Stablecoins for the Fortune 500 w/ Dileep Thazhmon

Transcript

Passage of the stable coin [music] legislation drafted by the Senate dubbed the genius act because analysts say a wave [music] of competition could complicate things. >> Stable coin issue of debut right here at the NASDAQ [music] today. >> Welcome back everyone to the stable pulse. My name is Don Reminic. We have a a very special guest here and a really really well timed episode, I feel. So, without further ado, I'm just going to get right into it. Dileep, welcome to the show. As you know from being a long time listener, we always start with an episode or a a segment that we call bragadocious. We use this as an opportunity for you to brag about yourself and all of the really awesome stuff that you have built. You have a lot of reason to brag, especially

recently. So, I'm going to sit back and shut up. Tell us about yourself. Tell us about what you've built. Please, please, please do not be humble. >> Well, Forest, thanks for having me on, Dante. I've heard a lot about the show and so I'm really excited to be here. So, I'm Dileep. I'm the founder and CEO of a company called Jeeves. Um, this round that we are just announcing, which was about two days ago, was a $110 million round and what's really interesting is that we have always been building in the financial infrastructure ecosystem focused on enterprises, but this round is really for us to go deeper into stable coin.

So, taking a step back, what do we do? So, Jeeves provides a financial operating system for global enterprises. And what does that mean? If you're a company like BMW or Lululemon or H&M that uses Jeeves today, what we give you is a combined operating system that includes cards in 25 to 30 countries. So, you do not need a corporate card for your employees in the US plus another one in UK, another one in Brazil, etc. All of that we do. And then we also do payments in and out to 190 countries and we just launched accounts receivable. And so really the pitch is if you're a company that operates in more than one country, we can combine your stack and and fix it and make it much much easier so you get kind of one login and everything kind of

lives together and we do own a lot of infrastructure to be able to do that. Now onto the side about things to brag on, um I would say for us it's really been impressive to see the growth in the last 8 months. We really launched our stablecoin product in January and we just crossed a a billion and a half in annualized TPV, so that's north of 130, 140 million a month in 8 months. And and I think, you know, a lot of times when you think about stablecoin use cases they tend to be focused on uh small businesses. So 5-person e-commerce company, the digital nomad, uh sometimes it's PSPs and fintechs. We sell to enterprises, so it's the actual opposite of that where you got to go sell full enterprise sales cycle and then stablecoin's part of that. So for me that's something that we're very proud

about and, you know, I think it's really important. And then I think the other side that is also very important is we're one of the few companies that combine both fiat and stablecoin. We have real infrastructure, we have real licenses, we have three principal memberships for card issuing. Uh we can do payouts to 120 countries and on top of that we built the stablecoin layer and to be able to do that so far we've moved about 5 billion in annualized TPV and that's grown about 10x in the last 2 years. So the business is clearly hitting this inflection point, which is why uh we did this round. Uh me personally, I'm a second-time founder, so this is my second company. Before this I started a company in marketing automation space, hated the space, but sold the company um for about 100 million plus and we

raised about 19 million. Very different time, but good outcome for everybody. Uh and then the problem I'm trying to solve with Jeeves was something I'd seen in that company, which is if you operate in two countries we did, you needed two different bank accounts, two different corporate cards, two different payment rails. And then at the end of the month when I say, "Hey, you know, CFO or my team, like how much did we spend last month?" Nobody knows. Takes you 30 days to answer that question. And so that was this core problem pre-stablecoin that was just kind of like haunting me where I'm like I have to figure out how to solve this. Uh and that's the genesis of what kind of Jeeves is today.

>> I love that. First of all, I think that's a fantastic introduction. I have many, many questions. And so, I hope that we can I hope that we can keep this efficient, but I doubt that we'll be able to. >> Yeah, no. >> I mean, you guys sell to major, major enterprises that have absolutely nothing to do with stablecoins, right? You mentioned Lululemon, you mentioned BMW. >> They don't care about stablecoins. >> They don't care about stablecoins, right? When you were going to pitch these folks, do you talk about stablecoins or are you just pitching better financial services that just so happen to be powered by stablecoins in the back?

>> It's It's It's exactly the latter. And And if you think about it, when you go pitch we do payments, nobody says we do ACH. You just say we do payments and like the payment show up. No one's like, "Okay, what's the protocol and the rail that you're using?" It's just one, do I trust you? Two, what's the cost? Three, is the money going to show up or am I going to get fired as a CFO cuz the money never showed up? Like, that's what they care about, right? And that's what we sell. And And it's interesting cuz we don't hide stablecoins. It's just abstracted away. And so, what that means is one of the things that we do, which is probably the hardest thing we do, is we maintain our own ledger in 25 countries. So, that means at the end of the month when you say, "Hey, Jeeves,

give me a statement for my account." That statement, line by line, is generated by Jeeves. We don't go to a third party, get it, and send it to you. And it sounds easy, but that's actually the hardest thing we do because that means your your ledger, your data, your FX, this is 25 countries, multiple currencies, has to be perfect. And if it isn't, you're going to hear that in the first like 30 minutes cuz someone's going to tell you the number's off and I'm not going to pay that, right? And so, that that's really the muscle we built. And because we built that ledger, adding stablecoin is just another currency. And so, we were able to make the ledger just 10 times more efficient.

