FORTUNE may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. And so we are we just got I mean, US World Report this year, put fat merchant as the number one processor for neck and neck with square square being from micro for micro merchant and for anything over $100,000 it was fat merchant. You know, why? This is where my family is. secondsSpan.innerHTML = 0; Our solution just doesnt add enough value for you. And so that was part of the details. What died about it pop ups as a as a medium died and instead of iterating to the next alternative pay per click. Yeah, medium they just said lets move on to another business, Suneera Madhani 6:58 It was so variable. Suneera Madhani, cofounder and CEO of including Airbnb and Google, spread across 150 countries; profitable with net margins north of 5% Unison has Well, that sort of thing. Just four years prior, in 2014, Madhani started the all-in-one payment platform using $50,000 in startup capital from friends and family. And so that was kind of the one of the reasons why I felt I had to go get a corporate go down the corporate route. } But I think its important. Andrew Warner 42:25 Suneera Madhani 19:45 But all of that credit goes to my parents, Madhani says. My story is I think just as women sometimes we dont even put ourselves in those positions where we think naturally to be like its I can go do this. Its like the club like I want to be on the inside. Andrew Warner 36:11 Yeah, I cant share a ballpark. From a error standpoint, but we are growing. October 1, 2019 - There are success stories and then there is Suneera Madhani. How did you get that checklist of things that you needed to do in order to process credit cards, Google University, really You just go and then you put together a list. We get them on a call that fast we give them like its a credible value proposition as well. Today, Stax has more than 300 employees and $100 million-plus in recurring software revenue, oversees $23 billion in payments, and was recognized by Forbes as one of the most innovative fintech companies. It's been days since news broke that WNBA star Brittney Griner was in Russian custody, and weeks since her imprisonment. Am I right? At one point, my dad had a nightclub, you know, marketing company. Im the founder of mixergy, where I interview entrepreneurs who are ambitious for an audience of entrepreneurs who are also ambitious, who want to do things, you want to build things, you want to leave a mark on the world. WebSuneera Madhani Age 32 Title Founder and CEO Company Fattmerchant In the six years since its founding, Orlando-based Fattmerchant has facilitated more than $5 billion in Right. And thats just part of the culture that were in a high growth environment. During her free time, Suneera loves traveling with her husband and their children. Suneera Madhani 48:31 While Madhani advocates saving, she advises that parents invest in themselves and the things that are important to them and bring them joy. Known Addresses for Suneera Madhani. Suneera Madhani 23:42 She and her brother worked in their family's ventures and gained a grasp of what running a business entailed. whyd you call a fat merchant? Heres 20 minutes and youre up to a couple of days of like a full, you know, full integration to your full suite, I think, Andrew Warner 39:57 So from a even from, like most of our customers are not new net new customers like net new businesses. What all of these sectors have in common is that they all need to take payments both in person and digitally. "I just wanted to go solve a problem in my market." I founded my tech company Fattmerchant 5 years ago and scaled it from 0 to 5 Billion in record time. "I really fundamentally believe that we, as women, can do it all, and we don't just have to choose being a mom or being a working professional," says Madhani. And well share our contact list sweet for to take all these businesses virtual got into, Andrew Warner 48:26 Her company is headquartered in Orlando, Florida. Ive taken home check sizes as big as $100,000. And there was often companies doing things great things from a retail perspective, like square, there was awesome companies doing things from an API perspective, like stripe, but nobody was really doing anything for like a card not present environment like a virtual terminal. Suneeras That's when she came up with her "three bucket principle." Where we put something together youre saying put it all together and are you gonna do together? daysSpan.innerHTML = 0; In 2014, most credit card companies went to market through physical banking channels. That inspired the business owners to go further. Give yourself six months and give it a go, Madhani says. She was obsessed with the early-adopter subscriptions like Birchbox and BarkBox in a time she describes as the pre-subscription economy., [Then] that light bulb went off, and I was like, Holy s***, why isnt there a flat subscription in payments?'