This Entrepreneur Raised ~$30 Million To Build The Leading Banking-As-A-Service Infrastructure Platform For B2B Businesses In Brazil
Doug Storf’s entrepreneurial story is not a linear ascent fueled by perfect timing and flawless execution. It is a story shaped by contrasts between consulting and operating, between theory and reality, and between abundance and scarcity.
Doug’s story also captures what it truly takes to build financial infrastructure in an emerging market: resilience, humility, and a deep respect for capital. In this engrossing interview, he discusses the challenges he faced in building, scaling, and raising funding for SWAP.
Childhood and Early Years in São Paulo
Born and raised in São Paulo, Doug grew up navigating vastly different environments every day. His school was an hour away from his neighborhood, exposing him to a range of socioeconomic realities early.
Evenings with his grandmother, weekends playing in the streets, and long commutes across one of the world’s largest cities shaped Doug’s worldview long before he ever touched a pitch deck. That exposure planted the seed for something that would define his career: an instinct for problem-solving.
A Problem Solver Before He Knew the Word
Doug’s problem-solving mindset surfaced early. At just 15 years old, he took a summer job to manually fix thousands of corrupted zip codes after a software update broke a company’s database. Within days, he realized the issue was simple—the system had dropped leading zeros.
Using Excel, Doug fixed the problem in two days. With nothing left to do, he noticed another inefficiency. Employees were lining up to use a shared HP 12C financial calculator to compute payments.
Doug built a simple Excel template, installed it on every computer, and eliminated the bottleneck entirely. That moment foreshadowed a lifelong pattern.
Whether studying engineering, working in consulting, or later building companies, Doug learned to break complex problems into their simplest components, solve them with the tools available, and then recombine those solutions into something scalable.
Engineering vs. Consulting: Two Ways of Thinking
Doug’s training as an engineer taught him to test multiple solutions methodically. Consulting refined that mindset further, but in a different direction. At firms like McKinsey, he learned to operate in a hypothesis-driven way: form a belief, assume it is correct, and work backward to disprove it.
As Doug points out, as an engineer, you tend to think more like a scientist testing alternatives to find the right one. But as a consultant, you tend to work more on hypothesis-driven scenarios. This shift from exploration to conviction would later prove critical when navigating ambiguity as a founder.
During his MBA at the University of Michigan, Doug moved through roles at Google and AWS, and after earning it, continued on the consulting track before stepping into a defining chapter: joining Brazilian mobility giant 99 as Head of Corporate Strategy.
The Shock of Becoming an Operator
On paper, the move made perfect sense. A former consultant stepping into a strategic role at a fast-growing tech company should have been a seamless transition. But, it wasn’t. Doug quickly realized that 99 didn’t need more PowerPoint decks. It needed execution.
The consultant toolkit — analysis, frameworks, polished narratives — wasn’t enough. The company needed someone to own problems end-to-end and deliver outcomes. For nearly six months, Doug spun his wheels. He worked harder than ever and produced less than ever.
Everything changed after DiDi acquired 99. Instead of remaining in strategy, Doug decided to build something tangible. He took ownership of launching 99Pay, a digital wallet for the ecosystem.
Suddenly, Doug was selling ideas, working with limited resources, and pushing initiatives forward without institutional backing. For the first time, he truly felt what it meant to operate.
Seeing the Market Gap Before the Market Named It
While building 99Pay, Doug began to see a broader pattern. The friction he faced within DiDi included regulatory complexity, infrastructure gaps, and a lack of reliable partners. It was the same friction his peers across Brazil’s fintech ecosystem faced.
Doug felt like he was hitting a wall and not getting any real traction. He was exposed to the market and recognized that the pain points he experienced were similar across the board.
Demand was rising, but supply was not, and the opportunity felt too large to ignore. In October 2018, Doug founded SWAP alongside Ury Rappaport, with whom he had been working at 99. The timing helped. DiDi’s acquisition of 99 had energized Brazil’s venture market, and Doug’s background gave him credibility.
SWAP raised its first pre-seed check in December 2018 on a PowerPoint deck. But the real breakthrough came almost accidentally.
Rewriting Employee Benefits in Brazil
A former McKinsey colleague was launching a company in employee benefits, an industry historically built on closed-loop card systems. These models required building card schemes and acceptance networks from scratch — a massive barrier.
