Todd Ablowitz Co-Founder & Co-CEO of Infinicept

Todd: 00:00:00

what we hope for is to be this infrastructure layer across payments and um, In a way that is agnostic to the different providers. We don't want to go build a lending product. We wanna work with the best lending products. We don't want to go build a banking as a service product. We wanna make the connectivity between payments and banking and lending and all the other things seamless so that software companies and others have the opportunity to choose their vendors of choice.

undefined: 00:00:36

Welcome to Bridges to Excellence Podcast. Inspired leadership in payments and fintech. Bringing you conversations with payments most fascinating people on top of their game. Leaders, influencers, experts, and innovators. Each weekly episode turns our guests wisdom into practical advice. Their personal journey starts now. are meant to inspire and challenge you to explore your possibilities. Here's your host, Desmond Nicholson. In this episode part of our Founders series, we're talking to Todd Abowitz, Co-founder and Co-CEO of Infinicept. Todd is a globally recognized authority on payment technology, mobile payments, and emerging trends. Todd founded Double Diamond Consulting in 2008 to help payments industry clients solve their most critical business challenges. Then in 2014, Todd, along with Deana Rich. Co-founded Infinicept, making them both Co-founders and Co-CEOs. Infinicept provides tools and services that enable companies to get payments going their way as a well-respected thought leader in the industry. Investors, media analysts, and industry watchers rely on Todd for expert advice, trend insights, and consulting. He has written articles and spoken about topics such as how embedded finance is changing the way financial services are delivered, and why openness and transparency. are good business Since 2020 Infinicept has experienced exponential growth tapping into the embedded finance market, which is projected to reach $585 billion by 2030. Todd will be taking us on his journey, perseverance, setbacks, dogged determination, transforming into the entrepreneur he has become, and of course, sharing with us along the way, insightful, actionable takeaways. So stay with us.

Track 1: 00:02:48

Todd. Welcome to our show. And do you realize it's been 27 years since we've known each other?

Todd: 00:02:57

27 years and, that was

Track 1: 00:03:01

I.

Todd: 00:03:01

pretty close to my First day in payments.

Track 1: 00:03:03

Incredible, isn't it? Anyway, we'll catch up later. Okay, Todd, take us back to your early life, where you grew up and what your life was like while you were growing up.

Todd: 00:03:17

Oh, wow. I haven't had that question in a long time. I grew up, in northern New York about 20 miles as the crow flies from Canada. North of Lake Placid in a town called Potsdam. my dad was a professor still is actually, and my mom was a real estate broker. I lived in a town that was a college town, obviously I was the son of a, a college professor and it was half college students and half farmers, it was a great experience Really amazing public schools, in Potsdam, New York. Amazing. And so I got a great education growing up. wasn't a big fan of the, uh, location and couldn't wait to get out of there, and was lucky to do so when I was 16. Move into Boulder, Colorado.

Track 1: 00:04:09

So, uh, where did you attend school?

Todd: 00:04:12

University. I went to the University of Colorado

Track 1: 00:04:15

I.

Todd: 00:04:15

go buffs and, uh, excited about our new football coach. We actually were a, uh, were a national champion my sophomore year. We had a, uh, we were a great football team during that time, so I wasn't a huge football fan till I got to Boulder, but all changed. I went to school a little bit early. I went to school when I was 16, so that was an interesting experience.

Track 1: 00:04:37

And, what was your major in college?

Todd: 00:04:39

Well, it started pre-med and after about a year of experiencing boulder and all that Boulder has to offer, I switched majors to political science.

Track 1: 00:04:52

Now take us on your career path. let's start out with First Data

Todd: 00:04:59

Yeah,

Track 1: 00:04:59

shall we?

Todd: 00:05:00

after spending, an unusually long amount of time in college, I graduated, in 96 and I was screwing around all summer, finally decided by around August that I really should like, get a job and do something that would be productive and a friend of mine. that I'd worked with at a department store had been telling me about this job where he was selling credit card terminals and he offered to introduce me to the manager. And I sent a resume in, I got some letters of rec. I was very excited about this opportunity 'cause he, pumped it up so much and I, my clothes in the front seat of my two-seater car and drove down to Arizona and couch surfed with a friend went in and got a, an interview at First Data with Scotty Wagner. who's a dear friend. In fact, I think he's coming next weekend, to go skiing with me. But Scotty interviewed me on the way to the job interview. I, I drove it the day before 'cause I really was excited about this job and.

Track 1: 00:06:05

Oh.

Todd: 00:06:06

I, uh, I drove the route from my friend's house and it was a, a little ways, and it was new. It was Arizona in August, and so I knew exactly how long it was gonna take. I left really early, uh, just to make sure I wouldn't take any chances with traffic since I didn't know it very well. And about halfway to the job interview, I got a flat tire in 108 degree weather. a suit on. And I looked at the time and I said, there's no way AAA's gonna get here on time. So I changed the tire, in six minutes I remember getting to the front desk of Scotty's office and, and the. receptionist. Becky looked at me like I had three heads, and I was, I sweat through my suit and, luckily there was a gym underneath. and so I had enough time. I went down and I, took a, like I took a really quick shower and tried to like dry off my shirt and went into the interview. And by the time I got to the interview, he basically said I was hired And we ended up just talking about college basketball. I think.

