Caroline Tran cold-DMed the CEO of Tasmania's largest telco through a Facebook group, no product, no brand, no payments background. He said yes. That became Hello Clever: $15M ARR, 20 countries, 60 banking relationships.
Caroline Tran is the co-founder and CEO of Hello Clever, a global payments and embedded loyalty platform. We talk about the pivot that saved the company, the 11pm call that killed her biggest deal (and became her best hire), and why she now validates demand before writing a single line of code.
Chapters
0:00 Cold open 0:43 Meet Caroline Tran 0:54 What Hello Clever is 1:34 From corporate to founder 2:32 Launching during Covid 3:16 Running out of money 3:23 The return-payments conversation 4:56 The first merchant 6:59 You never forget your first customer 9:57 The flip to exponential growth 12:24 The deal that almost broke her 14:46 Team culture 17:42 What she used to believe that was wrong 19:33 The most valuable lesson 20:09 The game Transcript Search or select a timestamp to jump ▾ 0:00 Caroline Tran: And I thought payment is real time. And he said, no, it's actually not. And I'm like, oh my God, okay, tell me more about this. 0:05 Speaker: Caroline Tran was building a payments company with no payment background. She started building a consumer cashback app and realized she needed to pivot. 0:14 Caroline Tran: We ran out of money, right? We need more. Either we need more capital or we pivot. 0:18 Speaker: And then found her first paying merchant on a Facebook group. 0:22 Caroline Tran: I literally reached out to him and be like, Ashley, we do have something for you. 0:25 Speaker: No brand, no product, CEO of the largest telco in Tasmania. His answer? 0:31 Caroline Tran: You got nothing to lose. 0:32 Speaker: HelloClever now processes payments across 20 countries, $15 million in annual recurring revenues. And I'm thrilled to welcome Caroline Tran on Founders in Motion. 0:43 Caroline Tran: Hi, I'm Caroline Tran, co-founder and CEO of HelloClever, and this is Founders in Motion. 0:51 Thea Ngo: Before we get into your story, for people who might not know, how do you describe HelloClover? 0:56 Caroline Tran: So HelloClover is a global financial payment technology company. So we help merchants or global businesses to accept payments in 20 countries. And on top of that, we see payment is an engine for growth, right? And that's why we have products such as embedded loyalty and Clover AI, which is a data analytics product that helps merchants understands, give them insights, understand their business on a day-to-day activities and help them grow. 1:22 Thea Ngo: Hello Clever now is a major player in fintech. I think you guys said that you crossed $50 million in ARR, which is crazy and insane, and globally as well, not just in Australia. But your story, so you moved to Australia 15 years ago, you did accounting, you did media finance. What was the moment when you realised maybe the corporate pathway wasn't the right fit? 1:44 Caroline Tran: 2021, when I was in, you know, sitting in my room in the middle of COVID And I realized what I'm doing here. 1:50 Thea Ngo: COVID makes you question life. 1:51 Caroline Tran: Yeah, questions life, correct. And I realized this is like my time to do something different. And before that, I'm always in, you know, wanting to be building a business of myself. And COVID just made everything happen. And that's where I called my co-founder, who was my high school friend. We kept in touch for years. And I know he was the smartest guy in the room and, you know, wanted to get him into, you know, doing business together. 2:17 Thea Ngo: You know what I've learned from this? Always keep in contact with your smart friends. 2:20 Caroline Tran: Exactly, exactly. You never know, you know? 2:22 Thea Ngo: Okay, so you had this itch to build something of your own, but ideas are easy and action, that's where kind of the real magic happens. So you launched HelloClever during COVID at the peak of uncertainty of life. What was the spark or kind of the moment that really made you think, oh, like this could be an idea with legs? 2:43 Caroline Tran: When you started a business, it actually takes a couple of times to get it right. So when we, uh, when we found, uh, Hello Clever, it was actually the original idea was building financial apps for Gen Zs and millennials. And that's why the name is Clever, because we wanted people to be clever with their money. 