Stephany Kirkpatrick On Raising $85 Million To Create A Frictionless Solution To Move Your Money

Stephany Kirkpatrick has built a career out of fintech and transforming legacy businesses and infrastructure into modern platforms that can support a new generation of businesses and products. All while helping millions to enjoy instant payments. Her venture, Orum, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Inspired Capital Partners, Clocktower Technology Ventures, Homebrew, and Canapi Ventures.

In this episode, you will learn:

• Post-merger integration experience
• Stephany Kirkpatrick’s top advice when launching a business
• Startup fundraising
• Payments

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For a winning deck, take a look at the pitch deck template created by Silicon Valley legend, Peter Thiel (see it here) that I recently covered. Thiel was the first angel investor in Facebook with a $500K check that turned into more than $1 billion in cash.

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About Stephany Kirkpatrick:

Stephany Kirkpatrick is an entrepreneur who loves taking on game-changing problems across all industries with a track record of raising and exiting over $800M in value. Her experience spans start-ups to Fortune 100 companies with a focus on launching new lines of revenue, driving innovation, transformation, and growth strategies.

Stephany Kirkpatrick is the Founder & CEO at Orum, a platform for frictionless money movement. By leveraging its exclusive intelligence for predictive funds availability, Orum is building an infrastructure layer to maximize the financial potential of every American household.

Connect with Stephany Kirkpatrick:

• Crunchbase
• LinkedIn
• Twitter

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 exciting founder. You know we’re gonna be talking about building scaling I mean she’s done it all and all the good stuff that we like to hear about the fundraising. Also she was part of an exit. So great insights that we’re gonna be getting out of this conversation so without furtherdo. Let’s welcome our guests today Stephanie Kirkpatrick welcome to the show you so you were born in Oregon.

Stephany Kirkpatrick: Hi. Thanks so much for having me excited to be here.

Alejandro Cremades: But they obviously from a immigrant a parents. So I’m sure that you know that was quite. You know an experience also for you. So how was life growing up.

Stephany Kirkpatrick: You know it’s such a really deep part of who I am ultimately to have a dad who was born in the firma yugoslavia and who came to the us when he was 7 and how it shaped me in terms of you know what it was like to live in a household that wasn’t filled with. Traditional american traditions how we thought about gifting how we thought about saving spending his context and ultimately what it showed me is the importance of what the american wallet needs in terms of financial services it like deeply shaped me. And to want to solve for kind of what I think is an evergreen solution which is how do you help everybody of every background and know what to do with the next dollar with their last dollar with whatever dollar they have to push it further to make it worth more. And so it ended up putting me on a path to become a certified financial planner which then put me on the path to be where we are today and so much of that is just tied back to my dad um and the childhood I had that you know really informed wanting to be on a path to constantly be in a position to give back.

Alejandro Cremades: Then I’m sure that I also push you into the entrepreneurial you know path because I’m sure that you know him coming here. You know building his own path to you know the uncertainty I’m sure that you had you know a lot to learn from him. So.

Stephany Kirkpatrick: It must be in my Dna to be an entrepreneur. My dad was running small businesses always thinking about an idea always tinkering with something in the garage and I think it it was inspiration right? to think I can build that I can do that all you have to do is start. And I think just watching like the incredible generation of ideas and opportunities that were self-created from someone who didn’t get a college education who where english wasn’t their first language whose background was very poor and inspired me to say you know what I’m going to say yes when the opportunity comes. To give it my all to try a side hustle to turn that side hustle into a business and and to lean in where others I think would ultimately lean out because the opportunity to own and build is so powerful. It’s so satisfying. But I think it’s super unique I don’t think everyone has the dna um I think the appetite for. Uncertainty and unknowns that come with believing in yourself and believing in the potential of what you could be working on.

Alejandro Cremades: So talk ah talk talk to us about moving to Southern California you know, studying there and becoming a financial planner. Okay.

