Interviews with Leaders in Fintech & Web3
Interviews with Leaders in Fintech & Web3
Fintech Empowering Underserved Communities Thru P2P Lending - Rodney Williams, Co-Founder SoLo Funds
Rodney Williams, co-founder of SoLo Funds, shares his journey as a serial entrepreneur and fintech innovator. He discusses his first startup, LISNR, which used ultrasonic technology for seamless checkout experiences. Williams, an inspiring black entrepreneur, explains the motivation behind later starting SoLo Funds, a peer-to-peer lending marketplace that provides access to capital and helps individuals create bigger yield on their savings. He highlights the challenges of regulatory actions and the importance of being a B Corp. Williams emphasises the need for financial literacy and the role of fintech in empowering underserved communities. He encourages aspiring entrepreneurs to pursue their passions and take risks.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Background
02:57 From Listener to Solo Funds
08:32 The Problem of Limited Access to Capital
14:25 Challenges of Regulatory Actions
20:35 Go-to-Market Strategy and Product Differentiation
27:34 The Significance of Being a B Corp
31:33 Financial Literacy and Empowering Underserved Communities
36:58 The Future of Solo Funds and Advice for Entrepreneurs
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Matt (00:01.084)
This is Matthew Cheung, I'm founder of Work in Fintech and today we're delighted to be joined by Rodney Williams, who is a serial entrepreneur and Fintech innovator. Rodney's latest company is SoLo Funds, which is the largest black owned personal finance app and only black owned B Corp. And it offers a peer to peer lending marketplace with over 2 million users who've made over $275 million of personal loans. So Rodney, welcome.
Rodney Williams (00:30.18)
It's a pleasure to be here. I'm looking forward to this conversation.
Matt (00:33.924)
Awesome. Well, let's dive straight in and go back a few years, go back to kind of early life and it'd be good to hear about, know, kind of where did you grow up, where did you start and your path kind of took you into some big corporate brands at the start of your career before you went into the startup world. Can you talk about that journey and then why you ended up in your first startup and what does it do or what did it do rather?
Rodney Williams (01:00.029)
Yeah, so I was born in Baltimore, Maryland. My family originally from Jamaica, they're Caribbean. And I made my way to college in West Virginia University. I did a couple degrees in finance and economics. But my first job out of school, post my MBA, was actually I worked at Proctor & Gamble.
Procter & Gamble is a consumer packaged goods company, but they work on some of the biggest brands in the world. Think of Tide or Dawn, Disho or even Pampers, diapers for kids. I actually worked on Pampers, coincidentally. I never thought that that would be the brand that I would be on, but it was and actually proved to be a great learning ground for me. You know, as I made my way through corporate, I
I was always into digital. I was always into how to communicate and connect with consumers in a more digital way. And I led a number of the digital programs at P &G. And at the time, Pampers was the largest brand in their portfolio. So the point is I was always adjacent to technology. And I had an idea that turned into my first company. That company was called Listener.
L -I -S -N -R and it really just stemmed from a problem that I saw at my job where, you know, we were selling products in stores and focused on the consumer shopping experience and the consumer shopping experience had these, I would call these like moments of hiccups when you know, when you're trying to check out and I always thought there could be a more seamless checkout experience and that was what started to have me focus on the checkout area and how technology could be used to make that
easier and more efficient. One of the challenges was data connectivity. And what I mean by that is, how do you pay from your mobile device for the items that are sitting in your cart? And if you're familiar with Apple Pay, by now you all are, or some type of QR code product, you can pay, but you gotta tap your phone, or you know, gotta scan something. Conceptually, I felt like you shouldn't. You should just be able to...
Rodney Williams (03:26.333)
pick up your items and walk out. For that to be possible, there needed to be some level of data exchange between the device and the things around you. And that was the emergence of LISTENR. LISTENR used ultrasonic technology, so basically audio you could not hear, as a way to send and receive data to devices nearby.
Incredible technology still active to this day and that's what that's honestly what started me in the tech in the fintech world.
