He Raised Over $20 Million To Build An AI-Powered Smart Wallet Service That Optimizes Consumer Rewards And Benefits On Purchase
For Tikue Anazodo, founder and CEO of Kudos, his entrepreneurial journey began long before Silicon Valley—long before Google, Microsoft, Affirm, or Shopify. It started in Lagos, Nigeria, in an environment where entrepreneurship wasn’t a career choice. It was a necessity.
Unlike most founders, Tikue didn’t wake up one morning and decide to build a regulated fintech company that touches people’s money, credit, and daily spending habits.
That kind of ambition is usually forged over time through exposure, repetition, and a deep understanding of how real businesses operate at scale. Tikue appeared on the Dealmakers Podcast to discuss building, scaling, and raising funding for his company, Kudos.
Lagos, Columbia, Computer Science, and Learning to Build From Scratch
Tikue grew up in Lagos, attending boarding school and absorbing a reality that would later shape his thinking about business. He arrived in the US in 2009, where he studied computer science at Columbia University in New York City.
As Tikue reveals, he chose Columbia specifically because he was also writing a book that he later self-published. Tikue wanted to be in the publishing capital of the world in a school where he could also study computer science. This weird combination of aspirations led to Columbia.
The university exposed Tikue to innovation, ambition, and more. He had the opportunity to get into tech and started working with some of the world's most prominent companies. What made the transition harder and more formative was that Tikue had never written a line of code before college.
Many of his peers had been programming for years, so Tikue had to catch up fast. That gap fueled an obsession with building, learning, and surrounding himself with people who were creating things.
Columbia became a gateway not just into tech, but into Silicon Valley thinking—through programs, exposure to startups, and relationships with companies operating at massive scale.
Growing Up Entrepreneurial by Default
As Tikue explains, in Nigeria, formal employment isn’t the default path. The vast majority of people create their own income through small businesses, trade, and hustle. “Over 80% of people around me were entrepreneurs,” he recalls. “Not because it was trendy, but because that’s how you survived.”
That exposure embedded a problem-solving mindset early on. People didn’t wait for systems to work; they built around them. When Tikue first encountered computers and the internet, it unlocked a powerful idea: software could scale entrepreneurship beyond geography.
Most of the software Tikue used in Nigeria was built in the US. The realization that he could someday build tools and upload them to the Internet so they could be used by people he would never meet stayed with him. He could help solve problems for people in different parts of the world.
Learning Scale Inside the World’s Best Tech Companies
Before starting Kudos, Tikue deliberately chose to work at some of the most sophisticated tech companies in the world, including Microsoft, Google, YouTube, and Affirm. Part of the motivation was about preparing himself to become an entrepreneur and cover every angle.
As an immigrant, working at large companies simplified the process of obtaining a visa and a green card sponsorship. But the deeper reason was strategic. Tikue wanted to understand how category-defining companies actually operate.
At Microsoft, Tikue learned what it meant to deploy consumer products used by tens of millions of people. He also developed an understanding of what it meant to deploy software at scale.
At Google, where Tikue helped launch Google Pay’s online product, he saw what true scale requires. Because Google has billions of users, it doesn’t just build software and launch it. Several internal processes, legal scrutiny, risk mitigation, and discipline need to be navigated.
The experience sharpened Tikue’s understanding of products in general, as he began to consider the legal implications of actual customers using them. It was also a great way to get quick, scalable feedback when a new software release has 10 million users.
Data signals and instant feedback loops enable engineers to quickly refine the product. That environment sharpened Tikue's thinking about product, regulation, and user trust. “You don’t just ship at Google,” he says. “You earn the right to ship.”
Tikue values the exposure and interactions with highly intelligent professionals who would go on to build their own companies in Silicon Valley. He also learned about problems that, in his view, were worth solving.
Affirm added another layer: heavy financial regulation. Lending, compliance, legal review, and consumer protection weren’t theoretical; they were operational constraints that shaped every decision. Together, those experiences planted the seeds for Kudos.
The Insight: Wallets Were Built for Merchants, Not Consumers
Tikue and his future cofounder, Ahmad Ismail, had worked at the same companies for over 10 years. The duo was exploring different problems from various angles. Across Google Pay and Affirm, Tikue noticed a consistent pattern.
Most wallets and fintech products are optimized for merchants, driving conversions, increasing spend, and improving checkout performance. Very few products are truly optimized for the consumer.