And to your point, we don't sell, "Hey, come to us for stablecoin." We say we actually call the product Jeeves Instant Pay. So, it's stablecoin, but like the product that we sell is Jeeves Instant Pay. And we say, "Hey, you can use regular or you can use Instant Pay. Here's the cost, here's the price, blah blah." And then you pick. And as you can probably expect, you know, people tend to pick instant pay. >> Interesting. And so, a lot of your competitors that are competing with you for deals like BMW and Lululemon, are they also using stablecoins? Are you guys able to go in there and offer better financial technology because you are using stablecoins when your competitors are not?

>> Yeah, so it's it's very interesting cuz if you like if you take stablecoin payments, right? And and this is kind of the the the cry that everyone's hearing right now, which is FX fees are getting compressed, right? Like if you think about the off-ramp from USD or USDC to USD, that used to be 1%. Now it's five bips. It's going to be zero, right? Complete compression, right? That's 100 bips that you've lost. FX, same thing's happening. You'll you're going to lose all your FX. It's going to be some fees, but it's nothing like the fat spread that's there. It's actually great for us because what we sell is not the FX, it's the entire workflow automation before the FX. So, that's an example, in Mexico, we have a product where you can put in your tax ID, we'll go download all your receipt uh your invoices from

the central database, fill in the information, you hit a button, we'll send the payment. The last step, that's the payment, and that's FX and all of that stuff. But, we charge you for everything else before the last step. So, we can actually subsidize the cost of FX, you know, give it away close to free because that's not where we make money. We make money on all the other steps before that. And that's the difference between the product that we have, even pre-stablecoin, which is we sell financial automation. We sell efficiency gains. That's what a CFO of a 5,000 person company cares about. They don't care about five bips or 10 bips here or there, which is it's just a very different audience from like an SMB.

>> Interesting. And so, are you guys able to do FX better and compress those rates more because you're built on a stablecoin stack? >> Yeah, so we do the classic kind of stablecoin sandwich, so to speak. So, I'll give you an example. Previously, 2 years ago, you could have come to Jeeves and say, "Hey, I want to do a payment between uh let's say Mexico and and Europe, right?" And you'll say, "Great, put in information for SEPA, hit send, we collect your funds in Mexico, send it to correspondent bank one, send it to the second bank, and then they pay it out." Takes about 1 to 2 days. Now you come to Jeeves, it actually looks exactly the same. It's the same information, it's still SEPA, you hit send, but now what happens is we collect your funds in Mexico, as soon as we do

we release USDC or USDT, whatever you want, and then we pay out on the other side. It takes 1 to 2 hours, but everything else looks exactly the same. Same platform, same statements, blended into their cards, that's what we sell. It just so happens, exactly like you're saying, that the stack that's, you know, providing the money movement is stablecoin. But we don't go in and say, "Hey, come to us just to access the stablecoin." That's That's not where we win. There are many companies that are very good at that, but that's not like where I see our differentiation. >> Is it fair to say that you're fighting to be the primary financial relationship with these large enterprises?

>> I We want to be the the the primary financial relationship {slash} operating system. It's It's actually a very good point because the number one competition that we see is usually a local bank. So these companies they tend to have a private banker, they tend to have someone they can call and say, "Hey, I need to send this money." And the guy's like, "Great, like let me help you with that, blah blah blah." Cuz these are bigger companies. And we say, "Keep that. Like don't lose that, that's amazing, keep it. But what we can give you that your bank is not going to give you is unlimited virtual cards, which in a country like Brazil is actually very important because there's a lot of fraud." And so we have this product that's single-use cards. So companies can just literally call the card, you don't need a human in the loop, it's agentic

API, whatever you want, and card just spins up, gives you a number, you use the number, and the card dies. And so there's very minimal fraud because you can't use the card, and the reconciliation is very high. And we have companies that'll do 100,000 cards a month. A bank is never going to give you that, right? And so that's how we compete, which is like, keep the bank, we're the operating layer, we're the layer that sits on top of all the banks. And you should keep your bank, banks are great, we work with them, we have a lot of bank accounts, it's awesome. Right? But like what they're not going to do is these six things, they're not going to give you cards in Portugal for Brazilian business, or Spanish cards for Mexican business, because that's not where they win. That's where we win, right? And so,

again, this the spaces we compete in is it's so big. It's not a winner-take-all market. It's not like it's, you know, one versus the other. These are trillion-dollar spaces, right? And you 1 2 3%, I mean, you're talking about a massive massive massive company. >> So, you don't make your money on FX. Where do you make your money? >> We We We actually it's really interesting. Um if you look at our revenue stream, right? And and and just for classification, right? We're We're falling firmly into like that expense management box, right? Like that's that's our core product is cards, via payments, just the standard things and we move around, blah blah. What's really interesting is for us, interchange is less than 40% of the business. Most expense management companies,