Matt (04:02.662)
Presumably if you did an MBA, that's very business focused and listening sounds very technical. So how did you bridge that gap? Did you have co -founders or people you knew that you brought in to do that? Or are you technically and technical enough that you could talk to developers to scope stuff out and get it built?
Rodney Williams (04:23.473)
Well, in the beginning, well, I'm not a technical, I'm not an engineer, to be clear, right? And I think, and I did have co -founders and in the beginning, you know, I tended to focus on what the technology should do, not necessarily how it's going to do it. And if you look at a lot of founders, you know, I started to gain confidence because a lot of founders, especially from technical companies, are not technical.
They're like the visionary. They, they have more product focus or consumer focus. And, and, and I've, I tended to anchor there. so, that was one of the biggest misconceptions that I've ever really received was that I didn't necessarily need it to know everything from a technical aspect to build, a technology company. even though the company that I started, my first technical company was actually really very deep tech. I will say this.
After you do it once, you turn into a technical co -founder. My conversations today are much different than my capabilities today is much different than it was when I first started, for sure.
Matt (05:38.044)
Well, you have to learn to run very quickly, right?
Rodney Williams (05:42.737)
You know, the number one skill I think of a founder is their ability to learn. There's so many things you have to learn. you didn't go to school to get a degree to be a founder. You basically have to watch it, see it, learn it, right? You have to digest it, you have to create it. No one, there's no certificate, founder certificate. With that said, you gotta learn things about yourself.
You gotta learn things about your product, you gotta learn things about your market opportunity, and you gotta continue to out learn your competition if you wanna continue to be successful. And those are some of the things that I definitely hold on to.
Matt (06:25.34)
So with this idea then of continuous learning, because, listener, you were there for over 10 years and then you decided to break away from that and start up solo funds. So what was the motivation to do something different?
Rodney Williams (06:28.122)
Thanks.
Rodney Williams (06:42.801)
You know, I love listening and I traveled the entire world pushing the technology, customers in Germany and France and in Southeast Asia and Africa and South America. I grew up with listening. But as I was excelling in my career, I had a lot of friends and family back home.
who really just needed a few hundred bucks to take care of some necessities. And I started to be fixated on the financial system and how to figure out how to provide better access to capital. And like, could I create something to not just provide access to capital, provide ways for individuals to grow the capital they do have? When I get fixated on problems, as a lot of founders do,
You know, I think that's one of the key nugget that I think you be, you might have it is you just get fixated on something and you begin to learn. It becomes your pastime. and, for years I was, you know, alongside my, my co -founder, we were tolling with this idea of a marketplace and a peer to peer marketplace where the community can help each other. and eventually once it, when it clicked, it's when I.
is when I decided, you know what, the life of stress or the stress associated with running a company, I would rather do it and know that I'm helping people. And that's basically one of the biggest things that motivated me to make the jump.
Matt (08:32.166)
So what exactly is Solo and what problems is it solving?
Rodney Williams (08:39.281)
Well, it's a global problem. can talk about it in the United States, but what I've always said is that the working class or the middle class or the people who are aspiring to be much more than they are today, they don't tend to have a lot of savings. And it's because their jobs are inconsistent or the cash flow is inconsistent. So when they do have an emergency, a flat tire, a sick child,
A sick pet, they tend to wipe out their entire savings to fix the problem, which leaves them needing just a few hundred dollars to make ends meet. And it's very difficult to get a loan like that. There's not many products in the United States, there's not many products around the world, and the products that are there tend to be very, very, very predatory. So we wanted to create a new product to enter
that group. Give it some competition and let's be very clear, there hasn't been much competition from the payday loan or the credit card. So we wanted to bring in something new. The other aspect that we learned is that you can't fix the problem by just giving loans. You have to figure out how to grow the capital they have when they have it.
So at some point, this same group is going to have some savings. They have the job, but it's sitting in their bank accounts and it's not growing because they're not, you know, that's not getting any yield. know, banks don't offer working class people great savings rates on the savings accounts because it's based on the size of the deposit. And this is a global issue. So we felt like
We wanted to figure out a way to grow people's savings as well. And that's what brought this together. So, is a marketplace. It's a marketplace of borrowers and lenders, people like you and I. You can borrow on your own terms. What's special is the borrower sets there all of their own terms, how much they need, what they're willing to pay, and when they're gonna pay it back. They do it in the form of a tip and donation.