Convincing restaurants to adopt the new payment method and convincing card companies that restaurants were open to it was expensive. Doug was well aware of how tough it can be to stimulate two sides of the marketplace.
Doug proposed something different: open-loop cards using Visa and Mastercard rails. By leveraging existing payment infrastructure, SWAP eliminated the hardest part of the equation overnight. Restaurants already accepted the cards, so employers could onboard faster.
A new paradigm was born. SWAP didn’t just find product-market fit — it redefined the market.
Building Banking-as-a-Service, the Brazilian Way
SWAP evolved into a full banking-as-a-service platform, but not in the lightweight sense common elsewhere. In Brazil, BaaS providers build their own infrastructure, and it is more than just a distribution layer between fintechs and banks.
SWAP developed direct connections to the central bank, card networks, internal ledgers, card-issuing processor, and regulatory licenses. In short, all the infrastructure needed for users to have a fully functional, transactional wallet, along with the licenses.
Under the hood, SWAP became a full financial operating system. The business model was simple: take a percentage of transaction volume. Over time, SWAP raised $30M. But the journey was anything but smooth. At the onset, the going was really good, as Doug recalls. Storytelling is everything that Doug Storf was able to master. The key is capturing the essence of what you are doing in 15 to 20 slides. For a winning deck, take a look at the pitch deck template created by Peter Thiel, Silicon Valley legend (see it here) where the most critical slides are highlighted.
Remember to unlock the pitch deck template that founders worldwide are using to raise millions below.
SWAP had great traction and a large potential client base. However, the market flipped.
Running Out of Money—and Firing Everyone
The hardest chapter came in early 2020. As the pandemic hit, SWAP was in the middle of a seed funding round, with the product not yet fully deployed or having strong metrics. Capital froze, the world shut down, and cash evaporated.
Within 10 days of lockdown, Doug had to fire the entire team over Zoom. It was devastating because employees who believed in the mission were let go during one of the most uncertain moments in modern history. Some stayed, though.
As Doug looks back, it was the most delicate period of our generation in terms of human existence and survival. Half the team accepted equity instead of paychecks and committed to rebuilding a broken company with no guarantees.
That moment permanently changed Doug’s relationship with capital. In startups, everything compounds, including cash burn. In December 2019, SWAP had 50% of its capital in the bank. By March, it had zero. The lesson was clear: growth may be exponential, but so are costs.
Client acquisition, revenue, and traction — everything is exponential.
Partnering With Regulators, Not Fighting Them
Operating in financial infrastructure meant navigating regulation head-on. Doug adopted a philosophy he once heard from Condoleezza Rice — regulators exist to regulate. It’s the industry’s responsibility to engage them with high-quality information, so they can make informed decisions.
Instead of merely following the rules, SWAP helped shape them. The company worked closely with regulators, participating in debates and co-founding a banking-as-a-service association in Brazil, which influenced regulations released in late 2024, and got more representatives in the market.
For Doug, mature industries require dialogue among competitors and between operators and regulators. In his perspective, top players in a regulated industry need to be able to influence rule making not because they want the rules to favor them.
Instead, it’s because regulators don’t always have the full picture. They are not exposed to day-to-day workings and don’t understand the realities and complexities of the market.
It is up to the top players to assist regulators in setting the right boundaries to create a regulatory framework that not only stabilizes the market but also promotes competition and a healthy industry.
The World Doug Is Building Toward
Doug’s vision for SWAP is not about becoming a bank. It’s about enabling trusted ecosystems, including employers, platforms, communities, to deliver tailored financial services efficiently to the people closest to them.
In that world, financial services flow through relationships with the companies that users interact with and the employers that employ them — not institutions. Products and solutions are developed and deployed specifically to serve the people.
Doug envisions local ecosystems being built around players who have the legitimacy to build those ecosystems. Capital is allocated more efficiently. Prosperity becomes circular.
One Piece of Advice: Trust Your Instincts
If Doug could go back and speak to his younger self, the message would be simple: believe your instincts. Humans process more data than they can consciously explain. Those subtle signals matter. Ignoring them in favor of external validation often leads founders astray.