interchange is 80 to 90% of your business. That That's the That's the biggest chunk of your revenues interchange, brex, etc., etc. For us, it's less than 40%. And so, it's a very very blended revenue stream where 40% is cards, so that's interchange plus our cards API. 40% is payments, but payments is not FX. It's that workflow automation that we charge for. It includes FX, but like that's not the big driver, so that's about 80%. And then, we charge a lot of fees. Um about 15 to 18% is fees. So, it looks a little bit more like a Revolut than what I call it is like an enterprise version of Revolut where you have this massive engine that's very profitable, that's growing, and then you get to take all these other bets and then subsidize it and kind of eat the market share so that your margin is my,

you know, like whatever the the the saying was from >> Your margin is my opportunity. >> My opportunity. Because I can subsidize it, right? Because I'm making money somewhere else. So. >> Maybe I I'm approaching this the wrong way and trying to categorize you when I should not be. But like, I think that when I hear people talking about Jeeves, oftentimes they use the word neobank, right? And so, to your point, you mentioned You just mentioned that you're an expense management platform, much more akin to something like Ramp. But, in reality, you're this like weird, sexy hybrid between between the two right?

>> You you you're probably figure that out faster than a lot of investors have said of it, which is it's it's it's exactly that. Like, it's everyone's like, okay, what box is it? But, now the boxes have changed. I mean, like Ramp is an AI company. Like like the boxes there's no one specific, you know, thing of like, oh, I get it. You're exactly this. We're not. Like, we operate in 35 countries. We're 200 people. Like, not a lot of companies do that. We do card issuing directly. I mean, we are the issuing entity. So, you get a card that says issued by Jeeves, not a bank. That's us. Like, we issue the cards directly. Like, we go very, very deep in the stack. And yes, part of it is expense management, part of it is payments. But, it's very hard to just put into this one box and be like, what

is this company? And I think most successful companies in the next 5 years, the ones you see, the ones that are growing very fast, they're going to look like this. They're going to pick the best parts of what worked for them and have this hybrid product. Because that's what's also now changed with AI. You just can build so much more than you could before. It's actually very interesting. I had this conversation internally, uh and we were using this metaphor of like at bats. If you think about it 3 years ago, right? And and like, let's say that you're starting, you're like, hey, we're going to do two bats. We're going to do A and we're going to do B. And we're going to spend all this time. We're going to build it out. I need at least one of them to work just to make

the year worthwhile, right? So, I need one out of two. Now, with AI, I can do 10 bats. And I I if I get three of those work, >> only need one or two to work. >> Exactly, right? So, like, the amount you can do is so much more. And if I get three of that, that means my output is 3x better than it was 3 years ago. Like, that's what's changed. >> And so, are you guys just constantly running experiments internally and trying to poke and prod? Like, tell me about that experimentation internally. >> So, our our core philosophy is that we want to own the CFO suite. So, what that means is you have cards, which is our core wedge. Uh then you have a AP, which is payments. 80% of companies use more than one product line. So, that's two.

We just launched AR, which is invoicing, so accounts receivable. And And this is kind of that, you know, virtuous circle, right? If you use us for invoicing and the funds come to us, then we have your funds. Because we have your funds, we can give you more spend. Because if you get more spend, you can do more payments. So, you get Like it's that whole cycle. So, you have cards, you have AP, you have AR. Then we want to add treasury, and we want to add payroll. And then we have this concept of what we're believing it's still something we're working on, which is kind of this Jeeves AI services module. But, the idea is that we will be your entire CFO suite back office all-in-one in any country that you operate. That's the goal. Like And And it's a big goal, right? Because you got to you got to do

this in like 30, 40, 50 countries. But, that's the goal. >> Well, I To that point, I think we're getting ahead of ourselves a little bit. Like we're talking about experimenting and building out this full CFO suite filled with payments in multiple different jurisdictions. And you're acting like it's relatively easy. You're like, "Yeah, with AI, we can just, you know, we can go and build it." But, you can't really vibe code what you're what you're talking about. Can you walk me through what it takes to build it? Like, frankly, I just want to be very, very clear with our audience that you make it sound easy, but it's not. It's very, very difficult.

