Lawrence Lin Murata On Raising $77 Million To Provide Businesses With Easy Access To Capital And Favorable Point-Of-Purchase Terms

Lawrence Lin Murata’s journey from Brazil to Silicon Valley is nothing short of extraordinary. Born and raised in São Paulo, he ventured into the tech world without prior experience, eventually leading a successful startup.

This blog post delves into his inspiring story, covering his multicultural upbringing, the challenges of breaking into tech, his experiences at Stanford, and the founding of his company, Slope. Slope has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Tech Square Ventures, Alerion Ventures, Charlotte Angel Fund, and Techstars.

In this episode, you will learn:

• Multicultural roots shaped Lawrence’s unique approach to problem-solving and innovation.
• Stanford provided Lawrence with hands-on experience that bridged the gap between academia and industry.
• Social impact has been a driving force in Lawrence’s entrepreneurial journey.
• Lawrence’s first company taught him invaluable lessons despite its challenges.
• The idea for Slope was born from Lawrence’s experience digitizing his parents’ wholesale business.
• Strong relationships with influential figures helped secure significant funding for Slope.
• A culture of transparency and collaboration has been key to Slope’s early success.

 

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About Lawrence Lin Murata:

Lawrence Lin Murata is the Co-Founder & CEO of Slope, a B2B payments workflow company.

Prior to Slope, he was Head of AI Platforms and Data Science at Nauto, founded a self-driving vehicle startup, Newton (acquired by Nauto), and worked on NLP projects for Siri at Apple. Stanford B.S. CS, AI track (focus: NLP and CV, advisor: prof. Andrew Ng).

Connect with Lawrence Lin Murata:

• LinkedIn
• Medium
• Crunchbase
• RocketReach

Read the Full Transcription of the Interview:

Alejandro Cremades: Alrighty, hello everyone and welcome to the Deal Maker Show. So today we have a really amazing founder. a founder you know We’re going to be able to appreciate you know the the whole thing of going from Brazil to the U.S. not being familiar with tech. All of a sudden, like after getting his degree and working for other companies, he’s going at it on his own. i mean what What he’s done is really remarkable. We’re going to be talking about finding product market fit, how to go about ah culture. We’re going to be talking about fundraising too, and all that good stuff that I would like to hear. So without further ado, let’s welcome our guest today, Lawrence Lynn Murata. Welcome to the show.

Lawrence Lin Murata: Awesome. Thanks for having me, Alejandro. I’m excited to be here.

Alejandro Cremades: So originally born and raised in São Paulo with kind of like a nice a mix there, and you know with the family you know coming from all parts of the world, which I’m sure you know shaped you up as well.

Lawrence Lin Murata: yeah

Alejandro Cremades: So give us a walk through memory lane. How was life growing up?

Lawrence Lin Murata: Yeah, for sure. So I was born and raised in Brazil in São Paulo. um I lived in São Paulo my my whole life until college. My family is half Taiwanese, half Japanese. My great grandparents from my father’s side, they immigrated from Japan to Brazil. My grandparents from my mother’s side immigrated from Taiwan to ah to Brazil. Yeah, I mean, but Brazil is an extremely multicultural ah place. I think it it was an awesome experience. um At the same time, being so far away from Silicon Valley, especially at that time, there were not that many startups back then. um So you really had to like search for information about, okay, how do I go study abroad, tech, and things like that.

Alejandro Cremades: So what what ended up bringing you to the U.S.?

Lawrence Lin Murata: Yeah, I would say since I was little, one of my life goals is always true. How can I maximize my impact? I feel like growing up, I was never thinking of this idea of like coming to the US. I think to me that was kind of like a separate reality. And I was thinking of becoming a business owner, just like my parents. um One day, when I was in high school, an English teacher met him, and then he told me about the process to apply to the U.S., and he was very apparent passionate about having people like ah attend U.S. colleges.

Lawrence Lin Murata: Yeah. And then he mentioned how promising he felt my background was and what are the steps required to do that. Um, so I literally became obsessed about that idea. I was like, wow, like I thought these colleges were like things that I just seen in movies. They’re so outside of my reality. Um, and now this teacher is telling me that he sees potential in me being able to apply to these colleges. So literally every day I was like at his door, like asking questions about, okay, what’s tough or what’s SAT, t how does this work?