Track 1: 00:07:05

Oh, that's Scotty. Okay. Anyway, take us through that path beyond First Data. That first hire, Go ahead.

Todd: 00:07:14

I was at First Data for 10 years. Uh, so the first five years selling

Track 1: 00:07:20

I.

Todd: 00:07:20

or managing salespeople and training salespeople. When I worked with you, to. Help small merchants with their payments experience. And, I, realized very quickly, within the first day that signing up a merchant account was like a mortgage. Five pages triplicate press, hard, three copies, check, of blood, firstborn child. It was, what we had to do to sign up a merchant

Track 1: 00:07:47

As they would say.

Todd: 00:07:48

Yeah. And so, it was exactly the opposite of my college experience. I just got really motivated. I thought it was a cool job, and I really enjoyed it. And so I was fortunate enough to move up very quickly. It was a growth time at First Data the late nineties were really a, very, moving time. And before I knew it, I was managing Something like half of the Wells Fargo, um, Merchant Services sales team. And then I found myself in product, because that was kind of a disaster. and they asked me to clean that up. And so I spent that first five years was really in this sort of this, this $300 million company. Called Wells Fargo Merchant Services. That was a joint venture between First Data and Wells Fargo Bank, but it operated like its own entity and it was really cool, great leadership, a lot of growth formative time. And then I moved into more of the mothership of First Data, and that second five years was a lot more stagnant. a lot more middle management as a director, working for various executives on different products. Product initiatives and there was a lot of seasoning on things like, how to speak to executives. I was really terrible at it, uh, for a long time. And it got beaten into you, how you needed to do it. We, one of my, uh, most important mentors was, Diane Vogt, who's now Diane Faro. And she, uh, man, she was tough as nails and really. Set a very, very high bar. That was difficult. I thought she hated me. we've talked about this since I thought she absolutely hated me 'cause she's just really tough. I remember when I, uh, it was time for me to go after 10 years and, I got recruited to go to a, Silicon Valley company. I'll talk about that in a minute. I remember giving notice and I was terrified to tell Diane. Her assistant thought I was like, sick or gonna tell her I had cancer or something. I sounded so bad. So I finally tell her. And then we did a conference, To kind of do, we were doing the National Association of Convenience Source Conference at that time. I, I had Seven 11 and some really big, relationships, across First Data. And I remember I gave her notice. We did some turnover with the customers, and then she and I sat down at a blackjack table and started talking and playing blackjack, and we became Best friends. I had no idea, how she felt about me. And, and we ended up after I left First Data, we became really good friends. And to this day, she's one of my dear, dear friends.

Track 1: 00:10:16

Okay, great. And what's the next step after that? After First Data.

Todd: 00:10:19

So in those days, this is 2005

Track 1: 00:10:22

Okay.

Todd: 00:10:24

There was a lot of excitement about contactless payments. and went to a company that built the best contactless payments readers in the world. they were called Vivo Tech. And we built contactless payment readers about 10 years. It turns out before anyone needed them. but Visa and MasterCard were populating them into the marketplace. uh, during the time I was there, I, was, SVP of sales, uh, so I ran global sales there and I think we sold 750,000 readers in 29 countries. during the three years I was there. Uh, what an experience. My networking, when you're inside First Data, at least in those days, it's very insular. We, knew each other, but we didn't work with that many outside in a lot of the jobs, either customers or colleagues. uh, Vivo Tech was the exact opposite. I had to meet the top brass from every single, uh, merchant acquirer, not only in the US but many of them around the world, with a focus, on the us. And was fortunate during that time to be elected to the board of the Electronic Transactions Association, in 2008. And that was really incredible. I'd been involved by then, I'd been involved in the organization for about eight years. I'd been the, I. Vice-Chair and then the chair of the technology committee. And was a huge way for me to get to know people in the industry make a difference. We started the technology innovation award, when I was Chair of, the tech committee and that that lives on to this day. We really wanted to do something that would endure. So anyway, I, was able to my network during those three years. And then what ended up happening was, you may have heard, that there was a, minor financial disturbance in 2008 uh, really put a bullet in Visa and MasterCard populating the, the readers. So when you, when you need to get acceptance of a new payment modality, you have to, drive acceptance so that when someone gets issued the card, they can use it. And so Visa, MasterCard stalled on their acceptance drive in the US because of the recession and budgets and whatnot. And so that really put pressure on Vivo Tech. And, and I got fired. well laid off, whatever you call it, because it was my fault that that happened. I joke about that.

Track 1: 00:12:44

Of course.