>> It is not easy. This is It's It's It's really, really hard. Like it's It's You know, like you have to go get the licenses, you have to build the stack. So, just to give you an idea, and I'll use card issuance cuz I think that's the clearest one to kind of explain, right? So, just to give the background, I don't have a fintech background. I don't have a banking background. And I think part of the reason Jeeves is built the way it is is because I didn't see it the same way, good or bad. Candidly, we probably bit off much more than we could chew in the first go-around of this. But, because we survived and because we made it to this point, it's a very defensible mode. Because if someone else wants to do it, they have to go to 25 countries, get the licenses, get the stack. But,

But really because I the way we had looked at it was a little bit different. So, what does that mean? So, if you look at like card issuing, right? So, that's our core product that we start with. It consists of four components. You have the top of the funnel KYB, customer acquisition. You have the processor. You have the program manager, which is the regulation compliance layer. And then you have the issuing bin, the bank identification number, the 16 digits. Visa, Mastercard give that to you, and that's how you issue the card locally. What we did that's different from day one is the first three sit on our own stack. So, it it works across partners, etc. But it sits with us. So, what that means is when we went from Mexico to Colombia, the only thing we needed to change was that bin. When we go from

Colombia to Brazil, the only thing we needed to change was the bin. When we go to Indonesia, which we don't cover today, the only thing we need to change is that bin. That's structurally different from how most FinTechs would build it because most FinTechs are only focused on one country. If you're only doing one country, why the F would you build this entire stack? It makes no sense. It's immense amount of overhead for one country. And so, usually you go very deep in one country. Three years later, you're like, "Let's do the next one." Build it again. Next one we build. So, ours is just fundamentally different, good or bad. But that's the core difference. Like, we built this very modular from day one because our goal, our thesis was that companies are going global from day one, but banking is still country and currency specific.

How do you solve it? The core issue is the data's are in the data's in different silos. If you want to get the data, you have to build this abstraction layer on top. That's our core IP. So, that's that's a difference. I don't know if that that's helpful, but like that that's really what's the difference between how we're built. >> I think that's super helpful. I think you explained why it's so hard to build. Like, there's sort of two different layers here. There's like, "Okay, the the financial primitives. Who's my sponsor bank? What am I doing with bin numbers, etc., etc." But that's step one. Like, it's a very hard step one, but it's step one. And then step two is, "Okay, how do I create the data layer on top of it to properly serve everything that a CFO needs. AP, AR, all

of that stuff." Is that Is that fair? >> That's fair. That layer is immensely It It's There's a lot of trial and error there. There's And this is why it's always funny when people are like, "Oh, you can make a 10-minute neo bank." The hard part is not spinning up the neo bank. The hard part is the operational side of running a neo bank. That's That's what Like doing payments in 190 countries, that's the skill set we've built. We can do this at industrial grade. Not that you can deliver the payments. I mean, that you know, you can just plug into someone and they'll do it. But the the whole sequence, like where does it start? Where does it go? How do the statements work? How do you chase it down across six different providers?

That's the muscle we've built in the last, you know, 2-3 years. >> It's funny though, cuz you're also serving companies, many of which have been around for many, many, many decades and are probably pretty ingrained in their ways of of doing banking, right? Hey, they're used to sending an ACH, they're used to sending a wire and waiting 7 days and and dealing with massive FX fees and everything like that. But I think that also gives you an immense opportunity to go in there and really, really disrupt the current status quo with a lot of these larger companies. This I talked to a lot of people that are building, you know, {quote} neo banks or payment rails for more modern tech-focused SMBs.

But for the larger enterprises that have been doing this for 100 years >> The inertia is strong. It's very, very strong. And And And also, part of the value of international, cuz really our sweet spot is international, it's not in the US, right? It's It is exactly that. People forget how hard it is to send a wire in a Colum- like in the Colombian banking ecosystem. You have to actually go into the bank to send a wire. So, the fact that we can we have an app where you can do it in the app, people will pay for that. Because like imagine if you're the CFO, it's like do I go into a bank or do I do this in this app? And then everything is there, it's all in one screen, it's the same statement. Yes, there's a cost, but you know, there's differentiated value that's been

provided. I would almost compare it to some in some points to the of the banking system of the US maybe 15 20 years ago. Right? Just in terms of the convenience. Doesn't mean like every country has that by the way. Like Brazil's banking system is incredibly sophisticated. It's actually I'd say better than the US. Right? It's faster. Everything is instant. They're like Brazilians are always shocked >> Domestically. Domestically. >> Domestic. When they do a payment and the last leg is a US leg, it is like oh, it could come today, it could come tomorrow. It says 48 hours and they're like, what does that mean? Like why is it not instant? Like it's always confusing, but that's the value internationally. There is a gap. There's these strong banking players that like run the entire market, but like they there there's no incentive to innovate because they it's it's a pure

amazingly profitable monopoly. So. >> Yeah, that's very very fair. But at the same time what you are doing is serving a need that will always be a need. As in, I don't think that any business is going to come to you and say delete, I wish my payments payments were slower. I wish I had less countries that I could do payouts in. I I I wish that my card programs had more friction. Like people always are going to want better, faster, cheaper when it comes to their money. Uh and if you give them a path for that I think that's immensely valuable.

