How Diego Rodríguez, CEO Linxe is Leveraging Technology to Ensure Financial Inclusion For Unbanked individuals?

Diego Rodríguez is the founder and CEO of Linxe. The company has raised a total of $1M in funding in a Pre-Seed funding round.

After 14 years of working in management positions of the financial industry, Diego was captivated for the FinTech ecosystem because they were giving solutions that Diego could not offer to the customers.

Linxe’s vision is to build a truly inclusive financial services platform, one that generates credit history and provides an entry point for unbanked individuals that are too commonly overlooked by large institutional banks in Colombia and Latin America more broadly.

Diego has an executive MBA and business management degree with a minor in economics.

In an exclusive interview with AsiaTechDaily, Diego Rodríguez says:

The best advice we ever had was that we didn’t have entrepreneurial skills, and we couldn’t do it that we were going to fail and that the best thing we could do was to get a Job. This was the best advice we had because it gave us the necessary push to succeed. Entrepreneurs need to be prepared for this type of scenario. So, it is essential to have four main pillars to be able to do what we did. 

First, to have a strong team. This will give you the strength and stamina to succeed. Your cofounder or cofounders will provide you with the support to confront all the problematic situations that this way of life has. 

Second is very important to have discipline, and I think it is obvious why. The third is very important to work hard towards your goal. This is very important because it is the only way to fall and stand up again, and this will happen many times. 

Four to believe in your product. Though you will have to believe in your product, you need to be flexible because it is vital to be able to adapt or pivot if something in your product or idea is not working as you thought.

Read on to know more about Diego Rodríguez and his journey.

Please tell me about your background, and what are you working on currently?

Diego Rodríguez: After 14 years of been working in managing positions of the financial industry, I was captivated for the FinTech initiatives because they were giving solutions that we can’t offer to the customers. I had a bachelor’s degree in business and an MBA. Almost all my experience is related to sales, marketing, and product development in the banking industry. Fort he last two years I’ve been dedícate to build my dream, Linxe is the company I founded since March of 2019.

What motivated you to get started with your company?

Diego Rodríguez: When I started learning about the FinTech industry, I realized the opportunity we had to find out solutions to the traditional problems of retail banking but differently and efficiently. That’s why I chose to start my own business with a FinTech approach.

What is your current main product, and (If there is any) can you share any product pivot story from founding to the current product?

Diego Rodríguez: Our current product is an Inclusive financial service web platform for the unbanked. We primarily focus on employees of SME businesses.

The first idea began as a white-label platform for banks to sell payroll loans in the public sector, as you can see from the first idea to now, we had to make changes and pivot to a different sector, market, and product.

How have you attracted users and grown your company from the start?

Diego Rodríguez: We did a market test before starting with Linxe. This helped us to better understand customers and how we could improve the value proposition, which allowed us to build a comprehensive solution tailored to the needs of employees and companies

What’s your business model, and how have you grown your revenue? What strategy worked best?

Diego Rodríguez: At this moment, we are still preoperative. Our business model is B2B2C, and it consists of allying ourselves first with payroll providers to integrate technologically to be able to offer to the companies that they already have as customers, our platform to their employees as a benefit to improve their retention, productivity, and loyalty, while they don’t have to worry about additional operational burdens and improve the financial wealth of the employees.

How much money (funding) have you raised in total so far? When was the recent funding round? 

Diego Rodríguez: We just closed our pre-seed round for a total of US $ 1 million.

How do you decide when to go out for fund-raising? What were the internal decision processes in determining when to begin fund-raising, and what were the logistics for this?

Diego Rodríguez: Due to the type of industry we are in, it was inevitable to raise money, thanks to the financial projections and the estimated milestones we wanted to reach in the first 12 months of operation, which allowed us to quantify the funds we needed to raise. With this clarity, we started the process of raising money. It was hard and very demanding, but it is a work of great discipline and focus to achieve the objective. In addition, we have the great help of the Founder Institute and its Founding Lab program, specialized in raising money and help entrepreneurs in this demanding process

How many investors have you met so far, and which among them have invested in your past funding rounds? And how long does it take on average to finalize each funding round?

Diego Rodríguez: This was our first experience raising money. After an arduous process of almost four months, we had 60 meetings, 48 face-to-face presentations, and we managed to close with two investors with whom we hope and know that we can count on the next rounds of financing.

How did you meet these investors, and which channels worked best for you?

Diego Rodríguez: For us, the secret lies mainly in achieving good intros with the investors we were looking for; this allowed us to reach them easier and faster. For this, it is essential to expand the network of contacts and be permanently surrounded by people who have a relationship with your industry or ecosystem

What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced and obstacles in the process of fund-raising? If you had to start over, what would you do differently? (Your insight or advice on this would be very helpful for startups)

Diego Rodríguez: The biggest challenge for us was to understand that it is imperative to have as many meetings face to face with investors as possible. And it is crucial to have a deadline for your round. So if we had to start over, we would have many meetings as possible at the beginning of the investor process.

What are your milestones for the next round? And what are your goals for the future?

Diego Rodríguez: Our milestone for the next round is basically to have the traction to be able to support our valuation for the next round.

What are the most common mistakes founders make when they start a company? (or What should all first-time startup founders know before they start their business?)

Diego Rodríguez: The most common mistakes founders make when they start a company is “not knowing their market.” Many times the entrepreneurs have a great idea that they think is unique. However, if they don’t understand where their product is going to be offered, they would not succeed. For example, let’s imagine that I’m a founder, and I think that to start an app for, let’s say politics is a great idea. Now, if I build it and launch it without knowing who is going to use my app and why probably I won’t make any revenue. As a result, I will have a great app but with a small market, meaning I won’t grow. However, If I know my market, then I would structure my political app in a way that I can charge the politics, for example, a fee for using it, and I can charge for marketing.

What do most startups get wrong about marketing?

Diego Rodríguez: This question is part of my last answer, and I think that the problem here is to be sure what problem I’m solving and in that order to whom I’m talking to. This means that if you don’t understand your market and your final consumer, the startup will end spending a lot of money in meaningless marketing. Also, I think that for startups, the main goal to do marketing is to obtain leads, not likes.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received? And What advice do you have for someone who is interested in doing similar things like yours or in a similar direction?

Diego Rodríguez: The best advice we ever had was that we didn’t have entrepreneurial skills, and we couldn’t do it that we were going to fail and that the best thing we could do was to get a Job. This was the best advice we had because it gave us the necessary push to succeed. Entrepreneurs need to be prepared for this type of scenario. So, it is essential to have four main pillars to be able to do what we did. 

First, to have a strong team. This will give you the strength and stamina to succeed. Your cofounder or cofounders will provide you with the support to confront all the problematic situations that this way of life has. 

Second is very important to have discipline, and I think it is obvious why. The third is very important to work hard towards your goal. This is very important because it is the only way to fall and stand up again, and this will happen many times. 

Four to believe in your product. Though you will have to believe in your product, you need to be flexible because it is vital to be able to adapt or pivot if something in your product or idea is not working as you thought.

What are the one or two things that you would do differently if you could go back to 10 years ago?

Diego Rodríguez: One of the things would be to start sooner so that I would have made the mistakes sooner and had learned faster on how to start/run a company. 

You can follow Diego Rodríguez here.

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