Host Tedd Huff interviews Oz Merchant, Vp of Customer Success, who is the Fintech and Entrepreneurship Guru of the groundbreaking company Viably. They spill the beans on their startup journey and how Viably is revolutionizing the e-commerce industry.

Three things that will change how you look at ecommerce:

1️⃣ Unveiling the Secret Sauce: How Viably Helps E-commerce Businesses Access Capital like Never Before!

2️⃣ The Untold Challenges of E-commerce Sellers and How Viably Saves the Day with Tailored Solutions!

3️⃣ The Burning Question: How Does Viably Stay Ahead of the Competition with a Holistic Approach and Data-Driven Decision-Making Tools?

Get ready to have your mind blown as our guest spills all the fintech tea in this episode!

Also, watch the entire episode on youtube.

Links:

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Fintech Confidential

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Time Stamps:

[00:00:06] The journey into fintech: OZ's story of how he found success in the startup world and ended up in the exciting field of fintech

[00:05:04] Identifying the problem and mission of Viably: Learn about Viably's mission to solve the capital management problem for e-commerce businesses and how they're making a difference.

[00:09:39] Challenges faced by e-commerce sellers: Discover the obstacles that e-commerce sellers face, from supply chain disruptions to the need for capital to scale their businesses.

[00:11:47] Capital Management and Financial Planning for E-commerce Sellers: Get expert insights on understanding capital needs and developing effective financial strategies for e-commerce sellers.

[00:14:47] Viably's Unique Features and Services for E-commerce Businesses: Find out how Viably's platform empowers e-commerce sellers with data-driven knowledge, cash flow forecasting, and growth strategies.

[00:19:54] Real-Life Example of Viably's Impact on an E-commerce Business: Dive into a case study showcasing how Viably transformed an e-commerce seller's business through cash advances, inventory restocking, and vendor partnerships.

[00:22:27] The challenges faced by e-commerce sellers: Learn about the partnership and technology layers that streamline the seller experience and remove friction points like ad spend.

[00:23:33] Capital management and financial planning for e-commerce sellers: Explore the importance of additional capital for marketing new products and making strategic growth decisions.

[00:24:51] Viably's mission and vision for the future: Discover the exciting future of Viably and the role of data analytics, machine learning, and AI in underwriting businesses.

[00:33:09] The mission and vision of Viably: Delve deeper into the mission and vision of Viably, a fintech startup that's revolutionizing the industry.

[00:34:34] Discount offer for Fintech Confidential notifications: Don't miss out on a special discount offer for signing up for Fintech Confidential notifications.

[00:35:01] Disclaimer and caution regarding cryptocurrencies: Get informed about the risks and volatility of cryptocurrencies, and the importance of personal research and decision-making.

This is a Production of Diamond D3, Media

ABOUT:

Oz Merchant : Oz Merchant is the VP of Customer Success at Viably. He has 15 years of experience in the local startup community and is on startup number six. He has consulted and coached startup founders across 5 continents. Oz is also a SCORE Mentor for the Raleigh Chapter. Entrepreneurship is his passion and he loves connecting budding founders and sellers with the resources they need to make their vision a reality.

Viably: Viably is a free all-in-one banking, insights, and financial management app designed specifically for small business owners. Viably has built a small business banking experience backed by your business data, with insights tailored to your unique goals. The app is designed for all-in-one visibility into your cash and income–giving you the confidence to know where you stand and get paid faster. Viably’s banking and financial tools for small businesses remove the guesswork from critical decisions, giving you financial clarity to operate and grow. Dream boldly, run viably. For more information about Viably visit www.runviably.com.

Tedd Huff: Tedd Huff is the Co-Founder of Voalyre, and the President & Founder of Diamond D3, a professional services consulting firm focused on global payments and marketing. He is also a video podcast host and producer of Fintech Confidential.

Over the past 24 years, he has contributed to FinTech startups as an Advisory Board Member, Co-Founder, and Chief Experience Officer, providing strategic and tactical direction for Global Payments OpenEdge, Heartland Payments, Nuvei, and TSYS, among others, focusing on growth while delivering innovation, process improvements and user experience-driven value to simplify the complexity of payments.

Diamond D3, Media: A media creation, management, and production company delivering engaging content globally

Entrepreneurship has gotten to a point where you can take

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Welcome to FinTech Confidential, bringing you the people, tech and companies

that change how you pay and get paid.

