Winning a soccer match with tennis players in order to scale to 1.5 Billion.
By: Maximilian Waldmann
Tags: Startup, Corporate Culture, Change Management, Entrepreneurship, Fintech

Today marks Fredos and my last day at our BaFin licensed FinTech Invisible Pay. After conichi was acquired by HRS in 2018, together with Tobias Ragge the HRS CEO, we decided for a corporate build within HRS. The challenge was clear: Build the most advanced payment solution in the corporate travel space. Within 24 months and a team of 30, we built a leading payment solution and managed to ramp up the volume beyond EUR 1.5B.

My partner Fredo. One team always.

Today Invisible Pay is the most advanced virtual payment solution in the corporate travel market, empowering travellers around the globe to streamline their trips. More than 7M travellers did not need to worry about paying, collecting a hotel invoice or expensing their trips.

All of this was definitely not possible because Fredo and myself are seasoned payment gurus — we had no clue. Quite frankly the team was neither made up of experts before boarding our mission. We deliberately decided to try winning the soccer match with a bunch of tennis players. What we looked out for during the curation of our Invisible Pay team was dedication, trust and execution opposed to title, CV and education.

This plan worked out pretty well and allowed us to form a family of great minds challenging the industry status quo. It enabled us to rapidly build and scale a product with huge dedication and high trust amongst the product, sales and operations team. No micro-management, no finger-pointing, no nine to five. Only one common goal of winning the soccer match.

After building ventures the past years, I’d forgotten how corporates function in the inside. I must admit, it was more than a personal challenge being confronted with this cultural change. At the start it actually felt constricting and slow, making me mad due to the perceived loss in speed. This lasted only until understanding how to use this environment as a springboard and accelerator — being entrepreneurial about the novel situation.

After these two years within a corporate, I am still convinced that almost all corporates are substantially slower than most start-ups out there. As a start-up on our own, we would’ve been faster in regards to development, hiring, deployment and execution. What I needed to understand though, was that all of this “perceived speed” would’ve been irrelevant if the scale and reach wasn’t present or too expensive to build out. A great learning was that sometimes it’s not about the “perceived speed” but the “true speed” on a wider perspective. What corporates bring along is a massive reach to customers, markets and infrastructure, impossible for most start-ups to rebuild in a timely manner. The game is not won within the first quarter.

Understanding these dynamics, switching-off some of the cultural start-up perks and leveraging this reach was key to success. It was a huge learning for myself to understand how fast and with what kind of scale (EUR 1.5B in payment volume) we could build a new BaFin licensed fintech. I although also believe that this was only possible by building a family-style culture within the wider organisation. Most corporates are simply too large to experience a culture of trust and familiarity amongst the entire group, hence it is essential to build a close circle within.

Together with my co-CEOs Nicole and Fredo, we tried our best, living by the wider company values but within our cultural circle. A culture of tennis players, winning the football match. Mutual trust over everything and execution driven by dedication. I would recommend entrepreneurs to challenge themselves and potentially leverage ventures in the above way. In Germany alone there are about 18.000 larger corporates which are open for innovation and being challenged. Shout-out to all the entrepreneur to think about leveraging this scale going forward.

Would I do it again? Always.

P.s.: Thanks Tobias for giving us this opportunity. Again.

P.p.s.: Massive thanks to the entire HRS Group for supporting us along this journey — it has been an honour!