>> Yeah, I so I fully obviously agree with that. I I think the the harder part for the enterprise is that it it is still a true enterprise sales cycle. So it's a 90-day, 120-day. You don't just show up and be like, hey, let's like test this out. It's like you got to go through the process. You got to and that's why it tends to be stickier because once you do all that then the bar is like, okay, is this better than what we had before? And like just like you're calling out like that bar is not super high because you're competing with, you know, local banks. Um but that cycle to get them to switch and try, that's actually really hard. That's it's not like SMBs because if SMBs are like, oh well, let me try it.

Oh, 5% better. You know what? That's actually going directly to my bottom line. Like I'll test it out. That's not how it works. It works with like enterprises. >> Yeah. And what do you think is the major sticking points for the clients that are our Corgee's clients, right? You can do AR, you can do AP, you can do these cards, you can do all of these different things. Are there like one or two core features where companies when they hear your pitch they're like, "That. I I want that." >> So, cards is still the opening wedge. And when I say cards, the big the biggest part there is the It's not just the cards that you spend, but the controls. Cuz at an enterprise level, the number one thing they care about is controls. Like, can I control my employee spend? If I give them a card,

can it only work on an Uber and not work in this hotel or, you know, for dinner? Like, that's what they care about. That's what we do very well. We can do it well, we do it at scale. That's still, I would say, the biggest opener for us because it's something that is just so structurally different from a local bank. They That's just not where they compete. They don't care about it good or bad. Like, that's not where they make their money, right? For us, that's that's the core opener, which is you come to us for controls, you figure out your card spend. Then what we see is usually around month three or four, they start looking at, "Oh, cool. You guys also have payments. You know, maybe we'll try a little bit." And in the first 12 months, the revenue retention for our cohorts is almost 385%. So, that

means if you start with $100 of revenue, at the end of the month at the end of the 12-month cycle, you're looking at almost $400 of revenue, which is very very good. I mean, it just is a very sticky growing product. But cards, to your question, that's still the opener and it usually sits around controls, which is how do I know that the card spend can only be done for ABC and it can't be done for XYZ. >> Interesting. I I want to talk about the future a little bit. I mean, obviously Jeeves is on a a legendary tear, right? You're raising hundreds of millions of dollars, you're seeing your revenue double, triple in a very very short amount of time.

What do you spend all of your day obsessing over? >> So many things. Um so, I think I think on a structural level, the good and bad of what we do is we cover a lot of surface area and we go pretty pretty deep. Like, in Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, which is, you know, 65-70% of our revenue, we're fully local. We have local entities, we're getting a local banking license in Brazil to take deposits, etc. So, we are exposed to a lot of macro and regulatory tailwinds. Uh not tailwinds, just winds, right? Could be tailwinds, it could be >> Whether they'd be tailwinds or headwinds yeah yeah.

>> It's yeah, it's just it's winds, right? And something changes, it does have an impact on our business. A new, you know, election is coming, there's that that has an impact. There's, you know, new resolutions, that has an impact. The flip side is out of all the businesses, we are actually probably most protected because we have 25 countries. So, one part of one country changes, we still it's not, you know, the majority of the business. That's the flip side, but that's the number one thing that keeps me up at night because there's just a lot of surface area, like the war in Middle East, right? We have companies that have fuel exposure. And our core product is still like our Brex or Ramp, it's a 30-day charge card. That means for 30 days, we give you spend, and on day 31, you got to pay us back, right? And so,

there's a risk for those 30 days that we have to underwrite. And if you are exposed, you're an airline, and you're exposed to fuel. I mean, that's a pretty big macro risk, right? Because your your margins are now changed, right? So, like those are the things It's almost like you have to be everywhere at all the time. It's not just small businesses, it's massive kind of enterprises with different levers that each one is working. So, what I see at Jeeves is you either come in and you usually know in 1 or 2 weeks that it either becomes like super exhausting or it's almost like a exhilarating, like you just need more cuz it's like, you know, it just keeps you going. So, um that that's that's the first one. And then the second one, I think this is the the way companies are building is also

changing, and I'm always paranoid. I'm paranoid in general, but I'm always more paranoid that like there's going to be faster companies coming in than us. But the good thing with fintech is exactly what you said, which is even though the tech is compressing, the fin is not. You still need regulation, you need still need compliance, you cannot issue without a license. Those are things that are very defensible now. Almost the inverse of like 4 years ago where everything was the tech. It's like "Oh fintech fintech fintech the tech is moving so fast. The cost of development, cost of software is so low that the tech is compressing. But, the fin is one of the few industries that's regulated. Each country is different.

You got to get a license. You got to talk to the central bank. Like that, you can't AI your way out of. >> Yeah. It To to your point there, I we talked to a lot of people who are also going and pursuing these licenses and and talking to banks and everything like that. And I think that, you know, when you go and you look at the market and you see all of these new banks popping up all the time. There's often times a really, really big discrepancy between what people are marketing and what people actually have on the back end and and what they're actually building. You know, you see go to these websites and it's like, "Oh, a global money API." And oh, "We're global." And the reality is is often times it's a wrapper of a wrapper of a wrapper who of someone

who's doing the work that you guys are are going out there and doing. And I I think that the people who spend the time now are are absolutely going to be paying dividends on that in in the future. Which sort of leads me to to the next thing that I want to hear about is like, when you guys are thinking about the future, what are you building towards right now? Like your engineering, your product. Is this, "Hey, we need to just keep moving up the stack and go deeper in AR and and AP?" Is it, "Okay, we need to make things agentic?"

