Alex Bouaziz

🚀 Last Chance to Join the Permissionless Opportunities Event With over 50 startups already signed up, and thousands of votes from the community - applications to https://lnkd.in/dGidMeF6 are closing in 24 hours. 🤝 We've teamed up with the titans of the industry to arm web3 startups with everything they need to skyrocket. If you have a web3 startup, with a live product - wether it’s infrastructure, Defi, Gaming, Security or RWAs -> this event is for you. 👉 Applying is FREE and permissionless: No pitches. No gatekeepers. Just create your profile in under 3 minutes, and you’re set! Here’s what’s offered for the winners : 🤑 Pitch to and network with 50 VCs & Angel Investors across the US, Europe, SEA, and MENA. 🌎 Direct access to top blockchains for partnerships, grants, or accelerator programs. 🧠 Exclusive 1:1 mentorship sessions and live workshops with industry leaders on fundraising, GTM, PR, and more. 💸 Discounts & credits on essential software and services. 📢 A spot in a PR campaign across major media channels. Applications close on May 1st at 1:00 PM ET. 👉 https://lnkd.in/dGidMeF6

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I'm absolutely ecstatic to announce that Skuad has formed a powerful alliance with Payoneer, marking a monumental chapter in our journey. This partnership is a shining example of our relentless drive to empower businesses around the world and reshape global employment. To our extraordinary Skuad team – you are the true architects of this incredible achievement. Together, we’ve faced challenges with courage, celebrated victories with joy, and grown stronger with every stride. I am deeply thankful for the passion, hard work, and unwavering dedication you’ve poured into realizing our shared vision. This moment of triumph belongs to you! To the Payoneer team, I’m overflowing with gratitude for your trust in our vision and for offering us this incredible opportunity. The world is wide open before us, and with Payoneer’s support, we’re ready to reach new heights. Your partnership fuels our momentum, and I am beyond excited about the bright future we’re set to create together. A special thanks to Sundeep Sahi – your wisdom, leadership, and unwavering support have been instrumental in bringing us to this moment. Your guidance has been a cornerstone of our success, and I am deeply grateful for everything. To everyone who has walked alongside us on this remarkable journey, your support, belief, and encouragement have been our guiding light. Here’s to a future filled with growth, innovation, and limitless possibilities. Together, we are unstoppable, and I couldn’t be more proud or thankful! #GlobalGrowth #Empowerment #Teamwork #Partnerships #Innovation #FutureReady #SuccessStory #Gratitude #NewBeginnings #SkyIsTheLimit

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Week 6️⃣ of starting a company: Building First MVP, First Angel Commit and VC Talks It’s been a now pretty exactly 1 and a half months of officially going out of my job to start something new. Here are 3 things we did and learned this week: 1️⃣ Building First MVP After talking to 80 user we started to map the existing user journey on Miro. We added 2 new simple “solution steps” to the flow on the biggest pain point we saw. Then I built the first hi-fi version in Figma (we use an existing UI kit with auto layout). Lastly, I called some tech friends to ask what would be the quickest way to build X. In the end we decided to go with Retool for our use case, low-code Excel based builder. It took quite some iterations to reduce what we want to build to the bare minimum that would solve the core problem. Tbh I got a bit too excited on what the full-fledged product could look like, and wasted a few hours designing, in the end my co-founder tamed me. We went back and asked our selves how can we increase speed to insight; what’s the minimum version we can launch quickly that would help us significantly increase confidence. 2️⃣ First Angel Commit On Monday we could close our first strategic advisor/angel, who was one of my co-founder’s old bosses, highly relevant for us since he is well-connected in a regulated space with high barriers of entry (more on details once we go out of stealth). 3️⃣ VC Talks We talked to 6 VCs and 3 Angels this week, most intros came through first and secondary connections. We prepared a simple pitch deck: Mission, Exec Summary, Problem, Solution, Why Now, Market Size (we always skipped that - we now do a proper bottom-up of SOM; no BS trillion dollar top-down number), Competition, Team, Milestones. We do not want to fundraise at this moment, but want to have them poke holes and get feedback on what traction benchmark we should reach to get enough confidence. Key feedback was on (1) Distribution and (2) Long-Term Vision. (1) Distribution because we focus on SME long-tail, which have high CACs, what scalable channels we would leverage (hint: we currently go deep on Community-Led Motion which works great). (2) Long-Term Vision, what are the "plays" after the first "play", showcasing a reasonable strategic narrative on how we would embark on to hitting $100M ARR (i.e. unicorn valuation). We realized it’s all about story telling in pre-seed, crafting a catchy story and backing up the story with good assumptions and data, while showcasing we think big and can execute it! P.S. With Melting Pot we organize monthly meet-ups for entrepreneurs. We have a few spots left: 📍Berlin, Thursday 27 June: https://lu.ma/4u1f2dyk 📍Munich, Thursday 27 June: https://lu.ma/171al8ea #startup #founder #entrepreneur #berlin

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Want to know whether being part of an Accelerator is the right thing for your startup or scaleup? It's not for everyone. If you're not sure, it's definitely worth dialling into this webinar tomorrow to hear some first hand feedback and thoughts from those who have been through one of the best.