Oz, welcome to the show.

Hey, Ted, appreciate you having me on.

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

So for before we dive into all

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

the hard hitting questions,

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

You've had over 15 years of experience.

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

I think this is startup number six that you're working on.

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

You coach startup founders, I mean, you're a score mentor.

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

Dude, it sounds like entrepreneurship is like deep

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

in your DNA and I'd

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

love for you to share with everybody, how in the heck did

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

you end up falling into FinTech?

Yeah, it's, it's an interesting story.

Uh, I've been in the, the space, uh, for startups now, almost two decades,

and coming out of, uh, the retail, manufacturing, uh, wholesale kind of

side of the world, uh, going into, uh, tech was quite interesting, uh,

learning about software as a service.

I've done a number of different companies all kind of in the tech

startup space and you know, I quickly realized for me the, you know, having

done large companies to move to startup and tech made, uh, a big difference.

You know, where I found that?

I could better serve kind of the, the market, the, the customers.

You know, being part of the, the collaboration or bringing something from

kind of that zero to one, uh, was really a cool kind of, uh, addictive kind of thing.

It's like once you've tasted that, it's, it's really hard to kind

of go back to being a kind of a cog in a very giant, uh, machine.

So, uh, startup's been really kind of passion since then,

and.

now, like I said, you know, startup number six, uh, the, the team actually,

uh, we, we've all worked together for a long time and we actually kind of went

back to after we had a previous exit say, okay, let's go solve a critical

issue that we found was, uh, a big problem for us as we started the last

company, which was all around capital.

this, this whole industry is very interesting that.

You know, FinTech has been rocking my world as far as just how much,

how active it is and so much, especially like in the last five

years, there's a lot of movement.

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

Awesome.

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

So can you, can you help us understand like that moment when you and your

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

partners were sitting down and saying, this is the problem we want to solve,

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

and kind of help us understand.

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

know, what, what was it that that got you deciding to, to make that that jump?

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

To jump into FinTech

John Gordon, the ceo, when he reached out, he's

like, Hey, I wanna get the band back together this time around.

, let's go solve this issue around capital.

Uh, when, when it comes to, you know, whether it's SaaS companies, whether it's

for e-commerce companies, it's a space that traditional lenders, banking, just,

they don't know how to underwrite it.

They don't know how to capitalize it.

And it's a, it's a problem.

I mean, if you're starting something new, you need capital to kind of grow

and expand and scale the business up.

and if we could figure out and knowing kind of that space well that if we

could go help those type of, uh, customers, then that became very kind

of close to our heart as far as, you know, we've gone through that journey.

We, we know how to underwrite that type of business.

We know that the kind of problems they face, and it just seemed like

a good move for us to go solve the, the itch we had, you know.

A decade prior too.

So if we can help, uh, future entrepreneurs, and if you look,

you know, in the, the last probably like five, six years,

All these universities, everybody's got programs specifically designed

entre around entrepreneurship.

Yeah,

which is, you know, great because it's, it's,

you know, the, it's the thing that kind of keeps the economy going.

It's the oldest kind of career profession.

It's the, the, uh, whether small business, large, it's the system

that kind of makes everything run.

So, uh, the fact that you can potentially learn and, and actually.

not to kind of stumble your way through.

It is, is nice.

That's a big shift in where things were before.

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

Well, and you brought up one

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

thing that that has been.

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

Top of mind.

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

I mean, I've been part of numerous startups.

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

Um, I help startups all the time, especially when they're trying

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

to figure out, Hey, I've got this great idea, but I don't understand

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

what the bank is asking me.

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

I don't speak that language.

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

I.

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

Can you help me bridge that gap?

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

And, and I do a lot of that through my consulting group and we, we focus on that.

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

But before I dive into like how you guys really helped these folks get

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

through the process of getting capital,

You've gone over some really interesting things about entrepreneurship

and how you guys got into FinTech, but can you describe in your own words what

the mission and vision of Viably is?

Yeah.

Really what we're looking to do is really solve this problem

for, for, uh, e-commerce folks.

You know, the, the vision was really, It goes back to, you know, solving

this problem a around, uh, e-commerce businesses not being able to go to

any other kind of traditional means.

Um, they, they wanna grow their businesses.

They've got, uh, uh, scalability issues and, you know, e-commerce, if you look

back in these, probably this last five, six years, it's really blowing up.