. Title: CEO and Founder of Fattmerchant Industry: Merchant Services Suneera Madhani, 30, is a new mom and has led her company Fattmerchant to more than $1 So thats why we play in that you have to be processing At least $100,000, Ive talked about youre not a new business, youve ordered at least in business for a year. Distraught and frustrated, Madhani returned to Dallas just in time for Fridays family dinner. But it was really awesome. minutesSpan.innerHTML = 0; Yes, the percentage of contact usage today, it was like less than 3% like of all card transactions or contact list. Suneera Madhani 43:27 net new gross every single month, Im talking about the highest net new bookings that weve ever had. Like why isnt anybody doing a subscription and payments? Dont you want to know the secret? What is that? Madhani knew Stax was worth more. Im just curious to see how it works. In the past five years she has started her own company, raised $20 million in venture capital, seen triple-digit growth each year, expanded into multiple cities and hired 100 employees. "I can pack my days from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. if I wanted to, but that's not realistic," she notes. ClickFunnels Anyone in my audience who goes to clickfunnels.com/mixergy will get a couple of things that Im excited about. And we talked about something like. She spent the first five years investing in the company and growing its customer base to close to 10,000 customers with ten billion in payments processed. A wide range of options includes cloud-based web hosting, reseller hosting, VPS hosting and dedicated servers. var timeinterval = setInterval(updateClock, 1000); CEO School is a digital community and safe space for female entrepreneurs where I can give back in so many ways: through mentorship, retreats, live events, and virtual workshops. Let me take a moment talk about my first sponsor, then well get back into the story. It can be as a matter of like, heres your payment solution. I kind of grew up around it. But when I was first launching the company, I needed to go get customers and we started to build a website. I love that name, too. Ive been like, super quiet for the first five minutes but it is so such an honor to be here today. And in addition to it, the merchant processing company that we worked with, would charge a fee to and this whole thing was So opaque and so mysterious. Say hi. My aha moment was back in 2014 when I sensed there was an opportunity for better payment technology in the fintech space, especially for SMBs. 70%. It was through her family that Madhani learned the highs and lows of entrepreneurship. It was a it was it was it was a its a fun story. Her parents had immigrated from Pakistan's Karachi. It was not the plan to keep it fat merchant. Yeah, I want I do them. That was the only way that my family could make a means to an end was through entrepreneurship. It was a s***show of a board meeting, Madhani says. Andrew Warner 13:43 And so this idea was extremely novel. Before boardrooms and valuations, Madhani worked for a credit card company selling transaction machines out of the trunk of her Volkswagen Beetle. Nov 11, 2022. Here, Madhani's best tips for adding more balance to your life while hitting your financial goals. var hours = Math.floor(t / (1000 * 60 * 60) % 24); Over the past eight years, the 300-person company has processed $23 billion in payments for more than 20,000 customers across retail, professional services, and health care. Yeah, I think um, you know, they did really well in a in a marketing agency where you know, pop up ads used to be the thing in the early 2000s and that was that like the pay per click way of advertising and so you know, my dad had invested in a marketing agency that was really focused on pay per click advertising, and they did really well and that was something that I think would have carried through I think that there would have been new innovations that came through in in agency advertising, but when that died, their company kind of died. This is what we should do. I dont want to bore the audience with like, details about like compliance standpoints, but you pretty much have to get a sponsor bank, you have to be able to put transaction and then house transaction somewhere somebody has to clear the money, it has to be a bank that has to do it. When Madhani saw the offer, she was shocked. WebSuneera Madhani is CEO/Co-Founder at Fattmerchant Inc. See Suneera Madhani's compensation, career history, education, & memberships. a balance of balance sheet with enough money that you can do what that you can sustain the number, the amount of charges that you get. If you look at any Gen Z right now, theyre never not on their phone and look at Tick Tock. Suneera Madhani 43:05 Suneeras average salary is $9 