Todd: 00:12:45

but I really cherished that time. I worked with, another mentor of mine, Mohammad Khan, they call him now, the godfather of NFC, which is the broader technology around contactless. And, I learned more from Khan. He was a software engineer who learned how to do sales and business development, and I learned more from that man, than I can possibly tell you.

Track 1: 00:13:07

Okay, and let's not downplay this. In 2010, you were awarded, the member of the year at, ETA. Okay. Now,

Todd: 00:13:15

great organization. It's a great organization. I'm sure I'll talk about it again during the

Track 1: 00:13:19

Sure. Then of course you got into, or you founded Double Diamond. What was that about?

Todd: 00:13:25

So when I left. Vivo Tech when I left, I was still consulting with them for a long time. I, left on really good terms. I, love to joke about how it went down, but, I always wanted to start a company and I didn't really consider consulting starting a company, but it was like a, it was all I knew I could do. It's the only idea I had at the time. So I

Track 1: 00:13:50

Step.

Todd: 00:13:51

yeah, and I thought, I know a lot of people. I made a bet that people would for the, we didn't sell Vivo Tech readers because of they had more Hertz, or more, I don't know, power on this or that. Vivo tech readers beat the competition because we weren't selling readers. We were selling what these things could do, what contactless would mean over time, how it could change a retailer's business. And so we built that understanding and that vision of the future. And I thought I think people will pay for that. So I actually started doing some consulting work with a couple companies and I also started looking for a job 'cause I didn't have much money. I had moved back to Colorado. Fortunately I hadn't sold my house in Colorado and I only rented in California when I was out there. when I moved back, I was really, really tight. And actually my wife at the time had Didn't have a job. We had a, one-year-old. And so we had like emergency funds only. So in addition to starting Double Diamond Group, also went and was having serious conversations about a job and I got an offer, to go back to First Data. And it was a lot of money. It was like double what I'd made when I left and it was a lot more than I was, you know, pulling down in consulting and. I just, I had one big opportunity on the line from POS Portal. I knew the CEO quite well, Buzz Stryker. he and I had been talking about a project and I said to him, look, I've got an offer. I'd really like to, um, this consulting thing, but I need an anchor client. I need to know that I have some, a certain amount I, and I needed. At the time, I knew if I had $50,000 of committed

Track 1: 00:15:36

No.

Todd: 00:15:36

the next six months I could build around that. And so he came back to me. I was on a plane. I think we were using those, I think it was blackberries. I can, 'cause I can see that, the text in my, in my head he said, I'll let you know by the time you land back in Denver. I was actually pitching a consulting gig and so I'm landing in Denver and I get a text saying. Confirmed 50,000 in consulting business in the next six months. And I went back and I talked to Heidi and I said, look, I've got this offer for a lot of money to go back to First Data, and I've got this anchor client and she said, well. What do you wanna do? And I said, I, I think that the consulting businesses has legs. And she was good with it. And that was that. And I turned down the First Data offer and took the gig and I ended up making more that first year. It worked well, even that first year.

Track 1: 00:16:36

Great.

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It is now 2014 Infinicept is launched. How was the idea conceived leading to adopt embedded payments as a viable business model? Walk us through that light bulb moment. I

Todd: 00:16:53

Okay, so it's actually before that, we,

Track 1: 00:16:58

I.

Todd: 00:16:58

on the board of ETA and I made friends with this lady who was really smart. On risk fraud, compliance. And the thing that really stood out about Deana, this is now my co-founder. The thing that stood out about Deana was there was a conversation about and one of the industry's icons, Deborah Rossi was talking about very aggressively in her, inimitable style. She was very aggressively talking about a particular topic, something to do with chargebacks and Deana in the most elegant way. Corrected her on how it really worked. Did it in a way that was elegant, respectful, captivated the room, including Deborah and She stood out big time, so we became friends and we were talking and another meeting or two later in April, 2011, visa, and MasterCard came in and said the same day they would do their own presentations and they were like, Chinese walled off. So Visa would come in and leave and MasterCard would come in and then leave, and the other card brands and they both on the same day announced rules for what we now call payment facilitators. And I was captivated with that. I thought that was unbelievable. And I went and talked to the Visa guy, Samir Gove, and asked him, I said, is it big as. It seems like it is. And he says, I think it's, it's huge. And I said, I'm gonna go focus my business on this. So I grabbed Deana and I was like, Hey. She was like, I was thinking the same thing. I, there's so much compliance risk and challenges to the models like this. It's a great opportunity. So we put our heads together, said, okay, we'll do some gig work. So we each had consulting companies. So Deana had, Rich Consulting, and by the way, you should put her on. She's unbelievable, uh, for this podcast.

Track 1: 00:18:48

Absolutely.

