Suneera Madhani On Founding And Selling A $1-Billion Payments Company And Now Building A Credit Assessment Platform For Small Businesses

When you hear the term self-made, you might think of grit, long nights, and entrepreneurial tenacity. But in Suneera Madhani’s case, it’s a generational story—one forged in gas station aisles, sharpened in corporate boardrooms, and carried forward in billion-dollar exits.

Suneera’s latest company, Worth AI, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Silicon Valley Bank, Ingeborg Investments, DeepWork Capital, and Florida Funders.

In this episode, you will learn:

• Your upbringing can be your greatest business education—Suneera turned lessons from her immigrant parents into entrepreneurial fuel.
• Challenging the status quo sparked the idea for Stax, born from frustration with outdated payment systems.
• Rejection from her corporate employer led her to build a billion-dollar business on her own terms.
• Stacks scaled to $40B in payments and a billion-dollar exit without early venture capital—proof that scrappy execution wins.
• Her new venture, Worth AI, is transforming how small businesses are underwritten by building the FICO score for SMBs.
• This time around, Suneera chose investors based on values, proving business is deeply personal.
• Even after a billion-dollar success, she still reminds herself—and others—to trust their worth and lead authentically.

 

SUBSCRIBE ON:

For a winning deck, see the commentary on a pitch deck from an Uber competitor that has raised over $400M (see it here). 

Remember to unlock for free the pitch deck template that founders worldwide are using to raise millions below.

About Suneera Madhani:

Suneera Madhani is a true trailblazer in the business world. As the founder of Stax Payments, she built one of America’s top 10 fastest-growing fintech companies from an idea to over $160 million in recurring revenue, making it a billion-dollar technology platform, which she successfully exited north of $1 Billion.

Suneera is the first female CEO to lead a unicorn out of Florida and has received numerous accolades for her success, including being recognized by Fortune’s 40 Under 40, EY’s Entrepreneur of the Year, Entrepreneur Magazine’s 100 Most Influential Women, Inc.’s 100 Female Founders among others.

After facing countless challenges as a woman in business, Suneera has become a passionate advocate for gender equality and female entrepreneurship. She founded CEO School, a company empowering women to scale their businesses and change the statistics.

With less than 2% of female founders ever breaking $1 million in revenue, Suneera is on a mission to make sure her success isn’t a unicorn but becomes the norm.

Suneera is the daughter of Pakistani immigrants and the first person in her family to attend college. Beyond her professional achievements, she is a sought after speaker, top 100 podcast host with over 1 million downloads, a mom of two, philanthropist and an avid traveler.

Suneera regularly speaks on some of the world’s most coveted stages including; Meta, Capital One, Forbes 30 under 30 and SXSW. Suneera is a role model for balancing work and life and is an angel investor in over 40 businesses.

Connect with Suneera Madhani:

• LinkedIn
• Crunchbase
• Forbes
• SuneeraMadhani.com

Read the Full Transcription of the Interview:

Alejandro Cremades: Alrighty, hello everyone and welcome to the DealMaker Show. Today we have a very exciting founder — a female founder. You know, being a girl’s dad myself, I’m very excited about this podcast coming up.

Alejandro Cremades: We’re going to be talking about building, scaling, financing — all of the above. I mean, in this case, she built a billion-dollar company. Let that sink in. So again, I think you’re going to find this podcast very inspiring. Without further ado, let’s welcome our guest today, Suneera Madhani. Welcome to the show.

Suneera Madhani: Thank you so much, Alejandro, for having me. I’m very, very excited to be here.

Alejandro Cremades: So originally born in Chicago but raised in Dallas — and you moved quite a bit growing up.

Alejandro Cremades: Give us a walk down memory lane. How was life growing up for you?

Suneera Madhani: Life was wonderful growing up. I feel like I had the most incredible family and parents — but they were also a bit crazy, like most families are. I’m the daughter of immigrant parents. My parents immigrated to the U.S., to Chicago. They met in Chicago, and I was born there in the…

Suneera Madhani: …late ’70s — I was born in the ’80s — and their love story and entrepreneurial journey began then.

Suneera Madhani: They were both entrepreneurs, but out of necessity. Neither one of them went to college or even graduated high school. They both came to America around the age of 15 or 16 to build a better life for their families. So they were both working parents.

Suneera Madhani: For my father in particular, the only way to build the American dream was through entrepreneurship — to own your own business.