million. margin, give me an example of a high margin that they were charging typically. And even if there was no. Hes got a podcast called Traffic Secrets where he breaks down the secrets that he has learned as somebody whos grown his business over 100 million dollars in sales and also help businesses like mine, get more traffic and convert that traffic into customers. Additionally, she is a popular podcaster currently hosting a bi-weekly podcast titled CEO School. Its called Hostgator Ill tell you about that. She encourages other women to similarly own their truth, especially if it is playing into any second-guessing or self-doubt, as she says it will boost your confidence. From her career as an entrepreneur and also a podcaster, it is obvious that she has accumulated a decent amount of fortune over the years. Suneeras average salary is $9 million. She was born to her caring, hardworking, and also loving parents in 1988, in the United States of America. Therefore, Suneera is 34 years old Im out of the zoo. Why is it that you grew What is it? And its not talking to each other. salespeople. So its based on it just depends on how big your businesses but we dont process so you have to be at least $100,000 in processing volume to come to fat merchant, we just dont play for the micro merchants. And they made it really easy for me and if you hate your hosting company, or youre thinking hey, you know what this post COVID worlds is the time when I need to cut costs, go to hostgator.com slash mixergy. If somebody used a Chase Sapphire card, Chase has some percentage that wed have to pay. So were launching a full contact list suite when I was talking about Tick Tock was just attention span of like a Gen Z if you were there, it has to be quick. I didnt want to bring the stress Home of entrepreneurship. For her, that means not traveling for more than two nights a week. Suneera Madhani 8:00 Yeah. runner Benzs. Yeah, so we want to, we dont want to have to see anybody face to face. And immediately I think you can like go on to our, you can probably do like go sign up right now and then within a couple of minutes, you should have a salesperson calling you They better be calling Yeah, no, we have an our conversion from our like site landed from an SQL to a customer is over 10%. now were a SaaS company. Yeah. You know what, I wonder if Im just so disconnected from the real world because I work online that I forget that people operate differently. So I wasnt trying to be the, like, it wasnt coming at it from this venture back. Whatever form that looks like we want to be incentivized by where we spend our money, but somebody has to pay for it. Youll love it. yes, on the bottom line, right and so that quickly adds up like very, very quickly and it ended up so thats how the industry just kind of has always been the way that exactly how you described it as you got to pay the you got to pay the Visa MasterCard fees, right? Thats correct. She finally realized she had to go build it herself. Six months of that phase, but you kind of go through that was the part of the journey for me to realize that, you know, I can I can go do this. I dont have an MBA. We believe we are industry-leading. Oh, were going to remove all the bullshit fees that were charging them. Shoot me a note if youd like to meetand stop by our session with leaders from Color of Change, SEIU, and JUST Capital on Tuesday, March 15! As of now, she has aired over 160 episodes and her podcast has been rated 4.9 stars. Andrew Warner 20:00 Here's What To Do To Protect Your Family, 4 Time and Money Hacks From Single Parents, We Make Six Figures But Student Loans and Daycare Are Keeping Us Broke, A Nine-Month Plan for Getting Your Family's Finances in Order Pre-Baby, Stop Asking Me to Pre-Pay for My Unborn Baby's Birth, This Mom Paid off $23,000 in Debt and Now Shes Helping Others Do the Same. October smells like success. How was the fundraising experience? So Im usually on those kind of podcasts. Andrew Warner 50:48 Youre just getting a subscription. From a top merchant acquirer standpoint, we are literally the top five merchant acquirer today in the US from a digital standpoint. But, inspired by her family's entrepreneurial efforts, she took a leap. Its its a really quick sales cycle. I mean, theres a lot that goes into it. Whats your commission? But what is your revenue today? So I finally went on Twitter right there in their bedroom at like seven, it must have been 745 or late at night while I was getting them ready for bed. So I cant wait to talk to you about whats happening at that merchant and COVID but 2013 Im stuck in in Dallas, Texas. Suneera Madhani 31:22 Look at his podcast number 15. Suneera Madhani 27:18 She founded the charitable campaign Sober Spring, a Suneera Madhani 45:05 "If you don't have revenue, and if you don't understand your revenue, you can't do anything