Sandy Kemper On Raising Over $400 Million To Back Small Businesses With Working Capital, Enabling Smooth Cash Flows

In a recent episode of the Dealmakers’ Podcast, Sandy Kemper, a seasoned entrepreneur and former CEO of a reputable bank, shared his remarkable journey from the traditional world of banking to the forefront of fintech and eCommerce. Sandy’s story is not just a personal narrative but a testament to the transformative power of innovation in the financial sector.

His latest venture, C2FO, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Union Square Ventures, Temasek, Mithril Capital Management, and Allianz X.

In this episode, you will learn:

• A journey from traditional banking to fintech showcases the evolution of finance, rooted in historical significance.
• Transitioning from a large institution to a startup helped build cultures from day one, avoiding the shackles of corporate inertia.
• A perspective on success as both an enabler and a potential trap highlights the challenges of maintaining innovation within established corporations.
• A commitment to empowering small and mid-sized businesses underscores the nobility in leveling the playing field.
• By eliminating the need for risk underwriting, the platform C2FO pioneers a direct exchange between buyers and suppliers, revolutionizing working capital flow.
• Vision for a world where emerging economies can flourish by democratizing access to capital, stimulating job creation, and driving economic growth.
• Advice to young entrepreneurs emphasizes the importance of silencing self-doubt, balancing fear with optimism, and cultivating humility, coupled with active listening, as crucial ingredients for success.

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About Sandy Kemper:

Alexander (Sandy) C. Kemper is the founder of C2FO and serves as Chairman of the Board. In addition, Sandy is Chairman of the Board of The Collectors Fund, a private equity fund focused on alternative asset classes.

Prior to founding The Collectors Fund and C2FO, Sandy founded Perfect Commerce (fka eScout.com) and served as the company’s Chairman and chief Executive Officer from 2000-2006.

Under Sandy’s leadership, Perfect Commerce created the Open Supplier Network™ (OSN™) and became the largest and fastest-growing provider of on-demand supplier relationship management (SRM) technology in the United States.

Prior to founding Perfect Commerce, Sandy served as Chairman of the Board and CEO of UMB Bank and CEO of UMB Financial, a NASDAQ-traded financial services company with assets of more than twelve billion dollars.

Sandy began his career with UMB upon graduating in 1987 from Northwestern University, where he majored in American History.

Sandy is an active angel and venture investor and currently serves on the corporate boards of UMB Financial (NASDAQ: UMBF), UMB Bank, NIC (NASDAQ: EGOV), AXA Art USA (NYSE: AXA), and BATS Exchange, the third largest stock exchange in the world.

Sandy and his family are active in academic, civic, and philanthropic endeavors, and he serves on the board of the Agriculture Future of America (AFA), a non-profit scholarship and leadership development organization that he co-founded.

Sandy and his family live on a farm in Kansas City, Missouri, where they raise and care for their horses, sheep, and any and all wild animals (not including their four children).

Connect with Sandy Kemper:

• Bloomberg
• Crunchbase
• ZoomInfo
• LinkedIn

Read the Full Transcription of the Interview:

Alejandro Cremades: Alrighty hello everyone and welcome to the dealmakerr show. So today. We have a very exciting founder. You know what he’s doing is really remarkable. He’s on this a rocket ship and he’s gonna be telling us everything about it. We’re gonna be talking about building companies and also the way to think about it whether is. Ah, problematic company or an opportunistic company. Also you know why he decided to go the way that they did with their first day fundraise for his scoring company instead of looking at valuations more looking at the people that were financing the operation. And then also how to go about building scaling and financing a company as well as to how to think about accessing capital so without further ado. Let’s welcome our guests today Sandy Kepor welcome to the show.

Sandy Kemper: Um, thank you my friend good to be here. Alejandro thank you.

Alejandro Cremades: So originally from Kansas City so tell us about you know how you got into the whole world of finance you know were they that interest you know like mature.

