Head of Marketing and Brand | @frame_payments
Los Angeles
Joined December 2008
- Tweets39.2K
- Following772
- Followers3K
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today we uncovered the most sophisticated transaction laundering operation i’ve ever seen in payments.
pretty incredible the lengths people will go to disguise what they’re actually processing.
can’t wait for @FrogsAndRisk to share the post-mortem on this one.
Youssef Guirguis retweeted
one of the sharpest on our risk team is starting to tweet! Ciara has spent years in the trenches of payments risk.
glad more people get to learn from her.
Youssef Guirguis retweeted
peptides are about to become a much bigger business. we've been building in this space since the beginning of the year. clear that we made the right bet.
Youssef Guirguis retweeted
seems like every few weeks the timeline rediscovers the debate on what it takes to build a generational company.
I think a lot about what Michael Phelps so dominant. he trained 365 days a year. he understood that the days his competition took off would contribute to an advantage they could never overcome.
I think building a company works the same way. I choose to work hard, put in long hours, and show up consistently. I believe those investments compound.
if you believe working less or being less intense gives you a better chance of winning, then so be it. I'd rather bet on the work.
Nik Storonsky is one of the most hardcore and competitive founders I’ve ever talked to. He’s the founder of Revolut, a $115 billion company, and wants to be the number one bank in 100 countries.
When someone asked Nik if he was coming for Jamie Dimon's lunch, he said “I’m coming for his dinner.”
“We want to dominate, otherwise what’s the point?”
He removed every VC from his board, and when one investor pushed him too far, he started his own fund to compete with them.
Nik has a lot of ideas on talent, product design, marketing, constraints, and what makes founder-led companies special.
This is a fascinating conversation about competition, speed, and building a machine-like company.
0:00 Coming for Jamie Dimon's dinner
2:04 Building the #1 bank in 100 countries
6:12 Why founders beat professional CEOs
8:45 Revolut's biggest mistake
12:47 Why legacy banks can't innovate
17:20 Running a company like a machine
20:28 Funding winners and cutting losers like a trader
23:31 How AI is changing Revolut's team structure
25:23 50 direct reports and spreading innovation fast
29:59 Hiring self-guided missiles
33:31 Too much money makes founders weaker
37:38 What Europe's constraints taught Revolut
41:08 Why VCs are like football cheerleaders
49:28 Starting a fund to compete with VCs
54:28 From zero marketing to buying Europe's airports
1:00:21 Funding moonshots like a global tech company
1:03:58 Building an unstoppable machine
Includes paid partnerships.
Dm to help me name fintech themed drinks, torn between Series A-perol spritz and Tequila as a service…
we're sponsoring the last LA Fintech happy hour of the year.
LA has a low key slept on fintech community. I want to make sure we do our part to continue to grow up.
if you're a founder, investor, or operator in LA, come grab a drink with us, talk payments, and complain about Money 20/20 moving to the convention center next year
luma.com/up7jckoc
Youssef Guirguis retweeted
Fans from over 100 countries are putting down a deposit on something that happens months from now. It’s normal and generally accepted, but that’s a longggg dispute window.
We recently launched payments and compliance infra for one of the largest festival travel platforms: 250K+ travelers booked across 500+ events.
That gap between deposit and showtime is where we shine.
One of the best and clearest analogies written about what we do and why we do it, really great article.
Youssef Guirguis retweeted
I remember once a VC couldn’t believe that moving companies are high risk.
here’s a perfect example of how they can be.
there’s a reason most moving companies prefer Zelle, Cash App, or wires over cards. they’re much harder to reverse.
service quality is all over the place. the losses from chargebacks can be astronomical. and when a merchant can't cover them, the processor has to eat the loss.
I used Piece of Cake Moving and they lost close to $3k worth of high end bedding that was just recently purchased.
They confirmed they lost our box.
They will compensate us $300 as a goodwill gesture.
We asked them NOT to pack certain items that they then proceeded to pack. What they are offering to compensate doesn’t even cover what we ASKED THEM NOT TO PACK.
If anyone has a connection to help us get our belongings, this is ridiculous.
Youssef Guirguis retweeted
we've been shipping a lot of improvements to Frame lately, but one of the biggest is coming this week.
one piece of feedback we've heard was that our dashboard was confusing. payments and compliance were grouped together in ways that made sense to us internally, but not always to the platforms using it.
fair criticism... so we fixed it.
the new dashboard gives each product a clearer home and makes it easier for us to introduce new features across financial services and compliance.
we're rolling out launching v2 of our Transfers API. it supports bidirectional money movement across cards, bank accounts, and wallets.
oh, and accounts on Frame can now hold balances too 👀
a lot more coming.
Onward.
the last ~week or so has been one of our harder stretches. there's a side to scaling a company that doesn't get talked about enough.
some days you feel like you're on top of the world. other days you're doing everything possible to hold it all together...with a smile on your face so nobody knows just how hard the day really is.
I've been doing this long enough to know that the weeks you struggle through often become the stories you remember most.
we've been through plenty at Frame. every time, we've found a way forward. this time was no different.
onward.
