#187 Paysquad: Buy Now, Pay Together

0:00Welcome to The Pitch, where startup founders raise millions and listeners can invest. I'm Josh Muccio. And I'm Lisa Muccio. And on the show today, we have Cam with PaySquad. He's raising$1.5 million. All right. I'm going to say the name. You have to guess what it is. PaySquad. Oh, a squad that pays together. You cheated. You know that that's the answer. Okay. Yeah. So money. Let's talk about money. Specifically, a little button at checkout called Buy Now, Pay Later. Oh, yeah. What if there was a button there where you could pay with your buddies? Buy now, pay together. But I could just be like, hey, I paid for this.

0:38Everyone Venmo me. And then what happens? Half the people don't send you the money and you're stuck footing the bill. Always. Like trying to go see the Goo Goo Dolls with my brother Cody. And I'm like, hey, buy those tickets. I think he still hasn't bought those tickets. I have to confess something, Lisa. What? I don't really like the Goo Goo Dolls. What? I don't know. You don't want to go? Fine, then I'll go with that. You'll be just me and Cody. No, no, I'm going. No, you're not invited anymore. I'm going to support you. You don't like the Goo Goo Dolls? I just never. Who doesn't like the Goo Goo Dolls?

1:11I grew up not listening to them. I want to like them. You're not in the squad anymore. I'm kicking you out. Well, the question is, does the world really need another button at checkout? Or is Venmo enough? The pitch for PaySquad is coming up after this. But first, we are hosting two live events this season. One in SF coming up at SF Tech Week. And another one in November in New York City. We're also hosting our next taping of season 17 in San Francisco. Join us at any of these events. Go to pitch.show slash events. Your vehicle doesn't just get you from here to there. It's a bridge to the people and places that matter most.

1:58It's how you show up for your family, your community, and everyone else that depends on you. That's why for 125 years, Firestone has been building tires with one thing in mind. To deliver products that are as reliable as you are. Firestone. Always dependable. Since 1900.

2:20Welcome back to the Pitch for PaySquad. Let's meet the investors. Elizabeth Yin with HustleFund. My best deals have been the ones that I've committed on the spot. Charles Hudson with Precursor Ventures. We have 500 companies, so you pick it, we have it. Mike Ma with Sidecut Ventures. I got strings. I'm not an easy yes. Jesse Middleton with Flybridge. I'm so sick of people that are building stuff for building stuff's sake. And a new investor to the show, Yasmin Cruz-Farin with Visible Hands. There's one thing to be the first, but then there will be fast followers.

2:57The pitch, day two, pitch one. Oh, perfect. That's how it's done. How we doing? Howdy. Morning. Morning. Hey, Charles. Nice to meet you, Kim. Yasmin. Yasmin, lovely. Hey, Jessie. Nice to meet you. Elizabeth, nice to meet you. Mike. Mike, great to meet you. Fantastic. Kia ora. I'm Kim Richardson, founder of Pace Squad. Quick story, at my 21st party, my friends rolled out a three-wheeled motorbike as my gift. I was like, fellas, how did you do this? They said, Cam, everybody at the party chipped in to get this for you. Now, to some people, that's a nice memory. To me, it was a paradigm shift where I realized how much more is possible when people do things together and I had to see it happen more.

3:50The problem is every time since then, whether we were buying a group gift or traveling together or buying tickets to a game and actually wanting to sit together it was the same pain one person usually me had to front the whole cost and then chase people to pay me back one by one it was awkward slow and it strains relationships the world is designed for solo shopping so when you hit checkout you're gonna see a pay now option you might see a pay later option, but you're almost never going to see a pay together option, despite the fact that 30 % of Gen Z, like myself, share the cost for something every day.

4:29So we built PaySquad to make group payments native at checkout. It's the first, buy now, pay together. Here's how it works. One person selects PaySquad at checkout. We call them the squad leader and generate them a link that they can share with friends, family, and colleagues on any messaging app, in any group chat. anywhere in the world. When they click the link, they can see who started the pay squad, what it's for, who's already contributed and how close they are to the target with no need to download an app and no need to chase your friends to pay you back. When you hit 100%, that order is automatically processed.

5:04But the magic is on the other side too. Merchants want pay squad at their checkout because we're seeing triple the average order value and five to seven times the reach than any other payment method. In one sale, a merchant could acquire 10 new customers. That's transformational. So far, we've launched as a global payment partner on Shopify, the first pay with friends option. We've onboarded$70 million in merchant GMV and we have another billion going online in the next month. Today, we're raising 1.5 million to build the future of multiplayer commerce and help more people experience what I did at my 21st, the power of groups doing things together.