“What if a wallet worked for you?” Tikue wondered. “What if it helped you earn and save more money without you having to think about it at all?” That question and the exposure to regulatory hurdles when building products of this nature became the foundation of Kudos.
Launching Kudos and Iterating Toward a Self-Driving Wallet
Tikue and Ahmad launched Kudos in 2021, raising early capital from Max Levchin (founder of PayPal and Affirm), QED Investors, and other backers. They shipped fast, launching an alpha product within two months.
The first version was a browser extension that helped users pick the best credit card at checkout. But that wasn’t the end vision. It was a wedge. From the start, the goal was to build what Tikue called a “self-driving wallet, ”a product that automatically handled money decisions on your behalf.
Iteration came quickly. Feedback shaped features. Usage patterns clarified what mattered. Over time, Kudos evolved into a platform designed around one core principle: “Don’t change how people spend. Just make every spend smarter.”
Three Revenue Engines, One Consumer-First Philosophy
Merchant Commissions (Kudos Boost) - When users shop at over 15,000 partner stores like eBay or Expedia, Kudos earns a commission and passes 100% of it back to the consumer as additional cash back. For example, products like Rakuten or Honey at PayPal.
Financial Product Recommendations: Kudos analyzes spending behavior and recommends credit cards that actually fit how users spend. Not generic offers, but contextual insights like, “You spent $7,000 on dining last year or $5,000 on rent last month. This card would have earned you $300 more.” As Tikue explains, many Kudos customers have high credit scores with high spending and are looking for products that work for them.
Premium Subscriptions With Agentic Features: The newest and fastest-growing revenue stream. Kudos now offers “do-it-for-me” agentic features.
Kudos’ Agentic Features and How They Work
Tikue describes the recently-launched agentic feature in detail. Credit card users typically have offers and favorite shopping destinations, such as Amazon. However, they must go in and manually activate the offers, which are available in thousands each week.
Kudos automatically activates the card-linked offers that users forget to turn on and reminds them to avail themselves. As a result, users can save an average of about $750 a year from those types of offers. The next step is an agentic feature that helps users negotiate their bills.
Kudos deploys a voice agent to help. For instance, say, an Xfinity bill is very high. Instead of calling the company and spending hours on the phone, Kudos deploys an agent to make the call for the user and negotiate a lower bill, saving them about $250 per year.
The third revenue stream comes from people paying for agentic features that proactively unlock savings without effort. Early data shows users saving hundreds of dollars per year — without changing behavior.
The Inflection Point: When Growth Finally Clicked
Like most consumer founders, Tikue learned the hard way that launches don’t equal traction. For nearly two years, Kudos grew steadily but quietly until one feature changed everything. Kudos Boost rapidly grew its user base from 5,000 to 100,000.
Giving consumers 100% of the value unlocked a simple truth: people want easy, effortless ways to earn and save money. Later, premium features like card-linked offers reinforced that insight. The more Kudos removed friction, the more users leaned in.
The most explosive feature was that it was about the money that people typically don't get to take advantage of. Kudos does not change how they currently spend or their spending behavior. It simply ensures that every time users spend money, they get money back.
Fundraising in a Market That Kept Moving the Goalposts
Kudos has raised roughly $20M across multiple rounds, but not in a straight line. Expectations changed year by year, fintech fell out of favor in 2021, and consumers became harder to fund. Instead of chasing hype, Tikue focused on fundamentals.
QED Investors steadily increased their conviction, eventually leading the Series A. Bridges came from insiders who believed in the business. As Tikue explains, they raised capital incrementally each year. In the first year, they raised $4M; in the second year, $3M; in the third year, $10M; and in the fourth year, $3M.
Storytelling is everything that Tikue Anazodo 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 (<a href=" target="blank" rel="noopener">see it here</a>), where the most critical slides are highlighted.
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As Tikue recalls, when Kudos had that big inflection point two years ago and was about to go to market, QED was already an existing investor. He doesn’t believe in the concept of perpetually being on the runway. At some point, the business has to take off and have a path to cash flow positivity.
At that time, the company can dictate the terms on which it raises funding. Kudos is on the path to that place now. In the initial few years, Tikue and Ahmad focused on building a great product and working out how to grow it. But over the last couple of years, they have built a workable monetization engine.