Sandy Kemper: Well, you know, interestingly in Kansas City it was a financial hub even from the beginning of the city because it was the the place where all of the westward trails originated the Santa Fe the California the oregon trail all came out of Kansas City and and the business of banking was born financing. Those pioneers as they move from the middle west to the west pursuing their dreams. So the banks were here and I ran a bank here for a number of years that dates back to that very origin of of its creation story being to enable capital to give to the pioneers. So they could pursue their dreams as they moved westward. So my my my connection to finance is is long live and and somewhat interesting from that history.

Alejandro Cremades: I mean and and and the bank that you are running you know, quite impressive. You know we’re talking about a $40000000000 bank today you know how was it like you know managing the operation of a bank like that because obviously that they that gave you you know like some insights you know as to how to build your current business. Do they too.

Sandy Kemper: Yeah I would imagine I’m I’m one of the older founders. You’ve probably interviewed but in this case I ran a bank for almost well I didn’t run it for 20 years but I was I was there for nearly twenty years and enjoyed very much understanding the business understanding. What worked what didn’t work. And the challenge is really when you’ve got four or five thousand people I think it’s much more difficult to move the ship as rapidly as you would like and so in some ways when I retired from the bank and decided to go build technology and ecommerce and fintech companies. I was ah I was probably making it easier on myself because I was able to move into businesses where we could build the culture from day one. We could be nimble from day one. It would always be day one. It would never be as it was in our company at the bank year you know 101 and that bank just celebrated its Hundredth anniversary. So. That difficulty of moving something with that much historical baggage even though I was the Ceo of the bank was was pretty challenging and so in many ways I think that that drove me to want to create smaller more nimble more intimate companies where we could get things right? Perhaps get things right from beginning and stay on course throughout.

Alejandro Cremades: And.

Sandy Kemper: Didn’t have. We didn’t have to go back and burn the ships if you will because we were already United on our path and I think larger corporations older corporations struggle a little bit more with that.

Alejandro Cremades: And 1 thing that that is very interesting there as you were alluding to it over 100 years you know the the bank really remarkable now I guess like how do you deal to with adaptability for so many years like there’s obviously plenty of legacy systems you know and things and ways of.

Sandy Kemper: Oh yeah.

Alejandro Cremades: Things. So how do you go about listening to the market and adapting you know the company at such a scale you know to be able to to be in parallel with what the customers are asking you.

Sandy Kemper: So I will say it’s It’s still a fantastic bank. My My brother’s actually there. It does a great job getting capital hands of Businesses. It’s grown very nicely. But yeah, there’s there’s generally take that bank out of the equation and just think about larger organizations. What’s what’s it take. To be success and be large. Well I mean it takes success and we all know that failure is the mother of success I I have come to believe that success is the grandmother of failure the inertial potential the inertial momentum that comes with success leads to. Ossification or leads to entitlement and you start thinking about where your parking place is or how big your office is or what your title is and and that that is something that seeps into these large corporations and creates serious cultural issues and I don’t know that there’s a way to solve for it. Because success as I say has its own inertial sort of the the great The great silver lining is you’re successful and you’ve been successful and you’ve made money for the company and your shareholders the dark, the darkness inside that success is the inertial momentum that allows you to coast or allows you to think politically or allows you to wonder about your title. But think so many great innovations obviously come from companies whose Founders. You’ve interviewed and finding those small companies Innovative driving nimble not ossified, not political, not bureaucratic because they’re still they’re still struggling to make it and that struggle causes them to innovate.

Sandy Kemper: And the lack of that struggle creates complacency.

Alejandro Cremades: So obviously you know you’ve done this for a while. How do you go about embracing struggle.

Sandy Kemper: I think you have to constantly if you’re if you’re a startup brother. You’re already embracing struggle from day one. It’s a struggle and you become born to the struggle as you create success or as you have some degree of success in your startup. It’s moving. It’s moving the goalpost just understanding that you have to create even though you’ve had success. It’s a small success even though we have as an example, $2000000000000 of of accounts payable and a accounts re sibel on our platform here at ctwofo. That’s not I mean 2000000000000 I never thought I’d get to 2000000000000 as ah as a ceo or a founder of this company. But two trillions a drop in a bucket of the $100000000000000 global gdp so you get to your 2 the next goal is 10 and the next goal after that is 50 and how do you get all of the ap and all of the ar in the world on your platform. So I think I think certainly more effective ceos and leaders than I know how to create. Immense goals that are that are both exhilarating and terrifying at the same time and it’s that struggle to create outsized goals and outside outsize output and success that I think keeps companies where you have great leadership. On that edge always pushing always wanting more always growing and never being entitled never being satisfied.

