SMB Tech Innovators, powered by Gusto · 2025-03-11 · 30 min
Key moments - from our scoring
Substance score
60 / 100
Five dimensions, 20 points each
Relay Banking takes a fundamentally different approach to serving small businesses by centering the bank account as the primary tool for cash flow visibility, rather than treating banking as a commodity feature. Yoseph West explains how Relay's core insight - that small business owners check two things in the morning: Instagram and their bank balance - led to designing a 'smart bank account' deeply integrated with small business workflows. The platform offers flexible checking and savings accounts, spend controls, authorization rules for check fraud prevention, receipt capture, and employee card issuance, all designed to work with how SMBs actually operate rather than how traditional banks assume they should. West discusses Relay's focus on businesses generating $500K to $2.5M annually (with expansion potential to $3-5M), positioning Capital One as their primary competitive reference rather than other fintechs. Key to their approach is reliance on infrastructure partners like Unit for banking-as-a-service, combined with deep customer relationships and a commitment to serving 'heart of America' small businesses in trades, real estate, professional services, and retail that require checkbooks, cash deposits, and tool integrations traditional banks won't support. The conversation emphasizes that profitability at this segment requires understanding authentic customer pain - like Wells Fargo's $10K mobile deposit limits - and solving foundational problems before building sophisticated analytics.
Relay lets businesses set up multiple checking accounts to organize money by category (income, payroll, taxes, inventory), plus spend controls, card limits, check authorization rules to prevent fraud, receipt capture linked to accounting, and employee card issuance - all designed to prevent accidental overspending of allocated funds.
Relay focuses on small businesses generating $500K to $2.5M annually in trades, real estate, professional services, and retail that need checkbooks, cash deposits, and integrations with everyday tools; other neobanks tend to move upmarket, but Relay stays committed to this segment where they can operate profitably.
No; Relay's core value comes from the bank account structure itself - small business owners gain visibility simply by knowing how much sits in each purpose-specific checking account (payroll, taxes, etc.) rather than relying on accounting reports or forecasts.
Relay allows business owners to set authorization rules, such as auto-approving checks under $2,000 and requiring manual approval above that threshold, giving them control over check deposits in a way traditional banks like Wells Fargo don't support.
Relay builds on banking-as-a-service partners like Unit, selecting providers based on battle-tested technology, operating scale, clear understanding of failure points, and shared long-term cultural orientation rather than building banking infrastructure from scratch.
Our reviewer’s read on each dimension, with quotes from the episode.
The episode delivers a mix of useful observations about SMB banking needs and Relay's positioning, but much of it is foundational rather than novel. The 27-day cash buffer statistic and the emphasis on bank balance as the 'killer app' for SMB financial visibility are solid insights, but the broader themes - SMBs need better tools, customers should be prioritized, outcomes matter more than features - are already well-established in B2B SaaS discourse. Long stretches cover standard product features (multiple accounts, spend controls, checkbooks) without deep insight into *why* these resonate beyond surface-level convenience.
A median SFP has 27 days of cash back for that's 27 days without revenue before they're dead.
the killer app for financial visibility for SMB is actually the bank balance
West recycles several familiar frames: the 'take enterprise tools and make them accessible to SMB' narrative (explicitly stated as the 10-15 year macro trend), the land-and-expand motion, the idea that small business owners care about outcomes not features. The AI agent idea at the end is mentioned almost as an afterthought and not developed. The positioning against Capital One and articulation of the competitive set are sensible but not contrarian or first-principles thinking. The conversation largely validates existing mental models rather than challenging them.
how do you take the tools of a larger business and make them available for a small business? That's what we've all been working on.
the macro trend has been for the last 10 to 15 years
Yoseph West is a relevant and credible operator: co-founder and CEO of a functioning fintech (Relay), with prior experience at Wave and Hubdoc building products for SMBs. He has shipped products at scale and navigated real customer problems. However, he is not a household name in fintech leadership, and the episode lacks the gravitational pull of an exceptional operator (e.g., a founder with a unicorn exit, a market-creating innovator). His experience is solid but not rare, and his insights, while grounded, are not delivered with the force or novelty of a true category-defining founder.