3:01 Thea Ngo: Yeah. 3:01 Caroline Tran: Um, and I thought, you know, it's a great idea. We've got like thousands of users downloading our apps, but we quickly realized for us to be able to scale this, this product, it requires a lot of capital. And Australia is not a market for consumers consumer product in general, right? Um, so we quickly pivoted and realized more problems, right, in payments. I had a chat with one of our advisors and he mentioned about real-time payments, and I'm like, actually, what, what real-time payment? I thought payment is real-time. And he said, no, it's actually not. And I'm like, oh my God, okay, tell me more about this. Was a global chief compliance officer at a really big fintech company. There's unicorn, they raise millions of dollars. Then we doing our market research and kind of like realized actually, yeah, no one was doing real-time payments in Australia, specifically on the consumer-to-business payment. So up until that point, businesses only know how to accept payment with Visa and Mastercard, right? And real-time payments came about and we were like, realized like, actually, this is great, right? Businesses get benefits of getting capital instantly. So we were, yeah, one of the first fintechs that launched consumer-to-business payments in early 2022 in Australia. And that was a really great moment for us to realize, yep, we wanted to be everything for business. We wanted to focus our product now on the merchant-focused side. We love building consumer products. Up until this point, if there is opportunity, I would love to invest more and more into building consumers because the most valuable tech companies in the world is consumer tech. When we realized that we need to switch or pivot it because obviously we run out of money, right? We need more, either we need more capital or we pivot it. 2021, 2022, It was, yeah, it's, you know, interest rates starting to increase and, and getting more capital into the business is quite hard, especially pitching a consumer product in Australia. So that's where we, we quickly pivoted and launched a product that, you know, immediately could commercialize and start making revenue. 4:56 Thea Ngo: Okay. So you've made the pivot over to merchant and but you have zero connections in banking or merchant e-commerce, anything like that. So can you walk me through how did you land your first merchant? 5:08 Caroline Tran: It was a merchant who actually based in Tasmania, and he posted a question on a Facebook group that I was part of, and he was asking, yeah, I was like, who has, you know, who's doing real-time payment, right? Because his business so particular. So there was one of the largest telco companies in Tasmania. And he's looking for real-time payments because then he can get, you know, his customers pay with their internet bills and everything using real-time payments, right? He didn't want to see Visa or MasterCard. So I literally reached out to him and be like, Ashley, we do have something for you. And I remember I had a call with him and, and then I brought in my co-founder Gavin and another salesperson. He's also a young guy, went in and have a chat with this guy who's like CEO of like one of the largest telco companies in Tasmania. And he literally just signed up with us as the first merchant. Back then, we, you know, we literally had no brand, right? We were literally just building out and building our first product. So, and then since then, he'd been giving— so this first merchant been giving us a lot of feedback to how we can continue to improve our product. And that was so valuable for someone like, obviously, you know, as for a business of that size to give us a lot of like insights and continue to like improve our, our way of working. So it's lucky, but also we would just go for it. You got nothing to lose. 6:33 Thea Ngo: And then at that point, what did the product look like? 6:36 Caroline Tran: So at that point, we were building out the real-time payments connections. And in 2022, there's not many providers that could give you access into PayID, if you're familiar with that, and PayTo. We were the first that raised our hands up and be like, yep, let's just do it. So we quickly built the first version of our product and signed that merchant up and start generating that revenue. 6:57 Thea Ngo: You never forget your first customer. 6:59 Caroline Tran: No, you never forget your first customer. 7:01 Thea Ngo: When is a product enough to sell? Like, how would you advise someone that is in fintech, more of a regulated industry, to figure that? 7:09 Caroline Tran: You can never wait for it to be 100% complete. Or like 100% perfect, right? Because that's the definition of MVP. So MVP really means something. You need to start building something small and getting feedback from merchants, start to commercialize it. Because if you continue to, I guess, building more and more, you don't know whether it would fit your merchants anyway or your customers anyway. If we wanted to launch a new product, it's always MVP. Right? And then we continue to get feedback and fine-tune it as we go. So we've got 3 main products that part of Clever AI. So the first one is Clever AI Forecaster. So what it means is we help merchants to forecast their sales and see the future. So if you come to us and be like, hey, tell us what is my sales going to be in the next 30 days, we'll tell you that. And then another product is called Clever Accelerate Insight. So we actually give you proactive insights. whether your business is going up or down, what is your seasonality, and, you know, give you alerts. And then clever data analytics. So we help you to understand your customer