Alejandro Cremades: So how was that transition from you. You know for you on from going from the bank to all of a sudden building a ecommerce platform especially doing so you know in England you know as well I mean it is quite the shift right.

Sandy Kemper: Yeah, you know it it I think the thing that it was most difficult for me was I had become a little entitled myself I mean when you’re when you’re Ceo of a $20000000000 company. You have lots of supporters and lots of staff and lots of comfort I had become comfortable. And that the the the move to a smaller company I mean there were there were 5 of us 4 of us when we started and rolling up your sleeves and finding that muscle again I had I had gotten I’d gotten flabby and I had become entitled myself and so it was it was ah. Into the deep end of ice water waking up to realize that I had not been the reason of I had not been the reason for success of my bank. The inertial momentum had been the success and now it was sink or swim and that icy water and you better wake up boy because. What you had before isn’t what you have now.

Alejandro Cremades: So that company ended up being perfect commerce. So what were you guys doing there.

Sandy Kemper: Well same I’ve always I’ve always had a passion I think lots of people feel the same way but building things for the underdog building things for the small business. The mid-size business and and maybe it’s just overly romantic on my part but but I think there’s a huge market there and I also think there’s great nobility of cause. So ecommerce was the platform. Um, we wanted to bring at this day and age and you’re too young to remember there were there were companies like ah a rebo commerce one and basically they were selling to large corporations ecommerce platforms and I got a little upset because there wasn’t a saas based but is back in the. You know, late 1990 s so there was no saas anything and and they were all behind the firewall enterprise solutions and all the big companies were buying them and I felt like it was an opportunity that was not afforded to small and mid-sized businesses because enterprise price points for these software packages were just too damn high. So we became the first in those days you call it sort of of what did we call it Asp of of giant enterprise systems. So we bought the license we broke it into thousands of different parts. We got permission from the enterprise seller to do that and we sold Asp versions of it. All these small businesses around the midwest and the east and the west our go-to market was kind of interesting because our go-to-market was actually using banks as the distributor. So the thesis that we had was that finance is sort of the tail of the dog of commerce.

Sandy Kemper: But there’s no reason for payment unless you have commerce and all finances is delayed payment over time or deferred over time. So we argued that banks should be in the act of creating commerce because the act of creating commerce would enable the finding of financial products so we enabled. We got I think we probably got to 2 or 300000 small businesses on the platform. We had a thousand banks selling for us and the thesis was very simple right? if you own commerce then you own payments if you own payments then you own finance.

Alejandro Cremades: So how was it like to see the company going through an ipo.

Sandy Kemper: Um, yeah, by that time I I had gone I had we sold to someone who then who then took it out and and and took it public on the European Markets Bittersweet. There were there know there were there were times when I was in sync with my board and there were times when I was out of sync with my board and and those times grew when I was out of sync and I became out of sync enough that I became Chairman Emeritus which basically means Chairman to get the hell out of here and that was so as a bit bittersweet.

Alejandro Cremades: So so in your case you took a year off I mean you thought it was gonna be ah you know a certain amount you know I mean I don’t know if it had an expiration date or not certainly for your wife I understand that that was the case. But for you, you decided to retire I mean what? what? what.

Sandy Kemper: Um, ah.

Sandy Kemper: Um, I know I I don’t know that I was I I had well first I left the bank to go build that e-commerce platform you know good hard slog. We pushed that thing for 6 or 70 years super hard I wasn’t going to retire. But what I was going to do is take some time off and then.

Alejandro Cremades: But drove you to that decision.