5:48How are you getting these merchants in these early innings? Sure. To date, we've raised 80K as a friends and family around. And so, you know, it hasn't been any huge marketing campaigns or anything for merchants. It's been sheer audacity, inbound requests, people finding us on ChatGPT and on Google search. Classic example of this is a company called Totem. They have these little friend finding compasses at festivals and they were like, man, we've got these big bundles. Obviously friends buy them all together. We need to have a pay together option if there is one. So they gave us a call and we integrated with them inside 40 minutes.

6:26In the two conferences that we've been to where the really novel new tech and we have certain categories that we've already seen that are like running up to us being like, hey, I've been waiting for this to exist. Can you walk me through the economics? Sure thing. So similar to buy now, pay later, we charge a commission fee for every successful sale, typically in the realm of about 4%, which when merchants compare that to what they're paying for BNPL, it's quite an easy sell. We have a higher net transaction margin because we're not forming a line of credit or anything. So we right now are seeing a net transaction margin of about 2.2 % at scale that could be well over 3%.

7:05How are you thinking about the competition? Because it's one thing to be the first, but then there will be fast followers. So in terms of moats, we typically see brand data and integration complexities as our main moats. And for fast followers, I think the integration complexities are probably the highest up. Shopify, for example, is an invite only global payment partnership. With every merchant that we sign a deal with as well, we have an exclusivity that they can't develop their own. group payment option or sign on with a competitor as well. And look, large, particularly enterprise merchants, they're not going to sign up to something that was vibe coded a couple of weeks ago.

7:44I think FinTech still has a little bit of that technical barrier, unlike other industries right now. What was your background before this or your founding team? Were you guys in the payment space, merchant, e-commerce? For sure. So I was an omni-channel retail. I'm a two-time founder. previously I was part of a team that bootstrapped a billing platform to process hundreds of millions of dollars we built the foundation of pay squad and then spun it out I went full-time eight months ago to pursue this I've now brought on some exceptional talent particularly Sam Schafer in New York who is was the first employee at Afterpay US did the blue chip deals with Macy's and Urban Outfitters and then another ex-Afterpay person in Melbourne who will be leading our customer success retail experience.

8:29And then my head of growth and product, Joel, who is ex-e-commerce founder, right up to date with the latest in AI development and story branding. Are there any product category types that this doesn't work for? One of the ones I'll share that we thought would work, but hasn't really proven to be too valuable yet is furniture. We're like, okay, cool. It fits the idea of a high average order value, maybe for house warmings and things. It turns out that people have very specific tastes when it comes to those. And even in the premium brands, they really like protect their like one customer that they're building a relationship with.

9:06It might be one we add later on, you know, when it becomes far, far more mainstream. But for right now, that was a surprise. And what about things like perishable inventory, like airline tickets, concert tickets, things where like there is some time sensitivity between when you put it in the basket and when you check out? So in those situations, we have a configurable timeframe right now. So for an online travel agent, we signed up out of Singapore, we give them 50 minutes. And because Pace Squad is so seamless, that 50 minutes sometimes gets done in five minutes. In the future, we're going to have the first person effectively underwrite the full amount and we'll come in and help them do that so we can guarantee the sales straight away.

9:42When people start a Pace Squad, a group payment, they are fully committed to getting that thing done. We have a success rate of like over 90%. And so we're like, well, we might as well just be able to front it so if i heard you correctly you've powered over 70 million gmv and if you're taking a net of four percent you've done 2.4 million in revenue in the last eight months merchant gmv so the size yeah the size of stores that we're serving yeah i was like okay this is not this coming into bips i see so i guess like how many transactions have you powered since you started yeah so we've seen four million in pay squads created.

10:18And on that, we have a variable rate of percentages. So in May, we're looking to do 20 ,000 in revenue and projecting the next 12 months to do 2 million or 3 million. Recovering banking and payments person here. So you have a lot of people who are from the industry, after pay, et cetera, yourself. So how do you beat this race to the bottom that pervades the space from one payment person to another? What is insight on the growth that your team has and how you execute against this? I think the difference of ours is that we have far less payment risk in each transaction than if we were underwriting it in a credit perspective or some debt funding.