segment, help you understand, you know, where is the best time to do cashback campaigns. So then, yeah, you get feedback from merchants and they'll be like, yeah, no, this is great. You know, it's helped me to replace a business analyst that could cost me $100K a year. And then we got feedback around merchants that wanting us to do more with Clover AI, right? Yeah, would you help me to see my, my sales in the next, you know, 30 days? Why not like giving me more insights into like other things like inventory level, CAC, like what kind of like marketing budget I could spend to acquire certain customers, that kind of things. So we continue to fine-tune it because if I just start to build everything in one go, then I can't commercialize, like it's just too much. And then it just costs a lot of resources that you don't know, maybe it's not going to be a success. 9:01 Thea Ngo: When you just go into a hole and you build, you don't think about like what are the key use cases. 9:07 Caroline Tran: Exactly. 9:08 Thea Ngo: And sometimes you build something that's actually very unnecessary. 9:10 Caroline Tran: Yeah, exactly. 9:11 Thea Ngo: And then within your first few customers, how did you even figure out how to charge? 9:16 Caroline Tran: So when we first signed our first merchant, we gave them a really— I wouldn't say like like more cheaper, but it's just more like reasonable. Will you actually speak to people around your industry and do research how your competitor is charging? What is their, you know, how, what is their business model, right? We get feedback from merchants. Actually, your competitor is charging this much, right? And we'll be like, oh, okay. But now we do have a really well-structured commercial model. So I have obviously a CEO, I've got a general manager who's you know, really strong background in payment. So they know the payment industry really well. So as soon as we put out a proposal, the merchant's like, yep, this is perfect. 9:57 Thea Ngo: In the last kind of year, you've had this exponential growth. Like, when do you think it really flipped for you? 10:03 Caroline Tran: It really happened when we started our strategy around multi-geo, multi-infrastructure, and multi-product, right? So it's so important. So we started in Australia in, as I mentioned, 2022, and we've been hyper-focused to Australia, in Australia until like actually early 2024. So it was 18 months hyper-focused just Australia. And we see great traction, right? We've got merchants, we've got like great customers onboarding with us. But then because payment is so complex and you work with a lot of banks that has really tight compliance requirements, so for you to depend on one single bank to grow your business is not ideal. What if they say no to you, right? right? And they just turn them— turn you off. So that's why in around mid-2024, we start our strategy around, as I mentioned, getting more and more banking relationships globally. And for you to get into the banking ecosystem, it's not easy. What sort of compliance you have, what sort of licensing you have, what sort of like policies you have. So we quickly realized, yeah, we need to really build our foundation from the ground up, although we already have something, but obviously building out even more strengthened compliance structure. So that's why we got our COO, our compliance manager, our head of compliance to really build out policies and frameworks for us just to satisfy. Yeah, we were a startup, but we also have like really strong compliance process. And then, you know, licensing, right? So we apply for our license as well. We're fortunate because we got our Australian Financial Services license now, which allows us to do a lot of things in Australia. And then, yeah, quickly doing that and then starting to get in touch with banks across 20 markets, right? Banks in Japan, banks in Philippines, especially in Southeast Asia. Philippines is our strongest market. And then you've got banks in the US and banks in Australia, which where we're based, right? So at the moment, we've got about 60 banking relationships globally instead of like 2, like 24 months ago. Without sponsoring banks or without a banking relationship, you cannot facilitate payment. That's one of the challenges that we have. 12:12 Thea Ngo: Once you're also connected to the Shopify ecosystem, that's international already, so you sort of have the demand side. 12:19 Caroline Tran: Yeah. 12:19 Thea Ngo: Now you just have to make sure that you can supply all that. Yes. I want to talk about a story that you told me. Yeah. Um, there's a deal that almost broke you. 12:27 Caroline Tran: Okay. 12:27 Thea Ngo: A massive contract you were about to sign until everything fell apart the night before. Does this ring a bell? 12:33 Caroline Tran: Yeah. Yes. 12:33 Thea Ngo: Okay, so could you take us through that moment, like what happened at 11 PM that night? 