In this engaging episode of Fintech Fun, host Chris Titley invites Daniel Kniaz to take us through the genesis and evolution of his company Weel, formerly DiviPay. The discussion begins with an exploration of the early days, underscoring the iterative process that led to their current business model. The show offers listeners a glimpse into the world of Australian fintech innovation, capturing both the struggles and triumphs of a startup journey.
Daniel shares valuable insights into the initial concept of DiviPay and the subsequent pivot due to scalability and monetization challenges. The narrative shifts focus to Weel's current mission: resolving SMB spending-related inefficiencies and facilitating seamless expense management. Chris and Daniel's conversation provides a look into the ethos of a fintech founder, the strategic thinking behind pivots in business models, and the shaping of a tech product amidst a changing financial landscape.
• Daniel Kniaz's journey with Weel highlights the importance of listening to customer needs and adapting business models to meet market demands.
• Weel, born from DiviPay, serves to alleviate SMB spending and employee reimbursement pains by streamlining payment workflows and expense reporting.
• Successful scaling and market fit are achieved by offering a product that assists businesses in tighter financial control during challenging economic climates.
• The rebranding journey from DiviPay to Weel underscores the relevance of strategic name and positioning in the evolving fintech industry.
• Kniaz outlines the future direction for Weel, emphasizing both the expansion into new payment types and the enhancement of pre and post-payment workflows.
• Weel website • H2 Accelerator program • Stone and Chalk coworking and innovation space
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Chris Titley: You're listening to a Day One FM show.
Daniel Kniaz: Pick My Brain is the podcast where founders pitch me their startup and I try to give them some useful advice so they can connect better with potential co-founders, investors, media, and of course, customers. My name's Allan Jones and I was a founder myself for about 15 years, and after that, an angel investor for another 15 years. So yeah, old. Some of my ventures have been successful and some failed disastrously, But I like to think I've learned a thing or two along the way, and maybe some of that can help you. So if you'd like to learn how to tweak your pitch, subscribe to the Pick My Brain show now, wherever you like to listen to podcasts.
Speaker C: Hi, I'm Chris Tittley, and this is Fintech Fun, the podcast where I speak with Australian fintech founders and executive management and have some fun along the way, gaining insights about the person behind the brand. Fintech Fun is part of Day One, the network dedicated to founders, operators and investors. I'm joined by Daniel Niaz, founder and CEO of Weel. Daniel, thanks so much for joining us and being part of this series.
Chris Titley: Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.
Speaker C: Daniel, let's talk about Weel. Obviously started at a different name, but let's go back to the early days, the beginning, a little bit about yourself and how the business came about.
Chris Titley: Yeah, sure, sure. We've definitely had an interesting journey to this point. So I'll start at the beginning. Maybe just for context, so my co-founder and myself, we met working at Westpac. There we were in the innovation team and really where we got to learn a lot of great startup skills. Our remit was how do you take potentially disruptive financial technology and apply that to the bank. So through that, we got to learn about Jobs to Be Done frameworks, how to how do you best talk to customers and understand customer problems? How do you rapidly build MVPs and test that with the market? So that's where we got a lot of our, I guess, early training to then go and do what we did. Ultimately for us, I think in an organization like Westpac, there's 35,000 people there, there's a lot of bureaucracy, there's a lot of red tape, and ultimately, for us, a lot of the things that we, we built just never were able to make it into market and, and essentially get into the hands of the customer and deliver the impact that we thought they could. So that was the starting point for my co-founder and I to go, hey, maybe we should go out and do something on our own.
Speaker D: Hmm.
Chris Titley: So we, we left and we actually went into an accelerator program It was called H2 at the time.
Speaker C: This was really— This was Ben and Toby Heap, yeah?
Chris Titley: Yeah, exactly. So this was really great for us because there was probably like—
Speaker C: That was at Stone and Chalk as well, wasn't it?
Chris Titley: At Stone and Chalk, yeah, in the early days. So probably 6 to 8 companies, similar stage, where now we've just got this great network of founders. Some companies are ahead of us, some are at a similar stage, some no longer exist.
Speaker C: Let's do some trivia. I reckon I can name 'em. I can, Edstart, Simply Wall Street, Valiant Finance— oh, there's a few there that— Spriggy? Yeah, or I thought Fall do.
Chris Titley: So yeah, those guys have all gone on to build fantastic companies, and as founders we still get together and talk about the problems we'll face. But we went into that program, and originally we were actually trying to solve the shared bank account split bill problem. And that's the genesis of the DiviPay name, actually, where the— Mm-hmm. That we started with. So we started there, always interested in fintech and virtual card technology. Ultimately, what we found with that product was we couldn't build scalable technology to solve that problem. It was definitely a problem that existed and we built some MVPs that people enjoyed using and we got good feedback on, but we couldn't scale it from a technology perspective. And ultimately virtual cards were pretty nascent at that point in time, very difficult to actually stand something like that up. So there was a period of time where we didn't really see a pathway forward and we were trying to understand, well, where do we go next? And this is, I guess, our first pivot probably a series of 2 or 3 pivots. And we started listening to customers, and customers weren't using our technology for splitting bills or shared accounts. They started using virtual cards as essentially a proxy to their regular bank account, a way to protect their privacy and security while shopping online.