10:57And so for us, it is actually moving laterally into more of the communication coordination that comes uniquely with group payments. Being viral from day one is super, super helpful for us. Afterpay was really famous for signing up a million customers and spending less than a million dollars on marketing for pay squad we have the k factor of like an early 2000s social network you know in one sale we're seeing between five to seven people pulled in by the squad leader and people are putting us up on their product description page so it's about catching fire early and then being able to build sector specific integrations and really expand what's possible Can you say more about those sectors?

11:39So we heard it's not furniture. So what are the sectors? So the two main categories that have really risen to the top in this early stage have come from baby goods. One classic example of this is Cradlewise based out of California. They have a$1 ,700 bassinet cradle on their product description page next to Klarna, next to Affirm. There's pay with friends and family using PaySquad. And we're seeing really great high value conversions through that. We've got a$520 million retailer as part of our onboarding in the next month that is in the baby space and another$200 million one that we're bringing on just shortly after that.

12:16So huge space for us. But the second one that is going to be even bigger is actually pro sports ticketing. The team and the platform are getting everybody's contact. They're making a connection with everybody, not just the person who's made the initial payment. and that is really really valuable for connecting with fans and even for the ticketing platform as well but it doesn't end there there are also really large groups like 50 plus that are booking tickets for places and i've seen behind the curtain and it is the most manual process i've ever seen diabolical to see in 2026 and by bringing that into a fresh ui on the front end so that people can coordinate without having to get on the phone, which Gen Z hates to do, and organize it that way will be utterly transformational for them, not to mention the opportunities that we have to upsell.

13:11Memberships, like seasoned memberships, have never entered sort of the gifting equation. And that I think is a great travesty. And then group merch as well. So buying team kit together. So my feeling is that this idea is not new. There have been lots of people who have tried this. And I think there are a number of issues, certainly this idea of differentiation commoditization. But I think even just the sheer act of doing all this business development with all these sites, the holy grail is getting essentially the really big sites, the Airbnbs, et cetera. And no one's really cracked that nut because like those folks are powerful.

13:46This is not a priority for them, et cetera. Like how do you plan to do that? You know, Airbnb has an interesting history with this. They acquired a company that was doing something in the space. I would say that virtually every merchant we talk to has never considered or been pitched a pay-together option at checkout. So from what we've seen in the market and all the competitors we've tracked, it's incredibly novel. We've become the group layer for social commerce. And I think that's an area that hasn't really been innovated in the last decade. Can you go back? You mentioned an exclusivity in your arrangements.

14:19I just wanted to see what the extent and range of this exclusivity that you've built in? If presented with another group payment option or something that has collaborative payments right there at the checkout, our merchant service agreement restricts them from being able to integrate with them. But they could just terminate your MSA, right? We could. Okay.

14:44I hate it when that happens. We'll be right back.

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15:36If you cancel entire account before receiving all bill credits, credit stop and balance on a required finance agreement is due. Example,$1 ,199.99, iPhone 18 Pro, 256 gigabytes. Bill credits in if you pay off device early. Qualifying credit, new line, port in, and service. $85 more per month with auto pay plus taxes and fees required. $35 device connection charged due at sale. Visit T-Mobile.com. Can you go back in the same vein around integration complexities? I'm curious if you can double click on this because the buy now pay later is where they're offering credit, things like that. There's an underwriting of the consumer, but also the business fraud, all of these things.

16:07Where do you play in that? And where's sort of the risk for you and integration? For sure. Right now it's quite platform specific. We know that the most innovative retail merchants are on Shopify. That's why we got on Shopify. So if there is a merchant that wants to integrate with us on Shopify, we can get them live in under 20 minutes. And you're not taking on any risk in it. Like your payment processor is still taking on the fraud risk, things like that. So you're not having to deal with any of that. That's right. And we have a sophisticated like payment orchestration layer underneath it. the second like great enabler and to be honest a lot of this has been buy now pay later rolling out a red carpet for us is in payment orchestration which is an emerging place globally that helps enterprise merchants be able to effectively handle all of their alternative payment methods in one thing so that they're not stuck in stripe they're not stuck in agi and they can actually play around to the best option we're as part of our baby brand the 520 million dollar one as part of that integration we're integrating with their payment orchestrator and that actually opens the door for us to be as easy to switch on as Shopify in some of the biggest brands in the world.

