Source: SPEEDA Edge research

Background

Questions

1. What is Kapital and what inspired you guys to start the company?
2. This is interesting because it's the flip of what I expected. I was expecting the entry point was more access to capital. But you're saying access to capital is already there, but it's a commodity?
3. Mercury started as a bank and now they're layering on additional services. They have a card, they have lightweight expense management, they have venture debt, and you could imagine them also adding in bill pay and some of that stuff. As they layer on more product, does that then resemble what Kapital is, or is it fundamentally different?
4. When you say that in the US or in Europe, you have to upload the invoice versus at Kapital, everything's electronic in Latin America, is that because there's existing SaaS and fragmentation in the US and therefore that's the easiest way for these systems to talk to each other versus in Latin America, there's just Kapital? Or is there something else that I'm missing?
5. Can you talk about Kapital's customers? Why do they choose Kapital and what alternatives might they be looking at?
6. You mentioned ‘the Mexican IKEA,’ is there a point right now where companies graduate off of Kapital maybe because they’re too big?
7. Are there any key features that are on the roadmap right now that enterprise customers need?
8. In the aftermath of the Silicon Valley Bank implosion, one of the things that was recommended was diversifying your funds across multiple banks. So, instead of just having one bank where all your funds are, you diversify your risk so that you make sure you have FDIC insurance in the amounts across multiple banks.
9. One of the most interesting things—and I know Drib and Arjun highlighted this in their piece—is monetizing early and having a subscription SaaS product. In your case, it's the automated intelligence dashboard. Can you talk about how you identified the opportunity to charge upfront for SaaS versus trying to offer as much for free as possible, which is how Mercury and some of these other folks got started?
10. Can you explain the different revenue streams that you have and what the revenue split looks like? Or what the order is for those different revenue streams?
11. One of the neobank success stories has been Nubank. Is there anything in particular that you've learned from seeing their success when it comes to lending as a consumer neobank in Brazil? Are there any lessons that apply, or are there any lessons or things that you've taken away from their success?
12. Can you talk about the countries that you're in now? Are you only in Mexico or have you expanded into other LATAM countries? And then, also, René mentioned Southeast Asia having some similar characteristics. Is that only in terms of e-invoicing? Or is that also a potential area for expansion?
13. How do you think about or approach geographic expansion and go-to-market in new markets?
14. One of the themes of at least American and European neobanks is rising CAC, especially with increased competition and LTV flat. What structural advantages do you think Kapital has in terms of maintaining and driving down CAC?
15. I'm interested in talking more about expense management just because it's a big theme in the US with Brex and Ramp. In LATAM and in Europe, companies like Klar and Clio, there's lower interchange revenue. Can you talk about that dynamic and how that affects how you guys build your product?
16. Can you talk about fintechs like Konfio? I don't know if they're directly competitive or how you think about their positioning against not just incumbent banks, but all other fintechs?
17. We talked about net dollar retention. Can you talk about how you think about expanding it over time with your customers? What's a common trajectory of adoption of products within Kapital?
18. Can you talk about some of the financial infrastructure? I don't know if you use providers in your fintech stack—for example, in the States, Marqeta with cards, Bancorp, Stride, Evolve, Synapse—I don't know if there's any infrastructure providers that have been particularly important or that you work with? Curious to learn anything there.
19. What are your thoughts about the opportunity in payroll and global payroll? That would mean competing with companies like Deel, which have become quite large post-COVID, and then locally, LATAM companies like Ontop that do global payroll.
20. From the perspective in the States, we've seen how the recent downturn has made it harder to raise capital for startups. A lot of companies have gone under, and also, net dollar retention has dropped. It's been harder to grow. What’s the environment right now in LATAM with respect to these macro-dynamics and how does that make it ripe for Kapital? As you said, it's great timing right now. How does that translate into good timing for Kapital?
21. Can you talk about the fraud problem in LATAM? Because we were talking about cards, for example, and how hard it is.
22. Anything else we didn’t chat about that you wanted to discuss?