12:38 Caroline Tran: There was a really large merchant wanted to start with us, and I received a call from the merchant side, the general manager at the merchant side, that they're not doing it anymore. Like, they're like, yep, nah, we shut down Australia, we don't want to be in Australia anymore. Obviously he didn't give me a reason because I don't think he knows the reason from his his side as well. So I quickly called him and explained, like, asked the questions, right? What's happening? Up until this point, I didn't know what happened. So, but I think it's also opened new doors for us because now Rash, who was the general manager at that company, now working with us, right? Because he's got all the relationship with the banks, he got a relationship with the merchants. So Rush was our— yeah, so he started with us immediately after I mentioned you should come work with us, right? So you need someone or you need a new company that could facilitate all of these merchants' demand, right? So we— yeah, I quickly like talked to him the day after and be like, hey, this is us, right? Come join because we eager, we wanting to grow with you. And he has been like with us since like 3 years. He's now with us nearly 3 years. Really happy. Based in Singapore, our regional hub. He now has a team of 10 people working with him. Super happy. And I think, yeah, if I didn't call him that night, he probably would have gone somewhere else, right? And I have to say, Raj is like one of the best general managers or salesperson in Southeast Asia. 14:18 Thea Ngo: Really? 14:19 Caroline Tran: Some VCs told me that. Like, you have Rush Caroline, you don't need anyone else. I'm like, great, that's good, that's awesome. But for me to convince someone who's stuck with it, I need to give them assurance, right? Give them assurance, I give them the vision, we're gonna succeed together, right? So that's why, yeah. And he's just been, yeah, growing with us ever since. 14:39 Thea Ngo: Yeah, I love that, you know, turning a bad situation into an opportunity. 14:44 Speaker: Yeah. 14:44 Thea Ngo: So talk to me a bit more about team culture. So how do you think about like Hiring the first few people and building the right dynamics to make this— to let this team thrive? 14:55 Caroline Tran: When we first started hiring, uh, the first few, uh, full-time employees was obviously, um, yeah, quite challenging because, you know, we're still small, people still need assurance. Myself and my co-founder, we're all about empowering people to do their jobs. We don't like, like go to people and be like micromanage them at all. We trust them to do the best of their job. So hiring the first few people and, you know, continue to grow the business and get everyone connected. So we're a team of like nearly 70 employees globally. We've got like 5 offices, right? And we've got people who speak like 10 languages like among Teleclever. So I get people together in one day, like literally every Monday, and we do all hands. So we call Clever Together. 15:42 Thea Ngo: Clever Together. 15:42 Caroline Tran: which is our all-hands. 15:43 Thea Ngo: So this is like everyone globally? 15:45 Caroline Tran: So they call in on Monday. So normally what we'll do is I'll do CEO updates, right? What's going on last week, this week. My co-founder will do CTO update, and then we'll have a session, it's called Clever Pitch. Everyone, right? Whether you're an engineer, whether you're an ops manager, whether it is your CFO, CTO, whatever. So show us your perspective about Hello Clever. So basically, What, like, from your perspective as an engineer, what do you think HelloClever is? From your perspective from a compliance manager, what is— what do you think HelloClever is? Right? So it's actually sparked a lot of ideas. Your perspective from an engineer is different perspective from like a salesperson. 16:24 Speaker: Yeah. 16:25 Caroline Tran: So the engineers would then present, you know, a lot more about technical things, right? HelloClever is a payment solution that could, you know, generate payments in 20 countries, right? And a salesperson will be like, yeah, HelloClover is this growth engine, help you increase revenues, et cetera. It's so cool to see like people from different departments that come up with a deck, although it's like 3 or 4 slides. 16:47 Thea Ngo: Yeah. 16:47 Caroline Tran: But like seeing their perspective, like from, you know, from their side. We also do Clever Ideas. So Clever Ideas is like propose a feature that you think is gonna be cool and merchants or consumers are gonna love it. We have like a session, it's called Turn It Up. So our CFO over in Australia, like, literally, like, all the failed marketing that you see across the industry. And also we have, you know, um, company trip and, um, you know, team offsites really regularly because I want people to connect and to know each other. 17:18 Thea Ngo: You can't really replace the in-person interactions. 17:21 Caroline Tran: Exactly. 