17:15Hotel chains that you know, live event platforms that you know as well and that for us has been a great enabler because they're incentivized to sell us to their customers and to their partners as well. Double click on this large baby brand for a moment. How did you land them? We're six days away from starting the integration and we have about a week and a half in terms of the time that we're expecting the integration to take. That's because we're integrating with the payment orchestrator and giving us opportunity to that whole other realm. But I mean, how did you get them? What does the contract kind of look like in terms of the economics, etc.?

17:47For sure. So it was a chance connection that I made on LinkedIn. Because they do about 70 % of the baby market where they are, they have asked us to sign exclusivity with them. So we can't sign up any other baby brands. and that's going to last for 12 months. And then we'll be extended to 18 months if we had a run rate of like a million in that first few months. Is this what you're taking 4 % on? In this particular case, 2.8%. That's one of those levers that we have. The go-to-market motion that we can create around huge brands is really, really powerful. And this was worth taking that cut on.

18:26You hear all these stories that you've probably heard about buy now, pay later, just coming and dropping like a million dollars to get onto a certain checkout because they know the marketing power of being there. I could see a wedge in this idea of a social commerce platform. And I was at Betterment and we launched Betterment Gifts as part of registry. The problem is they're one time, right? So reconcile for me, baby brand. It's not like travel or restaurants where there's a high volume. So yes, two and a half times. And decreasing. Listen, I'm on the empty nest. aspects, I'm done. But my point is like, you need transaction volume, right?

19:07You need repetition to build this. So reconcile this moat for me against your wedge market is baby. And then also, by the way, exclusive, you have one and done in this area. So how do you go to market in a way that you can actually leverage your feasible moat? To be clear, the one and done is in the Australian market. So that's where the 70 % of the total industry is. So wide open in the US, nice and easy right now it was like we need to find the highest interest for these wedge points but we at all times keep the TAM as that 30 % of Gen Z that share the cost for something every day that starts by creating these flywheels in baby in ticketing in travel and then being able to say hey now that we've got contact with these customers and merchants what are the other things that you're wanting to share the cost for how can we move into that what does utility bill look like for pay squad is this valuable to electricity companies to have multiple people on file when one person leaves the house can we then swap them out for someone else there's just unique product formulations that haven't really been tried yet now that uh the technical side of things is far easier than ever before we can move into all of these really nascent industries and begin to bring a multiplayer aspect to it and the opportunity for that from even a viral coefficient is enormous.

20:26I'm going to say I'm going to pass just having spent my life in this area. I think your competition risk is so high. If I offered you one piece of solid advice of everything you mentioned, I could see travel being a wedge market where you can kind of own that. You're looking for this hard sweet spot between high enough ticket value where you need share and high enough transaction volume where you could build your social moat. And then that could move into other industries. That'd be where I would make a recommendation for you. I love the fact you have an exclusive in your MSA, but it's really simple.

20:59It's like happened every day in the payment things just to cancel your MSA and move on. Thanks. That's fine. I got to the same conclusion, but for maybe a different reason. So I'm also not going to move forward. We've done a handful of things in payments. One we have that's doing quite well is in the HSA, FSA payments. And my big takeaway is payments is you need a very big top line number flowing through the system such that when you get through all of the cuts and slices that everybody else takes, there's enough for you. And I think this is a useful use case. Like Mike, I think travel is probably the place, but I just worry there's not enough total addressable transaction processing volume for group payments to make a really big business.

21:40Cool. Thank you. And I think building on that, So a slightly different lens. Almost two decades ago now, I started a social commerce site and we were trying to do BD with a lot of different retailers. Now, I realize the world has changed a lot in the last two decades. But I think one of my learnings from that is you have to be a pretty high priority for them. And so if you just kind of start to take big markets and whittle it down, like, OK, maybe 10 percent of the transactions, if we're generous, go through this group thing and then like whittle it down even more on your take, etc. Like for even this large customer, the 500 million GMV customer, A, they're hard to get.

22:18And you're going to need like at least 100 of them to build a big business. And the BD cycles on this for most of them are really just quite hard to even get on their radar because they have so many other priorities just keeping the ship afloat. So unfortunately for me, I think I'm out. Thank you. Yeah. Unfortunately, I'd fall into the same thing. I think one of the things I think about is the economic driver. So one of the reasons that Buy Now, Pay Later does work in the way it does is there's a lot of room to add margin to this thing. There's a race to the bottom on price, but there's a offer in credit lending, right?

