Building a Global Hardcore Financial Technology Company from Brazil: Ricardo Josua, CEO of Pismo (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Were these Brazilian banks?

Ricardo Josua: The first ones, yes. The first one we went to was the largest bank in Brazil. We ended up closing this large contract. It was an experiment. Just having the open door there changed everything.

Sramana Mitra: Now you can go to all the other Brazilian banks and say that you’re working with the largest bank.

Ricardo Josua: For B2B, signaling is very important. Important as well is the feedback you get from players like this. They will criticize and analyze. In our previous company, we started with the smaller players and went up. The problems would appear gradually. What we had built in governance and control was not enough for a large retail chain. We would patch things up. This is, by the way, advice I’d give to everyone who’s looking at B2B. The name of the game for B2B, more often than not, is whale-hunting.

Sramana Mitra: In some cases, it works. Salesforce.com is a classic story of going bottom to top. We have seen all of those.

Ricardo Josua: I’m talking from my experience. I see people that were alongside us. It’s been very fortuitous.

Sramana Mitra: Then what happens next in terms of building this business?

Ricardo Josua: What we thought was enough needed a lot of tweaks. I keep telling people that in technology, everywhere I look, I see an unequal distribution of time versus visible delivery. The first 80% of any product is probably the easiest part for most businesses I know. The first version goes out. You have the product working. It just works at a certain scale or works with a certain depth. I think the struggle we had was trying to hold our ground. They were extremely helpful and very fair but they’re a huge organization. There’s a lot of pressure to do things for them. It was very stressful.

Sramana Mitra: What kind of deal sizes were you getting?

Ricardo Josua: At that point, we were doing deals that were about $70,000 a year on average.

Sramana Mitra: That’s a very good start.

Ricardo Josua: It’s a very long sales cycle. We didn’t have a sales structure until 1.5 months ago. We worked four years just dealing with referrals. The following 20 clients came not just from referrals but referrals from people who have worked with us directly.

Sramana Mitra: All within Brazil?

Ricardo Josua: Within Latin America. We just started to expand outside of LatAm last October.

Sramana Mitra: Tell me about what’s happening on the financing side. Let’s say these 20 clients that came from referrals.

Ricardo Josua: We just had a small follow-on to help us negotiate with the bank, but that was it. Then, last year, we came to the decision that we needed a global footprint. We had been talking to a lot of people in different markets that were happy with what we were showing.

Sramana Mitra: There was no competition outside of the Latin American market for what you do?

Ricardo Josua: There is. We built a system that integrates payment and banking, which are usually sold separately. In banking, we are competing with the common players in terminals and newer solutions like Mambo and Thought Machine. There’s plenty of competition there.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Building a Global Hardcore Financial Technology Company from Brazil: Ricardo Josua, CEO of Pismo
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