Dots (YC S21)

Introducing Michael Staib (on the right), our customer support manager! Michael, who lives near Las Vegas, is part of the permanently remote Dots team. He’s worked at several startups, most recently in crypto, and he says we’re the fastest-moving! Michael told me: “I’m personally addicted to startups because there's always a new challenge. It's not mundane.” He’s also a student pilot, is working on a degree in aviation science, and his life dream is to fly for the US Air Force. Is that cooler than payouts? Until we find out, we’re glad to have him!

Teasing the release of an innovative solution with disruptive potential! This cutting-edge product will be intuitive, scalable, and cost-effective. It will also be seamless to use! We’re really excited about how we prioritized transparency, security, and inclusion. It will be based in the cloud and open banking-enabled. We call it “Dots AI.” …this product does not actually exist. But we have something really cool coming down the pike. Stay tuned for the announcement! It will also have buzzwords. #fintech

Dots (YC S21) global payouts mini-case study: Lineaje Inc, a cybersecurity company that makes supply-chain security tools for companies that build or use software, has most of their workforce in India. Wiring funds from their bank in the US to their Indian entity to make payroll failed to get money to employees fast enough, so they switched to Dots (YC S21) for speed and simplicity with US-originating global payouts. As a US company, why set up a foreign entity when you can use Dots to nearly instantly make global payroll?

We’re fortunate to be signing deals with bank partners that appreciate our business model and sensitivity to risk while a lot of other people are getting turned down. Given what happened with Synapse / Evolve -- I’d really be surprised, for example, to find a sponsor bank that will partner with a new consumer banking app. With the compliance risk in consumer it’s just not going to happen. Dots (YC S21) is an enterprise embedded payouts tool, meaning the fraud and AML risk we’re exposed to is extremely low – our direct customers are commercial. We rigorously KYB each of them, and they control the outbound flow of funds from their Dots operating account. End customers have been KYC’d or KYB’d both by us and the receiving financial institution or app. Lots of controls in place. The pitch Dots makes to potential partners’ compliance teams, in a nutshell: - There’s a clear value to embedded payouts for both enterprise and end customers that’s easy to understand - There’s a shared incentive for robust risk and compliance practices and, following that, more customers and higher payout volume - Funds are safe and it’s easy for us to stay compliant because the risk of payout fraud is low, especially with commercial clients. - Payouts where both parties are known are just lower risk than payments because we KYC and KYB both ends #fintech #compliance

Introducing our Head of Sales Michael McCormack! Michael joined Dots as an AE and was recently promoted to lead our sales organization. He tells me that our team and quality of product first got him to join us, and now he’s actively building out the sales function here. After stints as sales hire no. 1 at several startups, Michael said that he’s really gotten a kick out of mentoring and coaching sales teams and is truly excited about creating a sales organization at Dots (YC S21) for the long term. We're in an exciting stage of growth, and he’s hiring for BDRs. Reach out to him if interested!

When I talk about payouts, usually it’s about moving money faster, ideally instantly, to end customers. Another part of the experience though is how an end customer perceives the speed and ease of use of the entire process, including things #Dots and developers can’t control. There are essentially four steps from the end customers’ perspective, and the first three can be pretty spread out over time: - Onboarding to a receiving account (Venmo, Cash App, legacy bank, etc.) - Onboarding to #Dots via a flow embedded in a developer’s app - Payment initiation, almost always programmatic via the Dots API - Payment receipt in the end customer’s chosen account. One of the biggest customer experience challenges in payouts is that the provider of the end customer’s account controls its own onboarding and payment receipt. Dots controls the payment flow, developers build onboarding or use the turnkey Dots experience, and then developers call the Dots API to initiate payments. Our solution to the lack of control over the receiving account? End customer choice via the Dots API. In real life, you can’t dictate people’s preferences. So give your end customers a lot of options. They’ll pick what works for them and you don’t have to worry about the other side of the payouts coin. #payouts #embeddedpayments #customerexperience #instantpayments

Something that stuck with me from my chat last week with Kwasi Ohene-Adu, founder and CEO of Groovetime, about how he uses #Dots. “We ask our creators how they like to get paid…They’re not thinking of #Dots, they’re thinking of the different ways we can pay them.” Basically, embedded payouts. Groovetime is a #marketing platform for artists and record labels, a gamified entertainment #app for consumers, and a channel dance #creators use to monetize their intellectual property. It uses Dots to send money to creators when they’re sponsored by artists and labels. Kwasi and I spent a solid half hour talking about why real-time #globalpayments matter to creators, what made him come back to Dots after working with web3, and how the Dots #API helps Groovetime build trust with end users. Read Groovetime’s customer story: https://lnkd.in/gr4tHhrU #dance #fintech #payouts