Stephany Kirkpatrick: What’s relevant that you asked me about Southern California in January well I currently live in New York because I’ll tell you this the impetus to leave beautiful green lovely pacific northwest living was to get to the sunshine where I thought I would stay forever by the way. Um. And you know spending my my college years in Southern California was a true gift and it put me on a path to end up working and right out of college for an incredible company where I actually did get that chance to say listen I’m fresh off of becoming a cfp certified financial planner and I’m fresh off of learning all the basics of how. Time value of money math works can I put that to better use than just financial planning for hundreds thousands of customers can I build software that could take that reach further can I build a better user experience and I still laugh. But it’s true I built my first technology project by going on e-lans which is now upwork. And finding an american who’d moved to India to build a dev shop and I emailed with him and I was like I need to build this and he says back. You’re going to need to send me some wire frames and I’m like looking around what are wire frames right? Quick Google search quick download of a free software and suddenly I’m a product manager um, or at least on the path to becoming one and so you know. Living in Southern California was interesting because my appetite for technology was really high but my awareness of what was going on in Silicon Valley ultimately in New York and the tech scene was kind of limited until I began to get a little bit more exposure to um, what ultimately led me to come live in New York which is a legitimate startup.

Stephany Kirkpatrick: Um, one that really carried the same personal mission and vision that I had where I knew I could go have incredible impact.

Alejandro Cremades: So how do you land the in learn Best you know what? Ah what I rocket ship and what a great outcome. So how how did that happen.

Stephany Kirkpatrick: Well, you know it’s funny that you ask I was introduced to the ceo alexa von toble who at the time was the founder and we realized that there was an opportunity together to take what had been built so far and turn it into something. Would have broader reach that could use software and at the time software as a service and ah a subscription platform was actually a pretty new concept and we weren’t focused on investment advice. We were focused on financial advice right? How can you get the 99% to have the answer to the question student loans or medical bills or you know savings or retirement. Life insurance or disability insurance right? because for some people the answer is a or b just given the dollars they have available so it was a really incredible time in my career in my life and to be young to be sitting alongside just an incredible powerhouse female founder and to watch kind of from the front row. What 0 to 1 company building looks like where there wasn’t product market fit and we had to figure out what that would look like and all the way through the journey of actually building the ip patenting all of the intellectual property and then selling our entire business and that ip to a massive insurance company northwestern mutual back in 152 where then. You go from a startup where you think you’re going to have reach to maybe hundreds of thousands to suddenly having reached to millions and the power that that brings to the inspiration of what you’re working on but the challenge it introduces which is you’re no longer just a startup that can build whatever it wants whenever it wants and you’re leading the post-merger integration work.

Stephany Kirkpatrick: Um, was one more kind of checkbox in the path of being an entrepreneur which is to understand and how do you bring something really powerful like a new technology to life and transform and truly um, a hundred and fifty year old business into a digital power player.

Alejandro Cremades: And I believe the terms of that the transaction were announced what what? what was the outcome all fail or invest again. Yeah wow, That’s incredible I Guess say.

Stephany Kirkpatrick: We I’m sure the the terms are written down somewhere was a three hundred and fifty million dollars transaction

Alejandro Cremades: You know, 2 you know for you I mean you were for 7 years in learnedest I mean that’s quite a ah while you know in startup years I mean it’s like do years now. That’s incredible now if you were to compare the ah but but I mean I’m sure that for you too. That was an incredible experience to be able to see.

Stephany Kirkpatrick: Um, are you calling me old. Are you calling me old. Ah.

Alejandro Cremades: What the full cycle of a company looks like now and.

Stephany Kirkpatrick: I mean it really is and I think it’s why everything I had done since then has been like a startup and orum today is a startup but what I did even between learn best and here the 0 to one framework. It’s really special. Not everyone’s wired for it. But those who are wired for it once you taste it. Um, are sitting with our director of sales who joined from Klarna and this is his first time in this early of a stage of a company at orum and we were talking about that moment when you’re like wow I would never go back right? because you are in a position with every decision you make every day. And every ounce of energy you put forth to have impact in the direction of the company and the outcomes of that company and yeah, it’s not easy every day right? There are our twists and turns are highs and lows there are days when you think I don’t have another hour to give at the the end of it overnight or or a long day but ultimately um. Being in an entrepreneurial seat I think the learning of being in 0 to one and and recognizing that’s where the innovation happens that’s where the magic starts that for me is something I’ll never be able to to not have in my life so we stayed.