Alejandro Cremades: so then So then how, obviously, you ended up landing in Stanford, and Stanford has had like an incredible ah impact and in you, in your career, in your choices, in your decisions. How would you say that da you know Stanford as a whole you know shaped you up?

Lawrence Lin Murata: Yeah, I feel like, um I mean, what’s interesting about the California culture in Stanford is just the how close academia and industry feels. So a lot of my teachers, they were also in industry before, or they are in industry at the same time while they’re in academia. um So if it feels extremely close. um I feel like I like the US ah college style where it’s very application focused. So I studied computer science with focus on AI. um And back then I was doing a lot of projects and everything is extremely hands-on and you’re close to this great company, it’s like Apple. And I got the opportunity to intern at this company. So I think being so close to the industry, um having hands-on courses, I think those was that that really opened my horizons.

Alejandro Cremades: as well as experiencing two the inequality and i’m getting like super excited about social impact while you were living in Brazil. What kind of ah turn of events did that give you?

Lawrence Lin Murata: to

Alejandro Cremades: you know that That passion?

Lawrence Lin Murata: Yeah, for sure. um yeah i mean Growing up in Brazil is just part of your day-to-day life. i mean Brazil has extremely inequality um in the same neighborhood. You can see extreme wealth and extreme poverty. um I think that was extremely impactful in my own life. My grandparents and great-grandparents also went to Brazil without having much. um so So that was a big inspiration on how can I leverage um like this ah this background in computer science, everything that I’m doing in AI, to have more social impact.

Lawrence Lin Murata: um So at Stanford, I started CS plus social good, which is computer science plus social good. So it was Stanford’s first um official organization to combine technology and social impact. um So we run official computer science classes. um They’re all project focused students work with nonprofits to help solve their problems. We host speakers. um who talk about different applications of tech for social impact. um So that was a big part of my experience at Stanford. And then even later at Stanford, um I think everything I do, whether it’s slope or my first company, I try to tie that into how can I maximize impact.

Lawrence Lin Murata: So, for example, my first company was in self-driving cars. A big driver there is just seeing how globally you look at the top 10 causes of death. Most of them are some type of disease, um but one of them, which is driving crashes, is human-made. So I was thinking, okay, how can we improve this system that’s human-made and make driving safer? um so So that was a big inspiration for my first company.

Alejandro Cremades: so Let’s talk about that first company. ah What ended up happening there, because i mean literally, you started that company you know right after Stanford, and that was like your segue into Nauta, which kind of like changed everything you know for you, being able to work with one of your professors there. What happened with that first business?

Lawrence Lin Murata: Yeah, for sure. um So we had an exit to Nado. um so So I started Newton right after graduation. and was It wasn’t easy, but it was a big learning experience. um I feel like it had no no experience, no track record. I was learning on the go. I was making mistakes. And I think a lot of that dictated um like the way I run Slope, like our culture, um the way I manage the company. um And I was also a solo founder, and being a solo founder in deep tech was extremely difficult. um And then after the exit to Nado, so I joined Nado, I was running AI platforms and data science. um I was fortunate ah that Stefan, the CEO, Russon, the CTO, they both gave me a lot of autonomy. um So I was able to really learn about, okay, what is it like to run these teams at a later stage company?

Alejandro Cremades: So then let’s talk about how the experience of Naoto kind of like polished your worldview of startups, because here you have the opportunity to work with like a rocket ship, right? With Naoto. And you were there for over two years. And by the way, for the people that are listening, Stefan Hack, watch also on the podcast. So you know if they want to check out that story now, go and take a look at that episode.

Lawrence Lin Murata: you

Alejandro Cremades: But how is it like to be able to experience that, to experience a company like that, and and to also have the opportunity to work with someone like Stefan, you know that iss a remarkable you know individual?

Lawrence Lin Murata: Yeah, I think what was great about the experience was just having kind of like two things. One, the autonomy um of being a startup founder. um I feel like within the team that I was running, I was giving a lot of autonomy to prioritize things and work on everything, like not only on the technical aspects, but everything from um like I worked on design, I worked on sales calls, um and Basically that everything ends to ends just because of all the autonomy um that they gave me. um But at the same time, you are at a larger company, which was very different from being at my first company where you start the company. And of course, because you’re the founder, people report to you um and people follow what I do.