Todd: 00:18:49

Absolutely recommend it. So Deana, and I agreed to do some work and within a month we get a call. I get a call from a company called Dev Pay, and they wanted to build payments for developers. And they, and called Deana and I was like, Hey. Do you think you can help these guys? 'cause they needed to figure out how to get approved at Wells Fargo. They were in Y Combinator, which is a startup incubator. so we helped them, I think they had nine employees. They got approved at Wells Fargo. and then, somewhere in there they changed their name to Stripe. And so we found ourselves working with, what became one of the most famous, startup stories ever, and then a few customers later. Deana gets a call, on a referral. She'd done a lot of work with Google this company called Shopify, Deana on a referral from Google, and they said, we want to create Shopify payments. And Deana calls me and says, Hey, there's a whole bunch of cool stuff here. I've got some of it, but I'd love to get your expertise on some of it. And so we helped launch Shopify payments and that was, they had about 20,000 merchants at the time on different payment gateways. And we helped them figure that all out and get Shopify launched. And the CFO who hired us at the time, is still on our Advisory Board as is Samir Govel. And, and one of my mentors from First Data, uh, I think you had him on your podcast. Eula, Adams

Track 1: 00:20:18

Great. Now tell us about some of the major hurdles you encountered in getting Infinicept off the ground and how you feel it's strengthened Infinicept as a company I.

Todd: 00:20:29

Well, the first thing you talked about 2014. The

Track 1: 00:20:33

Right.

Todd: 00:20:34

uh, pivoting from consulting to having some software. We had We worked with a, uh, software company that needed the software and we ended up partnering with them and, and they had a percentage of the company. We then were trying to sell it, but we didn't really have much yet. And so 20 14, 20 15, 20 16, all those years were just. of long proofs of concept because we didn't wanna raise money. We wanted to bootstrap, and as we finally got some early software to the plate and we were demoing it, I think I gave 300 demos before I, we made a dollar and we showed it to this guy, Henry Helgason, who was the founder and CEO of Cayenne, which is a huge payments company, sold for a billion dollars later to TYSIS. He said, look, I'm busy with some things right now, so I can't buy your software, I'd love to invest. The first thing, Dina and I looked at each other and said, we're bootstrappers, but we know and trust Henry. And the first hurdle was the hurdle of taking other people's money. But that's what got us off the ground. And we, raised some money from Henry and that he brought a couple friends in that are industry icons, in the investing world hiring those first few people. And then, there've been so many hurdles. Uh, this one might take a minute. We getting, from. The first couple of people to around. When we, as we got to about six people, we had to start having meetings. I mean, most of the people that worked for us were, quite a bit younger than us and used to an asynchronous engineering culture. And we were losing the thread some of the time by not talking ever. And so we had to start doing meetings. And that was interesting. And then throughout 2018, we were building for a few customers. We signed up five customers by the end of 2018 we needed to raise some more money. So I did a pass the hat round, for payments CEOs and investors and working our networks. And it was all just people we knew and nobody that Infinicept until. 2022. Uh,

Track 1: 00:22:44

Wow.

Todd: 00:22:44

did we go to, they all came to us. They all said, we, we like what you're doing. Can we invest? And we finally put a round together in end of 2018 and we had about six employees, and we went to 40 employees in 2019. So that next hurdle unbelievable torrid growth and figuring out a way to do that. And I remember in July, 2019. We'd sold all these customers. We went from five customers to 30

Track 1: 00:23:14

Wow.

Todd: 00:23:15

and I remember some of those early customers. when you're building new software, have to make promises of, well, we need this if, you know, for us to buy this software, we have to have this widget. And so any one of those things wasn't very hard, but when you stack that on top of each other, it creeps up on you. So whenever starting something, I really recommend keep a lid on the early growth. Don't go too far, too fast. 'cause it can really be hard unless you're ready to raise an enormous amount of money. So that next hurdle was, the software falling over, with real customers that needed to pay merchants and, you know, late nights and, and fixing it barely. And, being able to get there and keeping the customers. We didn't have anyone leave, but it was really, really hard because they, trust you to buy your software. trust you on delivering when you are doing your best, but have trouble, it's really difficult. There's so many more hurdles. I mean, we had COVID, we had, uh, SVB, which was our big investor in 22. When they went under that, you know, we didn't know where our money was. I mean, we've had hurdle after hurdle after hurdle, and we'll have some more.

Track 1: 00:24:21

Now, how many funding rounds have you completed so far?

Todd: 00:24:25

So I think technically, let's see, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, technically five. The first four rounds were all very small, uh, and a small number of people and all common stock. We've only had one, preferred round series A and that was, April of 22.

Track 1: 00:24:46

now, what is the mission of Infinicept and why is Infinicept an asset to the payment FinTech industry.