Sandy Kemper: To your point I told my wife I’d love to take a year off we have a ranch here in Kansas City I work on the ranch and build fences and stretch barb wire and take care of the cattle and the sheep and all the various critters on the place and and that lasted I think it lasted about three months I think I sold you 6 but by. By 6 it was really very clear that I was not I was persona non-grata on the ranch and my wife was ready for me to get the hell out of there and get back to business so we dreamed up ah a new business. It was a private equity fund that invested in you know, an unusual asset called fine art and and we. Put together about $100000000 in that fund small private equity fund but it was a very very interesting. First of its kind because we invested in fine art in the United States and we put the fine art into our investors’ homes and then rotated it so they would all have exposure to the art which was a hell of a lot of fun but not terribly challenging. And so by that time I was thinking about flaws in the financial structure and things I had learned when I was at the bank and I’d gone on the board of bats which was a local exchange here that was fantastic. That later sold to cbo Chicago board of options in exchange and I’d learned about market structure and I was beginning to wonder why you couldn’t put together. Ah, marketplace for working capital and that then of course gave birth to CTwofo

Alejandro Cremades: So walk us through the sequence of events. How was that the incubation process like.

Sandy Kemper: Well, you know there’s same advice I would give to a younger entrepreneur a younger founder or someone who wants to be a founder to me I learned so much being in the belly of the beast in the banking world. I learned what worked and what didn’t work I learned what the the prohibitions are relative to capital and the need to underride differently because you’ve got Fdic insurance and you’ve got the regulatory burdens and I was on the the board of cboe and on the board of bats before that they learned a lot about market structure and trading I I would argue and maybe i’m. I’m completely all wet here but I would my advice to to most young folks and I’m older as I said not older than you and probably much older than most of your founders. My argument is to them learn something first and understand because. My view you mentioned earlier my view is we tend to build problemtic companies or opportunities to solve big problems. Well if you don’t know the mainstream if you don’t know the traditional if you don’t know what’s broken and the systems that exist today. You’re not going to be able to build solutions. So the education that comes with being in those system. Just fantastic. And and I learned so much being in those systems of naval meat and and the teams that we have now to build build a company that solves for the problems of those antiquated in this case, antiquated financial systems.

Alejandro Cremades: So problematic versus opportunistic companies. Especially now as as we’re talking about the incuation you know c 2 fo what can you share about that.

Sandy Kemper: I think for me at least I’ve always I’ve always liked to find a big problem that bothers the heck out of me and and if I can find other people who say yeah, that’s a big problem too. Maybe there’s enough critical mass for us to put together a company and and and or. Build a product then put together a company. So problem people that agree with that problem create a product versus opportunistic which is hey I want to incrementally improve on x I want to enable y more effectively I I tend to want to blow things up. And start completely new and different because I see such structural flaw in assistant today as an example in the working capital world around the world on any given day businesses have plus or minus forty trillion dollars of accounts receivable on their books. $40000000000000 of money. They’re owed by their customers banks loan and my bank loaned against those accounts were receivedable in that inventory. All the banks all the supply chain finance all the Abl everything totaled in the world might be 5000000000000 so of the $40000000000000 of ar that’s out there. Only 5 is being satisfied and there’s lots of reasons for it. But the primary reason is the introduction of an intermediary a bank creates credit risk I have to underwrite the credit of that supplier.

Sandy Kemper: Now if that supplier’s big buyer pays the supplier early based on what the supplier has Bill. It’s been accepted. The big buyer says yep it works I put it on my shelves or I’ve consumed it I’m going to pay you in sixty days my choice if I’m ah find that suppliers to go to a bank and borrow against that account receivable. Now now with our market that supplier can say I’m not going to the bank and I want my money and I’m going to give an offer or a discount I’m going to name my rate to give an incentive to that buyer to pay me early when that buyer pays the supplier early. There is no credit risk. This whole thesis of risk underwriting of working capital is complete stupidity. It only exists because we introduce an intermediary Abl and scf a bank into the process which is completely idiotic. The buyer has money the supplier needs money. Well, the buyer can put the money into the bank and the bank and loan to the supplier. But again, that’s colossally stupid. Why not just enable a marketplace where that supplier can request early payment from the buyer by using a rate or creating a rate in the marketplace to give incentive to the buyer to pay them early. That’s what we do and and today. Running at a $100000000000 of funding per year or my my 5 generations of my family and banking in the bank’s only 40000000000, we’ve been doing this for 10 years and we’re doing a hundred billion a year which is the better system we are and 0 credit loss. We’ve done three hundred billion in funding

Sandy Kemper: Since inception one hundred billion in the last fourteen months zero credit loss 0 guarantees that personal guarantees or or second mortgages or problems that that small business or midsized business has to experience with dealing with clouderalization. It’s just your money make an incentive to your buyer. To get paid sooner and do it in a marketplace that’s very low cost and very convenient and that’s what we build.

