Curve CEO Shachar Bialick Says, “You Have To Focus Everyone On One Thing”

The founder says that his company is 100% focused on making money, but he thinks that 2023 could be the year when many other fintech companies finally shut down.

Curve, a financial tech company based in Israel, has had a very interesting year. On the one hand, the “all-your-cards-in-one” banking app laid off 60 to 70 people in July. It joined other top fintech companies like Klarna in doing this as fears of a coming recession grew.

On the other hand, the company launched in the US in March 2022, which is a place where many other EU success stories have failed to get a significant share of the market. It took the $95 million in funding it got in 2021 with it.

Curve’s founder and CEO, Shachar Bialick, thinks that now is the time for the company to focus on making money, which is what it was supposed to do from May 2022 on. This is despite the fact that the company’s latest report showed that its losses grew from £28.5 million in 2019 to £37.9 million in 2021.

“The leadership team made a decision to change direction from growth at all costs, which is what the market previously wanted, into establishing profitability as soon as we can,” said Bialick. “We’ve put a full plan into place about how to get there.”

He added: “We’ve hunkered down and reduced our workforce. We’ve focused more, and we’re doing fewer things because we have fewer people.”

Bialick says that Curve is currently only thinking about this new goal, but it will still work on other metrics like growing its customer base and engagement. The CEO says that this level of focus will be the key to success.

“As a company, you want your people to focus on no more than one matrix, which you can call your “Northstar.”

“You have to focus everyone on one thing sequentially, you only have one priority, and you don’t have priorities one, two, three, and four.”

He added: “It’s kind of like in the military or if you play video games, you have a primary objective, and then you have a secondary objective – it’s always sequential.”

Bialick then talked about how fintech companies that want to break into the US can’t just assume that the same business models that worked well in Europe or the UK will work well in the US, too.

He thinks that existing banks like Citi, Chase, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America, which already have “good apps” and “good service,” are partly to blame for this trend.

Bialick says that Curve has looked at every part of its offer, such as its messaging, positioning, product value proposition, market segments, and pricing, to make sure it fits the needs of the US market.

He said, “Everything is different in the US.” “That forced us to find gaps between the offering that we have in Europe and the UK”.

“Revolut failed because most Americans don’t even hold a passport, they aren’t impacted by FX fees because they hardly travel outside of the US.”

“Those who do travel outside of the US have a card from the likes of Chase, which doesn’t really charge that much in terms of foreign exchange fees.”

Bialick then talked about how his hiring strategy has helped this U.S.-focused customer service. As an example, he mentioned how Curve US CEO Amanda Orson, a former special forces operative who was previously the managing partner of media group W2PY, was hired in 2019 to lead the company.

Bialick thinks that his company will keep hiring in some areas, like product engineering, even though it has a “more focused” workforce.

He thinks that because there have been a lot of layoffs in the tech industry recently, now is “the perfect market” to hire.

Bialick also said that Curve is hiring for some support roles, such as financial compliance, as well as customer experience (CX) and other roles that involve looking at things.

In terms of specific talent pools, he pointed to some of the “remarkable talents in the UK”, saying that talent “is one of the biggest strengths of the UK in our view, thanks to the education system”.

In September, the card consolidator started a new crypto rewards program. This means that if one of the underlying payment cards already earns crypto rewards, customers can “double dip” and earn crypto rewards on both cards at the same time.

But many companies that offer crypto cards to customers haven’t had the best year. For example, FTX went out of business in early November, which was one of the biggest business stories of the year, and BlockFi went out of business last week.

Even though the crypto scene has been crazy in the past few months, Shachar still believes in the technology behind it. He says that he thinks crypto and DeFi are “here to stay.”

He doesn’t like how the technology has been used in the real world, though.

Shacar says he has always been critical of centralized approaches with a “man in the middle,” like FTX. He says this doesn’t meet the “objective or real intent of blockchain,” which is a dig at some of the centralized players in the space.

Because of these complaints, Curve is now being very picky about which cryptocurrencies it adds to its ecosystem.

“The approach we’ve taken is that if the cryptocurrency is not validating a network, it’s a shit coin that gives you Ponzi scheme returns.”

Even though Shachar is optimistic about the future of his own company, this isn’t always the case for other companies in the same industry.

He is especially pessimistic about the future of neobanks, saying that other than taking deposits, you can do anything “that a bank does without a banking license” and that “for a bank model to work, you have to take deposits and leverage them into the market.”

The CEO then broke down how he foresees their business model crumbling: “Largely speaking, 30% of revenue from banking is from lending and 30% of revenue is from fees.”

“Fintech killed fees,” Shachar explained, “So the only way to make money in banking now is through lending.”

“Therefore, if there’s no neobank that is able to lend at scale, with very good margins and net revenue, the model is set to fail.”

Bialick said that there will be a lot of neobanks in Europe and the UK. He may have been referring to the recent failure of some neobanks in Australia and the US, like the Australian bank Volt.

Even though it’s hard to predict the success of any business in the current economy, it’s especially hard to predict the success of a business that depends on consumers spending money. Still, Curve seems to have a clear idea of how it can change direction to become more profitable and grow outside of its core European market.