And the, the market is, It could, could be a whole lot bigger.

I think that's just probably under capitalized.

And if we could really help this, uh, segment of the, the space that's really

booming, especially, I think Covid was another factor that, uh, some businesses

got impacted pretty hard, but other, you know, e-commerce re some of those

spaces within e-commerce really took off.

Because everybody started shopping from home.

It's like, okay, I can't go anywhere.

Let me just place it online.

So, There, there was a big need that, you know, the, the, I don't think they

anticipated, uh, all the potential growth that they were gonna have.

And they quickly got to a point where, okay, I'm growing at a rate that, you

know, I can't have my current kind of cash flow and stuff handle that, so

I need to go find some other means.

So when we looked at kind of the, the overall market, we were like,

okay, what, what's really needs.

to be service.

Okay.

They're, you know, coming from the SA space, there's a

lot of players in that space.

Um, we, we know it well, but it's very highly competitive when we

look at small business as a whole.

There's a lot of, you know, there's a huge variety from a property management company

to a lawn service, to a dry cleaner.

There's all different types of small businesses, but they're so different.

There's nothing kind of, uh, similar in the sense of, okay, you

know, how can we best serve them?

And when we look at e-commerce, You know, here the, here's folks that get

technology because they're already online.

Here's folks that have a really, a strong community around e-commerce.

Here's a community that's really growing fast, that has big needs.

So it just made a lot of sense for us to kind of drill down into that

specific kind of market and say, okay, how do we help serve this community

and help them, uh, scale and grow?

. So that kind of became our mission as we've, as we've launched and

really want to partner with them.

And a lot of them, you know, their strategies to go have an exit.

So be part of, part of that ride.

what are the, the top like 10, five or 10 challenges

that you're seeing the e-commerce sellers coming up against, and

how do you all, how do you step in and save the day in offering

a unique value proposition?

What is that that really helps them thrive?

yeah.

In the e-commerce space, you know, because it's, it's product rich.

It's,

we've coming from, uh, this is.

Software as a service base was really, you know, it's software, but it's

still delivered as a service here.

Actually got hard, tangible products, which has a whole supply chain.

And if you look at what happened during Covid, I mean the whole supply

chain got disrupted and that became a big problem for a lot of companies.

Meaning that either the demand was really high because people started

shopping online, but supply chain got all kind of thrown outta whack,

uh, the cost of containers, you know.

I think five x six x, uh, during this period of time and

getting goods became very hard.

So there's been a lot of challenges for e-commerce.

And during that time, you know, there was a lot of boom where

there was a lot of consolidation.

Uh, people started looking at, okay, who's looking to sell at this point, a

lot of aggregators came in with private equity money and bought up a lot of

e-commerce businesses at that time.

Uh, some that were healthy, some that were not so healthy.

and during these kind of, uh, last couple years, you know, the challenges around

supply chain, even though I've gotten a little bit better, the other big challenge

has always been, okay, uh, how do I, how do I take you to the next level?

How do I have enough capital?

It's what's interesting, you know,

i've been in a

lot of different spaces and e-commerce is one of those

if you're actually successful.

you actually need more money.

It's actually harder and because, more challenging because you're successful,

meaning that the moment you, you know, you try out a, I'm gonna bring in a small

sample size of a particular product.

If that does well, then you quickly need to have enough money to go buy more.

Cuz you don't wanna spend all

the money on

you know, marketing that particular product, uh, getting the, the

traffic there and then be outta stock.

So you're taking this kind of ongoing risk that you, you, you've got really

small kind of window to say, okay, yeah, there's enough interest here yet this is

SKU is gonna

work.

This particular product, uh, you know, color, whatever it may be, is gonna work.

, I gotta go buy some more and get that, uh, kind of replenished

fast enough that I don't sell out.

So success in this space has its, you know, its own set of challenges.

It's, uh, own costs that, you know, in that sense we're failing.

It doesn't, if it doesn't work, then yeah, you're out.

That money, it didn't move as fast as you wanted to, but if you're

successful, it's even more costly.

So the.

so you, you, you talk about the, the, the, the seller

getting really successful, needing to shore up their inventory.

And I'm guessing you guys stepped.

Step in to help them manage that, that capital piece of it,

and really step into helping them manage their finances overall in

order to continue that success level.

Can you, can you give some examples to how you've done that and what makes

you different in solving that problem?