Speaker C: Hmm.
Chris Titley: And what we found, this is really interesting, that 50% of Aussies, or 1 in 2 people, are frauded every single year. And, you know, if you're frauded, you have to raise chargebacks, you have to cancel your card, get a new card from the bank. So people were using our product to essentially spin up one-time, single-use virtual cards to make payments, to give them this security.
Daniel Kniaz: Comfort.
Chris Titley: It's this barrier between themselves and the merchant. So we pivoted our whole business. We kept the name DiviPay at that point as well, but we moved from DiviPay shared accounts splitting bills to DiviPay protect your privacy and security while shopping online. And we actually scaled that relatively well. I would say we had product-market fit in the sense of people really wanted the product and derived value from the product. But ultimately where we landed was we couldn't monetize it. Yeah. And this was a really interesting lesson for us. But B2C, no one wanted to pay. No one wanted to pay in the B2C world in terms of financial services. And it makes sense. You know, a lot of people view their bank account as free. Obviously it's not, but that's the perception. So, you know, the feedback we're getting is, well, why would we pay for this other tool? So this was, I guess, our next pivot or question. Persevere moment in—
Speaker C: Iteration.
Chris Titley: Yeah, iteration. And again, we went back to the customer and understood, well, what is the value in what we've got and is there a path to monetization here? And this is where we landed on what we do today as Wheel. And what we found was customers were coming to us saying, hey, we love the product. We could see how this could be applicable to our small business. And when we dug in further there, what we found was very difficult for SMBs in this country to get access to traditional financial products. And instead, they would, they would have one of two different workarounds, particularly when it came to employee spending or corporate cards. And what we found was businesses would either require their staff to use their own personal funds and then submit an expense report. And be reimbursed. Or what happens way more than I anticipated, there might be a single card, a founder's card, a director's card, which would be shared around an office. And everyone has their own version of the story, but one of our earliest customers has this great story where they were a 30-person organization and they actually photocopied the director's card, and 30 different people had access to this photocopy just sitting in the top drawer of their desk whenever they needed to make payments. So with that, you know, you get a lot of fraud and wasteful spending. That's the inefficiency on card sharing. And then the inefficiency on the other side, which again was really interesting to us, when you require staff to use their own personal funds, what we discovered was you never truly know any individual's personal financial situation. And we were hearing stories of— Mm-hmm. Employees having to put often thousands of dollars of company expenditure on their own personal cards, and in some instances actually incur interest on behalf of the business before they got paid back. And then you talk to most people, no one loves doing their expense reports, definitely left to Friday afternoon.
Speaker C: There's leakage as well, and you know, maybe people go, "Oh, look, maybe that was not really for the business, but at the time it was," and you know, all those sort of things.
Chris Titley: Exactly. So it's left to last minute. It's then often done incorrectly. Finance team will send it back and it could be another fortnight, another month, or payslip, to actually get reimbursed. So that was really the genesis of the, the problem space that we started to go really deep in. And ultimately what we built was a piece of software that allows small business owners, finance teams to issue everyone in their business with their own unique virtual corporate card, build your expense policy into that card itself, So you're essentially building the smarts of your policy into the card. And then once you make the payment, we automate your expense reporting and push all of that into a connected cloud accounting software.
Speaker C: Wow, excellent. And then the iteration of changing the name and the company.
Daniel Kniaz: Yeah.
Speaker C: How did that come about and then the outcomes from that?
Chris Titley: Yeah, sure. So with the name change, so it was probably never our biggest problem to solve. Reflecting on that journey, we pivoted 2 or 3 times before we actually got to where we are today. And when we pivoted, we were kind of eyes wide open in the sense that this might not be the last pivot. If we can't find product-market fit, if we can't monetize this in the right way to build a sustainable business, we may have to pivot again. So we kept the name for a while until we truly believed that we are building something of value, something that solves problems, and something that people want. So we, we maintained the name for maybe a year or two until we got to that point. And then our, our brand, our product definitely started to mature, and, and we thought, okay, now this is a good inflection point. The other kind of forcing factor for us was we made the change around the time that we really started to see the rise of buy now, pay later in Australia. And if you think about a lot of those companies that were headline or in the news, they were always something pay. They always had pay in their name. So we just simply started getting miscategorized by the market.
Speaker C: People looked at us and said, "Oh, Divipay, you guys buy now, pay later." Well, I mean, for a period of time, you could have raised hundreds of millions of dollars, but.
Chris Titley: That's true. We, we probably could have taken more advantage of that. Um, but no, so, so we use, we use those few inflection points to, to do, to say let's do a wholesale rebrand. We now have a more mature product. We know who we are and where we want to go as a company. So let's, let's make that brand change, and with that, let's make a name change as well that just makes sense for us going forward.