Alejandro Cremades: So for the people that are listening to get it. What ended up being the business model of C Two Afo How do you guys make money.

Sandy Kemper: So we share and though there’s no charge for those suppliers who are on the platform we have close to a million suppliers on the platform our go-to-market is very simple. We go get the biggest companies in the world to come to the platform and post all of their accounts payable. Accounts payable then are pushed to those millions of suppliers out there or million plus suppliers that are out there on our platform to show those suppliers what they’re going to be paid by their buyer and when the supplier can then in 2 clicks of ah ah 2 clicks of a mouse order his cash or her cash online. By giving the buyer an incentive call it a a 50 basis point discount. So instead of getting paid a hundred thousand I get paid Ninety Nine Thousand $ 500 tomorrow instead of getting paid one hundred thousand in thirty to 40 days. That 50 basis point discount the majority of that goes to the buyer and we take a revenue share of that is our our way of making money.

Alejandro Cremades: And I guess you know I read a love the book of Simon Sinek everything starts with why? So what? What? What would you say is really the why that pushes you guys to get things moving.

Sandy Kemper: The why is because there are millions of businesses around the world hundreds of millions of people employed by those businesses who do not have the capital to build their business and pursue their dreams. Our position is very simple if we could create. Even half if we could meet half of the demand of this capital that the spliers have because the banks aren’t there or they’re they’re not able to get credit again. Banks aren’t banks aren’t evil. They’re great. They’re fantastic economic engines for the world’s economy but they have to risk underwrite. They have to think about risk. Eliminate the need for risk underwriting in a business to you can get those capital dollars to those businesses much more effectively at a lower cost. Do this with half of the opportunity in the world. We think we can create a 4 to 5% lift in global gdp. We think we can create 4 to $6000000000000 of additional. Of additional economic growth for the world just by enabling the flow of working capital without risk underwriting so you have a broken intrinsic system where everyone believes that you have to risk underwrite. The only reason needed risk underwrite is because you’ve introduced an intermediary called a bank. Instead create a direct exchange between those who have money the buyers the large corporates and all of their suppliers do price discovery where the supplier can name their rate I want to get funded at 50 basis points I want to be funded at 60 I want to be funded at 30 based on their needs for that capital clear that market daily.

Sandy Kemper: Move capital from the buyer to the supplier at the rates of that supplier names and enable those millions of businesses to grow and employ more people and increase the world’s gdp. It’s a super simple what why because it’s not the problem is it’s not happening today right with the system as we’ve described. New system can solve for this and if you do it right? You do it right? It’s not just $6000000000000 of gdp growth. It’s increased peace. It’s more prosperity because more people are employed more people are able to have jobs more businesses are growing half the world’s population is employed by small and mid-sized businesses. Half of the world’s gdp is generated by small and mid-sized businesses and yet these businesses are starved for capital the number one inhibition for growth in a small business is access to capital. Well, let’s solve that let’s create capital that’s risk-free. Let’s create capital that is name your own price. Let’s create capital that’s easily assessed on a marketplace like ours and let’s solve this damn problem. That’s that’s the problem that we’re solving so we’re a problemtic company and the why is because people are suffering jobs are not created economies are stagnant and not growing because capital is not available.

Alejandro Cremades: I Love it now in terms of um, capitalizing the business. How much capital have you guys raised too late.