Yeah, the, that's executive issues is that coming in and helping them

with the, the capital is, is critical.

Uh, and, and knowing when, I mean, you know, as a business, as business

grows and scales, Having the capital needs varies throughout kind of that,

that life cycle, that journey, and the better you can plan for that.

Planned capital is always gonna be cheaper than unplanned capital needs.

So the better you have understanding of when you're needing capital,

how much you're gonna need.

Most likely it's gonna be much, uh, more cost effective for you than

just getting surprised with it.

So we're coming in not only from the prospect or perspective of helping them

with the capital, but also helping them understand the business overalls to when

they need the capital, uh, as well as, uh, understanding, you know, how, what, what's

the right strategies to have in place.

It's a combination of things, and that's the whole idea of kind

of the building, the platform.

The way we did is, We really want to help 'em on kind of all those fronts, uh,

and, and think of it more holistically.

So, you know, there people, e-commerce folks are selling

on a variety of channels.

They may be selling on Amazon, they may be selling on Walmart, doing DDC

through a Shopify e-commerce store.

To be able to step back and kind of look at the business holistically.

and understand, okay, what are all the different costs, uh, happening here

that are kind of outside of that kind of particular channel to say, okay,

there's additional, uh, payroll costs.

There's consultants I'm working with, there's, uh, storage fees,

three pls that they're working with.

So there's maybe all these kind of, uh, after the initial, say the, the

cogs and uh, and the the fees that you may be paying for the platform,

there's all these other additional expenses that are across the board.

So be able to kind of identify all those and make sure you're factoring

all that into understanding how healthy the business is financially.

So I'm, I'm hearing cogs.

I'm assuming that means cost of good.

Sold.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I mean, it's so funny when you start to talk about different things in FinTech.

And FinTech is the hugest alphabet soup there ever is.

on a call.

We had a conversation.

About risk.

And I don't think we did.

I, I don't think we had a real word in the entire sentence other than

conjunctions to tie things together.

And it was all acronyms.

It was, it was hilarious.

Uh,

That's how the world of Amazon is.

I've seen it getting into it.

It's just literally one acronym after the other.

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

How does Viably set itself apart from

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

its competitors in the capital space, and what unique features and services

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

do you offer to these e-commerce businesses when they need the help?

the approach we took was we actually built the platform

and kind of layers, so we built the, the banking layer initially

and then added in the funding layer.

And then, uh, we added in this whole software, uh, layer where really helping

the businesses see what the current cashflow situation is looking like

across all the channels, uh, as well as be able to forecast to say, okay.

What can I do with the existing cash flow?

Can I go launch a couple of new product lines?

Can I uh, add some product variations?

Can I get more aggressive with my ad spend?

Be able to forecast all those and run the different scenarios and see

what the impact is on the cash flow.

And, you know, the kind of natural byproduct of that is that people

are like, okay, well I want to go execute on this strategy.

It makes kind of sound sense for me to do.

So.

. But for me to do it well, I'll need additional capital to do so.

So I can either decide, okay, well I'm gonna not do five skews that I'm gonna

launch, I'm gonna do three based with my existing cashflow, or, you know, it

makes sense for me to do five and take additional capital to go execute on that.

So it's really empowering the seller, having data-driven knowledge to say

what's right for you in your business based on the goals you have, uh, and

where you're at at in that journey.

Um, you know, some sellers are.

, you know, very new and, and they're getting scaling things up.

Others are really kind of at the point where they're shifting from growth to

more profitability, get their EBITDA looking nicer so they can have a

potential exit in the next 12, 18 months.

So based on that, it varies.

You're giving them all the tools to decide if they need capital.

What happens once they've realized, Hey, I need to get capital?

Do they go down to the local bank?

Do they pick up?

You know, the loan shark's phone,

what do these guys do in order to get the capital they need to, to get moving?

Yeah, the way we built the platform is as they're

running those scenarios, they can say,

this is a plan I've built up.

I click,

fund this plan and they get,

different offers right through the platform.

We are the institution that's

bringing that to you.

So we're providing the, the different offers based on the,

the health of the business.

So it's all coming from us, and they can decide if it makes sense for them or not.

could they go to their local bank?

Probably not

because traditional banking is looking at, uh, the business differently.

We're very future and forward looking, uh, approach where it's really about

the, the, the health of the business.