Lawrence Lin Murata: When you’re at a larger company, there’s more work that you need to do in terms of like crossing collaboration, pursuing stakeholders, handling disagreements. So I think there was this whole like real world experience that I didn’t have um before that Naoro gave me while also giving the all the autonomy.

Alejandro Cremades: So let’s talk about in that moment where you decide, because as they say, once an entrepreneur, always an entrepreneur. So in your case, after a couple of years there at the Nalto, you started to um to think that then it was time to get back at it.

Lawrence Lin Murata: Yeah.

Alejandro Cremades: know so So how would that happen? and And also, what were the sequence of events for you to be able to bring slope to life?

Lawrence Lin Murata: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, so I think of my goal was always to to maximize impact. So i actually, the CTO told me that he was surprised I didn’t leave earlier. um So he was not surprised at all to hear the news. so um And then, um yeah, ah after living in Ottawa, I explored some ideas with my co-founder. My co-founder is a longtime friend, Alice, so she studied at Berkeley. Berkeley and Stanford, they have a rivalry for the people who are in the Bay Area. um They have the big game that’s American football game between the two. We co-hosted the big hack that was a hackathon version version of that. um Yeah, and we stayed in touch.

Lawrence Lin Murata: um And then we explored a bunch of ideas. We had a process. and And throughout the process, um I think one thing that stood out was going back to building something for us. um And growing up in Brazil, I experienced firsthand the pinpoints that my parents have because they have a wholesale business that they’ve been running for more than three decades. And during COVID, I saw how they hatch digitizer business. um So I saw firsthand how there were no good solutions.

Lawrence Lin Murata: um I think one thing that sometimes people forget is this business owners are also consumers. So they’re using Amazon and all their great products and they’re seeing amazing e-commerce, like consumer e-commerce and payments experiences. On the other hand, there’s like a stack of paperwork for them to do anything in terms of like B2B payments. So so that that was an issue of inspiration to bring a consumer grade payments experience should be to B2B.

Alejandro Cremades: so then So then talk to us about the business model of slope. What ended up being the business model of slope and how are you guys making money?

Lawrence Lin Murata: Yeah, for sure. um So slope is a B2B2B model. So the first B is a B2B merchant. So we work with enterprise wholesalers who sell to other businesses. Basically, the value i to them is to bring their payments offline online. So typically, they’re doing things manually and offline. and we’re able to help them digitize that process. And then the last B is the business buyer. So there’s a wide range of businesses there. So it can be a small SMB or a larger business um that’s paying using slope. Basically, their business model has been to charge a fee in the transaction volume.

Alejandro Cremades: so then So then, I know that you’ve also raised some money, and you’ve raised money from very tier one investors. And we’re talking about some of the most influential people in in the world of of startups and tech.

Lawrence Lin Murata: Mm

Alejandro Cremades: so how did you go about really creating such an unbelievable network you know from someone that is coming from Brazil you know to be able to engineer that and and and to get all these people on board? I mean, how how how did you do that? and And I guess before you answer that, you’ve raised quite a bit between equity and debt.

Lawrence Lin Murata: hmm.

Alejandro Cremades: So how much have you raised in total?

Lawrence Lin Murata: Yeah, for sure. So we raised a total of $77 million in in debt.

Alejandro Cremades: Okay, so now talk to us about that network. How did you go about building the network? And and how would you say that financing rounds have shifted over time for you guys?

Lawrence Lin Murata: Yeah, for sure. um I would say it’s been kind of like a I mean, from many different paths. um so So Sam i actually met him back in college. He taught a class called CS183B, which was how to start a startup. So he brought a lot of like later stage YC founders in every class to teach about like different aspects of like starting and running a startup. um So that was, I think just, I mean, not having a lot of exposure to startups and tech growing up, I think that class was like,

Lawrence Lin Murata: was like really opened up my eyes to the possibilities and like all these great founders who are like coming here and and talking about their companies. So so we we stayed in touch since then. um I would say other investors, so Alice was already in YC, so we got into YC again. And I feel like we’re almost all rejected because we, so our partner Brad, he actually called us and he was like, hey guys, I think, so we applied with a different deal that was called Air Desk. It was Airbnb for office space. So Brad called us and he was like, hey guys, as you can probably tell from the interview,