Alejandro Cremades: So then after the transaction What happened.

Stephany Kirkpatrick: Right? I think a successful transaction probably worth a case study and is exactly the one between learn best and northwestern mutual which is today there are four hundred probably five hundred people in New York still under. You know an extension of that brand operating in a technology capacity driving massive amounts of innovation. Um. After a number of years of officially integrating the the system that we were building to deliver financial advice that was a proprietary asset to northwestern mutual allowed them to decommission vendors. Holistically update systems. And delivery world-class experience to customers in a fully digital way. So it’s been transformational watching that and and I remain in close contact and sort of a proud supporter from the from the sidelines.

Alejandro Cremades: I mean 3 years I mean it’s it’s I’m sure it was kind of like a little weird too from going like from 7 years like crazy like in the super high gear to all of a sudden now you’re like in a. Massive organization now like was it like a a little like going from like craziness to like a little bit slow motion or no.

Stephany Kirkpatrick: Well, it’s a funny question because I would say we were running. Let’s say on the treadmill at like ten miles per hour and then actually to accomplish everything we needed to do to merge companies you needed to run at fifteen miles an hour but you were now running fifteen miles an hour uphill so you’re running fast. But it’s a little bit harder because you’re encountering things. You’ve never seen before right in a startup maybe I was the final decision maker for signing off on a piece of software that would allow our engineers to push code faster or easier and and suddenly now I’m not and there’s a sort of incredible amount of learnings. Um. That you gain when you are forced to slow down and ask about ah roi because at some point profit and profitability becomes an important endgame distinct from innovation and constant cycles of could bees and maybes and I think actually. Startup scale. They do hit those moments. It doesn’t mean you have to be at acquisition or post acquisition. But it’s certainly just painted a very interesting picture and I think I’m actually unique if you look at sort of my peer set that I stayed 7 eight years and then another 3 years most of my jobs have been long right. Eight years eight years and then a couple of years of smaller things and most people today switch jobs on average every 18 to twenty four months and so maybe I did age forward and backwards a little bit in the dog years of a startup life. But I think it’s ultimately where can you get the most career experience and that’s not always a derivative of title.

Stephany Kirkpatrick: Certainly not a derivative of paycheck for me. It’s a derivative of where can I have the most impact and where can I have a seat at a table that I otherwise didn’t have a seat at where I can be learning and how can I then use that to think about my entrepreneurial journey and ultimately how can I use that to help bring others around me up into their next chapter. So in many ways it was just one of the most incredible I’m going to say like my Harvard Education but I got paid kind of experience to be in a post-merger integration like that.

Alejandro Cremades: That’s amazing now in your case you know we’re gonna talk about the entrepreneurial journey you know in just a little bit. You know with orum but the immediate step you know before you got there was soulcycle and equinox. So what were you doing you know there.

Stephany Kirkpatrick: This is where everybody scratches their heads right? What is this like financial planner who’s been doing fintech forever and and only fintech doing and the reality is you know I wanted to go see what it was like to build different skills and I think part of what made me ready for the journey to be a founder and a Ceo at orum. To go into a place where um, I’d be leading a corporate innovation project to help a brick and mortar business or set of businesses figure out what their digital strategy was going to be and then execute it so launching equinox media building a connected hardware product managing pieces of the supply chain those were net new things and I think. Career for me is again, it’s not title. It’s not salary. Those are nice to have and they usually come with part of the journey but it was really like accumulating more knowledge someday I might be responsible for a bigger p and l that has to contemplate a certain type of risk and I’ve never seen that before how do I go to exposure to that. But also. So stay true to the things I care about so I wanted to work for a female Ceo at the time soul cyclee was run by a woman had been founded by women went to work in a category was excited about health and well-being fitness those are important to me still in my everyday life. They show up everywhere in terms of how I think about sleep activity, exercise etc. Um, and I wanted to gain those skills and so it was a super awesome journey in some ways. Maybe the most learnings because you had a certain I think point in your career where you’ve matured into paying real close attention not to climbing the ladder but to accumulating experiences and a network.

