We spoke to Samir El-Sabini, CEO, at Juni to understand their journey, the reality of running a business during COVID-19, and what they see as the future of fintech.
When was Juni set up, and who was involved?
Traditional banks are slow, don’t understand their customers and can often become a big business roadblock. We believe that your financial partner should enable the customer to scale & improve their business - in more ways than just supplying payment cards and accounts to store funds.
So in the summer of 2020 Anders Orsedal (CTO) and Jonathan Sanders (COO) and Myself set up Juni.
Who exactly is your audience?
Our main audience are ecommerce brands & entrepreneurs, Dropshippers, Marketing/Ad Agencies, Performance Marketers.
Juni is the financial companion for all digital entrepreneurs. We solve a wide range of financial problems, specifically for ecommerce and online marketing companies.
Can you share any stumbling blocks that were experienced in the early days?
When starting any new business, it is natural to face some stumbling blocks! I would say miscommunication held us back and a lack of clear structure of implementation and definitely an over promise on timelines.
What are the things you are most proud of in your company’s journey?
I am most proud of the team. The level and speed of their execution is something that I am extremely proud of.
Looking outside of Juni now, how do you see your industry developing in the coming years?
Both fintech and ecommerce are disruptive global mega-trends that will only continue to grow. The death of retail has been talked about a lot and it just takes a quick glance at the TrustPilot reviews of legacy banks vs the challengers to see where this industry is headed. I believe Juni is perfectly positioned to capture the growth of both of these industries.
The COVID-19 global pandemic has been going on for almost a year at the time of this interview. Can you share any survival tips for businesses?
Juni was founded during the pandemic, so we decided to make Juni fully remote. Not only does that give all employees the flexibility to manage their own time better, they don’t have to commute to work and it also gives us access to global top talent that otherwise wouldn’t have wanted to move for work.
Being fully remote is working tremendously for us. It can be challenging at times and we actually haven’t been able to host a formal meet-up for all employees due to covid.
I hope other businesses can look to us as an example that fully remote can work extremely well.
And finally, what do you see as the future of fintech?
We are seeing signs of disruption of traditional finance everywhere. There’s DeFi, Cryptocurrencies, Challenger Banks and plenty of other tech heavy financial services popping up everywhere.
Thanks to new open banking mandates and a more digitally savvy public, I think we will continue to see the digitisation, democratisation and disruption of financial services everywhere.
Traditional banks have gotten lazy with time and I think that over the next few decades the landscape will change drastically.
Find out more about partnering opportunities with Railsbank.