Sandy Kemper: Well building a 2 sided marketplace on a global scale Ai n’t cheap I wish I wish I had been smart enough when we started this. We were lucky really lucky as ah, like literally a 7 person a 7 person firm and this giant retailer in the United States called Costco. I think is the third or fourth largest retailer in the world now gave us the chance. Ah they they said we’ll we’ll do this. We love it because we want to give capital to our suppliers at a rate that they name. That’s really advantageous for them. We know that a strong supply chain. Makes a strong Costco. We know that a strong supply chain with lower cost creates lower costs for our consumers our our customers so they were all in well it was great. It was a fantastic sail and and god we’re still so very grateful for them and they’re still one of our great longtime customers. But of course on day one when you’re serving Costco their suppliers are all over the world. So we had to enable the platform to be global on day one so building a global two-sided marketplace is expensive. It takes a long time so long long answer I wish we didn’t have to raise as much but the long answer to your the short answer to my long explanation is over 400000000.

Alejandro Cremades: Now I know that the first you know initial stages of capitalizing the business. You know came from really looking at strategically not at the valuation but more at the perhaps the funder and the network or the value that they would bring so why did you guys you know.

Sandy Kemper: Has been raised for the.

Alejandro Cremades: Think that Union Square ventures was the right player for this and how did you go about you know filtering. You know the investors towards landing un square ventures.

Sandy Kemper: So for. Thank you. We we’re first very fortunate very lucky to have a number of investors in our first round looking at us and my advice to to many founders starting out is is it may sound very counterintuitive and counterproductive. But for me, it certainly worked well. We did not take the highest valuation Union Square was not the highest my lesson from that has been reinforced over time because union square of course the reputation of Union Square basically your b round and your c round were already done as long as you didn’t screw up the company. My my statement now is to most founders take the lowest valuation you could stomach from the highest quality funder you can find and union square you asked how we filtered tremendous experience and and coaching and working with companies like ours I needed. I needed to know they understood b two b I needed understood they needed to know they understood fintech they clearly did and most importantly, a great cultural fit a great personal fit between the union square leader and and me so fine. Finding. Finding that personal connection with an entity that really understands the business that can help you build the business and they one one of our other giant retail customers a large company. It starts with an a was brought to us by uni square because they introduced me to a fellow named Jeff.

Sandy Kemper: And Jeff introduced me to the Cfo who introduced me to treasurer and the treasurer was therefore positively inclined to say yes to the platform and we we won that deal again because of the connections and because of the of the reputation of Union Square so lowest valuation you can stomach highest quality funder. You can find.

Alejandro Cremades: And how do you define quality in a funder. What does that look like.

Sandy Kemper: Well, this guy said it was you know the cultural fit the reputation the portfolio the experience like making sure that they understand your biz and there there’s probably a lot of businesses out there that can get lucky and get money from any of them they want but. Ah, deep understanding of the tech a deep understanding of finance a deep understanding of what it’s like to grow at that stage and then as I said you know, ah a great personal connection to your ah to your partner at the firm.

Alejandro Cremades: Now for you guys. You know as as you are you know, let’s say let’s say imagine you were to go to sleep tonight and you wake up in a world where the vision of C Two fo is fully realized what does that world look like.

Sandy Kemper: Did this sounds really really silly but I would be I wouldn’t I wouldn’t be there because it’s going to take up I’m I’m old and somebody else would be there but you solve it somebody somebody from this shop is going to be in Stockholm. Ah, accepting the nobel peace prize because the amount of peace that’s come through the prosperity that we’ve created on this platform. The world would employ millions more people the gdp would have increased 4 to 6 more food on the table for workers in countries all around the world that today have broken financial systems our system. And the United States in some ways. It’s kind of ironic that we started in the United States because it’s the it’s like it’s like Churchill thought about democracy. It’s the worst system in the world except for all the others everybody likes to complain about the banking system in the United States it’s the worst system in the world except for all the others. Every other nation’s much more screwed up and if you want to get into really screwed up countries. You go to developing nations or emerging nations and and the lack of banking the lack of capital is is diabolical. So I see an outsized benefit for emerging economies who embrace platforms like ours to get capital to businesses to. Increase prosperity increase peace increase their gdp. So if we look at again these are fantastic nations and I don’t I certainly want to be very thoughtful. We’re so lucky to be in the United States and to to to have sort of as I said you know been born here et cetera. But.

