Eugene Danilkis, co-founder and CEO of Mambu, built a SaaS platform that powers banking services. Mambu has achieved a $2B valuation by bringing.
Eugene Danilkis, co-founder and CEO of Mambu, built a SaaS platform that powers banking services. Mambu has achieved a $2B valuation by bringing the business models and technology benefits of SaaS to financial services.
whole generation of how people experience financial products financial services is going to be drastically different over the next couple decades it's going to be obviously much more digital it's going to be much more personalized i don't think our vision is ever completely realized because we want to be fundamentally enabling our customers to create better banking products and services and that will always change alrighty hello everyone and welcome to the deal maker show so super excited about the a guest that we have today obviously i guess that uh has been there has done it you know has been everywhere around the world i mean it's really remarkable his journey uh and i think that the story that he has to share with us today is gonna be super inspiring uh for me for you you know that you're watching listening uh and i can't wait you know and i don't want to make you guys wait any
longer so without further ado let's welcome our eugene daniel keys welcome to the show thanks very much for having me it's pleasure to be here so originally born in ukraine but obviously you know time in ukraine for you and for the family didn't last long so tell us how was life growing up yeah so i was born in ukraine it was still part of the soviet union uh my parents decided to leave when i was just about seven years old it was a bit weird we were learning english i had no idea why we were starting to learn english because i was still learn to speak basic russian and then we decided right we're leaving took a train out and i lived in italy for six months before then flying over to canada and uh i ended up yeah moving to canada and then i understood why i was learning english because now i'm surrounded by a bunch of kids and uh trying to keep up with them and in terms of picking up a
new language and everything and um grew up then and spent most of pretty much my my early days and until i uh growing up in vancouver so then let's talk about vancouver i mean how was that because you went there at what age you were like about seven years old or or yeah i was seven years old when i moved there yeah was it like a big culture shock for you and for the family i think the yeah the language and the culture was quite difficult right i mean life is always kind of difficult as a kid of course but i think especially when you're just trying to pick up a language you have this really strong accent you don't understand what all the other kids are saying what the teachers are saying so i think that made everything kind of a little bit more challenging of course but also kind of really motivated me to learn really quickly obviously try to pick up a language as much as i could really
highly motivated um but also i think made me kind of more yeah motivated to learn i would say right because i kind of self-motivated because i i saw the benefit of learning things and learning things quickly just to kind of fit in and be able to to survive really would you say that for you seeing your parents as well going through the change and and building a new life you know there in in canada perhaps inspired you you know in in the direction of perhaps you know being an entrepreneur and and being okay with with dealing with uncertainty i mean was that something that perhaps shaped you know that entrepreneurial bug a little bit for you i think so i think it made me more willing to to take some to take some risks and know that you know i know the the big risks that my parents took and in moving over and how challenging it was for them and you know even as an entrepreneur we talked
about you know taking risks as an entrepreneur but even then i know that the risks i was taking were really nothing and the downside in the worst case of me failing as an entrepreneur were still going to be trivial compared to the risks that my parents were taking so i think that always gave me a bit of a different perspective on risks because i know what i knew what really difficult was like and i knew that actually pretty much given almost the luxury that i had of growing up in canada that my worst case was not going to be anywhere as challenging as my parents situation so i think that gave me a lot of perspective on that and why do you think that a lot of people that are originally from ukraine or or i mean that technical side i mean that engineering mindset i mean what why why is that the case um it's a big part of the it's a big part of the education there it's just a really big
focus on that there's a huge discipline i mean my dad was continuously proud of you know his engineering background his uh strength and math he was always really uh pushing me and encouraging me to to be really strong in those disciplines because they're always really considered really important disciplines for everyone who's growing up i think in the soviet union and so i think that just gets passed along and so it kind of falls out all these you know engineering computer science mathematics that sort of elements were really important and i think you know when when you grow up in that then you sort of pass it on to your kids and it becomes kind of important and part of the education and you ended up sort of thriving in that i always was really good at in math i was always i was good at computer science and i think that's just because i don't think i was particularly smarter i think just
because my parents were really encouraging me and supporting me and that and helping me kind of go above beyond and that gave me like also a level of confidence because i could just see like i'm really good at this but i was good at it because i had support of others who saw the importance in that got it and in your case i mean that definitely got you into computer science you went to to to college there in in canada and essentially all of a sudden you see yourself writing software that is going to be used in space so how cool is that yeah that was uh that was really cool i uh so i was obviously a big science fiction fan reading lot of isaac asimov watching star trek that kind of stuff as most people who do computer science are and then i finished my studies and i applied for a couple jobs one was like some database job at a supermarket chain which i didn't get and the other one was
working for a company that does software development for satellites and for nasa through the canadian space agency and that was the job i did get so really happy that the other one rejected me because otherwise there's a different alternative universe where i'm working in a supermarket focusing on databases so thankfully didn't get that job yeah and and why why did you decide to go and do your masters i mean what was that trigger for you yeah so i mean i was i think it was a matter of passion i was so passionate about actually my first job and my first project the one that i got to work on on software that was up in space and when i went into kind of maintenance i just didn't see anything any other projects that kind of excited me as much as that so i was almost kind of spoiled with that and so i kind of wanted to re light that spark in a sense so so i kind of thought that maybe a little
bit of a fresh start of doing a masters would be an opportunity to do so but i think there was a second part which was the fact that i want to do the masters in the us in carnegie mellon and pittsburgh and i think i also wanted to really kind of it was a bit of that sort of entrepreneurial journey of kind of venturing out on my own in a sense of like i grew up in vancouver i went to school there you know my parents were always nearby and you know moving to the us was this really big thing for me because i'm like i'm really going to be on my own i'm going to start kind of from scratching away kind of build up a new social circle see where my career takes me from there so i think it was a little bit of that kind of entrepreneurial i want to try to build something uh sort of from scratch for myself combined with hopefully finding something that i was really passionate about as well i mean
obviously that was the beginning of a lot of moving because you know after that it was portugal then it was a germany amsterdam so so you name it so i guess same obviously the masters was uh what catapulted you to to end up to being in in portugal doing certain projects and eventually this is what got you into incubating the idea of of your baby of you of your company you know so so what was that process like uh and and what were you doing first and foremost in portugal and then how did the idea of really bringing you know this company to life how did that come about yeah so the the way that it worked over there was so i started the masters in carnegie mellon in pittsburgh and there was an opportunity to go spend a part of the program in portugal because they were effectively taking the curriculum and copying it over to portugal so again you know the excitement of going somewhere new
exploring a new…