The duo is focused on scaling forward so that, when Kudos is ready for future funding rounds, it has much more leverage. At that point, Kudos won’t necessarily need capital, but the capital is fuel that actually accelerates something that works really well.
The Long-Term Vision: A Truly Proactive Wallet
Tikue’s vision is simple, but ambitious. You open your wallet app, and it tells you it negotiated your internet bill down by $200, activated offers you forgot existed, or secured better cash back based on your habits.
Kudos agents can also negotiate better prices on products users have purchased and earn cash back. No prompts, no effort, and no optimization required. Just money quietly working in their favor. Tikue foresees a time when wallets will be more proactive rather than reactive.
Lessons for Founders: Monetize Earlier Than You Think
If Tikue could go back, he’d do one thing differently: charge and start monetizing earlier in the product lifecycle, so they were building the highest-value things for their users. Waiting to monetize until they figured out scale brought in users who didn’t truly value the product.
Charging forces clarity and optimization. It sharpens prioritization and reveals who actually cares. “The fastest way to learn what people love,” Tikue says, “is to ask them to pay.”
That’s when you can optimize to build a product people actually want to use. Next, you can layer on the other features and business models. With Kudos, they did it in reverse.
Building Networks as an Immigrant Founder
Retracing his entrepreneurial journey, Tikue talks about the value of building strategic networks. Being immigrants in a new country, he and his cofounder, Ahmad, had their share of challenges. Quitting their jobs and venturing into startup-building wasn’t an easy decision.
Kudos’ fundraising success wasn’t built overnight. It came from years of saying yes, doing good work, creating value, and not burning bridges. Networking and building relationships helped, and many of his early investors were former managers and executives.
Trust compounds when people see you execute consistently over time. Attending Columbia and meeting the right people also contributed significantly. Being in the right place was also an asset, and Tikue credits living in San Francisco for nine years with successfully building Kudos.
He leveraged the symbiosis of being around entrepreneurs and investors. Creating long-term connections with colleagues is also crucial, as is giving 100% to the job you’re doing. Introductions to the venture capital ecosystem from former bosses helped.
Navigating Regulation Without Losing Speed
Tikue navigated uncertainty on two major fronts when building Kudos — firstly, they were building a hyper-growth company. The second layer of complexity came from operating in a highly regulated segment. Balancing both aspects and pushing forward, regardless, was challenging.
Operating in fintech means constant trade-offs. Compliance shapes marketing, messaging, and product design. Kudos learned to stay nimble without crossing legal boundaries, whether that meant adjusting TikTok content or building automated education flows outside public channels.
Tikue cites regulations that restrict card issuers from mentioning card names or showing card art in their videos. Their first viral videos on social media platforms mentioned specific credit cards and the benefits users could get with them.
When Kudos started working with these card issuers, it also came under compliance restrictions. Tikue and his team had to pivot how they referred to credit cards. For instance, they used the term “big blue bank” to refer to Chase cards on TikTok and Instagram.
Tikue had to build workarounds, such as an automated flow, to engage users interested in learning more about specific products. The automation sends users the details they need directly into their inboxes — details which cannot be revealed in the videos.
Experience inside regulated giants like Google Pay helped Tikue understand where flexibility exists and where it doesn’t. As he explains, every time they build a fintech product, they must consider the Unfair or Deceptive Acts or Practices (UDAP) provisions of the Federal Trade Commission Act.
Under UDAP, Kudos must be cautious not to make deceptive claims. Fintech products can actually make very extreme claims, like guaranteeing that the user will save $500. Tikue and his team are careful to work within a framework and closely with their legal counsel when launching products.
Tikue understands the implications of building on the wrong side of the law and of regulation, and has gone deeper into compliance issues.
Final Thought
Kudos isn’t just another fintech product. It’s the result of years spent studying how real companies scale, how regulation works in practice, and how consumers actually behave. For Tikue Anazodo, the mission is clear: Build a wallet that works harder than its user—and does it quietly.
