Richie Serna, CEO and co-founder of Finix, discusses how his company raised $102 million to enable businesses to become fintech companies.
Richie Serna, CEO and co-founder of Finix, discusses how his company raised $102 million to enable businesses to become fintech companies. He shares insights from his journey of building Finix, which helps companies control payment processing and increase their share of processing fees.
So, rather than these companies outgrow in these type of develop developer friendly payment APIs and then having to build their own army of engineers, which is what Lift did, they can now come to Finix and we can provide them all the payment APIs and infrastructure to stand up their payment business. I basically dumped my LinkedIn from the folks that I knew and just reached out to people and said, "Hey, I'm starting my own company. Do you know people who in the industry, you know, who could help?" Alrighty, hello everyone and welcome to the Deal Maker Show. So, super excited about the guest that we have today. We're going to be talking about scaling, financing, I mean building, growing, I mean you name it. And I find that his story too of going from corporate to startups is super remarkable. I mean from humble beginnings to now really, you know, having been able to build something for
himself from the ground up. I think that we're going to enjoy very much this story. So, I guess without further ado, let's welcome our guest today, Richie Serna. Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. I'm really excited. So, originally you were born to immigrant parents, you know, parents that came from Mexico here to the US to look for a better future for themselves, for their family. I'm sure that that has been quite inspiring for you and and obviously not not very easy for them at the beginning when they had to move here to the country, you know. Yeah. I mean, my parents' story is absolutely foundational to to who I am, to my work ethic, to the way that I approach life. One of the things that I always start every single interview whenever I bring on a new candidate is I ask them, "What's your story and how did that shape you in your life?" And for me it was definitely my
parents coming to the states. So, my mom immigrated here in the '60s, my dad in the '70s and they met here in Santa Ana. And so, it's a part of Southern California in Orange County. Very different though from the the OC that you see on MTV and these other TV shows. Uh this is definitely the real OC is where I'm from. So, it's 80% Mexican immigrants. My I think I have something like 40-50 first cousins that still live there. Um but, you know, my parents were tirelessly, you know, hard-working um immigrants who came here to really provide a better upbringing for myself and for my brother. My dad's a bus driver uh for OCTA, the Orange County Transportation Association. Uh he actually just won uh employee of the month last month. So, across all the bus drivers in all of Orange County, he or employee of the year, excuse me. So, I think that's exactly where I get my work ethic and my hustle is
from him. That's amazing. And and your mother, you know, very early on she knew that she wanted to provide the absolute best future that that that they could really for you. And she fought hard to make sure that you had access to the best education. So, so what did she do? Yeah, I mean, my mom is a fighter if first and foremost. Uh she actually dropped out of of school at a young age so she could raise her five sisters. And I think that's just always who she's been. You know, she fights for the people that she loves uh and she fights to give people um a better chance. Uh a better chance than she had. And so, uh when I got into uh elementary school in the city that I come from in Santa Ana, they're some of the worst actually schools in the state. And so, most of them are actually taken over by the the the sort of federal government. Uh and so, to get into the better schools, which are
still not as good as the you know, some of the best schools in the state, uh she actually had to camp outside the school. This is an elementary school. She camped out there to make sure that I could get the best lottery possible. Uh then in high school, when our schools in Santa Ana um didn't have better opportunities, she went to Irvine, which was like the neighboring uh uh school district. And they are I think the second safest city in all of America. Uh it's probably I think it's like the best suburb to ever live in. And they have some of the best public education. She literally took my test scores to every single uh principal, walked in, and just said, "You know, will you take my school?" No after no after no until finally someone said yes. It's the same thing with pitching, right? You just got to get to that first yes and my mom had that same mentality. That's amazing. I mean,
obviously that that was a sick way for you know, really getting for the first time into an airplane that would land you into the campus of of Harvard. I mean, talking about like what an incredible transformation. I mean, I'm sure that, you know, when when when that was being the case, you know, probably your your parents, you know, had tears of joy. So, tell us about my mom didn't believe it. She didn't believe my mom didn't believe it. When I got into Harvard, I remember uh I I remember I went home and uh you know, they sent me an email. And so, usually they send you like these big packets and stuff like that. So, I was like, "Oh, if they send you an email, that's the rejection notification, right?" They don't even They're not even going to put that on paper. So, I opened up the email and it's like, "Congratulations, you got in." And I just sat there by myself like in a dark room,
completely quiet. I was like, "This can't be real." I really like five different times. Uh and then I called my mom and I was like, "Mom, you're not going to believe this." And she's like, "What?" And I was like, "I got into Harvard." And she goes, "Shut up. No, you didn't." And then so So, we all read it together and you know, absolutely tears of joy that that that came across uh my my grandma uh who doesn't speak much English and and and doesn't necessarily know didn't know at the time what Harvard was was. She's like, "Why don't you just go to Santa Ana Community College? It's right across the street." And I was like, "It's a little It's a little different, Grandma." Uh and so, I ended up flying out there and and um for you know, students who couldn't afford, they actually paid for you to fly out there so you could attend uh and see like the pre-frosh weekend. And I remember it was
like a scene out of a movie where like my hands were like this against the taxi window seeing the beautiful like brick stone architecture of Boston and just being completely in awe of you know, the architecture, the culture, everything that was there. And uh you know, it wasn't necessarily like the awesome welcoming experience when you go on the pre-frosh campus. You're like, "Oh, everybody there seems like they're working insanely hard and aren't that happy." And for me, it was like, "If I can make it here, I can make it anywhere." And so, I knew that that was going to be a place that pushed me to move across the country, to not have family out there. And it was honestly one of the best experiences of my life. And you know, it's very interesting because after Harvard, basically, I mean, you did you did a lot a couple of of internships. One that you did that was in you know, you did
investment banking, then you went into consulting. But it's very interesting because some of the best founders that I interview, they've either been investment bankers or they have been consultants. I mean, in this case, you have two very critical ones. You know, obviously, the other one is the VC or private equity guy turned into entrepreneur as well. So, those are the three ones that I see often, but you have two of those. So, I guess that mentality and that mindset, why do you think it makes such great entrepreneurs? Like either former consultants or former investment bankers. So, actually, I had a third internship, which is completely different from those two experiences. I worked for the mayor's office in in LA. This is before my investment banking summer. In the office of gang reduction and youth development. And so, that was something that was you know, definitely a passion for me
and something that really hit close to home given my upbringing. And during that summer internship, we were literally putting resources to the nine most dangerous parks in all of LA that had the most gang violence and putting on programming to reduce the amount of violence. And we didn't have a single murder, single shooting during that period, which was something that we took a lot of pride in. And it was the first year they'd ever done it. And it was the first type of program like that in the entire country. And they've now expanded it. So, definitely if had some you know, very unique and interesting sort of experiences. I think each one of them has been absolutely formative. I think you know, when you go into if you've ever seen the movie Training Day, Um, a scene where you know, they're flying pigeons when the cops come to the uh to the location. I we were working in that real
location. And so, I think, you…