Rodney Williams (11:02.845)
That tip 100 % goes to a lending member. As a lending member, I decide who to lend to. These loans are short duration loans. So as a lending member, it's very liquid for me. So I can lend and get back money in a few weeks. But from a borrower capacity, this is one of the most affordable options in the market. It's also a fixed cost. So one of the biggest things that borrowers tend to have a challenge with is that
the costs tend to change whether you pay it off today versus two years from now. One of the things that they love about solo is that it's the same cost today as it is two years from now. And that's what you call, it doesn't create a trap for you where you're be paying off this thing indefinitely. You always have a very clear understanding. that's solo.
Matt (11:56.484)
And what's like an average borrower or loan amount?
Rodney Williams (12:01.725)
Yeah, you know, one of the things that I always have to remember. So number one, the average loan amount is around $250. Very different than a lot of tech companies. You hear us talk a lot about what we do and how we do it, not necessarily the tech, but I will tell you the way we underwrite is very, very special. We leverage cashflow and we built a machine learning algorithm that has resulted.
in a default rate that's five times better than the industry average. It's incredible. We manage all of the money movement. So we actually built an alledger system. If you think about what we're doing, it's very similar to like democratized finance or decentralized finance, where there's commerce between two individuals independent of a bank, right? So we have to build our entire alledger system and payment architecture.
that's based on real -time payments. It was actually very, very difficult to build. And then also from a recovery process where in one aspect it's about funding a bar and the other aspect it's about returning those funds to the lender. These are some big innovations that we were able to create and it's all done on a peer -peer basis. There's no co -mingling of capital. It's literally a direct transaction between Matt
and a borrower. And I think what we're ultimately really happy about is that, you know, we've enabled nearly, you know, 400 plus million dollars of capital borrowers. A lot of our lenders, our lenders are making a positive return. The average lender makes over 20 % APY. That's significantly better than they could get from their bank. And I know maybe to everyone that doesn't mean anything, but you know,
If I'm a car mechanic and I have $2 ,000 worth of savings, and at the end of the year I earn $400, that's probably my budget for Christmas. And now I'm paying for Christmas without going into my savings. So that when I do have that emergency, I can fix it myself. You know what mean? And that's the power of community, that's the power of the product that we're building.
Matt (14:25.552)
Did you have any pushback from a regulatory perspective? Because this idea of regulatory capture, means that it essentially can prevent smaller firms from operating in a firm where there's lots of big institutions, was that a challenge for you at all?
Rodney Williams (14:43.547)
yeah, and to be honest, it's our biggest challenge. If you Google us, we have a ton of regulatory actions at the federal level, in the state level. And it's all motivated by the wrong thing. Because it's not motivated by the fact that we're affordable, because we are. We've brought in industry experts to prove that we're a cheaper product.
None of that matters because their motivations tend to be, again, if you're new, you're risky. You have to be doing something wrong. If you're in this market, you have to be doing something wrong. And, you know, in our case, in every single allegation, we fight it and it results in no admission of wrongdoing as well as no findings of illegal activity. But the accusation
alone hurts a small company like ourselves. And that's a big challenge, to be honest. That's one of the biggest problems that we're facing and that we tend to have to deal with. It's a regulatory environment around and being motivated from the larger companies and the larger frameworks, the more established frameworks, which for some reason,
regulatory thinks the larger frameworks are better despite the fact that the larger frameworks have created the differences in wealth of today. My company had no doing in the fact that in the United States, it's the largest credit card balance in the history of them measuring it. The largest wealth gap in the history
of them measuring it. And these large companies, the visas, mastercards, and the big banks, they're making more profit today than they've ever made in the history of their time. These are just facts. So it's actually a challenge, but luckily I have a big appetite for risk, despite the stress that it may put on me and my family.
Rodney Williams (17:09.645)
or my relationships, I'm gonna go for it.
