friends in the industry. You're talking about the Skype calls early on and probably even now, even, you know, talking to people that are still raising funds.

What advice can you give to entrepreneurs that are looking at today where I don't think the terms are that lucrative if you're, you know, an entrepreneur or a business owner when it comes to VC dollars, what advice can you give?

Should they be looking at VC? Should they be looking at maybe like just friends, angel investors that they know? What are your thoughts on someone trying to build in this landscape right now?

Elizabeth: I think the most important thing is really just raising the money that you can as quickly as you can. I mean, a lot of founders that are pretty snobby about it, like, I want a raise from this best fund, or I heard this fund is, um, you know, the best one to be in.

It doesn't really matter when you're early stage. If you have a wealthy uncle or a friend from high school, or you can access a grant funding, take it and get started. And then once you show traction, people will come towards you. I also don't think VCs are always the smartest people in the room. So, you know, I don't, I think they follow.

They follow each other. So if you have a truly innovative idea and you don't have traction immediately in the first six months, it's going to be an uphill battle and it can be quite discouraging. So, you know, maybe look for someone like a corporate venture or somebody that's in your arena, someone that's, you know, launched a company in insurance, if you're doing insurtech or like launch somebody that's similar in your region, that would help.

One of our first investors was the, was the head of Google Kenya. And he had. Launched the first ISP in Kenya. He was very adjacent to our sector and that was a great first investor to have.

Stephen: And how do you make that money last? Cause it doesn't look like you raised a ton of funds and I've seen people spend what you raised the 2.

5 million on, as you said, some yacht parties or putting their name on a, you know, half a stadium. How did you kind of make that money last? And not blow it all on marketing and sales, which is what a lot of people tend to do, uh, when they receive some capital.

Elizabeth: I'm good at what I do. So , you know, we make smart decisions or you know, we make logical decisions based on data.

So I think, you know, when you, when you see that, that's not gonna be in executive, that lasts, and I don't think that really, you know, is a sign for good executive behavior. Remember, a crypto company is still a company.

Stephen: I think that's stellar advice. Elizabeth, thank you so much.

Where can people find you?

Where do you interact with, uh, individuals? Twitter? Are you on crypto Twitter going down the rabbit holes? Or maybe LinkedIn is a place that people can tap into?

Elizabeth: She can take it. It's dark and melted. No, I mean, um, you can find us on LinkedIn. We have a pretty active presence there in our market. And we'll be at events involving the Africa Tech scene all over the continent and in London. So yeah, um, you can find us on LinkedIn and you can find us, learn more about us on our website.

Stephen: I love it. We're going to make sure all of those links are included in the show notes. Elizabeth, thank you so much. This was one of the most fun interviews I've had and you kept it extremely genuine and we appreciate the authenticity.

Elizabeth: Thanks for that, Stephen.