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Exciting news! 🎉 Our team at Oliv has just launched on Product Hunt! 🚀 Our AI sales assistant is here to revolutionize the way sales reps and managers connect. With features like AI-based call preparation, automatic MEDDIC scorecards, and insightful highlights, we're bridging the gap and making sales smoother than ever. We'd love your support! Show us some love and check us out here: Oliv on Product Hunt #salesassistant #AI #producthunt

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It's hard to believe it's only been two months since FAWB was officially registered as a company! As a founder, I never anticipated how quickly I'd be learning new skills. Personal growth is often understated when discussing startups, but it's been truly remarkable. Here's a glimpse of what we've achieved at FAWB in the last few months: 1️⃣ Hiring Our First Employees. Yey! A massive thank you to Bev Pullen the 2024 Broadening Horizons project for the grant that enabled us to offer four internships to Roehampton students. And a big shoutout to the University of Roehampton for managing all the HR procedures. Navigating this new terrain would have been impossible without your support! 2️⃣ Building Our Development Team Lisa Haskel has been fantastic at setting up our intern dev team with Jad Korayani and Krystian Mowinski! Together, we've been working on a small savings tool prototype, which we hope to deploy on our website soon. Exciting times ahead! 3️⃣ Diving into New Skills From UX and server management to WordPress, Elementor, Mailchimp, and more—the list is endless. 4️⃣ Mastering Social Media Creating reels three times a week is no joke! The content, videos, calendars—it can get overwhelming. But Fernanda Ramirez Montesdeoca has been an absolute star in this arena. Check out our efforts on Instagram (https://lnkd.in/emGwvCHE)! 5️⃣ Learning the Art of Filming Big thanks to Asma Ulusow for teaching us filming tricks and editing our videos on CapCut. We’ve learned about tripods, lighting, cameras, and just how long it actually takes. It’s been a fantastic journey! The poster below captures a special moment for our team (and the one and a half hours it took to set up and get all the shots!). We're applying for further funding from Santander X to keep our project moving forward. Next on our agenda: refining our savings tool and launching a LinkedIn newsletter and a web newsletter. Stay tuned for more exciting updates! Thank you to everyone who has contributed to this project so far. 🚀 #Startups #Growth #Teamwork #Innovation #FAWB #BroadeningHorizon #SantanderX #PersonalGrowth #Entrepreneurship #Milestones

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Klarna decided to sell its checkout product to consortium of investors led by Kamjar Hajabdolahi, CEO & Founding Partner at BLQ Invest for an amount € 485M, due to channel conflicts. https://lnkd.in/gQRHFTWh In my professional life I have often been asked to worry about channel conflict and hence this became a case of interest for me 😎 So why did Klarna built checkout and then had to sell ? ⌛ Checkout was launched in 2012. Assuming build started in 2011, BNPL was a new concept, and e-commerce was still growing. Traditional acquirers likely avoided new fintech payment methods. 👎 Limited PSPs: Stripe (launched in 2011 in the US) and Adyen (launched in 2005, with an acquiring license in 2012) were not as dominant or globally accessible as they are now. 💹 Klarna wanted rapid growth, requiring significant spending on consumer awareness. A robust distribution network was essential to quickly activate new leads, necessitating control over merchant integration. 🦄 Klarna, not as well-known in 2011, needed to ensure a consistent user experience across all interactions, leading to the development of its own checkout system. Over time, Klarna's checkout product evolved became market leader in Nordics ( market share : 40% in Sweden, 20% in Nordics ). For rest of the world Klarna forged partnerships with Stripe (2021) and Adyen (2019) . In 2023, Klarna deepened its partnership with Adyen, making Adyen its acquiring bank for all markets. Despite these partnerships, Klarna's checkout product must have had to evolve to support merchant needs matching those of competition. Klarna also launched Paynow in 2021 to pay from bank account or cards. Klarna claims paynow now is 40% of its online channel and 90% of its offline channel ( Annual report 2021 ). This meant going directly against its partners 🤜🤛 Channel conflict was inevitable. Klarna, aiming for an IPO in 2024, needed to demonstrate a clear path to scaling in the US. If parters have to heavy lift distribution in US than Checkout had to go. Even though checkout present robust numbers, keeping it alive meant investing in its upkeep/ improvement and distribution. Hence I think they must have thought about spinning it off the day they signed with stripe. 🧑‍🎓Key Lessons 📌 Build your distribution network if * You are bringing a completely new product to market which distribution network does not exist or existing distribution network can not cater to. * You have special needs on how the product is being made available to your customers. 📌A build decision might change to partner when market evolves. In 2024 more and more customer value is created via partnerships 📌 A buy decision is then left to mostly to acquire customers or make quick entry to a new market. 🤔 #FinTech #BNPL #Ecommerce #DistributionStrategy #Klarna #PaymentMethods #BusinessStrategy #TechNews #Innovation #GrowthStrategy #Partnerships #MarketDynamics #Product #channelconflicts

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