What are you doing with with your hundred million dollar round? >> So, um so, there's a few things. One, I think independent of uh whether it's agentic or not, we need to have ownership of the infrastructure. That's been our core philosophy since day one. We rent to start. We test the market. We see which ones are accelerating and then we want to get the get the license. That like that doesn't change. So, independent of like what the interface is cuz to me, agentic is a form of an interface, but the core rails, it doesn't change. It's cards, it's payments. You need Stripe. You need someone that can have give you that access whether it's a human or agent.

So, that is like number one. We have to go do these modules. That's not going to change. We have to get the licenses we need to operate. Not every single one. You have to obviously like make that call. But, the ones that we need to operate at the best cost that we can, like we have to get this. So, that's step one. So, there's a whole cycle and a whole team, like that's all they're doing, right? And so, that's one month. The second one, I strongly, strongly believe that it's inevitable, probably in the next 2 to 3 years, that we are going to go fully into this era of like programmable money. And And there are two components of that. You have the agent side, which is an agent that has contacts enough that a CFO at an enterprise will trust that agent, which is still a pretty high bar, right?

Because like you have to understand, CFOs are downside protection-oriented. They don't care as much about the upside, but they care a lot about the downside. So, you have to convince them that the downside is protected, and then then show them the upside. It's like, "Okay, cool." But, if you can't convince them on that, you're not going to get the first one. And I think that box is still open, right? It starts with consumer, then you have the SMBs, then you have like it moves through the progression chain. But, the enterprise is probably the last one in the B2B cycle, because they move the most, right? To get to that point. So, I think that's one. And then the second one is once you do have agents that are working without a human in the loop, the main thing is you have to be able to

take money and break it up into very small pieces. And so, this is where stablecoin to me comes into play. And I think there's components here that need to be figured out, because today the cost >> pause here, Dileep? Why is money going to be broken up into smaller pieces? >> Because agents >> a big statement. >> Yeah. So, so to me, the way I see it is agents are going to be making money decisions at a frequency that is going to be hard to comprehend for humans. You're already seeing the outlines of this where like I don't even know which agent I have that's working now or not, but they're all they're all doing something, right? Like they're checking a reservation, they're checking a flight.

And And that is only going to keep increasing, which is they need access to spend, but they also need access to spend that is not necessarily in the same dollar multiples that humans operate in, because for them, them I use very broadly for agents, the the value of time is very different. They're always on. They're always there. For human, like I'm not going to spend 5 hours trying to find the best deal or like So I'm like it's almost like I have six How many transactions do you do in a day? Six, maybe. Like just in the full day, right? Like like you you buy coffee, you go to restaurants >> Yeah, like like it's you know, it's not that many. But I think an agent, at least for my pieces, is that number is going to be 60. And if you get to 60,

unless your budget as a human has changed, which is not going to change, part of it is the cost and the frequency is going to be tied to smaller dollar value transactions. And if you do smaller dollar value transactions, what we have not figured out and we will is how do you make the cost of that also lower? Meaning the swipe for a card still has a cost an innate cost, whether it's 1 cent or $1. And at $1, it's priced in, like you don't really notice it. But if you get to 1 cent and lower, the cost of the swipe is actually more expensive than the 1 cent. So like there is there's a lot there that I like again, I don't think it's like insurmountable. I just think that is not something that's been figured out. But if you ask me in 5 years, I think even

in 3 years, it's inevitable that that's the next frontier, which is this fully programmable money. You have the agents, you have humans in loop, but the agents are doing a lot of this and they need money they can break up and then they need context enough that they don't eff it up. >> So just to be clear, you believe that stablecoins are going to be the currency of agents and then agents are going to need to interact with stablecoins because interchange and card fees are not going to cut it. >> Because so I believe that yes, the first one, which is the stablecoins are going to be the currency for agents. And just to be clear, I don't think it has to be a USD denominated stablecoin.

>> Yes, yes, yes, yes. >> The concept of like digitized money you can break up into very minuscule components, that's what I think stablecoin provides. And then the second one, the reason is that I do think part of this agent economy is the frequency is going to change. I'll give you a almost like a non-agent version of this, but because we have this card product, which is a card's API. But, if you think about an API as an MCP, MCP is an agent ticket. It's in the same box. The number of cards that companies were creating when we offered this thing with a single use, we're talking about 100,000, 200,000 200,000 cards a month. A month. Because it's fully single use, right?