Matt (17:14.236)
Switch into a different topic. Let's talk about like go to market. So you you've built marketplace. So it's a two -sided marketplace So you've got you know, that's there's a network effect there kind of straight away, but presumably Your growth has been kind of word of mouth and kind of product -led growth where you know people have said love Have you heard about this service? You know, I can get this money where otherwise I'd have to go to a pawn shop or you know Take out the credit card and pay 700 % interest on it or whatever
maybe. How did you, I suppose, did you plan the go -to -market strategy like that or did it kind of happen quite organically and you've helped to foster it?
Rodney Williams (17:57.041)
Well, I think from my time at P &G, you know, I learned that the best go to market is just a better product and a better price. You know, like if you think about laundry detergent, you know, that's a very simple example. But if it cleans better and it smells better and it's cheaper, it's just better. And eventually people will pick it up and use it.
And they would tell everybody it's just better. So in the beginning, that's what we focused on. We didn't have even a marketing person on the company. We were like, we're hyper focused on better. And we defined better as fixed costs, overall affordability and fast and ease of access on the borrower side. Better was that, you know, on the yield of a lender, we wanted it to beat the S &P 500.
Better is better. And we, you know, we, we've never been fortunate to, to, to have a lot of investors for the size of our business. Most companies have raised over a hundred million dollars. We, that's not us. So we have to focus on just better because that was our go to market and hope for network effect and organic growth. And I'm going to be, you know,
Every sad day that we have or every day that a regulator or we get some bad news, I'm motivated when I open up the app and I find another 20 ,000 downloads that did not come from a celebrity endorser or some type of advertiser. It came from the fact that the people, the users believe it's better. They don't believe the headlines. They read the headline.
and they go back to their own products at home and they're like, if I lose solo, that hurts me.
Rodney Williams (20:04.133)
I got to, it's so like, I don't understand. And this is the, I think this is just the testament to better product market fit. I love it. We have never been able to like pour a lot of gas on that or like accelerate it, but one day we will. I can't wait to do more with the community, do more with the interactions between the network and the marketplace. This huge opportunity for it. We just have to pick our battles one at a time.
Matt (20:35.62)
So what, I suppose going back to that product market fit then, what makes your app defensible compared to if in the UK where I am, Revolut is the big guy in terms of fintechs. And if they decided to move into this kind of space, if you were doing it in this country, for example, over in the US, if someone else who plays in this arena, obviously you're, the original,
kind of focus was, you know, kind of helping these people that are just underserved and that's something that's a passion for you. But in terms of the business itself, what makes it unique to someone else copying what you're doing? Or is it the passion? That is unique.
Rodney Williams (21:18.663)
Well, it's actually very difficult to do what we do. Revolut, if they ever wanted to do this, I promised them it would be better for them to just buy us. There's a reason why no one in the United States have ever been this successful at it. And to be honest, no one in the world has been successful at peer -to -peer in the way that we have. So there's a reason.
I will tell you the number one, our underwriting is very, very special. That is proprietary. We have been asked numerous times to turn that into a B2B business and sell it to other lending companies. We outperform lending companies every day. that, if you're, that's the only thing that makes any lending company special is their ability to manage risk.
And I would tell you we're one of the best in the world because we're managing the riskiest consumer segment better than anyone that we know.
Rodney Williams (22:31.751)
For any company to enter this space, because our loan product is so unique, if you were to try to build an algorithm, you would have to find a data set.
There isn't a data set that matches our high frequency. And the fact that we have the outcomes of now nearly two million loans and two years of cash flow for each loan in real time data, that algorithm is incredibly intelligent. If you think of it as a person learning, I actually think it's still a teenager and it's performing better than
than any other underwriting for this demographic. So number one, I think that's special. The high frequency ledger system is actually very, very complicated. It's probably the most complicated technical piece of our business. it's, you know, because it's the frequency of it. If you think about anything that we have right now, frequency isn't that big of a deal. Like people buy and trade stocks at a high frequency and there's complications there. Maybe people buy and trade.
you know blockchain products or crypto products. You're talking about, you know, right now on any given, on our app, we have nearly a half a million people exchanging assets every five to 14 days. And some people, lenders are exchanging 20, 30, 50, 60, 70, 100 assets in that time period.