Lawrence Lin Murata: We don’t really like the idea, but we really like you guys. um So I think he really pushed to accept us. um so So they gave us a chance. um And then I think one thing that Sam says that’s really like key to the scope of philosophy is iteration pay. So basically we iterated into a product that got traction. And I think because we got traction, um leveraging YC, I think we’ve been able to get more investors. um We’re also really good at like sending updates every single month. And we highlight we’re extremely transparent. If there’s anything good and bad, I think that builds a lot of trust between investors. So it’s been kind of like that network of like, OK, investors will do a trust. They introduce us to other investors. um And we love having operators. um I mean, not not just Sam, but the founders of DoorDash, Dropbox,

Lawrence Lin Murata: um the ah founders of Unity, Opendoor, and other great companies. um We love having people have done this before at different scales and tap into their knowledge.

Alejandro Cremades: So the equity versus debt, why did you guys go about doing both? And how does it differ, you know, raising one or the other, especially for a business like Slope?

Lawrence Lin Murata: Yeah, for sure. Being a FinTech, we need both because as part of B2B payments, one thing that we realized is 80% of global trade has some type of financing, whether it’s a supplier saying, hey, you can pay me in net 30, net 60, or whether it’s invoice factoring or other traditional ways to to get financing for B2B purchases. um so We realized that was essential um for B2B. um I mean, if you see in B2C, there are so many financing options for S&Bs, it’s even more essential. Cashflow is the life and blood of businesses. um So basically, that’s why we have these that warehouses because they amplify our cap capacity. So we don’t need to deploy our own capital. So we have a warehouse with JP Morgan, which we just announced. ah We have another one with First Seasons Bank and with Trini Capital.

Alejandro Cremades: So obviously, you know we’re talking about people. So how do you guys go about hiring too much slope? How do you guys go about building culture?

Lawrence Lin Murata: Yeah. I mean, hiring has, we’re extremely selective. um So we, we have 25 people um in the team today. We are always punching above our weight. We have some public company customers. ah We close our first enterprise customer, just being Alice and I. ah We raise our series A, I think, at about four people. um so yeah so so So I think we we try to keep the the team super lean and super nimble. I think we give out very few offers. We have an extremely rigorous interview process.

Lawrence Lin Murata: um I would say in general, ah in terms of culture, we look for people who are hands-on. So to give you an example, our CFO, Ashish, he was an executive at SoFi, and Deutsche Bank, our GC, Una, was an executive at Wells Fargo in Robin Hood. They’re both extremely hands-on. So they would take customer calls. They would do customer support. They would tell the customer, hey, you need to refresh your browser. um And there’s nothing is too trivial. um We all like work on sales. We didn’t have a sales team until a couple months ago. So I think being hands-on is part of our culture. I would say the other thing that we look for is always high-slope people.

Lawrence Lin Murata: um We want people who are able to pick up new things and learn fast, um which we call like the the slope of the curve. It should be high, the starting points can be low. I mean, Alice and I, we didn’t have any finance experience um before starting Slope, but we we talked with energy investors, we learned pretty fast. um so High Slope is a big part of our culture. We’re also very like no BS. We’re extremely transparent. So everyone, the team knows our revenue, knows our cash, runway, every single financial metrics. They have access to it real time. So we have dashboards. um Our bank accounts are connected through plaid, into our databases. People can see every single corporate spend. So there’s nothing to hide. We’re extremely transparent. We’re very results-driven. We’re very anti-politics.

Lawrence Lin Murata: Yeah, I think we’re we also collaborate really closely. I mean, we’re very competitive. We like having fun together. We just ran a the SF half marathon actually a couple of weeks ago. And we like doing like white water rafting, like different sports together. We did a burpee challenge. um Our CFO is the unchallenged winner.

Alejandro Cremades: That’s amazing. so So, as we’re talking about people here, I want to talk about vision, because obviously, all these people, whether it’s employees, investors, even customers, they’re ultimately excited about the future that you’re living into. and So, let’s say you were to go to sleep tonight, and you wake up in a world where the vision of slope is fully realized. What does that world look like?