That's how an agent thinks. And and and that's a fundamental different from like how you and I operate with Z have one card or you you know, might for movies, etc. So, that's what's going to start change. >> I The mental model that I use is and there's a fierce debate, right? Are agents going to use cards? Is that okay? Are agents going to use stable coins? My mental model is agents are going to use cards to buy the things that humans would buy. If you want your agent to go and buy a plane ticket or a banana or a t-shirt, the agent can use a card, right? Agent payable cards, great. Right?

If you want your agent to go and use something that only an agent would use, compute inference buy, you know, some data, whatever it might be, stable coins are going to have to be the unit of currency specifically because of the reasons that you mentioned. >> Yeah. I I I I I So, one I fully agree. I think the third one that I would also throw out there that combines a little bit as we are still thinking about outcomes and tasks like humans do. And I think one of the things that will start changing is the sequence of tasks that you need to get the outcome might be different for an agent. So, like as an example, when we and and this is just human nature, right? We think about something, it's like five steps to get there. Then you're like, okay, AI, I'm going to use AI and they'll help me with

these two steps. And you're solving for the same outcome. But, agents, and this is what to me is also going to change. They might have a very different way of getting to the same outcome. And I I fundamentally believe you need access to payment rails, but you also need dollar components that you can break up because how they get to the outcome might be very different from how a human is thinking is the most efficient way to get to that outcome. And then they need the tools to be able to get to that outcome with the constraint of like solve this problem, not take these exact same six steps that I did. >> It's It's funny. We're talking very generically. I want to narrow it a little bit. Like you These are your personal beliefs. How is Jeeves building for this agentic future? I mean, you

know, when we talk about agents that the CFO of BMW, Lululemon, and all these massive enterprises are going to use, you guys are to, you know, to use your own words, the financial operating system, the financial operating layer. How do you build something >> Well, so I I I think the reality there, and it's a good It's a good push. The reality there is So today we do have, you know, eight eight eight or 10 agents. I'll tell you the two that people use. So we have one that actually um does GL coding. So if you're an enterprise, there's usually a person. It's a really tedious job that they look at every transaction, and then they match it to like, okay, this is Uber, this is a restaurant, etc. It's called GL coding. Um immense value cuz you need that to close your books. We have a lot

of data because we have companies that do this today for us. So we trained an agent, it's 99.99% accurate. So better than a human. So that's something >> data spending or reconciling? >> Reconciling. This is reconciling data. It's after the data comes back, they reconcile it. And then the the the the uh agentic card creation. That's another one that clearly is there. We have six other agents that that are not being used. And and to your point, I think part of it, and this is the reality of where we sit a little bit is that one, internationally, the cost of human labor is actually lower, right? And so at some point, you're fighting with like, okay, yes, maybe it's a little bit better, but I already have a team, they do it well, it's just one less thing I need to worry about. And like, you know what? Let's

just continue with this for now, and then we'll come back. And so the urgency of like, you have to do this agents, I I I I think it's a very valid point. I I I don't think it's there yet at at a lot of the companies that we sell to because they have their process. Everybody's busy. They have 10 things to do and it's like, "Okay, give me the two things that work and then I need to see real ROI and then the rest is like, "Okay, good enough but like not really pushing the needle of what I need and so I'm not going to invest in that." I don't know if that's going to change uh very quickly. Like we don't, you know, like we operate internationally and it's not San Francisco. Like it's not like everyone's just going out and you know, saying

like, "Hey, if you don't do this, the world is going to end." Like it's like those different versions of how that works, right? So, I I think it's a it's a it's a very fair pushback but but I think that's still different from your first question which is where do you see this in 3 to 5 years? I do think we're going to get to that point but we have to build with that vision in mind. I think the usage is it's a very valid point. Like I think out of the six or eight agents we have like two people actually use and then six or eight, it's there. It's interesting. It's just not at the level of like, "Okay, I'm going to go change my workflow because of this one agent or two agents."

>> Of course. And how much of what you do is actually in the flow of funds and moving money versus being the operating layer on top of that flow? >> Uh it's it's more the operating layer. We we don't touch the money directly unless we have the direct license because once you do that, then you're in the funds flow. Uh so, usually we'll have we'll have partners that can handle the fund delivery in and out. Uh I mean, in Brazil for instance, we are getting the license at the end of the year so that'll change. Mexico, we are regulated so that we can touch but usually you don't want to be touching the funds um you know, at any point unless you have that direct license. So, we see ours as like the orchestration layer and also people forget about this but it's not just the orchestration.

It's it's the value of the CFO not having to do that which is they also could do this. They also could go talk to six providers, piece it all together, have like a treasury ops team or finops team do it. That's what we saw which is you don't have to do that. We'll do that for you. >> of a very, very disgustingly rudimentary version of that. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Hu- hu- hu- 100% and what's really interesting, and this is a little bit of our secret sauce, is the companies we sell to look like Jeeps. We operate in 20 countries. We have 60 bank accounts. Every day I get a report that's called cash in cash out, which we're trying to automate, but it's still so hard to automate, where someone literally goes into our 60 bank accounts, gets the actual cash that we have, puts it into a

report, and sends it to me. So, I know at the end of the day our entire cash in cash out, right? That that's a manual manual task. And now we're building agents to be able to do that, but what's good about Vera Vista is if our team uses it, and they feel like it has value, I feel pretty confident we can sell that, because the pain points we're solving is similar to what other organizations that operate in, you know, multiple countries with a sophisticated financing will also have to solve. >> Yeah, it's like it's dog fooding your own product while building your own product. >> unique, right? It's like >> Yeah, which is great. Which is great.