So the complications on accuracy, returns, recovery, I think is really, really difficult. No one had ever built a short term loan product. The shortest term, like even, you know, every other peer to peer model that we've ever seen, I think the shortest is about six months. We've seen things at three months. know, going even from three months to where we are to 14 days, I welcome the challenge.
Rodney Williams (24:44.605)
I welcome the challenge. know, some of the reasons why we know this is that, you know, when we build on top of some of our partners, whether it's banking and the service partners, or even like when we were part of the Visa Fast Track program, we're part of the MasterCard Start Path program. they like, they're like, you're the only company that we've ever seen use our payment rails like this.
And it almost requires a reconfiguration of it because it's not necessarily designed like that. If you think about even in the US, US lending businesses are built on ACH, which is like a two day cycle of things. So long story short, there's a lot of innovation in what we do. There's a lot of challenges in what we do. I think if you combine all of those things, combine with who our founders are, I think
That's also a difference. but I, listen, Revolut, you guys can come, you guys can come take us out. I think that's a better outcome than, letting us just continue to organically get big because no matter what, I read this book and it was, it talked about it's network effects and FX and it's a, it's venture firm.
And they predicted that at scale, meaning by the time a company can go public and do all of the things, that technology is not the difference. All of the technology can eventually be built or replicated. But the differences between companies with the most value is always going to be the brand. What does the brand mean?
to its consumers.
Rodney Williams (26:48.369)
I give you a quick example. We're a fintech, but we released like a line of clothes, like sweatpants and shirts and hoodies. And we sold out in two weeks.
I don't know the last time you wanted to wear a JP Morgan Chase shirt or buy a Revolut shirt. Probably can't give it away, that's enough. But people want to wear solo because it means something.
That's special. That's value. And to be honest, think at scale, that's going to be the thing that separates us the most.
Matt (27:34.586)
When you, I don't know if it was when you set up the company or kind of afterwards, but your company is a B Corp. Could you explain what that actually means to some people that might not understand? And how did it help or hinder doing business or getting investors?
Rodney Williams (27:54.737)
wish more people knew about it because it's a lot of work. So B -corp is a, it's actually a legal designation when you create your company. So you have to establish it as a benefit corporation or reestablish it as a B -corp. And then there's a nonprofit organization called B -Labs and B -Labs is actually global now and B -Labs
turns you from just a benefit corporation to a certified. And to me, the certification, it's a pretty long list of requirements that they have to go out and evaluate. And it's everything from your business model, your pricing, how it compares to competitors, who you serve, how you pay your employees. I mean, you name it. When we started this company, there's a couple of things that we fundamentally believe.
Well, if you ever talk to a working class person, they don't like handouts.
Rodney Williams (29:01.693)
When you think about everything that the government tries to as a handout, not, that's not, doesn't serve them. They want to do well and do good. They don't want handouts. And this concept, I felt like companies don't have to always be one of the other, meaning all profit or all philanthropy. I felt like you could do well and do good, you know, create a company that does have a strong mission and purpose. but, but they create balance between.
profit in people. the only way, so what B Corp does is guarantee that. They ensure that there's balance here. They're looking at your financials. They look how much profit margin you make. And it's, know, when you look at other benefit corporations, they're some of the best corporations that, examples of corporations that we have in the world, they actually care about people and they do the right thing and they pay correctly. And they're not in the headlines for treating people wrong.
You know, and that's just what a B Corp is. know, during this process and, you know, regulators, they're like, they try to, they request all of the certification and they're like, how did you, you know, what's going on here? And it's interesting because that's the biggest difference. See, the B Corp certification, it's not about
anything with structure or licensing or anything, it's all about is it cheaper than what's there? What's there? Credit cards, payday loans, etc. Is it cheaper? They survey customers, they talk to customers. If it's cheaper, then cool. So then how much margin is the company making? Are they paying themselves some exorbitant amount of money? are they, you know, what's happening?
