Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: NorthOne CEO Eytan Bensoussan (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: How were you financing a 15-people operation?

Eytan Bensoussan: A lot of it is personal. We had a very early investor who helped us out. Then it was about making the very tiny amount of money that we had last as if it was 10x the amount. This was about being scrappy, extremely thoughtful, and purposeful. Over time, there wasn’t enough. I had to start taking out of my savings and retirement and putting them into the company. Otherwise, you wouldn’t even have the opportunity to launch.

Sramana Mitra: This is one of the reasons I’m asking these questions. FinTech is a somewhat capital-intensive startup to build. It’s difficult to bootstrap FinTech startups. I’m curious to see how entrepreneurs get through that first phase of a FinTech company before they can attract some capital. Where are you doing this out of?

Eytan Bensoussan: A little bit of everywhere. We started the company remotely at first. We always had people in multiple cities. When you’re in an early-stage company, you can’t choose who you get to hire. You have to find someone of the right competence and skill and willing to go to a company that has nothing. It’s an idea. It’s a vision. Wherever we found great people, we brought them on. We had some folks in New York and San Francisco.

Sramana Mitra: Where are you based?

Eytan Bensoussan: I’m in Toronto right now. We spend a lot of our time in other offices. New York is our headquarters. Anybody that was willing to sign up for this crazy journey, we found a way to make it work.

Sramana Mitra: I run a virtual company. One Million by One Million has always been virtual. We started in 2010 as a virtual company. I’m very much in favor of virtual companies. COVID has vindicated that point of view. What was the first meaningful round of financing? When did it come in and what were the milestones against which you were able to raise that money?

Eytan Bensoussan: We raised a seed round of financing. This was about a year before we launched. We needed to show enough clarity that there was interest in what we were building that could turn into a real business. Especially because of the FinTech angle, we had all the under-the-hood pieces in place. You had the infrastructure that it would take to get there, the partners, the compliance clearance.

Third, we had the right team in place. That was a moving target. You might have the right team at one moment but someone leaves. You’re always trying to find this magic moment where everything is working together. Then you go and try your hand at fundraising. This was around when we were about to launch. We had enough pieces in place where we had a deal sign with a partner.

We had a growing waitlist and we had a team with enough special skills that you would look and say, “I could conceive that this is a kernel of a team that can get there.” Then it was about telling how this connects to a broader story that we’re building on.

Sramana Mitra: Who else is on that team to justify what part of that skillset that investors were asking you for?

Eytan Bensoussan: There’s me and my co-founder Justin who’s deep on ops compliance. That was his real side. We have a group of engineers, designers, and product managers. That was the core nucleus of it. As we grew and revenue grew, it warranted investments in more specialized skillsets. We built, over time, a fraud engineering department and then a growth department.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: NorthOne CEO Eytan Bensoussan
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