Speaker C: Daniel, how's the last sort of 6 months been, I suppose, or 6 to 12 months? It's been a pretty rough time for some of the smaller technology companies that are listed on the stock exchange, but how about your business?
Chris Titley: Yeah, obviously the macro environment changed pretty drastically. I think for us, we've in a sense gone from strength to strength, and when we reflect on the why behind that and we look at our customers, What's interesting is because of the broader macro environment, customers know that they need to keep a really tight eye and control on how they're spending company funds. And what's been really nice for our product is that is the problem that we solve. We help finance teams control spending, have the visibility, and make sure they understand where money is going out the door. So for a lot of customers, prospective customers and our current customers, they've doubled down on our service because it actually helps them in a, in a tougher environment really understand how they're spending. So for, for us, we've kind of been a product that solves a problem within kind of what's going on in the broader macro view.
Speaker C: Awesome. And then putting the hat on and saying, well, let's, um let's replay this podcast in 2025, the, in April, where would you like the business to be?
Chris Titley: Yeah, so look, we, we're a high growth business, so we look to double year on year. Um, very much on that trajectory. I think from a, where we're focused from a product perspective, we really want to be the epicenter for how business spends and, and manages money. So our focus is really two parts. First part is giving SMBs access to all different payment types. So we call this money in, money out. All the different ways that you can send or receive money. So we want to, we want to go broader on what options we give businesses to spend through our platform. And the second piece that we really focus on from a product perspective is adding value in the workflow around that payment. And what I mean by that is the pre- and post-payment workflows that actually help a business complete their expenses as quickly as possible. And if you think about, you know, what every finance team wants to do is they do want to complete their expenses as quickly as possible so they can move from really admin-heavy tasks to more value-adding, future-looking finance.
Daniel Kniaz: Mm-hmm.
Chris Titley: And that's what we solve for. In the next 12 months, we're really focused on unlocking both more payment types and specifically things like international bill payments is a really big requested feature from our customers. And then we want to go really deep on those pre- and post-payment approval workflows.
Speaker C: Very good. And Daniel, when you're not thinking about improving SMBs' payment solutions and all the various aspects that go with running your own startup, what do you do outside of startup land, or is it always 24/7 for you?
Chris Titley: Yeah, I'm pretty 24/7, but I do do a few things. I actually recently became a dad.
Speaker C: Congratulations.
Chris Titley: That definitely takes up the other part of my time, which I absolutely love. But then, outside of that, my kind of priority after family and work is I love to surf.
Speaker C: Ah, okay.
Chris Titley: I do a lot of surfing. It keeps me sane. It's my meditation. It's my exercise. It's my social.
Speaker C: It's lots of domains in one that you can get. And how long do you surf for? Are you a bit of a surfing sort of nut or are you just sort of a casual surfer?
Chris Titley: I would like to think I'm more than a weekend warrior.
Speaker C: That's what they call it. A weekend warrior, yep, yep.
Chris Titley: I do live pretty close to the beach now, so I try and get down as often as possible. I definitely don't surf for as long as I used to. Used to. My sessions are a little bit shorter, but, um, yeah, try and get out, you know, a couple times a week.
Speaker C: And if you went traveling around the world, would you take your surfboard with you?
Chris Titley: 100%. Yeah, 100%.
Speaker C: Where would you like to surf internationally?
Chris Titley: I've been pretty fortunate to, to go to quite a few places with surfing. I think the top 2 that stick out for me, I went to Nicaragua not that long ago. That was, that was great in Central America. And North Sumatra was probably the most beautiful surfing location I've, I've ever been and would love to go back.
Speaker C: Excellent. Any, uh, any hiccups or injuries along the way, or everything's been pretty, pretty good for you?
Chris Titley: I did dislocate my shoulder on the second day of a 10-day trip.
Speaker C: Oh no.
Chris Titley: Okay. But I, um, taped it up, couple Advil, and just kept going. Dealt with the consequences later.
Speaker C: It's like startup, like running a startup, isn't it?
Chris Titley: That's it, yeah.
Speaker C: Get knocked down but get back up again. Daniel, thank you so much for having a chat today about the progress of Wheel and Divipay in its first iteration and where you've come from, certainly where the future is heading, and also sharing some of the insights into your personal life, which is congratulations on being a dad. It's certainly, I'm a father of 3 kids, it changes your life much, much for the better. Looking forward to catching up and also following the success of Wheel.
Chris Titley: Thank you, mate. Appreciate it.
Speaker D: Listen to the Unfunded Podcast, brought to you by the Day One Network and hosted by me, tech writer Joan Westenberg. We're sharing the no-holds-barred untold stories from entrepreneurs who have decided to build a business on their terms. I'll be interviewing successful founders and operators on the grit and ingenuity it takes to to build and scale independent startups without the support of traditional venture capital funding. Subscribe to the Unfunded Podcast now, wherever you get your podcasts.