with it.". "I had no money in my bank account and a big vision," she says. why what what are you doing thats allowing you to grow. customers came from you in addition to winning competitions going out to to store owners. Yeah, well 12 other people who fill in a form now who just hit the page the way they did the second, they fill in a form percent of them by and part of it is that you get them on a call that fast. You know that we do earn some dollars on but its Still, its not just a vanity metric from a billion standpoint, we are one of the largest merchant acquires online and our technology is now being used through and we can get into that. people are still going back to their bank. Then, she analyzes if she sees an overabundance of commitments that fall in one bucket. I just grew up around a lot. And then we apply to another one and literally in our first year, we took home about $200,000 in prize competition money we would like literally show up win first place at these competitions. Let me know and if it doesnt work for you, I want to hear about that too. She was born and also raised in the United States of America under the care, love, and support of her devoted and protective parents. And the weird thing was if we just called up the companies that we worked with and said, Can you give us a discount? through a series of email drip campaigns, right? The duo has been married for several years and is currently proud to be sharing two adorable children. It wasnt just user experience on price. Because we are, were high performing. I like to call myself an elder millennial. And so, yeah, in the subscription tiers as, like it goes, you know, based on how much volume you processed so the 99 and the 199 is based on I believe its like less than 2,000,002 to 3 million in processing revenue. 25 Wall St Orlando, FL 32801. However, they want to pay whatever channel of beans a payment that you guys want to take, you can use those channels, we will pull in those transactional data into a single house. Our value add was transparency there, but it was really a great user experience across the board. Andrew Warner 6:48 And even during COVID, I would say, not just from a sales standpoint, even from an innovation standpoint, the amount of products that we are like that how we came out of COVID from really thinking about the future of commerce, were about To launch one of like the biggest products that weve ever launched coming in the next few weeks, and its really around the entire contact list evolution thats about to take place in payments. Ultimately, whether you're striving to succeed in business or at home, it's about setting a good plan, sticking to the plan, and having a goal in mind. The tech industry has grappled with a In this bi-weekly podcast, Suneera shares with her listeners a few tips on how to become a successful entrepreneur. WebOrlando, FL Suneera Madhani is the founder and CEO of Stax by Fattmerchant, one of Americas top 10 fastest-growing fintech companies, processing over 12 billion dollars in payments just this year. We never looked back and I it was it was unique in a sense it I didnt want it to be just It wasnt supposed to be just about like, literally the term fats. Andrew Warner 30:34 Thats really difficult for. Here, she hosts successful entrepreneurs to share their journey in order to encourage and equip her listeners with tips to make them rise up to the challenge. Andrew Warner 6:03 We started to put money online, but I literally also would show up Plaza Plaza and go talk to business owners about their pain points on what were their frustrations with processing. And we what we realized was, every time we accepted a credit card, the price was different. So customers come directly to us online, and we convert them to our to become a customer. Come g Are you gonna do this using imessages payment and like almost chatbot process or are you doing it by, Suneera Madhani 48:15 But theres there is a cost. I said, Does anyone know an entomologist to just zoom in with my three year old and my five year old and answer their questions, and somebody said yeah, Heres an entomologist whos actually working at the zoo. My family looked at me and said, Why not you?'