Lawrence Lin Murata: Yeah, I think we we want to see much more of the digital economy digital. um And not only that, I think the reason why we believe that’s important is because that enables access to different digital digital services. To us, it’s kind of like a The B2B economy being digital is more of like creating that B2B data layer. On top of that, you can access get easier access to like different bank accounts that you would otherwise not be approved by in traditional processes, get access to different types of like finance products, AR automation, um and different things that help you run your business.

Alejandro Cremades: So I want to ask you this, i because obviously, i mean the way that you guys are are are growing now is it’s unbelievable. But at what point do you really feel, looking back, that day it really truly felt like you guys had hit product market fit? What did that look like?

Lawrence Lin Murata: I would say early on there’s a Yeah, I think because both Alice and I were second time founders, so we’ve had a first company that had much less traction. I think we’ve seen firsthand what that looks like, just how like the customer calls feel, how much you need to push, how much you need to sell. um I think at Slope, literally every single month, we feel understaffed. Every single month, we feel like we have more demand than we can handle. um So I think it’s a very subjective feeling.

Lawrence Lin Murata: Uh, not like a specific metric. I mean, there are metrics that we measure, but I would say it’s mostly the feeling that every single month since we launched, we were understaffed. We have more demand than we can handle and we’re actually trying to be selective. And we declined, um, a bunch of merchants because we were like, okay, we need to focus and like serve fewer merchants, but serve them extremely well.

Alejandro Cremades: So as we’re talking about like going back in time, I want to ask you, if I was to put you into a time machine and I bring you back in time, let’s say to that moment where you were thinking about starting you know something here with Alice, and let’s say you had the opportunity of having a chat with your younger selves, and you were able to give that younger self one piece of advice before launching a business. What would that be and why, given what you know now?

Lawrence Lin Murata: I would say um iteration is extremely important and experimentation and listening to your customers. Um, I think just getting something live out there is really important. I would say that that’s being not in the difference between my first company and slope. Um, first company was very driven by, okay, I’m doing all this AI research. I think this is extremely interesting. There’s some big vision. Um, I think the big vision is important, uh, but equally important is also to listen to your customers. And I think it was more like of a, more of a tech, um, tech.

Lawrence Lin Murata: first approach for my first company. um I would say for slope would be a lot more customer centric. um So really focused on iteration. So we actually didn’t start with B2B payments. I mean, it we started with that Airbnb for office space idea. It wasn’t just that idea. We had a long list of 100 plus ideas. We iterated for a bunch of ideas. We launched a few products. We even got revenue with other products, talked to a bunch of customers. um my parents included um and that eventually led to slope.

Alejandro Cremades: So, as we’re thinking about like learning and and and really being able to capture the best and and and to be able to receive feedback too and guidance, i mean you’ve been able to build a remarkable network, now especially with all these investors that you’ve been able to surround yourself by. you know Some of the biggest names that we can think of in Silicon Valley I guess the question that comes to mind is, how do you go about getting the most out of the people that are surrounding you? know one one so one One thing is obviously to get the right people to to be around you, but then the other thing is to be able to keep them engaged and to get the best and the most out of them. How do you go about that?

Lawrence Lin Murata: Yeah, I think at Slope, what’s been key is just having a poor relationship. So we’re we’re never afraid of like asking for things. um so even anyone on the cap table who always ask for help um and we’re very like we’re not really not shy about it. And we’re not afraid of like getting no as an answer. if I think that’s one thing that I learned like when I was an auto, um I think being given so much autonomy, I think that was important. um And I just learned to to like ask for what I want. so um so So we do that all the time for investors and and we’re not like, oh

Lawrence Lin Murata: And very often, like people appreciate it. I think people want to know that they’re being helpful. we We always have a very long thank you section in every single investor update. Yeah, I think we’re always actively asking for things.

Alejandro Cremades: So for the people that are listening, Lawrence, I would love to reach out and say hi. What is the best way for them to do so?

Lawrence Lin Murata: ah Yeah, I mean, you can email me at Lawrence at slopebay.com.

Alejandro Cremades: Is it enough? Well, Lawrence, thank you so much for being on the Dealmaker show today with us. It has been an absolute honor to have you here.

Lawrence Lin Murata: Awesome, thank you so much for having me, Alejandro.

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