They look at the margin, they're like, wow, this is the thinnest margin company we've ever seen. Right? That's it. It's a better product because the company has decided to make it better. I wish that mattered to more people, but it matters to us. So we're super proud of it. Huge component of it. You know, our goal is to go into many, many different countries around the world.
Rodney Williams (31:26.749)
and we're going to continue to keep those certifications in each one of those countries.
Matt (31:33.178)
That's amazing, very admirable. I guess one of the problems...
The root cause of people having to take payday loans and use your service or having to borrow some money off someone else is all the way back. If you look back to learning and education and people understanding how they can improve themselves and improve their lives. But the other side is the financial literacy side, understanding financial products and being baffled by them when they don't know what an interest rate is and don't know the impact of
if the Fed does this, actually that's going to really impact your pocket further down the line. Do you do anything around that piece in the app and to the community and kind of educating them?
Rodney Williams (32:26.025)
Yeah, you know, we do.
Matt (32:28.892)
Hold on one sec. It just says, did you have a call just come in?
Rodney Williams (32:33.484)
I just had a call just come in, so sorry about that.
Matt (32:36.506)
Yeah, I think it's still recording.
Rodney Williams (32:40.075)
Is it still recording?
Matt (32:40.666)
Yeah, cool. Yeah, yeah. Yep, go.
Rodney Williams (32:44.589)
Cool. So.
Rodney Williams (32:50.439)
One of the things, so we actually published something called the Cash Core Report.
Rodney Williams (33:01.613)
The biggest thing I can tell you that why we created that report is because we felt like there was a lot of misconceptions on this market. How savvy they are and how financially literate they were. So we believe we want us to redefine them. We wanted to talk about the products they use and we wanted to talk about what the costs that they're extremely experiencing. Number one, this group is probably the best budgeters.
I have ever seen in my life. And why I'm telling you that is that when you're living on very, very limited savings, you know down to the time that your Netflix bill is gonna hit your account. You are taking $20 and you're spending money for the week.
Matt (33:44.881)
Hmm.
Rodney Williams (33:56.461)
Like you're very, very precise and you, you know, they actually are very, very aware when they're overlevelled. It's not by accident. Like you see an overdraft or you see an issue with the bank account. They know exactly why.
The conception is that, these, so long story short, the biggest problem and the underlying problem is that there just isn't enough money. So here's some other interesting stats. 80 % of them have credit cards. Nearly 50 % of them are college educated.
Rodney Williams (34:35.959)
they use investment apps.
They're using stash and Robin Hood and acorns and they're buying bitcoins and they're in the NFTs and they are so aspirational. know, they are working multiple jobs. They tend to all have multiple jobs. What I mean by that is even if they're a school teacher, they're selling products on Etsy, you know, or even if they're riding Uber, they're also a graphic designer and they're trying to do that too.
This group isn't sitting at home waiting for an opportunity to come to them. They're outside and they want to do better and they are incredibly savvy. The problem is they just don't have enough money. So that is the challenge for them. But I have a very, different opinion of their intelligence or their literacy as it relates to certain things. I think that even though they may not know.
all of the opportunities that may be available for them. They're super eager and they're super willing to learn. And they read our report, they read our financial literacy. We send things about taxes and student loan recoveries. And these things are the highest open rate emails that we have. They're absorbing a lot of content. I'm very inspired by this group. I would also tell you what makes me inspire them the most.
30 % of our borrowers turn into lenders.
Rodney Williams (36:13.537)
If that's not inspiring, I don't know. And it's not because we told them to, it's because they see it. They learn. They're like, wow, when I get some savings, I'm going to do this. I'm going to build myself out of this. I'm going to help someone else. And, you know, I'm going to fix my problem. You know, one of our taglines and models was financial autonomy for all.
Financial autonomy can only be accomplished if you can give capital and grow capital. You cannot do it independently and create an ecosystem of financial autonomy.
Matt (36:58.268)
So do you see over time that average $250 kind of ticket size increasing then as this community matures as well?