You know, it's like I need to understand how to help CFOs that are building international finance companies. >> Which is what >> to do that by building an international finance [laughter] company. >> Yeah, by building it. And and it's great, because if our team uses it, then I feel pretty comfortable that we can package this and sell it. >> Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think, you know, we we're sort of talking about the convergence of agents and and flow of funds and everything like that, but if you guys are able to develop agentic systems that are making a difference in your flows, and in your back end, and in your flow of funds, it's pretty easy to sell that, right?

You sort of have that internal conviction on, "Hey, I know that this is going to bring you value, because it's already done that." >> Because it's yeah. And and this is how you use it, and here's how we use it, and you know, like like all of those help. >> That's that's really I I imagine as a CFO, and you tell me if if [snorts] I'm wrong, but like that level of trust is probably a really big boost to to your sales motion. >> Yeah, it it's it's the fact that we have the same learned experience is very helpful because we can sell it in a way that our team understands meaning like it's useful for them.

The trust is the most important thing like it's because to your point like you we have this point of like the CFO's trust us and now we're like hey try this with us. It's not that other companies don't have stablecoin it's just they don't have the entire thing integrated in a box that the CFO already trusts in these international countries. That's that's reality right and why do they trust it cuz we have the infrastructure. Why do they trust it cuz they used it for 3 years. Why like it's all these little pieces but it comes back to the same point which is that trust. >> Yeah, I mean I know a lot of companies that have really really cool tech and think that that will do all of the heavy lifting and I think most of the industry really underestimates the value of trust still.

>> And and innovation and like the >> Absolutely. >> Yeah, people are >> Absolutely. I mean but like historically speaking you look back on the last like 5,000 years of finance and the only through line and dictator of success is trust. >> That's it. >> And and there's no reason why agents would would throw that 5,000 year track record of trust away. >> Hey it's it's money right it's it's like at the end of the day it's like it's like you know people get paranoid and irrational about money. I mean that's just human nature it doesn't change.

>> I love it I love it. So we started off the episode talking about your your big you know hundred plus million dollar raise. I want to end the episode with talking about what's next post raise. I mean obviously you guys are backed by the best. I know your team well you're building with the best. What can people expect out of Jeeves? >> So a few things. So one we are aggressively hiring and and aggressively for a very small team right so our team is still less than 200 people. We operate in 35 countries. We just added 10 new ones. But we are looking for more people especially with depth on the stablecoin and crypto side.

So what that means is we're looking for obviously folks on the product side. We're looking for engineering talent. We're looking for sales talent. We have a global head of partnerships role that is I think very exciting which is, you know, if you feel like you can do this across 35 countries, you'll have just What's unique about Very Good is we have a lot of levers. We have fiat, we have stablecoin, we have infrastructure, we have licenses. So you need someone that's creative to be like, "Oh, actually we can mix and match this in a way that someone else hasn't done it." Whereas like, "Here's a playbook that worked for XYZ. Let's take this here." So one, what's going to change is we're moving into an era where we want to hire more because we want to 10x our surface area in the next year. And 10x means more

geographies. It also means more product lines. So that's why we're also announcing the launch of the AR invoice suite. So we started with Brazil, but we want to expand that to all the countries we're in. And then we also, I think we're mentioned this, but we also launched this global AI expense tracker. So our companies have this specific sequence where because they operate in six countries, they actually have AI spend in different currencies. So you have your engineering team spending in pesos with Cloud. And then you have your customer success team spending in pounds with OpenAI. And at the end of the month you have the same question. What is my spend and what is the ROI? And so we built this global spend tracker. It'll show it to you by model. It'll map it out for you. That's in beta right now, but we're going to be launching that as

well. So that's another area we're investing in. And then we're also the big announcement is like we are expanding to 10 new countries. So we have launched Argentina. We're expanding into Peru, Paraguay, Uruguay, Central America. So that's Panama, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, etc. So this year's all Latin America. In the next year we want to go into Middle East and then Southeast Asia. So we see our right to win kind of in this global south. So a lot to come. >> Fantastic. I love it. And and I'm I'm going to be following along with that journey. I hope that our audience does as well. Believe, thank you. Thank you so much for jumping on for sharing your wisdom.

You and I have about 10 more hours of questions to to cover. But for the sake of the sanity of our audience, like I said, I appreciate you coming. For our audience, I hope that you were able to learn a lot. I know that I did. And Believe, we're going to have to have you back on the show. >> I love it and looking forward to continuing the conversation. Thanks for having me on.