Australian FinTech company profile #131 – gini
1. Company Name: gini
2. Website: www.gini.co
3. Key Staff & Titles:
- Ray Wyand, CEO
- Victor Lang, COO
- Stephanie Johnson, CMO
- Sarah Davies, CFO
- Ricardo Mota, CTO
- Fung Lim, General Manager (Australia & New Zealand)
4. Location(s): Hong Kong, Australia & New Zealand
5. In one sentence, what does your fintech do?: gini build financial management tools that help companies grow.
6. How / why did you start your fintech company?: There is an inequality in the access to AI-generated data, small businesses that cannot afford to hire data teams are left behind, while large corporations have massive teams of data scientists that help them scale their businesses. We need to narrow that gap.
7. What is the best thing your company has achieved or learnt along the way (this can include awards, capital raising etc)?: gini has built a suite of products that has solidified our position as fintech leaders. The gini personal finance app helps over 100,000 users around the world to manage their finances. Along the way, we picked up a few awards like winning the Citi Fintech Challenge and Harvard Business School Start-Up of the Year.
8. What’s some advice you’d give to an aspiring start-up?: Pick a large market to focus on. Developing a product for a small or niche market gives you little margin for error. It’s always better to have a wide focus and narrow it down as you learn more about your customer’s needs.
9. What’s next for your company? And are you looking to expand overseas or stay focused on Australia?: While we do have a number of users from around the world that have used our product for businesses, and have found it helpful, we are focused on Australia and New Zealand right now.
10. What other fintechs or companies do you admire?: We admire Apple for being a visionary company that has changed the world. We admire Segment, which persisted for years to find product-market fit. We admire Stripe, which has revolutionised the way we pay and collect money, and has given the credit card processing market a real run for its money.
11. What’s the most interesting or funniest moment that’s happened in your company’s lifetime?: One of the funniest moments was when we were scheduled to be on a video call with one of our vendors, and they popped up on screen naked only wearing a towel in a bamboo bungalow in the middle of Thailand. His colleague told him to turn off his camera, but it was too late, our team had already lost complete control of their laughter and the image of this large nude man had been seared into our psyche for the rest of our lives. It was at that moment we realised we needed a new vendor for this service.
