Taking the Pain Out of Payments - Hiroki Takeuchi, Co-Founder and CEO GoCardless [S8.E1]

Hiroki Takeuchi, the co-founder and CEO of GoCardless started in
2011. GoCardless is a star of the blossoming UK FinTech scene-
last valued at $2.1b, the business is on a mission to take the
pain out of payments for businesses of all shapes and sizes –
from your local gym collecting monthly membership right through
to the Uk’s biggest utility companies.


Payment collection is a problem as old as time, and in creating a
bank payment network to rival the card networks like Visa and
Mastercard , it is also an incredibly complex ecosystem to
navigate and operate in. But Go Cardless has seen tremendous
success – it currently processes over $35b in payments annually
from close to 100,000 customers.


Aside from regulatory complexity that is only heightened when you
throw cross border payments into the mix, the challenge of
scaling a business that form day one  has had such a variety
of customer shapes and sizes gives rise to some wonderful lessons
for operators.


Hiroki’s personal story is incredibly inspiring. The founder’s
journey always involves a level of grit and determination to
overcome adversity, but Hiroki takes it to a new level; five
years into the Go Cardless journey, a bike accident resulted in a
spinal cord injury. If anything, it gave him a him a perspective
on life and leadership that has enabled Go Cardless to flourish
like it has.


Show Notes:


(02:12): Founding Story


(06:45): Why direct debit?


(10:03): Unraveling the complexity around cloud-based payments


(12:31): Navigating the rules and regulations on collecting
payments


(14:02): GoCardless’ competitive advantage


(19:00): Scaling challenges when expanding internationally


(21:52): G2M success via partnerships


(24:21): GoCardless’ culture journey


(26:55): Embedding and living company values


(28:26): Leading the business post bicycle accident


(31:10): Evolution of leadership when scaling a business