Stephany Kirkpatrick: Um, that might look whoy different than the financial planning network that had kind of always been the backbone of who I was so it was ah an incredible in my life short eighteen months I think in the world of many people’s careers kind of standard timing and to really just do something that felt like a left turn but really. Ultimately brought me a ton of things that I ended up finding were necessary for the next chapter and actually now at orum. There’s probably a 5 or 6 maybe even 7 people that worked with me or on my teams at soulcycle where we’re building something that’s not fintech that actually ended up at orum. Write skills right? time right? people and I think that having been able to build a career where there’s a tremendous amount of followership. It makes the entrepreneurial journey that much more exciting because you can look to those people and say let’s go right? where you speak the same language. Let’s lock arms and to do it alone as a solo founder. Especially as a nontechnical founder and a woman is no small thing so to be able to lock arms with some folks that you know you trust and a third of the company and I have worked together in a past life and that’s really powerful for me too and I hope that that becomes true for entrepreneurs who are listening and choose your team really wisely. They are the Dna. Your company. They are the reason why you will ultimately succeed as the entrepreneur and and and invest in those people and that’s part of what gets me really excited about company building right.

Alejandro Cremades: I Love it now in your case at what point does orum you know, come to mind and at what point do you say? let’s go.

Stephany Kirkpatrick: So I thought about orum for a lot longer than I think people realized which I think is actually pretty classic for founders. It starts when I’m young and I’m thinking about financial planning and it kind of segues into the different pieces of software and tech I worked on but like the ultimate problem is time to money as an immigrant. My dad had a. You know difficult childhood and life as a result of the fact that he didn’t have a standard bank account. He didn’t have a credit score and he’ve primarily worked jobs that were low waged cash under the table types of situations and if he had a regular paycheck. The time to get that money the time to reconcile access to dollars to your own liquidity. It just became this very obvious problem and pain point that hasn’t gotten any better frankly, it’s a 50 year old problem because we have a 50 year old system that moves our money. So I saw it in my life firsthand I saw it with everybody that I give financial advice to as a financial planner and then I saw it. To the tune of really ultimately hundreds of thousands and millions of people at northwestern mutual who would say yeah that sounds like a great thing I should do. But if I move my money to this investment account and I have an emergency on a Saturday with the classic you know emergency I can’t get it back but I should just I should keep it in cash I don’t want to move it and. It’s not about how much wealth you have although certainly access to liquidity changes over the wealth spectrum. It’s about that uncertainty that it’s my money and if it’s locked up somewhere on a Saturday and the banks are closed I can’t get access to it. So that’s the motivation.

Stephany Kirkpatrick: Building a company that today is the simplest Api integration for instant payouts so that we can build better infrastructure to power everything in financial services and the question isn’t time to money. The question isn’t how long will it take me to get my dollars from point a to point b out of an account that I need it from The question is how can we optimize that experience and what would you build differently if money moved instantly and so that over time the accumulation of seeing the pain point in the market living it watching it seeing millions of people struggle with it and realizing that software itself. Couldn’t solve it because even the best software that knows where you should point your dollars can’t actually transact any faster because the infrastructure is broken right? and so Oren was born out of the idea that if we could solve that problem with software but not with infrastructure then where we should focus is with infrastructure. And so as a payments company as an embeddable piece of infrastructure now. The reach can be hundreds of millions of american wallets and that for me that impact and reach it’s it’s a huge part of why I put one foot in front of the other every day to build a company.

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

Stephany Kirkpatrick: Well, we make money when other people need to move money. So I think it’s a pretty simple model but let me tell you a little bit about what orm does stepping back is the simplest Api integration for instance payouts we allow the use of just one solution to deliver every type of payout. Accessing Rtp ach seem the Ac right? All the different ways that you could move money and that’s important because it lets customers that work with us whether they serve businesses consumers implement instant payouts into their tech stack very easily right? easy to integrate one sprinter less. I think the integration to beat is currently thirteen days and we have a customer right now trying to beat it and go live in like less than seven so we’ll see how that turns out um, but under that Api. Yeah, you access all the major rails without costly bank integrations or prolonged compliance. That is a game changer for companies who especially in today’s let’s call it tougher downed market. Don’t have time or money to put towards implementation for payouts and yet they know this solution is necessary so that they can launch a new payouts experience which. Frankly, attracts more customers. Um, it provides a ton of differentiation and it monetizes something wholly different and allows for diversification of revenue because when it comes to payouts you’re no longer stuck with just ach which will take seven days good luck to you.