Doug’s journey — from São Paulo streets to financial infrastructure — was never about certainty. It was about listening closely, acting decisively, and staying committed when the data ran out. And sometimes, that’s what building something that lasts really looks like.
Building financial infrastructure in emerging markets demands resilience, humility, and an uncompromising respect for capital. · True founders move from thinking like consultants to acting as operators who own problems end-to-end. · The biggest opportunities often appear when demand is obvious, but the supply side is fundamentally broken. · SWAP succeeded by removing structural friction, not by incremental improvement, rewriting how employee benefits worked in Brazil. · In startups, everything scales exponentially, including cash burn, which makes capital discipline a survival skill. · Regulated industries reward founders who partner with regulators to shape healthy, competitive ecosystems rather than fight the rules. · When data runs out and certainty disappears, trusting your instincts becomes one of the founder’s most valuable advantages.
Original Version
Alejandro Cremades: Alrighty, hello everyone and welcome to the DealMaker Show. So do today we have an amazing founder. you know We're going be learning quite a bit you know when it comes to building, scaling, financing, also being able to build a business that is really in the financial infrastructure you know type of approach.
Alejandro Cremades: And I mean, what they've done is remarkable because they had to even fire everyone at one point. They ran out of money. I mean, crazy stories that we're going be sharing. Very inspiring conversation. So brace yourself for it.
Alejandro Cremades: And without further ado, let's welcome our guest today, Doug Storf. Welcome to the show.
Doug Storf: Thanks for having me Alejandro. It's a pleasure to be here and share some of those stories.
Alejandro Cremades: So give us a walk through memory lane, dog. Born and raised in Sao Paulo. How was life growing up for you?
Doug Storf: Sao Paulo is a huge city, as you you know, right? So it's interesting because you get exposed to a lot of different situations.
Doug Storf: um I grew up in the neighborhood. My school was in a different neighborhood, quite far apart, maybe one hour away. So that gets me exposed to and a number of different situations.
Doug Storf: situations during my my my young, um from being with my grandma on evenings and going back to home, playing on the streets during weekends. So quite a fun youth.
Alejandro Cremades: That's amazing. Now, obviously, the problem solving has been with you, you know, very early on, whether it was with studying engineering or when it was about, for example, going into consulting. But problem solving has been a big one. So so tell us about how was, you know, for you to like, where did that problem solving, approach and mentality, where does that come from?
Doug Storf: Ah, gosh. I think it's always been there too. Let me share you with you a story, right? So it was at the end of the high school and I i took on a a summer job the summer.
Doug Storf: on this on this firm. And my job was basically there will there has been a software update, which at back in the day was a a big thing. we' We're talking 95, something like that. um And somehow on that company, all the zip codes got got messed up.
Doug Storf: So imagine you have like 4,000 addresses of your clients and you get all the the zip code messed and i started and And I was hired to basically look at a zip code database, update the the the the files, and that back and forth, back and forth.
Doug Storf: And then I noticed um basically what it did is it missed it missed the zeros on the left, right? Very basic software.
Doug Storf: So once I i realized that, i I fixed it using Excel and in two days I had my summer job done basically. So I started looking for other things to do and I noticed people were constantly going from their table should the manager stable to use ah an HP 12C calculator to calculate the the payments that some client needed to do.
Doug Storf: And I said, that that that's lame. why Why everybody has a computer in front of them with an Excel? Why would they have to go there? So I did a very simple template on on Excel and installed everyone's computer so that they could calculate PMT.
Doug Storf: And I was 15 probably at that time. So I think that the problem solving mentality has always been with me. And obviously during the during college when I was studying engineering, that got to a whole different level because as an engineer, you learn to...
Doug Storf: Once you face a very challenging problem, you simplify the problem as much as you can, right? So a car becomes a single dot and the whole road from here to Santos becomes a straight line. So you simplify the problem and try to solve that sliced, simplified problem with the tools that you have, and then you recombine them to perhaps get to the solution of a more complicated problem. And I kept applying this throughout my entire life.
Alejandro Cremades: How do you think, for example, consulting, whether it was at Kearney McKinsey, shaped up the way that you approached the problem solving? Because you had it from engineering, but now with consulting, you know, probably it shaped it up a little bit more.
Doug Storf: Yeah, so the the synthesis and analysis that I just mentioned, they are present both at engineering and at consulting. I think what the difference is and what I learned with consulting is to be hypothesis driven.