Todd: 00:24:58

So our mission is to drive the transformation to software led payments. That's our mission. We wanna drive software companies to the fore of the payment ecosystem. So the biggest reason we're an Asset to the payments in FinTech space is we believe openness, fairness, integrity, and that's not been the history electronic payments. Unfortunately. We started something called the Embedded Payments Bill of Rights, and you can look at it. It's embedded payments bill of rights.com. And this is a industry movement with eight principles around things like I mentioned, transparency, fair pricing, no lock-in. And so the biggest thing that Infinicept stands for and provides the ability to with your choice of technology, choice of bank. Your choice of, software ecosystems, and we bring democracy to the software companies and help them. They, I mean, soft, think about it. Software companies are incredible. come up with an idea, maybe it's in, event management, or maybe it's in restaurants, maybe it's in nonprofits, and they go and they build this beautiful. merchant experience, business experience ties so many different elements of what a business, whether it's a nonprofit or a restaurant or event management or government payments. These software companies build this thing. They get it distributed, they answer the questions, they build it so that it's user friendly. They do all this stuff, but then when it came time for payments, they were just Tossing it to some other company with a clunky process, and that other company so many times did not serve the customer. kind of experience that the software companies can serve. So the software companies are rightfully in front of this. The software companies are rightfully the ones to take payments to the next level. we do that's special is we help them get there faster. We help them get there more seamlessly, and we help them get there without locking them into some Closed ecosystem.

Track 1: 00:27:29

Got you. Now let's talk about a customer. You could pick any customer who has become a payment facilitator on top of your platform. Let's focus on use case scenario and talk about the before and after.

Todd: 00:27:46

Yeah. One of my favorite customers is a company called WorkWave. WorkWave has the majority market share in field service management for recurring services. So for example, the So-called Green Industries, that's pest control, lawn and care, they have janitorial services, et cetera. So they were in a referral agreement a major processor. The customers were complaining. They had a statement that said the processor's name, the revenue share was paultry. The pricing was, was, totally opaque and it was just overall a terrible experience for their customers. So they decided to become a payment facilitator. They had some bumps in the road before they. chose us. They, worked with another vendor, uh, shall remain nameless, and they tried, but they had a financial plan to hit a certain amount of revenue. And when they found us, and they'd tried to launch, but nothing worked. And when they found us in the fall of 2019, they were in a tough spot. And I remember when we finally were getting close to signing an agreement. Keep in mind, we'd just gone from five customers to 30 and they were the last agreement we signed before Covid. And when the CEO called me and said, I want to do a top to top, .,I wanna make sure he also wanted to grind me down for a better price. But, he said, can you hit this plan of March? Uh, March, getting a material amount of volume going, and by November having the entire. live and I committed that we would get it done to him. they got it done throughout 2020. They got live uh, and they hit their financial plan. Post that experience. They have a totally branded experience. Customers deal with nobody but WorkWave. They're on our tat. The customer's looking at a screen that is controlled by Infinicept both on the merchant application and the sub merchant portal, which is what the merchants see. They see the WorkWave logo and they see all their transactions, but it is totally a WorkWave experience Infinicept app doesn't exist other than in A URL and now WorkWave has grown their portfolio by four X since they started. They're making significant income and their merchants love it. They added a CH, they've got check conversion, or it's not conversion, what do you call it? Check deposit, remote. Uh, check deposit. They've been doing things with finance and it's all on WorkWave payments, which is a, really an admirable example. I don't, I won't give their volume. I don't know if they talk

Track 1: 00:30:58

Sure.

Todd: 00:30:58

publicly, but it is billions and billions of payments volume, per year.

Track 1: 00:31:05

Excellent. what are Infinicept's core values and how are they reinforced in the workplace?

Todd: 00:31:12

So we have five core values and we talk about them all the time. They're extremely important to us, and everything we do revolves around our core values. So the first one is have integrity. The second one do the right thing. The third one is act like an adult. The fourth one is be excellent because perfect is impossible. And the fifth one, everyone's favorite is eat and drink. Well, the way we re reinforce these Des. They infused into everything we do. So let's just take an example. We are into a ton of autonomy. Engineers are expected to do their job and and, create poll requests for their code. And the reason we give them autonomy is we expect people to act like an adult. And guess what? If you treat people like an adult, they're more likely to act like an adult. Do the right thing. So this one's really important. Do the right thing. It, just e everything from we've had challenges in the company, when we've, people with personal challenges. When we think about how we treat our customers, we come back to, okay, well what's the right thing here? It might be painful, it might be, costly or difficult. We just say. do the right thing. the one that I think is most important, I wouldn't say it's my favorite 'cause it might be the hardest, but it is the most important, is be excellent because perfect is impossible. And what that means to me is so often we find ourselves it the first part. Sure. Be excellent. That's easy, right? You should really be excellent. Great. Well, perfect. Being impossible is really important because. We don't want people covering their ass. We don't want people saying, well, the reason I did this thing was because I thought this and I thought that, and I was thinking, it doesn't matter if you made a mistake, you made a mistake. You're not perfect. Let's just get that right there in the middle of the table. I fucked up. I do it all the time, multiple times a day, and putting that out there and saying. Let's be transparent that we screwed up on something. It's fine. Let's own it. Let's not get into a whole bunch of noise around why it wasn't really a screw up or covering up that it was, we just screwed up. It's fine. People do it like multiple times a day. So that one's really important to me

Track 1: 00:33:55

Mm-Hmm.