22:50You have room, you can offer it to less credit worthy and you can charge a higher rate. I think you're going to have to get into doing that. It sounds like you're thinking about that already because you're thinking about the like underwriting the single buyer. Right now you have this huge risk that like you're already offering them a much lower rate. And so your net take is going to be very small. So to Charles's point, even more volume necessary. And so I think that's the challenge. You're just early in this. I do find it to be a creative wedge. I don't know how hard it would be for a firm or anybody else to say, you know, we're going to offer it and cancel our MSA.

23:21But assuming you can figure that out, which maybe you can, the rest of the business has to flow in that way. And it's just early. So for that, I'm out. Cool. Thank you. I'm also going to pass. It was great to hear your pitch. It's a great team. you're already attracting and I'm excited to watch you build and the network effect is really interesting but from the moat perspective I'm out. No I appreciate that everybody thank you. Yeah one of the interesting things and he talked about a little bit he said in the numbers like they're even before this large customer they did 20 000 in revenue and it was like half a percent take rate, right?

24:05Not even the 2.2, not even the 1.2. And that's without the highly negotiated deal that's coming in that my math says it's basically 0 % net take. There's something that comes in founder pitch too. Like if you're going to sell a payments business, like you're in bips, you're not in percents. He almost lost me out the jump, right? Wait, say more. I'm not quite following. So the payments, when he was talking about, you know, 4 % take rate on a 70 GMB. I was just like, if you work in this space, it's not credible. And he led Elizabeth down the rabbit hole as like two points. I was like, no, no, no, he's not.

24:45But don't you think that's an honest mistake? No. I mean, if it is, then it's a mark. I think it was an honest mistake. And that's why I asked the question. Yeah. He called it merchant transaction volume. And so I like, I think it could be. I don't think he was trying to mislead me. I don't jump to that. No, but I think your point though, would be that this business is a business that is measured in basis points and the margins are very tiny. Like every payments company, if you could make 4%, like... And maybe I'm just like grizzled, grizzled like fintech person, which I think you are, yeah. I definitely am.

25:16I get that sense, yeah. Mike has lived so many lives as we've learned. I am unhirable. Unhirable, yeah, that's fair. The worry is you spend our capital to make a market for a firm to sit on, right? Like that's not fun. For me, it was less about that because, yes, that's the nature of fintech, but more about the timing of why now and for him to come out of the gates and say this has not been done before, like it has been done before. It's just not going to survive. So I think you have to explain like why now is better than when all these other people tried it. And it's because of A, B and C reasons.

25:51And yeah, I didn't quite hear that. Yeah. The baby space is also really tough. And I read at bat and the baby space for me has gone so wrong. It's also a big one-time purchase, right? Like it's not taking a trip every year. It's not the same. Well, but if you are a button integrated on a site, you are there for all the recurring customers for that site. It's just getting your button on the site is hard. And staying there. And staying there. Like that's the challenge. A lot of these merchants, even the larger ones, will try things out on 5 % of their traffic. you know there's like testing that people are doing it's so easy because they don't roll it out to everybody when you have a payment orchestrator platform to its points you're like turn it on right now try and turn it off there's i was thinking about the checkout i just went through yesterday and there were like seven different payment buttons and this was like a large site and it was like three different buy now pay laters i was like i don't even know why they're on there like i'm not sure what the difference is but i think it's just like logo recognition like you're going to be the eighth one that may be on there for 10 like i don't think is being misleading, but I also think it's the way he described the business.

26:56I think it was way overly optimistic. If you knew the payments business, you would know that's not how this is going to play out. Like you're going to measure in percentages of percentages. The payments business is not an optimistic area of fintech. It's not. You have to be cynical like Mike to be running one of those. Is that what you're saying? And here's the thing. He has after pay. He has industry execs where you're like, come on, bro. Well, I mean, you have to come into a pitch all sunny and excited. I do. But like, I don't know. You don't, but he has to. You don't, but he has to. There is a frame of reference that has to be in bounds, right?

27:34I guess I'm just saying that I think that is more in the category of naive rather than misleading. I don't feel like he tried to lie to me or whatever. Like, I just generally give people the benefit of the doubt. I think payments is not a business for the naive. So that's fair. Especially with afterpay execs. These are not, I don't know. As Mike knows, you're not really a successful payments company until somebody rips you off. You haven't made it until somebody really gets you hard with fraud. It's like a tacit biggie shot, right? Yeah, you know. You're not. So that's fair, but you don't have to invest, right?

