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Story 5 – 20th January 2022
Nicholas Jeffery - President & CEO, RAYL Innovations Inc
This is the fifth story out of a collection of bi-weekly fireside chats, which have evolved as our business does. The theme is about the Trials, Tribulations, and Triumphs of bringing a multi-faceted startup entering the "FINTech" space while at the same time building a runway for RAYL to become a Global "Challenger Financial Institution."
I hope you have enjoyed the first four chats from "The Birth of a Unicorn" series, where we have explored building a brand, vision, team, management tools, and in our last issue, we discussed raising capital. If you have any other topics you would like us to explore, do shout out to me at njeffery@rayl.com. This one is about technology…
"If there is no competition, there is no market."
A quote coined during the `80s, which in my opinion, does not hold true anymore. Corporations are being funded to be disruptive, where there is no competition at the time of launch. Consider Uber, which brought together a collection of existing technologies to disrupt a stagnant vertical industry, in this example, the urban licensed taxi market.
Looking at RAYL, our evolving FinTech corporation, we are bringing three business strategies together, simultaneously, using existing technologies, but like Uber, disrupting the norm, in a lackluster vertical.
Our strategy has been to use open-source software, develop a propriety technology stack, and acquire businesses for stock, to get into the market as quickly as possible.
This strategy is not unusual, but it does come with some challenges and opportunities. The underlying technology framework or platform code can differ (PHP / Python), so when RAYL had the vision of making the three businesses and all the modules Interoperable, it has had to work hard, creating conduits between different platforms to make the customer journey seamless. It's getting there. You need to watch out for outsourced charging structures; some provide free software until you go commercial, and they charge exorbitant fees; luckily, we caught that one, but watch out.
As CEO, I've realized that technology is only an enabler; it's people that matter in a FinTech business, probably for IOT business. My one tip here is to attract the best team you can afford. If you are outsourcing a lot of the build in the early days, you need a proficient CTO to
manage the developer teams around the world, manage the infrastructure and build out the vision. RAYL has IT teams in the Dominican Republic, Canada, Eastern Europe, and India. Still, it works really well, and we are building the customer support strategy on a "Follow the Sun" strategy, so we have Tier 2 subject matter experts on every continent.
Given we are in the FinTech space, we have another complication, we are required to implement a layer of certifications and regulations to build out as we deploy the applications, such as data location-based compliance. Global General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a new one to most, addresses the transfer of personal data worldwide. GDPR&'s primary aim is to enhance individuals' control and rights over their personal data and simplify international businesses' regulatory environment. It is not complicated but needs to be part of the strategy from day one.
I love this even if it is from a competitive business in one of our modules, "Design adds value faster than it adds costs." -- Joel Spolsky, web programmer, writer, and creator of Trello.
If you have any questions specifically about RAYL or being a CEO of a Unicorn in the making, feel free to drop me a line at njeffery@rayl.com.
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