Todd: 00:33:56

because I find myself, if I'm trying to be perfect defensive and that has, there's no room for that in life or in business. We should just recognize that we're fallible and we gotta just keep getting better.

Track 1: 00:34:08

Absolutely. Now, transparency is one of the key pillars in building a strong culture in your organization. What kind of feedback mechanism you have in place to make it work.

Todd: 00:34:19

Well, it's, it's infused in everything we do. So we have, regular communication. We are transparent with our financials. We're transparent with how the business is going, whether it's going well or at that particular time, not going so well. We're transparent about our new sales. We're transparent about. many employees are doing what, changes in the organization, everything. And one of the ways we communicate, is uh, a monthly hands. I. haven't asked me anything. Deana and I and our Chief Operating Officer, Scott Agatep, usually have a set agenda, but especially with Scott taking over as COO, he runs a lot of the operations of the company. and he'll walk through the agenda, but we always leave enough time for asking anything, and we put vehicles out there for people to ask, by voice, by chat. Anonymously and we've got checks and balances to make sure that it's really anonymous. And, we get all kinds of interesting and tough questions and we don't, we don't shy away from them. And that kind of transparency has built a, culture. And, and look, we, we always can get better and I, and we always encourage our employees to tell us how to be better, but I believe that the employee base trusts us. To do the right thing, trusts us, to tell them the truth and be transparent. And that's because we've done so in good times and bad. our, one of our, we have some on podcasts like this, we talk about so many things, but one of the principles that's really important is employees come first. If you treat your employees really well, they will treat your customers really well. And if your customers are really happy. Your investors get taken care of. So I think American business culture has gotten that upside down

Track 1: 00:36:13

Right.

Todd: 00:36:15

And, I just think that if we just do our basic job every day, then the investors will get taken care of.

Track 1: 00:36:20

I guess it's that employee first mentality and it shows case in point in January. Infinicept was honored by Built-in as their 2023 Best Place to Work Awards ranking 15th on the best mid-sized places to work in Colorado. Congratulations.

Todd: 00:36:41

Thanks de.

Track 1: 00:36:44

As, uh, Co-CEOs, how do you and Deana divvy up your responsibilities?

Todd: 00:36:50

That is such a great question. I have to tell you, I was not a believer in co-CEOs before we. Before we met, I, thought, well, there's one president. How are you gonna have two bosses? Like, who, how do you break ties? Who's gonna do what? And it turns out in that time, during 2019 where everything was going really quickly, we were stepping all over each other. Not in a bad way. Our trust and commitment to our partnership is unparalleled. I've never seen anything like it. She, she's ride or die, in terms of a business partnership and. We found ourselves making decisions that the other person had made the opposite decision or just stepping all over each other because when we were just partners, we just talked about stuff and made decisions. So we, we hired a coach, a professional coach, to help us through like, okay, how do we divvy it up? And we became extremely, uh, precise and specific about who does what. And basically, I do go to market. Deana does fulfillment. So I looked after everything from marketing, demand gen, business development, sales at the beginning. That included product, and theneaDina looked after Engineering, consulting, customer support. Oh, I also had, customer success in those days and then Dina looked after customer support and all of the serving of the demand that was, that was generated. And then as we evolved, we realized that keeping product and engineering on opposite sides was not healthy for the company. So we moved product to where I belong, in Dina's organization. we brought in a CTO to run all that for Deana then most recently, Scott coming in as COO, he's taken over everything except for sales the CTO organization with, sales reports to me. CTO reports to Dina and, everything else reports to Scott.

Track 1: 00:38:45

Good My next question, but before I get into that question, let me put some context to it. There you were in 1996. Fresh out of college, no prior work experience. You joined First Data in sales within three years. It's now 1999. You are now a District Sales Manager for Wells Fargo Merchant Services Alliance covering Colorado, Utah, and Nevada, et cetera. In that same year, you were nominated for your first leadership award. That I'm aware of, namely First Data's Leaders of the Pack Award, recognizing employees whose performance were exceptional and exemplary. With that being said, Todd, when you think about your journey as a leader, do you think you were born with these capabilities and capacity, or do you think you really learn to become a leader during the course of your career?

Todd: 00:39:46

it is not call. Absolutely 1000% learned. I was such a dork when I got started. I was a micromanager. I didn't know what I was doing. I compensated with it for it with hard work, but. Yeah, I was, I was terrible. And I give the credit to kinds of leaders that I worked with, Scott Wagner, George Jathis, Bill Vogtle and Karen Whalen, uh, taught me an enormous amounts about how to, how to carry oneself in a public domain and how to lead. And, uh, and there's many, many more. I mentioned, Diane Faro, Brian Seims Charles Drucker. I mean, it's endless, right? You just go through these people that you learn so much from. and so I studied and and was made a very strong attempt to be self-aware and not be so proud that I thought I knew what I was doing at 23 years old. You know, starting in corporate America,

Track 1: 00:40:48

Now, how would you describe your leadership style?