Suneera Madhani: And that’s exactly what they set out to do. They bought their first convenience store — actually a gas station — in Texas because his cousins were starting that business there. We moved from Chicago to Dallas, and he was very successful in turning one store into two, then three. I just grew up watching all of that — watching my parents work really hard.

Suneera Madhani: I have a brother; we’re two years apart. He was born in Texas, and we grew up with the businesses.

Suneera Madhani: My dad expanded from gas stations to franchises and other ventures. I just remember, even as a young kid, after school we’d go to the stores. On weekends, I’d help my parents stock shelves or go to Restaurant Depot — whatever was needed.

Suneera Madhani: We grew up in the business. My brother and I always say that was our MBA — watching our parents work hard. There are so many values I feel we now have as a company and in how we work together, and what we’re building is really based on what we saw.

Suneera Madhani: I’m so grateful for that. That was a little about us growing up. But also, it wasn’t all roses, right? Entrepreneurship is not easy, and owning small businesses is not easy. We got to see that side of it too. I watched my parents really struggle as well.

Suneera Madhani: We moved around a lot. My father was great at starting businesses, but he had entrepreneurial ADHD — always onto the next thing. So we moved quite a bit.

Suneera Madhani: My brother and I went to 10 different schools by the time we were done with university.

Suneera Madhani: At one point, my dad decided we were moving to Karachi. We went on vacation there and never came back — we stayed for three years. He started some companies in Karachi.

Suneera Madhani: Then he got bored there, and we came back to the U.S. and moved to Florida. I was 16 at the time — that was my third high school. There were so many wonderful things, but that was one thing I really didn’t want: I didn’t want to move again.

Suneera Madhani: So I ended up going to the University of Florida. I got a full ride and went to UF. From there, I settled back in Orlando and haven’t left since — it’s been 22 years.

Suneera Madhani: That’s where my journey is now. I was like, “Okay, I’m here and I’m not moving.”

Alejandro Cremades: One thing there…

Suneera Madhani: My husband is here.

Alejandro Cremades: One thing there for you…

Suneera Madhani: My family is here. All of it.

Alejandro Cremades: Dealing with uncertainty, Suneera, is one thing that really comes to mind. As you said, being in 10 different schools by the time you were done with university — new friends, new environments, new everything.

Alejandro Cremades: What do you think that taught you about uncertainty — being exposed to it so early in life?

Suneera Madhani: Yeah, I mean — so much. There are so many great things that came out of that. I feel like we learned very quickly how to adapt. We learned how to make friends — and those are amazing skills. I feel like I can go into a room and make friends with anyone.

Suneera Madhani: If I couldn’t be charming, funny, kind — all of those things — I’d be alone at the lunch table.

Suneera Madhani: So you learn how to fit in and adapt. Yes, there was uncertainty, but one thing that was really stable was our home life. My parents were very stable. Our safety was stable. Financially, I never had to worry. Even through the chaos, we didn’t have financial instability — I’m so grateful for that.

Suneera Madhani: The only thing I was required to focus on was getting a great education. That was a huge part of everything — every school we went to, my parents made sure we went to the best ones.

Suneera Madhani: They wanted us to graduate at the top of our class. Education was the most important thing — because they didn’t have it. They worked hard so my brother and I could get educated.

Suneera Madhani: We could become and be anything we wanted to be. That was their American dream — that they figured it out so we wouldn’t have to. We could truly have an opportunity to become anything.

Suneera Madhani: What’s crazy is that I ended up in entrepreneurship — and we both did. My brother and I actually run our companies together. It’s funny how that played out. I was the first person in my family to graduate college — on both my mom’s and dad’s side.

Suneera Madhani: I got a degree in finance and marketing. Sal got a degree in finance and leadership. We both went into corporate paths. And after a couple of years in corporate, that’s how the first business came about — Stax Payments. I’m sure we’re going to talk about that.

Suneera Madhani: Eventually we ended up wanting to build something for ourselves, and entrepreneurship found us.

Alejandro Cremades: So let’s talk about entrepreneurship finding you. Because here you go — the corporate route. I’m sure your parents were like, “Finally! Our kids have stability, a nine-to-five, all of that.” Especially after college — you were the first in the family to go.

Alejandro Cremades: What was that moment like when the idea for Stax Payments came to you? And why did you decide it was meaningful enough to take action?

Suneera Madhani: I was working for a payments company. I was in financial services — this was early 2010.

Suneera Madhani: I grew up watching my parents challenge the status quo. Excellence was always expected of us. I have so many memories of learning to do things with precision — perfection was important, and excellence was the standard.