. Everyone knows him as the company that created landing pages. is it paid ads and what else, Suneera Madhani 40:00 Not a lot of companies are doing text payments right now. But our, the company has evolved quite tremendously. The first-generation Pakistani American found herself with an aha moment while she was newly out of college working at a fintech company that was still operating in an old-school manner. After all, Griner was, by basketball metrics, the second-best player in the league last year and its best offensive player. function initializeClock(id, endtime) { Its going to be seamless off their mobile devices. Andrew Warner 44:56 And thats that was like the initial start of the company. Suneera Madhani 46:23 "Payments are the heart of a business," says Madhani. In our industry at that time, where everybody was still feed on the street, you were going directly to the banks to get your processing, you would open up a business account, thats where it was your processor was attached to it. Andrew Warner 27:21 I could do it under the umbrella of other companies, which I didnt want to do, which was definitely an option. I saw firsthand what it took to build a business, what it took for businesses to fail, the hardship, the good, the bad, the ugly, and everything in between. Its called Traffic Secrets by Click Funnels, Sr. How many people the company now? Number one is a free trial so you can actually try it and use it. Suneera Madhani is the co-founder and CEO of Orlando-based payments start-up Stax, recently valued at more than $1 billion. The customers It was really a poor customer experience. Andrew Warner 39:28 She responded to a petition asking for pardons for thousands of people convicted and executed under the Witchcraft Act of 1563, calling those accusations the result of "deep misogyny." Because really, youre already listening to me, youre going to be open to a brand new way of thinking about your traffic. 20,000 in monthly recurring revenue, that means the subscription fees that people are paying you and not that doesnt include the percent that youre giving the credit card companies, right? Andrew, I love what youre sharing and especially when you first talked about having more female entrepreneurs speak up and even identify as female entrepreneur when you asked me that it was just it was second nature to me like I am a female entrepreneur and I want to inspire other women, as well as just other entrepreneurs to take a chance and go follow their dreams. And not only not for money, like literally to understand what their pain points were and how we can make it better. So I took it to about 12 different processors and investors. It was an entrepreneurial role you could per se is what I was trying to I knew that this business model would work. Have a wonderful Wednesday. problem that I imagine its just a checklist of different things that you need to do in order to be up and running as a merchant right. But also we have an incredible product. Andrew Warner 27:15 She earned a degree in finance and worked in the credit card processing industry for four years, focusing on merchant services. We have 110 people at the company but Id love to say hi to the audience. So for us, it was really about the user experience from not only from a transparency on a price perspective, but also from a from a customer product perspective, as well as from a customer experience perspective, meaning. I have always been underestimated. Lets move on to the next opportunity. And youre telling me most people do that most businesses sign up with their bank. So January was better than December. How many the merchant processing is a business has been around for years, people bid on it with deep pockets. Like those are like, thats kind of I dont know if were fucking successful because we we dont we dont we dont let anything stop us. Her parents immigrated to the United States from Pakistan, met in Chicago, married, then moved their young family to Dallas, Texas. He had a chameleon in his house. And so I would literally give away the solution for them to run transactions on our terminals. Suneera Madhani 27:13 And they had every type of business under the sun, you know, convenience stores, pizza, the pizza shops, restaurants. This is a BETA experience. var t = getTimeRemaining(endtime); Suneera Madhanis fintech company, Stax, has processed over $23 billion in payments for 22,000 businesses. Right? So well make sure that we get at least a free month for your customers so that you guys can take a look and see what we can do for you. How did investors respond to Stax? Or get take a hit around? Joining me today is a woman who one of the first things I asked her was, how do I make this interview win for you? And drew from the zoo said, Sure he got on Zoo with my kids. Lets use that as a way of promoting his Traffic Secrets podcast. Andrew Warner 46:22 In 2020, I started a podcast called CEO school, because I didn't go to CEO school. A related ritual is something she calls Sunday Zoom Out. When Madhani was raising venture capital, she was also expecting her daughter Suneera is a podcaster presently hosting a popular business podcast called the CEO School. She secured a meeting with the C-suite and worked on the presentation for a week while binging the first two seasons of Shark Tank to perfect her pitch. Suneera Madhani 47:26 I said, Theres no way Im going to f***ing accept this.'. So if youre out there and youre looking to start a business, go to hostgator.com slash mixergy.