Todd: 00:40:52

I would say. I think it'd be better to hear from, the team, for this. But, the best I can say is, listen, I strive to give, both, autonomy and accountability. To my team, I try not to get in their way. I'm very passionate about the vision though, where I have been accused of overly micro is when I have a particular way that I see the company evolving and I don't see alignment to that vision. Very, very important to me and. I think the most important thing is developing people. my dad is, I mentioned earlier, is a professor and he talks about scientific children scientific grandchildren. And one of the most rewarding times, that I heard about was when one of my managers, Steve Moss, who I still adore to this day, I think he's one of the top brass at Wells Fargo. still, he was talking about someone that he had developed. And that person had done some amazing things and he was really encouraged to see their career blossoming. And I think of that example where you've developed someone and then they go on to develop someone and they, and you're passing down this business leadership through the generations, speaking. So that, that's really, I think, a great way to, to look at how to be a good leader.

Track 1: 00:42:16

Now over the years, CEOs and business leaders have shared their thoughts on the phrase work life balance. What does that mean to you? Or would you phrase it differently?

Todd: 00:42:29

Yeah. I think everybody's got to, I think you gotta do you on these things, and, and it changes throughout your story arc. One of the things that I realized at the end of

Track 1: 00:42:41

I.

Todd: 00:42:42

at First Data is I'd let my body fall apart and I was not feeling it at, what was I 33 or something, and I was, not happy with how my body performed, and it was hard to fix that too much. I started fixing it in California with Vivo Tech, but it really put attention to it starting in 2008. when I started Double Diamond Group, I had more time on my hands and I made it a priority and one of the big priorities for me was to get back to skiing. Double Diamond Group is a play off of a double diamond, which is a black double black diamond ski run. And I really prioritized skiing and, um, personal health. And of course I had little ones. So as they started to, come in, that took a lot of attention. I thought in that, in those consulting days, that lifestyle business, I had, I, a lot of times I would go skiing on Fridays and I would spend time with my kids and they became. Really great skiers and, one of my great joys is skiing with them. So it became a very heavy period of, the life part of work. So-called Work, work-life Balance. And then when Deana and I started in Infinicept I mean, a startup is it's all encompassing. You don't have a life of anything. So that's a, 90, a hundred hour a week job at times. And for some years, like it was for consistent time. so some of the work-life balance, so-called Work-Life balance was more work and Little less life, but you have to keep your body together. if I didn't run a marathon in 2013, if I didn't, out, in a, in a consistent basis, and most importantly getting my skiing in, I wouldn't be effective in my work.

Track 1: 00:44:21

Good what are some of Infinicept's growth initiatives for the coming year?

Todd: 00:44:27

Okay. our biggest initiative is we found over the last few years where our approach to be a software company for payment facilitators and other payments companies, too many software companies just don't feel they're ready be a pay fac no matter how much we can make the case and show them, Hey, this is, you can do this. Especially with our help, they just didn't feel they were ready and a lot of our competitors. Were paybacks themselves and just said, let us do the payments for you. that never jived with our values until we realized that we could do it in a way that was really friendly to the software company. So we created Launch Pay. Launch Pay launched earlier this year in stealth, and then we announced it in September. And Launch Pay is a payment facilitator. for software companies that aren't quite ready, and so we'll do the payments for you. You still get your branding, you still do the sales. You can still service your customers, but you don't have to register and learn everything about payments to be Payfac.

Track 1: 00:45:28

Good now, what are you most excited about Infinicept's Future

Todd: 00:45:34

I can't believe how quickly

Track 1: 00:45:36

I.

Todd: 00:45:36

are adopting. Launch pay. We've got billions and billions and billions signed up already. Our, legacy product, the pay ops, payment operations software, we have about 15 billion annualized payment volume, we signed up more than a third of that in six months on Launch Pay. It's gonna take some real hard work to get all the merchants live and to do all the, gritty stuff to make that volume come. True, the early about the product is staggering.

Track 1: 00:46:09

Now, where do you see the company in five years down the road?

Todd: 00:46:13

I think anybody who answers that question with a straight face is fooling themselves. ambition and what we hope for is to be this infrastructure layer across payments and In a way that is agnostic to the different providers. We don't want to go build a lending product. We wanna work with the best lending products. We don't want to go build a banking as a service product. We wanna make the connectivity between payments and banking and lending and all the other things seamless so that software companies and others have the opportunity to choose their vendors of choice.

Track 1: 00:46:50

Now what keeps Todd up at night?