17:22 Thea Ngo: And then on the other hand of things, it's like hiring is all about, like, that vision and empowering people. Like, no one works for a startup for kind of like the base salary, right? Like it's all about like they align with the mission and wanna grow with the business. But super cool. So looking back on that journey from idea to near disaster to raising capital, what's one thing you used to believe about building a business that turned out to be completely wrong? 17:49 Caroline Tran: Really fast is building products. 'Cause we have a super agile and talented engineers based in Vietnam. But if you build a product, it isn't necessarily that it will commercialize. That's why at the moment what we are doing right now is doing a lot of research before we actually start building something. Who's our customers, right? Do we have demand for this, right? Will they pay for this, right? So in the past, there's, you know, occasions where we just build product and without realizing, oh, actually no one's buying it, like, you know. So I think that's one of the things that we thought, you know, we could have done better because it's just wasting time and resources. That's one of the things that I, you know, we're now starting to, you know, get as we grow. Before we build product, we have to do a lot of research and identify demand. So if I go to my co-founder right now and tell him to do something, he will come back to me and be like, Justified demand. 18:35 Thea Ngo: I also think that co-founder dynamic is very, it's very great too. It's like having someone that can challenge you. 18:41 Caroline Tran: Yeah. 18:41 Thea Ngo: And like actually pushes you back on like certain things. 18:43 Caroline Tran: Yeah, because otherwise, you know, he's just wasting his engineers' time, you know. 18:47 Thea Ngo: And then what has been the most valuable lesson you think you've learned throughout this founder journey? 18:51 Caroline Tran: Most valuable lessons for me, getting the right people in the team, great management team, great leadership team who've, you know, got experience in doing whether it's payments or like whether it's B2B sales. One of the things that I learned during the entire journey was just go with it. And because we pivoted a couple of times, it's not like you will find the right problem right away. And as of today, we continue to see problems as we go. So, so as we find problem, we have to, you know, build a solution for it. And that's how we identify gaps. And that's how we getting the momentum continue to go and quickly adapt to the market condition. As you can see, AI is everything now. 19:31 Speaker: Yes. 19:31 Caroline Tran: So, so that's why, you know, you have to be super focusing on how the market is reacting and how it can apply into your business use case. 19:40 Thea Ngo: So, okay, for someone that is maybe still in their 9 to 5, like the Caroline of 2020, um, what's one thing that you would advise them to do before they kind of take that leap? 19:52 Caroline Tran: Definitely make sure that you have enough money to do it. 19:56 Thea Ngo: Important. 19:57 Caroline Tran: Yeah, important. Also, look after your your health and have fun while you're at it. One thing I wish I could have done is that I would have started earlier. 20:05 Thea Ngo: Oh my God, I love that. Before I let you go, we like to play a little game. Okay, so let's think about how we can get people paid for being clever. 20:13 Caroline Tran: Yeah. 20:13 Thea Ngo: So what's an underrated side hustle that more people should be trying? 20:17 Caroline Tran: I would have to say dropshipping because I had that. I used to run a dropshipping business before HelloClever, and it was fantastic. Dropship from like Vietnam, Say it's Asia or even China and sell it to like globally because it's so easy to do that now. 20:32 Thea Ngo: And on the flip side, what's the most overrated side hustle? 20:35 Caroline Tran: Most overrated side hustles— consultant. Consultants actually so, I guess, specific to their expertise that sometimes I feel like you more— you need to be more generalist. Consultants, I think, is a little bit overrated. Everyone call themselves consultants. 20:51 Thea Ngo: Okay, so what's the best financial advice you've ever received? 20:54 Caroline Tran: Invest in startups. If you find the right opportunities, it actually could, yeah, help your financial situation. I mean, I do invest in startups here and there, seeing myself, you know, getting a little, you know, little resources for me just to invest in the future of technologies. It's just great for a better human being. And so if I do have opportunities, I would love to invest more in biotech, health tech, fintech, obviously, but I'm already in fintech, so I know what's going on. 21:21 Thea Ngo: And then if you could instantly solve one financial headache for everyone around the world, what would it be? 21:27 Caroline Tran: Oh my God, it would be student debt. People like my age, right, still paying for student debt. I'm like, are you serious? Like, it's been 20 years. What's going on? 21:37 Thea Ngo: Okay, Caroline, thank you for joining me. 21:39 Caroline Tran: No, thanks for having me. It's great. I love the questions. No transcript lines match that phrase. Try fewer words.
▶
▶
▶