Stephany Kirkpatrick: Or worse a check that’s literally going to get maililed to maybe even an address. You don’t have if it’s like an insurance payout during let’s say a storm um, and this idea that you can diversify revenue with instant payouts is very interesting, especially now when consumer demand. And business demand for instant withdrawals is at an all-time high and then together with our partners we grow right? Grow beyond the payout solution and thrive in a world of real-time expectations with orum because we’re building what you’re ultimately going to need in the future and. We’re not going to stop with Rtp or fed now or the fastest current form of money movement. We’re going to continue to push boundaries and bring the ability to unlock new features through our Apis into the hands of our customers and that to me is why I think when you step back and think about one. How do we get paid which was the app ultimate question and 2 why is it valuable. Um, it’s because of the opportunity to have streamlined infrastructure and so our platform fee covers a lot of things I talked about you license things like that compliance layer right? and the fact that you don’t have to worry about being a bank or any regulatory risk and then you pay per transaction and you pay what you use for. You pay for what you use rather and so I think it’s a very straightforward model that allows a ton of predictability a high degree of visibility and it ultimately is priced in a way that allows folks to create and generate margin positive revenue opportunities on their products that they’re building and that is a win-win when we think about.

Stephany Kirkpatrick: Better Faster smarter outcomes for financial services and the transformation that I think is inevitably coming.

Alejandro Cremades: And I know that for this you guys have raised quite a bit of money. So how much money have you guys raised to date. So.

Stephany Kirkpatrick: We have raised about $85,000,000 to date.

Alejandro Cremades: And what has been the experience of going from 1 financing cycle to the next first.

Stephany Kirkpatrick: Well, it’s a very storied story because orum is essentially a pandemic baby. Um, we raised our first institutional round of capital in the spring of 20 and I say this all the time but I’ve never actually raised capital with my shoes on because I’m always sitting at a desk in a home office. At the time it was my 5 year old’s but bedroom now it’s actually my home office. Um, but I think I look to do a very different fundraising experience than many ever have because at the time that this pandemic is starting and March of 2020. It’s not like we know the answer to the things we know today that vaccines will come the market will correct. You know what’s going to happen and so at that moment we’re super excited. You’ve got a big vision right? All the passion points and the team assembled and we’re sort of facing this moment which is like I don’t know if there is capital in the market. Um, so first I think that is a forcing function to immediately say with what money we do have in the bank. Which was a seed check um, an inspiration check actually from alexa an inspired capital who had launched blurn vest their seed money put a preseed money put us in a position to to prep for going out to raise institutional dollars and we said let’s pull back everybody stops taking a salary. We. Extend our runway as far as we can because we don’t know if we’re going to be able to raise money so that’s actually where the story starts which is like I don’t know if I’ll ever get a dollar but I’m certain that I’m going to keep working on this problem and it turned out that we were able to get a dollar or a few in that first round and and then we start on the journey of building.

Stephany Kirkpatrick: What we thought would be the kind of the first important puzzle piece in a broader vision for payments and along that journey we were able to raise subsequent rounds of financing and that put us in a position today to ultimately be very heads down in the business where we have a very I think. Focused and kind of first principles approach to what we’re working on but it wasn’t always obvious that instant payouts was going to be the absolute answer. In fact, in the beginning and there was a pretty important component for us around understanding the risk that goes into the payment transaction so that the speed aspect is well managed. Um, but we spent a fair bit of time learning our way through the curation a product market fit and what would work and what wouldn’t um and there are definitely learnings out there I think they don’t get talked about often enough where you might have six months nine months maybe even a year where you’re still figuring it out right now we are past that today. And but for entrepreneurs listening. It’s not linear and everyone says that but then you have to have the lived experience. It’s not linear. There are board meetings when you’re like but go. But I think I know what I’m doing but I not enough data yet and I just I think it’s just so important to kind of say out loud that. Um, every entrepreneur whether they’re in tech whether they’re just building you know, ah a standard um non-tech business. Everybody has to have those months years weeks days whatever it may be of discovery and I think that is if dev right? Actually why you end up building world class.