Sandy Kemper: Don’t mean to cast aspersions in any direction I think when I say emerging nation I think some people take umbrage at that. But but let’s just use the the traditional vernacular as an emerging nation like Mexico an emerging nation like indian emerging nation of a smaller emerg nation egypt or otherwise. Systems that we have in place in those countries our platforms in India our platform in Mexico our platform in places other than the western european states and the United States we see 2 to 3 times more utilization. So. The need is even greater in these developing and emerging nations right? The systems haven’t been built as well as they could have been financially and now kind of like telco in Africa you don’t need to put up hard wires. You don’t need to build traditional financial system. Let’s just go straight to marketplaces for working capital. Let’s let’s jump over all the silliness of intermediation and risk underwriting. Let’s just create from day one. The ability for people to get the capital. They damn well need at a price that they name without any sort of risk underwriting. So that’s we were just we were just very fortunate to be given. Ah, license to be 1 of the national platforms in India and there are a couple others. We’re much bigger than all the others. Even what we do inside C2O in India and they decided the government decided they also wanted us to to be in a position where we were part of the official national platforms.

Sandy Kemper: Modi and team have to create 100000000 new jobs in India between now and twenty thirty there is no way to do that without getting capital to small and midsized businesses because they employ 65% of the people in India Job Creation is not going to come from the from the the biggest and the brightest large companies. Sure there’s going to be some. The vast majority is going to come from the smalls in the mids those smalls in the mids those businesses that that aren’t at that enterprise level. They are starred for capital and we can solve that problem which is why we’ve become a national platform for working capital in India.

Alejandro Cremades: So so we’re talking about the future here but I want to talk about the past but doing so with a lens of reflection. Let’s say that I was to put you in a time machine and then I was to bring you back in time and I’ll make you younger here. So I’ll I’ll bring you back to the.

Sandy Kemper: Ah, we hope to do the same thing in Mexico and other nations.

Sandy Kemper: Yeah, yeah, make make me younger.

Alejandro Cremades: Moment that you know maybe you were thinking about doing something of your own Maybe to that moment where you were you know transitioning from the bank and then thinking about like doing something you know from scratch. You know, Ah, let’s say you had the opportunity of being right there at that moment with that younger self I’m being able to give that younger Sandy. 1 piece of advice for launching a business. What would that be and why given what you know now.

Sandy Kemper: And lots lots of piece of advice because but because boy when I was there I was I’m still super stupid and back then I was just colossally stupid I you know everyone sort of says a trite thing. It’s gonna be okay I do I do remember and. You struggle like hell when you start a bid I wondered whether I’d be able to keep the house or whether I had to sell the house I wondered if my kids would be able to go to the school down the street I worried about reputation risk because I had been a successful banker and now is in the deep end of this ice water without my inertial momentum and maybe I wasn’t that good. Maybe maybe it. My only success had come from the success of the previous Corporation. So I’d I’d say silence the self-doubt for every moment when you when every moment that you you you cut yourself open to to look at what might not be such a pretty side of who you are what you can do. You should also spend time thinking about what could be and and to try to balance the fear with the ah optimism of what could be if it all works not to be pie in the sky or head in the sky. But but but to be., Thoughtful and not beat yourself up too much when you have those failing moments and I had huge amounts of failing Moments. So I would have that I would have done and then the other the other one I would say is um, listen listen more I think I think I learned to listen.

Sandy Kemper: As I struggled so much to make the adjustment from an entitled Ceo running a big company to an entrepreneur who was afraid of louth losing his house and whether he’d be able to get his kids into school and I learned I learned a hell of a lot of humility that I should have had to begin with but I had lost because I had been. Had been in an inertial beach that had too much success.

Alejandro Cremades: Wow! Very profound sand for the people that are listening that will love to reach out and say hi. What is the best way for them to do so you say enough? What Sandy thank you so much for being on the deal maker show today. It has been an honor to have you with us.

Sandy Kemper: Um, just Sandy at c twofo dot com.

Sandy Kemper: Which you guso me Mego Grass paraator.

*****

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