Suneera Madhani: When I got to this company, I saw so much opportunity — but everyone was just status quo. I couldn’t understand it. Why didn’t people care deeply about the work? Why were they just clocking in and out?

Suneera Madhani: I discovered something huge: the industry was so commoditized. There was no innovation. No passion for serving the customers — which were small businesses.

Suneera Madhani: Small businesses — like my parents’. Credit card processing was expensive. A huge line item. There was no transparency. No one explained how the fees worked — you were just expected to pay them. And you got no value. It was a necessary evil.

Suneera Madhani: Now I was on the other side. And I was like, “Why aren’t we doing better?”

Suneera Madhani: One week I was visiting family in Texas and got stuck in a snowstorm. Literally, I was in Dallas during an ice storm and couldn’t fly home. I was stuck at my grandma’s house.

Suneera Madhani: I watched the entire first season of Shark Tank. That really happened. And I’m sitting there thinking, “Wait — you just pitch your idea, and this is how you raise money?”

Suneera Madhani: That week, I was inspired. I started thinking about what I could change in the industry. I was going online to check on my subscription boxes — I had clothing, dog subscriptions. I was 25, and all about those.

Suneera Madhani: I was texting my mom to make sure she grabbed my boxes, and I thought — subscription is the future.

Suneera Madhani: It was happening in software. It was happening in physical products. And I thought: why isn’t there a subscription-based payment processor? This is it.

Suneera Madhani: I did what every entrepreneur does — I Googled it. It didn’t exist. I was shocked.

Suneera Madhani: I spent the whole week working on a business plan. Instead of flying back to Orlando, I rerouted to Houston — where the company’s headquarters was. I’m really good at getting a seat at the table and getting meetings.

Suneera Madhani: I got the meeting with the executive team. Of course, no women in leadership — all the women were in sales or customer service.

Suneera Madhani: I was a territory sales manager. I gave the best presentation of my life. I knew in my bones this was going to be something.

Suneera Madhani: Their response? Crickets. “This is never going to work. Why invest in tech? Why give away 40% of our margin for market share?”

Suneera Madhani: “Little girl, we love your big ideas. Go back to your box.” That’s how I left that meeting.

Suneera Madhani: I was crushed. I went back home to Orlando, and I thought — what am I going to do? How can I keep working for a company that doesn’t believe in me, where I’ll never be heard? I’d have to accept the status quo.

Suneera Madhani: And part of being—like, I don’t know—there’s this DNA that you have as an immigrant kid. Like, I don’t know… you just challenge stuff. You want things to be better. Like, why doesn’t everybody just want things to be better?

Suneera Madhani: I get home, and we’re having Sunday dinner at my parents’ house.

Suneera Madhani: My brother also happened to be there from California. My dad looks at me and goes, “Sonny”—that’s my nickname—he goes, “Why don’t you just start the company?” I’m 25, and I’m like, “Dad, where do I go find Mr. Visa?”

Suneera Madhani: Like, how do I start a payments company? How do I go build technology? And he goes, “Somebody else figured it out. You can figure it out.” And that was it. So I quit my job.

Suneera Madhani: And I also think that, you know, it’s timing, right? I mean, when you’re that young—I had no kids, no responsibility—yeah, like no financial responsibility. You can take risks.

Suneera Madhani: And I’m so grateful that I took the risk. That was the start of the company. Within the first year, Sal came on board to join me. He left his job, and we both started building. From just us—just the two of us—we grew it to $40 billion in payments through the platform we created.

Suneera Madhani: We onboarded 40,000 small businesses, hired 400 employees. We never raised any capital at the beginning. We went from being rejected to raising, like—there’s so much to unpack in a 10-year journey.

Suneera Madhani: It took 10 years, but we did our seed, our A, B, C, and D rounds. We recapped the business. We exited the business in 2021 for north of a billion.

Suneera Madhani: So it was a wild ride. It was a 10-year ride, and I’m really proud of it.

Alejandro Cremades: So what was that moment like when you exited the company for north of a billion? I mean, that’s… that was probably quite the feeling.

Alejandro Cremades: What was that process like? What was that journey like—going through something like that?

Suneera Madhani: I mean, it’s a lot. It’s hard to unpack, right? I feel like I could sit here and share so much with your audience. I would say—it was a very proud moment, for so many reasons.

Suneera Madhani: I didn’t know I could build a million-dollar business, let alone a billion-dollar business. But our hearts were in the right place. We never did it for the wrong reasons. We really wanted to serve people—our customers. We wanted to be disruptive.