28:09He would come in really focused on travel or some other market that feels less problematic than baby. Is that more interesting? I think about things like from the founder perspective, having been a founder for a long time. So if I were tackling this, what would I do? Well, we would have to cold email or cold call a bunch of companies. Right. And so let's just start listing them off. Right. In travel, there's probably five companies. It's probably like Airbnb, Bookings.com, Expedia, whatever. And Expedia and Bookings.com are the same company. So it's not that many companies that would actually make an impact.

28:41And that is the key here. Right. You can get all the little Shopify sites, but they will not make a dent in your revenue. He has this one big player who maybe might give him a million a year, which would be great. But now we have to go and find like a hundred more. So I think it's like all the categories he listed off, there's probably a handful in each of those. It may even be less. And then what's your likelihood of landing those? And I think that likelihood is pretty small. And could he get another handful of sites? Yeah, probably. So maybe there's a 10 million a year company. So even though he's coming in with being able to say like, we are already increasing average order value for these companies.

29:17That's not interesting enough. Well, and I also am not sure I necessarily believe that. That's very hard to prove. And I actually think that is probably the problem with why is it so hard to do BD? I don't know if stores believe that. You're still going to buy with your friends, even if it's hard. The HSA FSA company we have, they have a very clear story around Lyft. And actually their biggest, the merchants were just like, well, what if this is just cannibalization? What if you just take a transaction that would have gone through our normal rails. Right. I had to pay you more. They're just like, oh, these are net new customers to us.

29:48And it's a more complicated, but there's actually real complicated stuff on the back end. There's real friction in the HSA, FSA space, right? Like ranging from regulatory, just like cognitive overload of understanding it. Mixed baskets. There's a whole bunch of problems. I mean, so it sounds like you guys just don't even fundamentally believe that this is a problem. I do think it's a problem. I think my worry is like, it's a problem he solves and the firm's like, cool. It's not a problem in the baby's face. That's clear. I just don't think it's that. Everyone just. Yeah. And Amazon. Everyone. It's all shipped to your house.

30:19Yeah. I just had a baby shower. Yeah. I think sometimes you have to be honest about like what the substitutes here are. Yeah. The high friction cost of like one person does it all. Yeah. Which still happens a lot. Which is mostly what happens. Vendor solutions. Split wise. Split wise. Yeah. Okay. All right. Thank you, sir. That's pitch one. All right. Thank you. Thank you.

30:46Cam walked out of the pitch room with no commitments from this squad. But this was just stop number one on his American tour. What happened after the pitch? After this.

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31:34Welcome back. A couple months after his pitch, we caught up with our favorite and first ever Kiwi on the show. Hi, Cam. Hey. Welcome back to the show. It's good to be back. So you came all the way from New Zealand to be on the pitch, which is insane. That is 8 ,000 miles to travel. Are you crazy? Beyond. I mean, my adoring fans describe me as delusional. Talking about my mother there. look it was in the startup world you've got to take big swings and risks that's all part of the makeup and it was a whirlwind it was amazing the community around the pitch show is incredible the other founders that I keep in contact with now on a near daily basis and get out genuinely yeah who is your pitch bestie the church AI voice Errol Trenton like they're just incredible guys and they're uh on an absolute tear as well and sometimes actually getting out of the local context and getting into some around some big thinking americans can have really positive outcomes and i definitely experienced that even around the event i was able to close a couple deals and and we've had a number of investors jump in it's so it's it's just been an absolute whirlwind but it was it was one of those things where things just started like falling into place.

33:04How was your experience pitching on the show? Like the actual pitch room itself, which I, as I understand was the first leg of your American tour. And we'll get into that in a little bit, but how was your experience in the pitch room? Look, I mean, whirlwind is the correct word. I mean, I was jet lagged. I had a period of the night before where I was just awake from 1230 to 430 AM. And despite that, you know, I really felt like I got the pitch off exactly as I wanted. And ultimately, we all know the outcome here, you know, it was a pass from the people that were in the room. It took a little while, I'll admit, for the reality of it to sink in, you know, as founders, we're quite used to like the highs and the lows and the incredible adrenaline of being there.

33:47And then all of a sudden, you're like, oh, wow, I just that didn't quite go as I was hoping for. And it took, I think took maybe six hours before it sank in. And so I just went and I was at Chick-fil-A sitting by myself and that's when i had the real low i was oh no i'm on the other side of the world away from my family and everything and i failed at the objective and there's all these people who are cheering me on from the other side of the world who are like oh no he didn't he didn't make it yeah and i was on it's just real as low as i get yeah and then out of the blue i just get this call from a global ticketing platform ceo and he called and said can we want to make a deal like let's sort this out.