Uh, doesn't matter what's kind of happened in the past, long as you know,

the business is trending in the right direction, most likely you're fundable.

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

If I'm an e-commerce person

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

that's selling good services,

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

How does your.

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

Platform cater specifically

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

to the needs of that very ideal customer to help them overcome the capital

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

challenges, to really propel them forward.

There's different types of sellers in the space, So we've

got a couple of different product options.

So

if they're, say for example, redoing retail arbitrage or online arbitrage

Typically on a lot of the marketplaces where you're having to wait 14 to 18

days, depending by the time ACH settles, you're, you're, you know, you're talking

about two and a half weeks roughly just to get access to your money so

that you can do something with it.

they need.

Capital like every day.

If they, the quicker they have access to money,

For that person, you know, we've built this

cash advance type product

they're getting that kind of realtime same day, uh, funding.

By having that every day makes it a whole lot easier for them to keep kind of doing

the purchasing, keep getting more sales, so it allows them to grow much quicker.

. Other types of sellers where maybe

wholesaler or authorized reseller

or they are, uh, Brand builders where they're actually, you know, buying all

the raw materials, working with a co packer, uh, and, and producing a product

or even an importer where it's, uh, you know, bringing in goods from overseas

and they need, you know, 20, 30% down now and they need another 70, 80%.

and.

60, 90 days to release the shipment.

Those are

different needs for that type of seller.

So having a growth capital product for that type of seller makes a lot more

sense because they need cash in, in larger chunks, but also at different intervals.

So really building something to serve the audience is what we kind of opted for

and, and just made a lot of sense, uh, because that's how we can help them scale.

How does viability platform.

Really harmonize the diverse tasks, whether it be financial or

modeling, or looking at inventory to help them create a budget.

How does it create that seamless, seamless, and efficient experience

for the e-commerce sellers?

A lot of the e-commerce sellers,

they're managing it to a degree, and, and they're usually, they're

managing it through spreadsheets.

Uh, a variety of different spreadsheets.

The fact that we kind of built in APIs that we connecting into your, your

Amazon storage, your Shopify stores, Uh, into your bank and your credit cards,

bringing all that data in real time.

Normalizing that data so that you can quickly see, you know,

how's it being categorized?

This is all the types of revenue I have now, what do I want to do with it?

And, and the fact that we're looking at it, you know, across.

all the different streams, so it's not just siloed into one particular channel.

It's getting that holistic picture that's oftentimes what's missing

for sellers and just understanding the business at that level.

Um, so if we can help in that and, you know, make, just like I said, make

better data-driven decisions, it's, uh, I think a, a better win for them.

Can you share a real life example of how viability has

transformed a e-commerce business or e-commerce sellers business,

and how you made their journey smoother, more

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential:

efficient and thus

just more successful?

One of our earlier customers was, uh, coming

out of, uh, Q4 of last year.

They were, you know, they're growing rapidly and unexpectedly as you know.

Q4 often happens.

You can always, uh, especially in kind of if you're selling on Amazon

stuff, you may have, uh, expectations that I'll do this well, but oftentimes

you're still kind of, uh, doing more than you, than you'd expect.

You're kind of, uh, anticipating that, okay, I'll have this much growth

that you end up surprising yourself.

Well, once again, with these, in this space, every time you have that

surprise, it gets even cost later.

So, This customer, you know, data opted in for doing kind of cash events, which

for some businesses makes, uh, sense even if you're not doing arbitrage.

, in this case, you know, it is a, it was a good strategy for q4.

But moment you got into q1, it's not as effective a strategy.

So we worked with them to quickly, you know, pay off, uh, all the, the

cash advances as well as giving 'em capital enough to do all the reach

off for post holiday inventory.

And from there

started working with us and every time we were looking at this is kind

of a partnership, uh, and getting to a point where if I can, uh, , I

guess beginning of q2, uh, he started working with a new vendor and this

particular vendor was like, we only do a hundred percent upfront.

We're not, uh, doing, you know, breaking up the, the, the, uh, the

cost over like, you know, 20, 30% and then 70% or 50 50 needed cash upfront.

And you know,

he called me like it's seven o'clock and I had said, Hey, I need to place order.

, I gotta have, you know, a, a big chunk of money by like tomorrow to place this order

so that I'm not, you know, missing out on certain time in, in my Q2 for a timeframe.

By 6:00 AM the next morning he had the money in his Viably account

and basically placed the order.