Stephany Kirkpatrick: Life changing game changing products because you take the time to discover what’s going to work and what’s not and as opposed to just chasing any and every customer any and every dollar in the door because ultimately that won’t build transformational companies and and I know in my heart that what we’re doing at orum and the time it will take. To go from where we are today to billions and billions of dollars of value it’s not a linear path and the journey of raising eighty eighty five million dollars is only the beginning so truly only the beginning.

Alejandro Cremades: Now I know that for you guys too I mean the team is fully remote. How many people do you guys have right now and and then also how do you go about having the team completely remote.

Stephany Kirkpatrick: There’s about 45 of us today in about 23 different states some are more central to let’s say the New York region or other places where we originated from um and interesting that you asked me this because last night we had our first ever in-person board meeting. So overall this time not only have I not met. Most of the employees. Although now today I’ve Mett many if not all of them and I had never had an in-person board meeting or a board dinner. So in 2023 that sounds pretty crazy to say but it’s true and so what did we do right? We thought about company building a little bit differently and people at that work at Forum don’t work at Oren to be able to play ping pong ball. Their lunch break with free snacks from the kitchen they work at Orm for wholly different reasons and we try to celebrate what makes us unique which is the diversity of thought that we get from diversity of people when you’re able to open the aperture of hiring on a national level and we think a lot about mental health and mental. Well-being. We absolutely pull all nighters. Um, if there’s an incident if there’s a critical service down and if there’s a customer problem. Um Kanu is a 24 7 3 65 business because of real time payments and that’s critical for us. But we also recognize that mental health is really important. So the first Friday of every month we take the day off and yes we have on-call coverage. And yes, we’re here for our customers and but we go and and we actually spend time away from the business so that we can spend our best time when we’re at work together being really focused and I mean there’s really funny small things that actually work really well. Um.

Stephany Kirkpatrick: Have a hypes and braggs channel and folks love to brag and hype of folks that they’re working with projects are working on so you don’t replace Inperson with remote and Zoom is not a fixa but you can absolutely build a product a business a team and a culture as long as you put intention to it from anywhere and. And so I think it’s been a really cool model that has served us really well in the time that’s existed for us and I think the question is unknown as to what the future holds on the future of work and where everybody’s going to want to end up with hybrid in person not in person fully remote. What I do know is that we are going to continue to follow our true north. Ah, which is to take an employee first approach to everything that we think about and to really live by our values and to put the customers in the center of everything that we’re thinking about.

Alejandro Cremades: And as you’re thinking about future. How do you think about I mean the times that we’re living in are quite uncertain. You know with this macro environment as well. How do you think do about positioning the company for a potential downturn.

Stephany Kirkpatrick: I mean I’m so glad you asked this question because the high of raising money and the fun and energy of curating products market fit and the unique experience of doing a remote company sometimes masks the reality which is the macroeconomic situation is one. We cannot hide from right? Nobody can hide. In a macro setting that is uncertain and certainly turbulent and for today’s purposes in January of 2023 frankly, a little bit dark right? Super high inflation ground war in Europe I mean record high interest rates for you know mortgages and loans and things we rely on. And eggs cost a fortune today right? things that are really starting to hurt the bottom line for businesses for companies. Um, and we’re frankly like you know in the last six months seeing over 150000 people laid off from technology jobs. So what do we do with that well we do what I think smart. Company builders always do is we start with what we can control and 1 of the most important things we can control is how do we spend our money are we getting ah roi on that money and are we on a unit basis unit economics profitable why are I not and make sure that the fundamentals make sense. The innovation is awesome. The vision the opportunity. That’s all awesome, but it never materializes without steadfast focus on good company building and the reason we’re in a position today to have raised the amount of money that we have and still have runway is that we’ve been steadfast about making those calculated thoughtful principled bets.

