Tikue Anazodo discusses how past jobs and immigrant lessons fueled the success of Kudos, an AI-powered smart wallet service.
Tikue Anazodo discusses how past jobs and immigrant lessons fueled the success of Kudos, an AI-powered smart wallet service. He also delves into the fundraising secrets of creating value for investors and scaling the business through a monetization engine.
I would say at least in the early phases, [music] you want to one say a lot of yes because sometimes a lot of yes puts you in the right mood. [music] All righty. Hello everyone and welcome to the deal maker show. So today I'm 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 traits and now he's doing it, you know, on his own, you know, he's now with this startup that he's launched. 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, Tiquay Anna Sodto. Welcome to the show. >> Thanks for having me. So, originally from Nigeria, Tiguay. So, give us a walk
through memory lane. How was life growing up for you? >> Uh, life was great. Like, I I grew up in in Lagos, Nigeria. Went to a boarding school uh an American boarding school growing up and then ended up in the US in 2009 where I came out to study computer science at Colombia. >> That's amazing. How how how do you land in Colombia? I mean, this is this New York City is quite a bit far from Lagos. So, so what was that thought process there? Yeah, I mean it was it was quite interesting because I picked Colombia specifically because at the time I was also writing a book that I 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 Colombia was the best school for that. So how was it too like being exposed to the innovation, the
ambition, the all of that? Because as a result really of Colombia, you know, you really have the opportunity to to get into uh tech, you know, as well and and and and starting to work with some of really uh known uh companies globally. Yeah, I think I mean it's a really great opportunity for me because again coming from Nigeria and coming to Columbia University uh 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 uh turns out that a lot of people who were studying computer science in 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 um and working with a lot of people who were building things. And um Colombia 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 uh in the application development initiative that I was on at Columbia University. Um, but yeah, it was a great segue into really being able to see and understand what I could do with technology. And now in terms of technology and problem solving, you know, because you study computer science, I'm wondering like where does the spirit of problem solving come from for you? Um I I think there's just a like coming growing up in Nigeria where like a lot of I'll say over 80% of people in Nigeria are actually entrepreneurial because it's not a like in the US you many people have jobs in Nigeria most people actually just start some sort form of company that's how most people 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 um And the technology aspect of it was really
cool because I I think the first time I started interacting with computers and the internet just realizing that you could build something that is not localized. You can build something put it on the internet and a lot of people can 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. Now before you started 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 become an entrepreneur and cover every single angle or or or what was really the thinking you know before because I mean it it took some time it took some experience for you to be okay with being with the unknown. So what what was that journey you know like why you know that sequence of events why did it take so long for you to to get going as a founder? >> Yeah I think there is there is there is 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 im immigrant so it's a lot more straightforward to actually go work for a big company that will sponsor your green card. >> Oh
yeah. Oh yeah. I know the feeling. I know the feeling. So, so that piece I did actually work for a bunch of big companies that made my immigration process simpler. Um, but beyond that, I think I just got to learn I wanted to learn about different types of things at scale. Um, and like joining Microsoft and building like TV like IP TV 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 pays online product and actually just seeing the combination of because when you're at a big company you're not just that you 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. Um, and I think that helped me sharpen the way I thought about product in general. Um, 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. 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 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 that 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 a firm 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. Um from my end um just working at Google pay 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 helped consumers earn and save more money without them having to do any work. So yeah, I think that that journey was important to understand how to deploy products at scale. Um how to iterate like learn from feedback and iterate and also just in
general it was part of the inspiration for how we got to thinking about kudos specifically and the problem we're solving. So let's talk about Kudos then because I mean obviously you did a little bit of as you were saying you know whether it was a firm or you had that exposure to the regulatory hurdles too that it's involved when you're building products of this nature. Uh but what were the immediate steps that needed to happen for you to bring Kudos to life? >> Uh yeah so we we we started Kudos in 2021. We were fortunate in that when we were we were leaving a firm, we actually got funding from like Max Levchin who was a founder of a firm and PayPal and we got funding from QED and a few other like Patreon and a few other firms right out of the gate. Um, and we started building the goal was we we launched Kudos within two like like launched an alpha version of Kudos within two months
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