34:28And it was the most intense whiplash I think I've ever felt. Doesn't that just typify the startup life? Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the highest highs and the lowest lows. Sometimes within the same 12 hour period. So you got a call from like a ticket master? I'll say it's the, it's fourth in line. Yeah. So not ticket master. A couple notches down yeah yeah yeah but still that is exciting man yeah so then what happened after you talked to this ticketing platform where do you go from there we went on to dallas was at a conference over there called lion's den so this is like dragon's den but with lions oh yeah like biblical lions yeah yeah yeah i i think that is kind of what it's supposed to be as a play on it because It's kind of an epicenter of Christian investors and entrepreneurs and things.

35:29We made some incredible connections there. And since both of that and the Florida thing, we've had six commits to the round. That's awesome. Six commits. Yeah. How much have you raised? Still a fair bit shy of the target, but we had a really interesting conversation with our... Well, I'll start by actually answering point blank your question here, at least. Classic founders are like, oh, well, go over here. So we've added an additional 200K since then. Okay. That's great, Cam. That's a relatively short period of time. Yeah. It is. We've raised 500 in total now. And I know it was significant because our CFO changed his tune.

36:09It's quite unusual for CFOs to saying, Cam, we could make it based on what we've currently got here indefinitely with these new contracts that were coming in. Dude. That's pretty good. Well done. Again, like the different American mentality and the amazing connections and the present in person is just so different Yeah, agreed That is what we have made all of our bets on Yeah, gotta press the flesh, as they say I knew you wouldn't like that I have never heard that one That's great I was going a different direction and then my brain was like, wait, what? It's a saying, Lisa Um, okay. So my question is, are you going to keep fundraising or you're just going to work with what you've got now?

37:01We're going to keep fundraising. There's an amazing US go to market opportunity that's still developing in pro sports. And that naturally requires some extra capital. Okay. So you mentioned the American mentality a few times. I'm just curious to learn more from you culturally. What do you feel is different? Sure. I feel like I have a unique perspective to be able to speak into this because my mother's in America. I was actually born in North Carolina. And I've lived between the two countries, mostly in New Zealand. But in New Zealand, we have this prevalent culture called tall poppy, where if you kind of raise your head above the general, you get cut down pretty quick.

37:43because people feel a little threatened by that or they don't want people being too prideful. You can imagine for launching a business and things, it can be a little detrimental. Whereas in the US, I mean, people just gas you up like crazy. I mean, they're so outrageously encouraging. And maybe sometimes it's a little over the top. We'll be real about that. But it definitely fills you with a bit of confidence. And in many cases, they're like, yeah, let's go early. Let's get behind you. You're a delusional young founder with a dream. Let's pour money on that and just see what happens. Let's feed that delusion.

38:30Genuinely. That's what I've seen. And you get to experience firsthand. That's very cool. So when are you moving back to the US? I tell you. This US Go-To-Mark is not going to do itself right. It may have to happen. So I want to go back to the pitch room and get your thoughts on the investors' feedback. Mike Ma, he calls himself a grizzled fintech guy. And he told us after your pitch that he got hung up right away when you said that the take was 4%. Mike was like, if you're going to sell a business payments solution, you use BIPs. You're not in percents. Yeah. So he took issue with the term you used and it caused him to question your credibility as a fintech founder.

39:23Not to put you on the spot, but how do you respond to that? look if it all takes as a terminology you could definitely argue that there's not a broader connection to the core problem that we're trying to solve and one of the funny things about pay squad is that we are a fintech but when we're at fintech conferences we feel like the weird kid i mean we are the ones who are talking about social cohesion about helping groups like choose what kind of gifts they're gonna get take tickets together like it is so different than like getting bogged down at interchange rates and FX and basis points and the like.

40:01But I could see he's using his pattern recognition to go, is this a legitimate fintech founder that knows payments inside and out? And I think that's fair. And I was so used to saying percent because that's what our customers understand a little bit more as well. Yeah. Yeah. In e-commerce company, even enterprise, they're not talking in BIPs when they talk about checkout buttons. To be fair, the head of payments would be, right? If you're talking to the head of payments in a huge retailer, of course, they're thinking in BIPs. Our ICP, we actually start with the head of marketing normally because we're such a customer acquisition tool at checkout.