Doug Storf: um As an engineer, you tend to think more like a scientist testing alternatives. And as a consultant, you tend to work more on a hypothesis driven scenario. So you basically come up with the solution and you believe that solution is the right one. And you you try to prove they're wrong.
Doug Storf: Whereas with the engineer, you test different solutions and see which one is stick right.
Alejandro Cremades: Now, for you, you know you did your MBA at Michigan, and then from there, you know you did a little bit of a rodeo, whether it was working at Google or AWS. Obviously, different AWS now than what it is today. now But I guess that gave you you know some type of comfort to be able to understand what it would...
Alejandro Cremades: I guess, get more on the operating role with 9.9, which I think that that was quite pivotal for you, especially going through that acquisition with Didi. That was, in fact, the most immediate you know step that needed to happen for you to to be able to bring Swap to life. I'd love to hear, you know, what what what was what was the sequence of events that happened there and what you think you needed to really feel...
Alejandro Cremades: the safety or the or or the confidence to to be okay with with venturing into the unknown with your own business?
Doug Storf: I'm not sure I ever got to that point to be feel safe, but but let's let's let let's get there.
Doug Storf: so at nine nine i had an important shock in my career, actually, because i can mean as a head of corporate strategy, obviously coming from a consulting company, consulting firm like McKinsey, that should have been an easy transition into the operating world.
Doug Storf: But it was not because I arrived at 99 with the consultant mindset and suddenly it felt that all my tool set was not appropriate for the task because what was needed was actually an operator.
Doug Storf: Even though I was sitting in a strategic role, the company didn't need anyone doing PowerPoint. It needed someone to take on a real problem and solve it, right?
Doug Storf: which is different the tools that you have as a consultant and as an operator they're completely different the pace that you get to the solution are completely different so when i got there i spent my initial six months or so spinning my wheels i was like working a lot putting all my energy deploying all the tools that i had and I wasn't getting anything done and because I didn't know how to get things done.
Doug Storf: um And it was only after the acquisition from Didi that I actually left the strategic role and said, you know what, let me create something real.
Doug Storf: And that's when i I started working on the project of launching 99pay, a wallet for the ecosystem that I got into this operator role.
Doug Storf: That was the pivotal moment in my career when I started learning what being an operator and an entrepreneur in the sort felt like because I needed to prove my my my my thesis, I needed to sell it to the Chinese people, I needed to, with limited resources, try to get something out of paper.
Doug Storf: So that's a little bit of what happened there that gave me somehow confidence. But what made this shift was it was not really the priority for Didi at that time to launch the wallet. So I was kind of ah stumbling in my head ah against the wall there, not really getting the traction that I wanted. And at the same time, I was being exposed to the market and seeing that the pain points that I was having trying to launch that product at Didi was the same pain points that a lot of my peers were facing.
Doug Storf: So kind of it was clear to me that the demand was arising, the market was opening up and i wasn't finding the the right partners, I wasn't finding the right solution and neither were my peers.
Doug Storf: So the demand was arising, the offer was not there and the opportunity kind of seemed too big to let pass. It's when you see that huge opportunity and you jump into it not because you are super confident that you can make it but just it's too good to let it pass.
Alejandro Cremades: So then what happened next? What happened next, Doc? It sounds like swap was born and the rest was history, but but what happened?
Doug Storf: So we basically, that was October 2018 and eighteen um and It was a very good year. 2018 was the year when Diddy acquired 99, so that created a lot of momentum in the VC marketing in Brazil because it was a big exit. So everybody was excited.
Doug Storf: Me coming out at of 99, kind of gave me the credentials to talk to VCs and be a credible potential entrepreneur.
Doug Storf: So it was not hard to get the first check. In December 2018, we got the first check. um It was a pre-seed PowerPoint backed company.
Doug Storf: And One of those stories, you were we were pointing one direction and suddenly we found the gold pot in another direction, right? And ah I was at the right place at the right time. a friend of mine was also leaving McKinsey to create a company um and we were creating the two companies back basically at the same time.
Doug Storf: And I was able to offer him a solution that changed the market for employee benefits um in Brazil. Traditionally employee benefits in Brazil is done through closed loop solutions. So basically you create your own card scheme and you have your own network of acceptance.