Suneera Madhani: We always invested in people. We always invested in technology. We always invested in the right things. And I felt like—we had, you know—it takes a lot to build a billion-dollar company. A lot of execution, a lot of everything.

Suneera Madhani: To go from zero to $100+ million in recurring SaaS revenue—that’s what it was. Reaching that milestone is every tech founder’s dream. It’s the textbook definition of incredible—it’s the epitome of startup success.

Suneera Madhani: And so I feel very proud of it. Very, very grateful. At the same time, it meant a lot. It wasn’t about the dollars in the pocket.

Suneera Madhani: We did incredibly well for our team too—we made over 30 millionaires on our team.

Suneera Madhani: Sal and I didn’t own the entire company, right? We had investors all along the way. We made hundreds of millions of dollars for our investors—for our community. It was a very big moment, not just for us, but for so many people.

Suneera Madhani: So it makes it… the word I can think of is—it was worth it. You look back at all the sacrifices—it didn’t just happen. It wasn’t just luck. It wasn’t just given.

Suneera Madhani: It took every day of execution. It took every ounce of so many people’s energy, and everything going right—for it to really happen. So it was really special.

Alejandro Cremades: Well, you mentioned luck. Obviously, luck is when opportunity meets preparation.

Alejandro Cremades: Let’s talk about that—opportunity meeting preparation. Because right after exiting Stax, you guys got started with Worth AI.

Suneera Madhani: Yeah.

Alejandro Cremades: So what is Worth AI? How do you guys make money? What’s the business model there?

Suneera Madhani: At Stax, we onboarded 40,000 businesses. One of my biggest challenges wasn’t the product I was selling—which was payments. One of my biggest challenges was onboarding and underwriting small businesses.

Suneera Madhani: Looking through the small business lens, there’s so much amazing technology now in financial services. Right now, Alejandro, you can go on your phone, sign up for an Apple credit card, walk down to Starbucks, and make a transaction before this conversation is over.

Suneera Madhani: But if you want that credit card under “Alejandro LLC,” everything stops. It says: send us three years of tax returns. We need your P&L. We need this, we need that.

Suneera Madhani: There’s so much friction in onboarding a small business. Why is that?

Suneera Madhani: Why isn’t that the same for Alejandro versus Alejandro LLC? In financial services, we’ve had a huge boom in personal finance technology. But on the business side, we haven’t had that level of innovation.

Suneera Madhani: What’s missing is that there’s no standardization of how we view what’s called “credit worth.” For Alejandro, we’ve got your credit score—your W-2, your credit history—so whoever you’re working with, whether it’s a bank, a credit card company, whatever, they can easily determine your credit worth.

Suneera Madhani: For small businesses, that hasn’t existed. So we set out to build the business credit score. We set out to build a platform. And now, we’re in 2025—we have the most incredible technology.

Suneera Madhani: We went to all our partners and built an onboarding platform so that when financial institutions want to onboard a small business, they don’t need to ask for all of these documents. With just a name, tax ID, and address—three fields—we should be able to know that business instantly.

Suneera Madhani: So we started the company. It’s been a year since we’ve been in market. We were in stealth for a little bit. It’s incredible technology—a huge team of data scientists—and we’re in market now, selling the platform to large enterprise financial services firms.

Suneera Madhani: This helps small businesses onboard faster, so we can have a more equitable and efficient world for SMBs. Small businesses are our heart. We know how to serve them. We love them. We are them.

Suneera Madhani: There needs to be a better experience for us in all of financial services. That’s what we’re building. It’s called Worth. We’re building the Worth Score, and we’re really excited about doing it again.

Alejandro Cremades: Well, I know investors are excited about supporting you too, because you recently announced your $25 million seed. That’s quite the seed!

Suneera Madhani: Yeah, it is. I mean, it’s different the second time around, right? The first time, Alejandro, I could tell you stories of every room I walked into—it wasn’t like this.

Suneera Madhani: Trying to get funding to build technology, even the first time around—as a woman, as one of three minority founders—less than 2% of venture capital still goes to women-founded companies.

Suneera Madhani: And even less than 1% goes to minority founders.

Suneera Madhani: There’s a huge gap. But this time, we have credibility. Now we get to choose our investors. The investors back at the table now—we got to decide who they are, and they’re people who believed in us the first time.

Suneera Madhani: So it’s really exciting to go build again. We did amazing things on the first journey, right?

Suneera Madhani: But now we want to build something that really changes the world. I believe that if we can give small businesses access to their credit worth—right now, that’s always been determined by banks and institutions. Everyone else controls that.