Stephany Kirkpatrick: Um, and maintaining a really deep focus now the task at hand is to say what might we want to do differently in our go-to-market to find a different size or shape of customer who’s not as industry sensitive or not as concentrated and I think companies that had a portfolio that was all crypto customers or all fin text. Might find downturns like this harder. So how do we make sure that our approach to go-to-market changes in the profile we’re looking for and ultimately how do we train our team to be in a position not just to sell to another. Let’s say engineer who wants to integrate in 1 sprint or less but also. Think at today’s market you’re very much selling to a Cfo right? And so cfos think about bottom line to think about cost and so getting our team. Well-trained and kind of well armed with pricing levers. They can pull and a different approach to make sure that we’re mindful of hey this is an absolute necessity. What orm does. As the simplest Api integration for instant payouts is not a vitamin. It is a painkiller and it drives a revenue and it drives bottom line so that’s also really interesting because I think sometimes just even knowing that the positioning of how you’re making sure you’re touching on what a Cfo or a business owner cares about. Could be the difference between a good sales cycle or bad sales cycle in an unknown market like the one we sit in today.

Alejandro Cremades: As we are talking about the future here Stephanie imagine you were to go to sleep tonight and thank god you don’t have to put on all nighter. Everything is working good. But imagine you go to sleep tonight and. You wake up in a world where the vision of orum is fully realized what does that world look like.

Stephany Kirkpatrick: Um, oh man, that’s such a great question. What I didn’t see coming I love it? Um, so if I wake it tomorrow the vision of or was fully realized I’m going to have a lot more gray hair than I have today because I don’t think it’s going to happen overnight. Um, but when it’s fully realized we will have accomplished not just. We’re the easiest Api immigration. Our vision is so much bigger which is to build a massive data network and a massive network of next generation financial services providers that doesn’t exclude banks or existing folks today but it includes a massive population of. Finex and new players who are serving wholly different audiences and we have realized the potential of instant money transfers by creating a network big enough to transfer within that network and ultimately go from modernizing access to better payment rails to being. New infrastructure of the future and then that’s not where the story ends. So I don’t know if we’re going to wake up ten more years later with even more gray hair and have another story to tell. But I think we will and because once we’re in that position and today’s vision is realized. You are now truly rebuilding financial services from the ground up and I think that’s going to be able to power products and services. We’ve never even thought of today.

Alejandro Cremades: So we’ve been talking about the future now. Let’s talk a little bit of about the past but doing it so with a little bit of reflection imagine I had the opportunity of giving you the chance of going into a time machine and being able to go back in time maybe to that time where. You were graduating from university you know in California and and you’re wondering you know like you know playing you know, financial planning and then the software and and then you know the whole startup you know, ah world imagine if you had the opportunity of being able to you know, sit down with your younger self and. Being 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.

Stephany Kirkpatrick: Well I would definitely counsel younger me to wear more sunscreen so that’s a starting point but that doesn’t necessarily change how I turned out in terms of the business outlook and I think I would counsel me to. Say yes, even more often. It took a pretty big leap of faith to land in a place where I was ultimately pulled into a tech company a true tech company and ah the reality is the first eight years I spend in my career. Yes I was absolutely a financial planner I was working on interesting things. Wasn’t pushing my boundaries as much as I could have and if I think about what those 8 years could mean in terms of more impact and company building where might I be today further along with orum because I would have seen the problem sooner. Um I do think looking back. That opportunity to push through comfort and security and really drive even deeper to my natural instinct around curiosity and continuing to take a leap of faith sooner I think that would be the push I would give.

Alejandro Cremades: I love it so Stephanie for the people that are listening that would want to reach out and say hi. What is the best way for them to do so.

Stephany Kirkpatrick: Hello at orum io or hit me up on Linkedin and I would love to chat.

Alejandro Cremades: Amazing! Well hey Stephanie thank you so much for being on the deal maker show today. It has been an honor to have you with us.

Stephany Kirkpatrick: So thank you.

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