Doug Storf: And obviously it's kind of expensive to at the same time convince all the restaurants to accept the new payment method and convince all the companies that all the restaurants around you already accept that.
Doug Storf: And because I was coming from NineNine, marketplace, I knew how hard simulating the two sides of the marketplace is, I offered them a solution using open loop cards, basically MasterCard Visa card scheme, that because that would solve one of the the pieces of the equation, right? The acceptance network was already there installed, and it was at the same time the largest entry barrier for this kind of industry in Brazil.
Doug Storf: So by providing them this, we created a new paradigm of how the the benefits are offered. And that's how Swap was actually created and started by offering the the solution for that market.
Alejandro Cremades: So in in that regard, so of the people listening get it, what ended up being the business model of swap? How do you guys make money?
Doug Storf: So we we have built the infrastructure that allows any company, it's a banking as a service, right? In Brazil, banking as a service is more than just the the distribution layer between fintech and a bank.
Doug Storf: In Brazil, the that the banking as a service industry evolved in a way where the the providers, they build the infrastructure itself. So we have the connections with the central bank, with the connections with the card schemes, the the ledger, all the all the infrastructure that is needed for someone to have a wallet, fully functional and transactional wallet, and also the licenses.
Doug Storf: So that's the the the product, below the the hood. And the business model is basically we get a take rate on the transacted volume.
Alejandro Cremades: Now, you were alluding to it earlier on you guys getting a check. You guys have raised $30 million. dollars What has been the journey, too, of going through the motions through raising the money as well?
Doug Storf: ah Easy and hard at some times. As I mentioned at the beginning, was really easy. was a good time in the market. the We had good traction in terms of story of the founders that made it easy. And we also had a potential large initial client.
Doug Storf: um Then it became really hard because the the market flipped. It was the beginning of the pandemic, pre-pandemic, when we were trying to raise a new series, actually the the seed, um and we couldn't. We didn't have the metrics. We didn't have the the product fully deployed.
Doug Storf: The money was... basically running out. And it was the beginning of the pandemic, so now nobody knew where the world was going. So it was really hard to raise money during this period.
Doug Storf: Then because of the pandemic again in 21, it became really easy once again to raise money. And you know how crazy the market was back in 2021. And now I think we are recovering we starting to see more and more deals happening ah but now there is a new challenge called ai right if you don't if you're not an ai company it may be hard for you to to raise capital again luckily we don't need that anymore profitable and generating cash so we don't need any new funding just for
Doug Storf: staying alive but obviously any startup at the growth stage has big aspirations to continue to grow and that that might require new funds.
Alejandro Cremades: I mean, I remember that you were talking about it in COVID. That was a pretty tough time where you had to literally fire everyone. You know, the company had to fire everyone.
Doug Storf: It’s a world where you provide financial services because you are close to a specific community or ecosystem, and you’re able to develop and deploy products that are truly tailored to it.
Doug Storf: These solutions are better and more efficient. They optimize how capital is allocated, how people receive their money, and how they use it—creating a virtuous circle of prosperity.
Alejandro Cremades: I love that. We’ve talked about the future, but now I want to talk about the past through a lens of reflection.
Alejandro Cremades: Let’s say I take you back in time, to when you were coming out of the Didi offices after they acquired 99 and you helped with the transition.
Alejandro Cremades: You’re walking out with excitement and uncertainty about what comes next. If you could stop that younger version of yourself and give him one piece of advice before launching a business, what would it be and why?
Doug Storf: The instincts are there, but sometimes we try to muffle them. We don’t listen to them actively. We look for reasons to believe they’re wrong.
Doug Storf: What I would tell my younger self is: believe your instincts.
Doug Storf: As human beings, we are exposed to far more data than we consciously process. Our internal algorithms pick up on very subtle signals that we can’t always articulate, but they’re there—and they’re valuable.
Alejandro Cremades: I love it. For the people listening who would like to reach out or learn more about Swap, what can you tell them?
Doug Storf: We have our website at swap.financial. My email is doug@swap.financial
Doug Storf: Please reach out. I’d be happy to help you build financial products in Brazil.
Alejandro Cremades: Amazing. Doug, thank you so much for taking the time. It’s been an honor to have you on the DealMaker Show today.