Todd: 00:46:56

Yeah, I think anyone who's in electronic payments that doesn't think about data security doesn't have their eye on the ball. But I think the biggest thing I think about is, you know, we have. More than 60 famalies Infinicept. And the thing that I think keeps me up the most at night is making sure that we do the right things, make the right decisions, and bring the business where it needs to go to make sure that those families can, thrive and, achieve objectives. and part of that is your job and your financial, wherewithal.

Desmond Nicholson: 00:47:35

What aspect of your personality do you think has been the most helpful in your career? Todd

Track 1: 00:47:42

I think kindness. I think, uh, I have always tried to be there for people and, it's paid back way more than I would've imagined. And, I want to double down on that. I.

Desmond Nicholson: 00:47:56

The law of reciprocity. Indeed. Now, FinTech is one of the hottest areas of innovation right now. Where do you see opportunities and where would you steer new entrepreneurs to look for problems to solve?

Track 1: 00:48:11

Well within payments

Desmond Nicholson: 00:48:13

I.

Track 1: 00:48:15

I get very excited about payfac. Of course, if I wasn't doing payfac, I think. One of the areas that's super exciting is network tokens and orchestration. I think, uh, business to business payments is a hundred trillion dollars opportunity worldwide, something like 30 trillion in the US so you get very excited about that. So healthcare payments are still messed up. Just paying your doctor should be so much easier beyond payments. I think the broader embedded finance opportunity is huge. The thing I'd caution there is it's so big one has to find a niche to address it, so it is addressable trying to to bite off a $585 billion market in one fell swoop doesn't work. All the great opportunities started with some sort of niche and use that as a jumping off point to build and expand to additional.

Desmond Nicholson: 00:49:21

Good. Okay. We now move into our final segment.

undefined: 00:49:26

The lightning round bridges to excellence, inspired leadership in payments and fintech.

Desmond Nicholson: 00:49:34

Todd, in this segment, I pose a question and you respond with a single word or one sentence. Shall we begin?

Track 1: 00:49:41

Let's go

Desmond Nicholson: 00:49:44

The road not traveled,

Track 1: 00:49:47

irrelevant,

Desmond Nicholson: 00:49:50

introvert or extrovert,

Track 1: 00:49:52

massive extrovert

Desmond Nicholson: 00:49:55

what does success mean to you?

Track 1: 00:49:58

changing payments.

Desmond Nicholson: 00:50:00

What is the best advice you ever received?.

Track 1: 00:50:05

Follow Nature,

Desmond Nicholson: 00:50:07

What one book would you recommend to our listeners and why?

Track 1: 00:50:13

the Mind Body Prescription by Dr. John Sarno. The reason is. The connection between the mind and the body is little understood. When he was alive, nobody accepted his, research, even though he was a tenured professor at New York University and today he died a few years ago. And today his work on tension myositis syndrome has changed, pain management. So, the Mind Body Prescription prescription is the best book I've ever read.

Desmond Nicholson: 00:50:44

Good. What is your favorite quote in leadership or otherwise that inspires you?

Track 1: 00:50:51

You can build trust for 20 years and lose it in 20 seconds. That was, that was a quote that, Mohammed Khan, that I mentioned earlier in the podcast, said to me.

Desmond Nicholson: 00:51:03

What is one thing people you work with would be surprised to learn?

Track 1: 00:51:08

I'm kind of an open book, so I gotta think about it. I was a giant dork in high school and a complete nerd.

Desmond Nicholson: 00:51:18

Who's your hero of all times and why?

Track 1: 00:51:23

My dad.

Desmond Nicholson: 00:51:24

I knew

Track 1: 00:51:25

because he, he's 78, he is a distinguished professor at University of Colorado, still actively teaching. He will probably into his eighties, won the biggest, award that you can win at, CU the biggest, faculty award, and he's hilarious.

Desmond Nicholson: 00:51:45

Broncos or Raiders?

Track 1: 00:51:47

Broncos get real

Desmond Nicholson: 00:51:50

What is one thing that has you fired up right now?

Track 1: 00:51:53

Taylor Swift.

Desmond Nicholson: 00:51:59

Todd, it's been great catching up with you and thanks for the invaluable insights and sharing your journey, for that we are grateful. Any parting thoughts to share or comments before we wrap up?

Track 1: 00:52:13

I just wanna say thank you for everything you taught me and for the time we spent together all those years ago. I use the things I've learned, from your coaching and tutelage, to this day

Desmond Nicholson: 00:52:26

Well thank you my friend for being on our show and to our listeners as always, thank you for your time and Todd do give my regards to Deana will you?

Track 1: 00:52:35

Will do. I.

Desmond Nicholson: 00:52:37

And never forget the more you expect from yourself, the more you excel.

undefined: 00:52:43

You've been listening to Bridges to Excellence podcast, inspired leadership and payments and fintech. Be sure to join us next time for more conversations with another of your colleagues in payments and fintech. Insightful conversations in their journey to excellence for transcripts and other materials covered on the show. Visit us at DesmondNicholson. com.