co founder and CEO of Relay Banking
I joined a company called Hubdoc
The episode includes some concrete details - 27 days of cash, the $10k mobile check deposit limit story, $2k check fraud threshold example, focus on businesses doing $500k - $2.5M annually, Capital One's $25B deposit base and $2 - $20M revenue target, the 10-year commitment. However, many claims lack specifics: 'most' of their acquisition is organic, 'a lot' of customers use profit-first, 'some' competitors are up-marketing. Customer anecdotes are vague (a Wells Fargo fraud victim, a mobile check deposit customer). No revenue, unit economics, churn, or concrete growth metrics are shared. The AI agent ideas are speculative with no specifics on roadmap or timeline.
a median SFP has 27 days of cash back
$25 billion off businesses that do between 2 and $20 million a year in revenue
Host Brian Bush asks solid setup questions and draws connections to Gusto's philosophy, showing preparation. However, follow-ups are often gentle and accept West's framing without pushback. When West mentions Relay is 'predominantly' organic on CAC, Bush doesn't probe the profitability claim or ask for specifics. The check fraud anecdote is accepted without digging into competitive advantage or market size. Bush mirrors back concepts ('land and expand,' 'outcome-focused') rather than challenging assumptions. There are no moments of productive disagreement or skepticism. The conversation is respectful but operates as a soft interview rather than an incisive examination of claims.
I'm curious though, to get that, forecasting, that visibility, uh, what's the relationship with the accounting side of the house?
how do you think about standing out for them from those folks?
Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.
Small business owners wake up each day focused on two things: their Instagram and their bank account. But what if banking could do more than just show a balance? On this episode, Yoseph West , Co-Founder and CEO of Relay , discusses how banking designed for small businesses can drive cash flow confidence and financial clarity. Key Takeaways: (03:43) Small businesses struggle with financial visibility. (06:52) Relay differentiates itself from traditional business banks. (09:07) Preventing check fraud with authorization controls. (10:53) Small businesses still compare digital banks to traditional ones. (14:41) Attracting new customers and driving organic growth. (18:55) Three key factors matter when choosing fintech partners. (24:17) Small businesses demand more from their financial institutions. (28:19) Building deep relationships with customers is essential for success. Resources Mentioned: Yoseph West - Relay LinkedIn - Relay Website - Coalition for Financial Ecosystem Standards - Any specific guest you’d like to hear on the show? Leave your suggestions at . Thanks for listening to “ SMB Tech Innovators,” powered by Gusto | Embedded Finance, Vertical SaaS, Payroll API .
Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.
Speaker A: Become like best friends with your customers, give them your phone number, be on a texting basis, especially those early ones. They're special people. They're taking a bet on you that they probably shouldn't be taking. But for whatever reason, they've decided to do this with you and continue to build that depth because you'll understand the core customer set so much better. I think the thing people struggle with understanding when it comes to, like small business owners and building for them is it's all good if you save them time.
Speaker B: Welcome to the SMB Tech Innovators podcast. Powered by Gusto. On this show we explore the intersection of fintech vertical SaaS and how software combats the rising complexity of running a business. Our goal is to share stories, advice and best practices from the leaders and investors behind today's cutting edge platforms. This episode of the SMB Tech Innovators podcast is brought to you by Gusto Embedded. Gusto has spen a decade building and testing its payroll tax filing and compliance infrastructure, which is available as a robust set of APIs so you can develop custom tailored payroll solutions. For more information, go to embedded.gusto.com here's your host, Brian Bush,
Speaker C: on this episode of the SMB Tech Innovators podcast. My guest is Yosef west, co founder and CEO of Relay Banking that gives business owners cash flow confidence. Yousef, welcome to the show.
Speaker A: Awesome, Brian, thanks for having me. It's awesome to be here.
Speaker C: I'm excited for this one and for you to tell us a little bit more detail what cash flow confidence means. But first to anchor the audience, tell us a bit about your personal career journey and mostly what led you to co founding Relay.
