Xendit Fundraising & Growth Strategy for Founders

The Myth of the "Billion-Dollar Idea"

A professor once told Xendit co-founder Moses Lo not to bother him unless his idea was worth at least a billion dollars. This is classic Silicon Valley advice, and it’s also mostly wrong. It fixates on the destination, not the starting line.

The real story of Xendit—now a payments unicorn with over $530M raised and a $15B annual payment volume—isn’t about a single big idea. It’s a story of getting the first-principles right: finding the right partner, listening to the right signals, and fighting for the first dollars of funding. Founders Moses Lo and Tessa Wijaya’s journey provides a tactical playbook for any founder facing the earliest, most critical hurdles.

Finding Your Co-Founder: Beyond "Instant Chemistry"

The official story is that Moses and Tessa met at a coffee shop and had "instant chemistry." This is true, but it’s an incomplete picture. Chemistry is a starting point, not a complete strategy. A durable co-founder relationship is built on a foundation of mutual respect, complementary skills, and clearly defined roles.

The Co-Founder Compatibility Checklist

Complementary Skillsets: Moses came from consulting and had worked at Amazon—he was skilled at breaking down big problems and had learned SEO and sales via his own side hustles. Tessa came from private equity in Indonesia, where she evaluated companies and founders for a living. She brought deep local market knowledge and an investor’s critical eye. He had the "big vision" mindset; she had the "will this actually work here" grounding. Your founding team needs both. · Shared Vision, Different Perspectives: Both wanted to build something impactful in Southeast Asia. But their different backgrounds meant they approached problems from different angles. This is a feature, not a bug. If you and your co-founder always agree, one of you is redundant. The goal isn’t harmony; it’s productive tension that leads to better decisions. · A Framework for Disagreement: Before you agree on equity, agree on how you’ll disagree. How will you settle ties? Who is the ultimate owner of a specific domain (e.g., product vs. sales)? For Moses and Tessa, this was tested when they decided to pivot; they didn’t just argue about it—they created a system to test their competing ideas.

Common Mistake: The Friendship Trap

Founding a company with a friend seems ideal, but friendship doesn't guarantee a good working relationship. Friends often avoid the hard conversations about equity, roles, and underperformance. A business partnership requires radical candor that can strain personal bonds. Tessa’s experience in private equity taught her that the quality of the founders was the single most important factor for success—a lesson she applied to her own co-founder search.

The Search for Product-Market Fit

Xendit didn't start as a payment infrastructure company. They got into Y Combinator with a Bitcoin remittance idea. Once inside, they faced a hard truth: it wasn’t working. The traction wasn't there. This is the first major test for any startup: do you stubbornly push forward, or do you have the humility to pivot?

"Listen to What Customers Don't Say"

Tessa wisely points out that customer feedback, especially in some cultures, is often indirect. You have to learn to interpret the signals.

"Listening to what customers want is sometimes not what they say, but the questions they ask or the questions they don’t ask."

This is critical. Politeness is a product killer. A customer saying "That seems like a neat idea" is giving you zero signal. A customer asking "When can I try it? How much does it cost? Can it do X?" is giving you a buying signal. You must be ruthless in distinguishing between the two.

How to Run a Better Customer Discovery Interview

Don’t pitch, diagnose: Your goal isn’t to sell them on your idea. It’s to understand their problem so deeply that the solution becomes obvious. · Ask about past behavior, not future promises: Instead of "Would you use an app that did X?", ask "How did you solve this problem the last time it happened? Walk me through it." · Listen for frustration, not features: What workarounds are they using? Are they using a spreadsheet for something that feels like it should be automated? That frustration is where your opportunity lies.

The Co-Founder A/B Test: A Masterclass in Pivoting

Once Xendit knew they had to pivot, they faced a new problem: pivot to what? Instead of endless debate, they ran an experiment. Moses took one idea (the payment API concept) and Tessa took another (a wallet concept). They split up and went to market to test both hypotheses in parallel.

This is a brilliant, non-obvious strategy. It de-risks the pivot by turning it into a data-driven decision. Within a short period, it became clear that Moses’s API concept had far more pull from the market. That’s the idea that became Xendit. Instead of a contentious debate, they had clear evidence. This approach maintains alignment because both co-founders agree on the testing methodology beforehand, making it easier to commit to the winning result.

Raising Your Seed Round When You're "Too Different"

Despite their YC pedigree, raising Xendit’s seed round was brutal. US-based investors didn’t understand the Indonesian market. "They had to begin with teaching investors where Indonesia was," the original story notes. This is a challenge any founder in a non-obvious market faces.

If you’re in this position, you have two jobs: sell the market, then sell your company.

Phase 1: Sell the Market (The "Education" Deck)

Your first few slides can’t be about your product. They must be about the macro opportunity. Assume your investor knows nothing.

The Core Insight: What is the massive, non-obvious trend you see? (e.g., "Digital payments in Southeast Asia are fragmented and broken, but smartphone adoption is exploding.") · The Market Size, Simplified: Don’t just use a generic Gartner number. Build your own TAM. (e.g., "There are 60 million SMEs in Indonesia. Our beachhead market is the 1 million who are trying to sell online. If we charge them $100/month, that’s a $1.2B immediate opportunity.") · Why Now?: What has changed to make this opportunity possible today? (e.g., "Regulatory changes, new mobile infrastructure, and a post-COVID shift to digital.")

Phase 2: Sell Your Company (The Execution Deck)

Your Team as the Unfair Advantage: This is where the co-founder story becomes critical. For Xendit, having Tessa—with her deep Indonesian PE background—was the ultimate proof point. They had an unfair advantage in understanding and executing in that market. · Early Traction as Proof: Moses mentions a YC goal of 30% month-over-month growth (or ~7% weekly). This is the kind of metric that proves you’re not just a story; you’re a machine that can turn capital into growth. Xendit has maintained ~10% MoM growth even at scale, showing how powerful this early DNA is. · The Ask & Use of Funds: Be specific. A $2M seed round on a $10M post-money valuation (20% dilution) to hire 5 engineers, 2 salespeople, and acquire the first 1,000 customers over 18 months. This shows you have a plan.

How to Apply This This Week

Stress-Test Your Co-Founder Relationship: Schedule a 2-hour meeting. On paper, independently write down your role, your co-founder's role, your top 3 priorities for the next quarter, and your biggest fear for the business. Compare notes. Are you aligned? · Kill a Zombie Feature: Identify a part of your product that customers say is "nice" but that nobody uses. Spend the week talking to those users and asking what they did before your feature existed. The answer will reveal their real problem. · Rewrite Your Market Slide: Pretend you’re pitching an investor from another planet. Can you explain your market’s potential in 3 simple bullet points, using numbers you can defend, without any jargon?