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

How does Viably foster partnerships

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

with other e-commerce technology companies and platforms and.

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

How do some of these collaborations, I guess you could call them, contribute to

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

mission of empowering e-commerce sellers?

it's been critical.

The e-commerce space is so tight to the community, uh, and partnerships

is really what it's about.

We want to basically partner with, uh, with that whole ecosystem

and say, okay, these are all the different services and stuff that

you're probably touching anyway.

Then how can we embed ourselves in that process?

So we're looking at just not only kind of a partnership from the standpoint of just.

You know, playing well with others, but really adding con

technology layers to streamline the experience for sellers so that,

the less they're spending time doing administrative stuff, the

more time they can better service their kind of, uh, end customers.

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

So you mentioned freight carriers

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

as being like a good friction point.

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

Point that you've removed,

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

what are a couple additional friction points that you've either removed or just

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

made a little bit smoother that would really stand out to, to the audience?

Another is anything around, the ad spend for most of these

people who are doing brand there, there's, there's a significant ad spend to make

that whole brand kind of come to life.

usually the brands will have a particular spend that's normal for them throughout

the year, but every time they're launching a new sku, they're gonna bump

up or, you know, ramp up that marketing for that particular new product.

That means they need additional capital to go do that.

A lot of times they'll say, okay, I'll, I'll cover this with my cash flow because

these are levers I can pull up and down.

But every time you use cash flow for that, you're probably taking a hit

from our standpoint, you know what's, it's a growth capital.

that may mean let me go, you know, hire some folks and,

uh, get a storage facility.

So payroll and storage may be the right move, uh, for using that capital.

It's really what's the next best move that you need to make, that you can

justify the, the capital you're getting.

How do you take that money to make more money out of it?

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

When you look at the ways

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

that you get the data in,

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

are you pulling the data in from like a, a CRM like Konnektive or sticky io?

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

Are you pulling in data from chargeback providers like Chargebacks 9 1 1

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

? What kinds of integrations

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

built in the marketplace that.

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

Really help you have better data for you to make better decisions

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

for the e-commerce sellers

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

how are you making it more seamless for them to, for you to see the data and

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

for them to deliver the data to you.

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

Hey, Tedd Huff here from FinTech Confidential.

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from August 23rd through the 25th where it's all about the movement of money.

At present it's with, directly with

like Amazon and Shopify and,

the banks and credit cards.

But over time, that's exactly kind of the direction we want to go.

The more.

Data points we can bring in.

When it comes to funding, it's all about mitigating risks.

So, you know, the, more data we have, the, the more assurance underwriting team has,

the easier it is to underwrite businesses.

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

So when I start to look at

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

all of these really complex pieces of data analytics.

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

you just mentioned machine learning and AI in there as well.

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

So you've got all these, these things going on,

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

how small of a company.

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

Fits your product and do they ever grow out of it?

It goes back to money's an amplifier.

If you're doing the right kinds of steps, more money's gonna, you

know, help fuel the right kind of decisions and, and strategies.

We wanna really help companies when they've, you know, gotten some traction.

They've figured out, okay, yeah, this particular skew is working.

It's getting some traction.

I've figured out some of the ad levers that, okay, I can move the product and

it's cost effective for me to do so.

Then more money just helps you scale.

So that's why we, when we look at kind of 10,000 as that kind of

sweet spot of saying, okay, hey, you probably figured out some things.

You're, you're moving in the right direction, at least with one sku over

time, you'll do it with additional SKUs and you'll keep growing.

So that becomes kind of a, a key deciding factor to say, okay, is that,

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

so you mentioned like the variance in

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

how small to how large, and I can only imagine that they're gonna have different

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

needs and customer success and support, especially in the rapidly involving

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

FinTech and e-commerce landscape.

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

How does Viably ensure that they're giving a top notch customer service experience

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

or customer experience in general?

we've got probably three different types

of folks that are new sellers

new sellers that are working with mentors and consultants that are

really helping kind of, uh, shape the, the moves they're making.

And then even say real entrepreneurs, they've had exits, um, you know, in

the past or multiple exits in the past.

So now they're.

, the whole goal is let me do it quicker and faster and bigger.

So, you know, that is a different type of customer and we wanna basically

work with, you know, all of them to say, okay, how do we help scale you?

What's your exit plan?