Growing up in Lagos, where entrepreneurship is survival wired, Tikue to solve problems by building, not waiting for systems to work. · Starting computer science at Columbia without prior coding experience forced a steep ramp that became his unfair advantage in learning speed and a builder mindset. · Microsoft and Google taught him what “real scale” requires: process, legal rigor, risk management, and fast iteration driven by massive data signals. · Google Pay and Affirm revealed the core insight behind Kudos: most wallets optimize for merchants, while consumers need a wallet that optimizes for them. · Kudos used a smart wedge (best-card-at-checkout extension) to iterate toward the bigger vision of a “self-driving,” proactive wallet. · The product promise is frictionless value: don’t change how people spend, just make every purchase return more money via rewards, offers, and agentic actions. · Tikue’s fundraising and growth lesson is leverage: build monetization earlier, earn trust through strong execution, and raise capital to accelerate, not as oxygen.
Original Version
Alejandro Cremades: Already, hello, everyone, and welcome to the DealMaker Show. So today, I'm actually very excited about the founder that we have joining us. You know, he is a founder that has been around the block when it comes to really understanding how really successful companies operate on some of those trades.
Alejandro Cremades: And now he's doing it, you know, on his own. You know, he's now with this startup that he's launched. and We're going to be talking about the building, the scaling, the financing, you name it. And so again, brace yourself for a very, very inspiring conversation. And without further ado, let's welcome our guest today, Tikwe Anasodo. Welcome to the show.
Alejandro Cremades: So originally from Nigeria, Tikwe. So give us a walk through memory e lane. How is life growing up for you?
Tikue Anazodo: Life was great. Like I grew up in and Lagos, Nigeria, went to a boarding school, and an American boarding school growing up, and then ended up in the US in 2009 where I came out to study computer science at Columbia.
Alejandro Cremades: That's amazing. how how How do you land in Columbia? I mean, this is this New York City is quite a bit far from Lagos. So so what was that thought process there?
Tikue Anazodo: Yeah, I mean, it was it was quite interesting because I picked Columbia specifically because at the time I was also writing a book that I had ended up self-publishing and I wanted to be in the publishing capital of the world in a school where I could also study computer science. So it was like a weird combination of things I was looking for and Columbia was the best school for that.
Alejandro Cremades: So how was it to like being exposed to the innovation, the ambition, all of that? Because as a result really of Columbia, you know, you really have the opportunity to to get into tech, you know, as well and and and and starting to work with some of really known companies globally.
Tikue Anazodo: Yeah, I think, I mean, it's a really great opportunity for me because again coming from Nigeria and coming to Columbia University, ah I think I got exposed to a lot of smart people who, for context, I had never written a line of code before I went to college. And it turns out that a lot of people who were studying computer science in my year had been writing code for for a lot of years. So I got really deep into just being excited about building things and working with a lot of people who were building things. and um
Tikue Anazodo: Columbia was also a good segue into Silicon Valley because there are a lot of Silicon Valley type companies that always used to interact with us like in the application development initiative that I was in Columbia University.
Tikue Anazodo: um But yeah, it was a great segue into really being able to see and understand what I could do with technology.
Alejandro Cremades: And now in terms of technology and problem solving, because you study computer science, I'm wondering like where does the spirit of problem solving come from for you?
Tikue Anazodo: I think there's just a, like growing up in Nigeria where like a lot of, I'll tell you over 80% of people in Nigeria are actually entrepreneurial because it's not a, like in the US, many people have jobs.
Tikue Anazodo: In Nigeria, most people actually just start some sort of form of company. That's how most are able to make incomes. And so that was naturally embedded in my life growing up that everybody around me actually was not employed at a company, but started a company.
Tikue Anazodo: And the technology aspect of it was really cool because i think the first time I started interacting with computers at the Internet, just realizing that you could build something that is not localized, that you can build something, put it on the Internet, and a lot of people could use it, and it can actually solve problems from people like in different parts of the world. Most of the software I was using in Nigeria was built by people in the US, and I thought that Just understanding the fact that I could actually build software that was used by people that were not around me was a new concept when I was growing up and it was something that I wanted to lean more into. So again, when I went to go study computer science, I didn't really know what it meant to write code, but I knew that it was a very scaled way for me to conceptualize the the entrepreneurship that I wanted to do.
Alejandro Cremades: Now, before you start with Kudos, um it's unbelievable like the caliber of companies that you've worked at. I mean, we're talking about Microsoft, Google, YouTube, Affirm, Shopify. I mean, it's like the who is who in terms of companies. I mean, what were you trying to do? Like really preparing yourself to be become an entrepreneur and cover every single angle? or Or what was really the thinking you know before? Because I mean, it took it took some time. It took some experience for you to be okay with being with the unknown. So...