Suneera Madhani: If we empower our businesses—people like us, like my parents, like half the country—we can give them the transparency and tools to succeed.

Suneera Madhani: I think it’s going to be transformative. So we’re excited for a much broader mission and to do it again. We know it requires capital. But this time we’re saying: what do we really want? What will it take to build, and build fast? We have the playbook. We know what we’re doing. And we’re going to be at it again—hopefully building another billion-dollar business in less time.

Alejandro Cremades: You said it’s different now when you enter a room. So why did you choose the investors you chose to bring along on this journey? Because now, having done a billion-plus business, investors see you through a different lens.

Suneera Madhani: It’s super simple: I love the humans behind them. That’s it. I believe business is personal. Everyone always told me it’s not personal, but it is. It’s the most personal thing you do. I spend more time here than anywhere else in my life—besides my family.

Suneera Madhani: It’s my work and my family. It is personal to me. The people I want on this journey—I want to have fun with. I’m doing it again because I’m a builder. We’re innovative. We’re young. We’re creative. We want to do big stuff.

Suneera Madhani: We want to be surrounded by champions—smart, strategic, incredible humans. That is important to us, to me. And that’s who’s on our side. I’m so grateful for our investors.

Suneera Madhani: These were the investors who believed in us when no one else did. That’s so special and important to Sal and me.

Alejandro Cremades: Let’s talk about vision. Those investors are betting on vision. So if you went to sleep tonight, Sunira, and woke up in a world where the vision of Worth is fully realized—what does that world look like?

Suneera Madhani: That world looks like an equitable landscape. Right now, in financial institutions, humans do underwriting. A human looks at a business and makes a decision.

Suneera Madhani: A business shouldn’t be judged based on someone else’s perspective. There’s conscious and unconscious bias in people. My maiden name was Ramatula—it’s my brother’s last name. People can make many assumptions about my business based on that.

Suneera Madhani: I want my business to stand on its own credibility. In a world with Worth, businesses stand for themselves. They can understand what they need to build strong financial credit—which is what great businesses are built on.

Suneera Madhani: When Worth is in the hands of all small businesses—and financial institutions are using it—not only will enterprises be more efficient, but the entire system will be more equitable.

Alejandro Cremades: Now, let’s talk about the past for a moment. If I put you in a time machine and brought you back to your corporate life—when you gave your notice and walked out of the big building into the unknown—what’s one piece of advice you’d give that younger Sunira before launching the business?

Suneera Madhani: Oh, if I could go back, I’d tell her: know your worth. Believe in yourself. I had a lot of self-doubt. It took the support of many people around me to get through.

Suneera Madhani: Now I look back—I always had it. I had it all along. I’d tell her: don’t listen to the naysayers. Keep going. Stay on the path.

Suneera Madhani: I still have to remind myself of that, right? Even now, doing it again, in financial services, in fintech—it’s still a man’s world. I have to carry a different level of gravitas to play the game.

Suneera Madhani: For so long, I was trying to fit in. Now, I’m just myself. I’m feminine. I don’t have to be something I’m not.

Suneera Madhani: I think before, I was trying to fit into the world to make it work. But now, I’m ready for the next chapter. I’m reminding myself that I don’t have to follow how it’s been done—I can do it my way.

Suneera Madhani: Even now, I have to remind myself. No matter your level of success, if you’re not a little scared, if there’s not that fear—that means you care. That fear means you want it to work. It doesn’t come from ego. It comes from groundedness and humility.

Suneera Madhani: Those are still the conversations I have with myself.

Alejandro Cremades: I love it. For the folks listening who’d love to reach out and say hi, Sunira, what’s the best way for them to do so?

Suneera Madhani: You can find me on every platform. Suneera Madhani—S-U-N-E-E-R-A, last name M-A-D-H-A-N-I. On LinkedIn, Instagram, all the things. And when you go to my profile, you’ll find Worth and everything I’m working on.

Alejandro Cremades: Amazing. Well, Sunira, thank you so much for being on the DealMaker Show today. It has been an absolute honor to have you with us.

Suneera Madhani: So excited. Thank you, Alejandro, for having me today.

*****

If you like the show, make sure that you hit that subscribe button. If you can leave a review as well, that would be fantastic. And if you got any value either from this episode or from the show itself, share it with a friend. Perhaps they will also appreciate it. Also, remember, if you need any help, whether it is with your fundraising efforts or with selling your business, you can reach me at al*******@pa**************.com

 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | TuneIn | RSS | More