Rodney Williams (37:10.859)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I definitely, think that, yeah, we will increase the dollar size. think we will get into larger dollar loans. I think that, you know, we have huge ambitions to get into business to business loans, B2B loans. As you can imagine, graphic designer to graphic designer, Uber driver to Uber driver, small businesses to us. I know we think about your local coffee shop, but a small business is a contractor too.
or consultant or just a graphic designer. And I think that this concept of them lending and borrowing from each other is actually something we want to get into. But yeah, mean, the core concept of what we're creating is a financial institution where the people, the deposit holders, the members decide who's supported and how they're supported. And then they disproportionately benefit from it.
When you think about the financial products of our past, credit cards, banks, they use our capital, they decide who to support, and they disproportionately benefit.
That's the difference. We should all ask our bank. And when you got a large deposit, can ask. I wish this was the level of auditing that a regular consumer can do. I wish a consumer could say, hey, bank, I left my $2 ,000 in your account. How much money did you make off of it, lending it to other people? Because I only got 1 % APY or 2 % APY. And I think everyone would be shocked.
More importantly, you would never get the answer.
Rodney Williams (39:03.799)
That's where we're going. That's also why we're being targeted.
Matt (39:13.122)
Absolutely.
You mentioned kind of anything from the contractors to Uber drivers and so on, but what advice would you give to people that have ambitions to be an entrepreneur or young entrepreneurs that are starting out or that want to get into fintech? So more broadly, what would you say? What would you say for those getting into fintech? And also, what would you say to people from underrepresented backgrounds as well? Because it's harder, right?
Rodney Williams (39:42.667)
Yeah, yeah, you know, it's hard. So just be ready, you know, take care of your mental and your body and, make sure you have a good support system. because it will be challenging with that said, you can do it. and we actually need you to do it. I think we, think FinTech has huge opportunity and I think, we need more, more people doing it.
And there's opportunity all across FinTech, whether it's financial inclusion, logistics, restaurants, credit. There's so much opportunity in FinTech. When you are doing whatever passion you have, there's always a FinTech angle. Because you've got to get paid. And someone else has to get paid. And then you should think about how to make that easier.
and create a product around it. think, please, there's a lot of innovation still to be created. And I look forward to all the FinTech founders. whether you're from an underrepresented group or not, it's going to still be hard. But I always say that that's what makes it special. That's what makes it different. Your perspective will be your competitive advantage.
and it can be. And I say will be, but it should be. So that's my message.
Matt (41:19.42)
My last question is if you were to rewind the clock and you were to meet your 18 year old self, what advice would you give yourself?
Rodney Williams (41:27.725)
My 18 year old self, wow!
Matt (41:31.536)
You
Rodney Williams (41:32.589)
What would I tell my 18 year old self?
Start now. Start earlier.
We do many things to validate, maybe not even yourself. Maybe it's like a parent or somebody else. You do this other thing, this other job because someone else told you to do it, but it's not really what you want to do.
I would tell you to go do it, whatever it is you really want to do, fail at it fast, faster than it took you to. Don't be afraid of the risk that's associated with the decision.
The biggest risk is not making the decision and looking back at why you didn't make it and doing something that you never really wanted to do in the first place. And every person that I've ever known to try to do what someone else wanted them to do, they all end up doing what they really want to do anyway. it's like, you know, this is a simple thing, but like, you know, I have a friend who became an accountant.
Rodney Williams (42:44.493)
maybe because her family was an accountant and she did all of these degrees to, 40 years old, become a yoga instructor and to start a yoga studio. And my message to myself, my message to her, my message to you is just go for yoga at 18 years old. I promise you, by the time you're 40, you're gonna be such a better yoga instructor anyway, just doing what you love to do.
And that's all I'm asking.
Matt (43:18.289)
Wise words there Rodney. So what's the best way people could reach out to you or follow you?
Rodney Williams (43:24.407)
Well, across social media, I'm Rodney B Williams. I'm on Instagram. I'm on Twitter and X. I'm following my company, Solo Funds. Like us, root us on. We're doing the good work and we love all the support and really, really appreciate this time today.
Matt (43:46.95)
Thank you, Rodney. It's been a pleasure.
Rodney Williams (43:48.279)
Thank you.