Alejandro Cremades: what What was that journey? You know, like why, you know, that sequence of events? What did it take so long for you to to get going as a founder?
Tikue Anazodo: Yeah, I think there is there is there's one there's a simple component and then there there there are all the things that I learned. So first of all, I was an immigrant, so it's a lot more straightforward to actually go work for a big company that will sponsor your green card.
Alejandro Cremades: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I know the feeling. I know the feeling.
Tikue Anazodo: So that piece, I did actually work for a bunch of big companies that made my immigration process simpler. But beyond that, I think I just got to learn. I wanted to learn about different types of things at scale and like joining Microsoft and building like TV, like IPTV products at scale that were used by tens of millions of people and actually understanding what it meant to deploy software at that kind of scale. Going to Google, where I helped launch Google Pay's online product and actually just seeing the combination of... Because when you're at a big company, you're not just...
Tikue Anazodo: that you have to earn the right to deploy to scale because Google has billions of users and you don't just build software and launch it. There's so many internal processes that you have to navigate. There are all these things you have to start to think about, like what are the legal implications if a person does X and Y happens? And I think that helped me sharpen the way I thought about product in general.
Tikue Anazodo: It also was a very great way to get quick feedback at scale because when you push something and like 10 million people are using it instantly, you get data signals that help you refine how you think about making products better.
Tikue Anazodo: So I think also Google, I would say, was the place that I worked at that had the most world-class product people that I've ever interacted with. And many of those Google product people i end up like going to go start companies all over the Silicon Valley area. But I think just being able to be around some people, there but a lot of people that were very intelligent, being able to have the ability to deploy products at a certain scale, and also starting to learn about problems that I thought were interesting to solve. Because a lot of what we ended up building with Kudos was inspiration from working at Google Pay and Affirm.
Tikue Anazodo: And my co-founder has actually worked at all the same companies as me for the last 10 years. So we were looking at different problems from different angles. From my end, just working at Google Pay at a firm, I learned that building a wallet that actually works for the consumer is something that most of the large wallets were not really addressing. They were largely building wallets that were helping merchants drive conversions. And I consistently wanted to get to a place where I could build a wallet that really solved problems, like help consumers earn and save more money without them having to do any work.
Tikue Anazodo: There are basic things we think about every time we build a product. UDAP is one of the biggest things in fintech—being careful not to be deceptive in the claims you make.
Tikue Anazodo: Fintech products can make extreme claims like “we guarantee you will save $500,” but we try not to. We work within a framework we understand, and we work closely with legal counsel on launches that could be outside the boundaries.
Tikue Anazodo: At the same time, as a startup, we have to be more flexible than Affirm or Google can be. Over the years, we’ve had to figure out how to navigate that boundary.
Tikue Anazodo: Here’s a concrete example. A lot of our growth comes from investing heavily in content on TikTok and Instagram, but we work with card issuers that are heavily regulated.
Tikue Anazodo: Those issuers restrict us from mentioning card names or showing card art in the videos we make.
Tikue Anazodo: When we started TikTok, the most viral videos were us talking about specific credit cards—like, “Look at the Amex Platinum and all the benefits.” But once we came under issuer compliance restrictions, we had to pivot how we talked about credit cards.
Tikue Anazodo: For instance, we’re allowed to say “the big blue bank,” but not “Chase,” when we’re talking about Chase cards on Instagram. It’s tough, but it still gets similar engagement.
Tikue Anazodo: We also had to build an automation flow where people interested in learning more reply to our Instagram posts, and then automation sends them the details directly to their inbox. Those details can’t be said directly in the videos.
Tikue Anazodo: I knew the implications of operating on the wrong side of the law or regulation. As we’ve gotten deeper into compliance restrictions, we’ve had to stay nimble as a startup while also staying within all the compliance required in our industry.
Alejandro Cremades: Amazing. Tikue, this is absolutely amazing. For people listening who would love to reach out, say hi, or learn more about Kudos, what would you tell them?
Tikue Anazodo: You can shoot me an email: tquitjoinkudos. And yeah—especially if you have any questions about the product, you can shoot me an email directly.
Alejandro Cremades: Amazing. Well, Tikue, it has been an absolute honor to have you with us on the DealMaker Show today. Thank you so much.