And a lot of times, you know, we find that okay, that's, they're not there yet.

So we help them say, okay, let's start thinking about kind of.

What is your exit?

Where, where are you going with this?

Because some of the, the best businesses, they kind of work backwards.

They strategize, you know, we have another customer I'm working with.

It's like, you know, he knows, uh, in thinking of 2026, that's his ex.

He knows.

And when he wants to have an exit, he knows where he wants EBITDA to be.

He knows how much money he wants to put in his pocket.

It's a beautiful thing when you could have that much kind of clarity because

now you know, kind of when you're moving in the right directions, if you're

off the mark where you need to play, catch up and it's like just, you know,

have you seen that diagram where A to B always seems like a straight

line, but the reality of it is looping all over the place before you get

I know

exactly which one you're talking about.

and, and that's the reality.

So, but if you never have that b.

You don't know where you're headed.

You don't know, and with any type of business, there's, there's an

arc where there's a, probably an optimal time to sell, not only from

a exit and kind of money standpoint, but also from the standpoint of.

You cross that and you're gonna hit burnout, you're not, you lose

the interest, you lose the passion.

We've talked about how you're helping e-commerce

sellers stay ahead of the curve.

How does viability stay current with the latest FinTech

e-commerce trends and innovations?

And how do you plan to adopt to evolve the platform to

continue to serve your customers?

Yeah.

That's, you know, especially if you look back, uh, over the last few

months, uh, after SVB and stuff, it, uh, it woke everybody up.

I, I think, uh, you know, there were certain assumptions everybody made

about kind of the, the banking sector and, uh, and FinTech as a whole.

It's, shook some people up, and we'll see what it does,

We wanna look at it from the standpoint of we building, kind

of making sound bets are, are we kind of helping the companies grow?

It helps that we've kind of been there, done that this is not our first time.

We as a company are as well as kind of, you know, having our CU customers trust

as and partner with us as we kind of grow and, and scale our business and help

our customers scale their businesses.

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

What pearls of wisdom do you have

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

for those in startups or fintechs that just wanna take their business

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

or their career to the next level?

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

And what have you learned along the way that could, could shed

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

a little bit of light for them?

Having been in the Startup space for, for a

number of years, probably the most recent Aha has been around inside

the e-commerce space and just looking at the creativity that folks have,

, it's just mind boggling of that,

the products that are out there.

Mm-hmm.

and every day I think like Amazon gets 30, 200 or

3,700 new sellers every, every day.

They're innovating and they're coming up with ideas and solving problems, and

The fact you can, you know, go do something.

The fact entrepreneurship has gotten to a point where you can take.

an idea and least fuel it enough to, you know, make a, an make a minimum

viable product that you can take to market and get a sense of, you know,

is there a potential, uh, need buyer, a community that will accept this.

It's just a, a very interesting time that we're living in.

And.

I'm just glad to be kind of a part of that ecosystem and the community.

So if you were to distill all of that down into

one specific piece of advice for a startup founder, whether it be

an e-commerce or otherwise, What would that one piece of advice be?

Wow.

Let's say.

Do it.

Just do it.

Iterate, do it some more.

Iterate.

There's so many people that, that don't take the chance, they don't

bet on themselves, and I think they shortchange themselves there.

There's amazing amount that you can learn through that journey.

You know, you can't, I don't think you can lose if you go down this path, I

mean that you get informationally richer.

You learn more about the, the economy, the business, the how money flows

about yourself, uh, as a person.

So just taking the action and doing it.

I think, uh, the net effect is you, you win it away.

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

I've really enjoyed the time talking

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

through, learning about you, learning about your perspectives, learning

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

about viability, and what it offers out to the e-commerce side of the house.

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

What is the best way to get in touch with you, Oz?

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

To learn more about what is going on there at Viability.

So for me, uh, I'm easy to follow.

Uh, and my handles, uh, at Oz Merchant, whether it's Twitter, uh, LinkedIn,

the, the company is, uh, ly is just run vitally, R u n v i a b l y, uh, dot com.

And that's also the same for all the handles, Twitter, TikTok,

LinkedIn, Instagram, all those.

Oz.

I appreciate the time.

I look forward to learning

more about Viably, seeing it

continue to grow, and watching it just explode along with e-commerce.

Awesome.

Ted, thanks so much for having me.

I really appreciate this and, uh, just granting me this audience.

It's great.

Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential :

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