40:42I'm not trying to cope here, but that's part of the reasoning why I did it that way. Yeah. Gosh. Yeah. I feel like the VC is really pattern-matched hardcore for a fintech company here. That's interesting. And this is, it's not that it doesn't apply, but. Yeah, it's different. It doesn't seem like the right rubric for this business. Is this your first time raising VC money? It is, yes. So did you take anything away from the pitch room and like change how you're pitching your business because of it? Probably actually the big one was as founders to be fully transparent. When you're presented with two numbers that you could share, you're like, let's go for that bigger one because that would be way cooler to share about.

41:24The 4%. Not even, no, an even bigger number than that. But I mentioned the GMV that we'd signed up. Yes. And GMV is a notoriously, what's the word? Like a loose, not a loose, that's the wrong word. Misinterpreted, vague. Yeah, it can use, it can mean so many things. What I was trying to communicate was like, hey, despite being virtually bootstrapped, we've been able to bring on some huge merchants. That's what I was trying to say. What I could have said instead was like, hey, we're going to do 20 ,000 in revenue in this coming month. And one of those is like, wow, that's a really big number. The other ones I was like, is this even going to be move the dial for anybody?

42:08And then I came to find afterwards that it probably would have. So much of fundraising VC is just learning where the landmines are. You don't step on them. Yeah, we've seen the GMV thing before in like an investor update and somebody was like, look, and then we're like, wait, no, that's GMV. That's like not what you think it is. It feels like you're being misled a little bit. Yeah, or like when people use contracted revenue for ARR and you're like, wait, you're actually ARR is a lot less. You guys didn't give me the heads up beforehand? What are we? I know, sorry. Well, that's the beauty of the pitch show, right?

42:47Is that you have five opportunities in one intense session just to be like, right, let's start running across a landmine territory and just see what limbs are left afterwards and see what we can learn. Someone needs to make a graphic of what it's like to be on the pitch show. It's just kind of like slow motion running. It's just like Rambo. Dodging landmines. Big old basis points, landmine.

43:16Oh my gosh. Oh, yeah. So of the contracts you've got signed, what kind of revenue are we talking about? Projected revenue? Sure, go with projected. Just on the deals you think you'll have signed. Between 15 and 20 million over the next three years. Okay. Okay. You're either delusional, as you said, or you are on an absolute tear. Oh my gosh. There's only one way to find out, right? Well, Cam, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thanks so much for traveling those 8 ,000 miles to come hang out with us. It was a beautiful experience. I have no regrets.

44:05Cam is such a lovely person. So lovely. I feel like this pitch, though, was like New Zealand meets New York. On one end of the spectrum, you've got grizzled Mike Ma. And then you got Cam, who's just like, I want more people to get three-wheeled drift carts for their boys. Which might be a good business. The question is, is this venture backable? Like, does it reach venture scale? Not the$10 million a year that Elizabeth thinks this can be. Only in venture is a$10 million a year business a bad business. Unfortunately. Either way, I hope that Cam does not become that grizzled fintech founder and he can retain his natural sparkle and joy.

44:48No offer to invest in PaySquad is being made to the listening audience on today's show, but you can invest in The Pitch Fund, where we invest alongside the VCs on the show. We're currently deploying Fund 2, and we're open to new investors through the end of the year. To learn more, go to thepitch.fund. Next week on The Pitch, we are raising a$600 ,000 pre-seed round to become the OS for Global Churches. If you can be the CFO of like one of the most important social fabrics that binds community together and by the way, holds a crap ton of assets, real estate. Shoot, I'm in.

45:31That's next week. Subscribe to The Pitch on your favorite podcast player so you don't miss future episodes. You can watch full-length versions of every pitch over on our Patreon at The Pitch Uncut. And if you're a founder raising a pre-seed or seed round, apply to pitch at our next event. It only takes a couple minutes to apply. Just go to pitch.show slash apply. We'll see you next week in the Pitch Room.

45:57This episode was made by Josh Muccio, Lisa Muccio, Anna Ladd, and Enoch Kim, with deal sourcing by Peter Liu, John Alvarez, and Phoebe Sun. Music in this episode is by The Muse Maker, Breakmaster Cylinder, The Firmware Rebels, Marlon Gibbons, Joey Cantor, Dreaming of Stars, and Peter Jean and the Runaway Queen. The pitch is made in partnership with the Vox Media Podcast Network.

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