Speaker A: Yeah, I think when you're growing up you're kind of like, oh, careers are this perfect linear up into the right. Hopefully if you're like successful thing and ending up starting Relay. And candidly, my whole career, I kind of just, I fell into it a little bit. Originally I went to school to be a lawyer. I'm half like English, half Persian. So I was raised with. You have two careers. You could be a lawyer, a doctor. You know, other folks like lawyer, doctor, engineer, engineer was never an option for me. I was like, these are the options. And I kind of went through the paces and was about to, uh, about to go become a lawyer. And I was like, this isn't what I want. This isn't exciting to me. This isn't energizing to me. For a lot of people it's a great career, but wasn't the thing that I felt called to. Half my family are like lawyers and half of them are entrepreneurs. For some reason, I can't explain it. Something in the water in that context I was, okay, maybe this law thing isn't for me, but maybe I could start something. And so me and a couple friends started a small tech startup. It was a terrible idea. It was like a financial uh, stock research tool that was free with ads back when was like that was the way that we were all going to make money. And we raised a modest sum of 25 grand Canadian with the, where the currency is today, maybe that's $4 USD, I don't know. And we learned a ton. And we ended up getting Aqua hired by a company called Wave. And Wave at the time was accounting software for MicroSMB. So this is my first exposure to kind of back office tech, accounting tech and just like candidly small business. And it was one of those experiences where you got to see what it's like to build something like really meaningful for an audience that, that really cares about it. They need, they need that support. The language that Wave as a culture use internally they were talking about like brave entrepreneurs. That was, that was really the language. And you'd uh, meet these folks and they're just like fighting to live another day and do something that is like inspiring for them and self actualize. And that was like my first exposure. And we're trying to solve this problem. And this was back in 2012, 2013, a uh, decade ago. Trying to solve this problem of like financial visibility through accounting. That was hard, right? Small business owners, they can go this week, they can go next week, and they go next month without doing their accounting. What ended up working about that business was we started offering invoicing, we started helping these small business owners get paid. You can uh, as I said, you can kind of avoid your accounting for a period of time. Can't avoid getting paid, right? A median SFP has 27 days of cash back for that's 27 days without revenue before they're dead. That is really hard. Like you have to have so much respect for is the backbone of our economy. These folks are out there and they're hustling and they're trying to make it happen. And they have an immense pressure under that context. And by offering that invoicing product and helping small business owners get paid faster, suddenly we're at critical dependency. And that was like a great lesson. It's okay, accounting sort of matters. It aspirationally matters. But helping these small business owners get paid really matters. And when you're closer to the middle, you're really more important to the small business owner. So that was like kind of bad experience I left there. I joined a company called Hubdoc. Updoc was a central repository for small business financial documents. Think bank statement, receipts, invoices. We would joke that it was perhaps the most boring product that sells like document management software that we sold to accountants and bookkeepers. You could almost fall asleep, like with a sentence. But we had a lot of fun. It was like great group people. We were doing something in the market that mattered. And we were global strategic partners with both Intuit and Xero. And we saw both of them wanting to be this financial system of record for SMB. I was like, okay, I've seen this movie before. Like, no small business owner is going to wake up in the morning and check their P and L, right? That's not what they do. The joke internally here at Relay is like, small business owners wake up in the morning, they check two things. They check, uh, Instagram and their bank account. Like that. Those are the two things. And so when we recognized that, it was like very clear to us that the killer app for financial visibility for SMB is actually the bank balance. But in the traditional context that is a very like static piece of information. Uh, you have a hundred thousand dollars in your bank of America account. That's great. But you have bills due this month, payrolls coming out next week. Hopefully you have money coming in, right? And so our view was like, what if we created like a smart bank account that was deeply interconnected into the small business back office? Could we increase financial visibility for these small business owners, help them make better decisions and ultimately help them build a profitable small business. Right? Like, we live in this world of like amazing abundance, amazing information. There's so many different ways to like self actualize and make money. But it is hard to go and build something that can endure and sustain your life. And so that's our goal. We want to deliver banking that enables anyone to build a, uh, profitable small business.
Speaker C: And I already love a couple of key points you made there. One, that point about brave entrepreneurs in that language, that obviously connects very deeply to how we think about things at gusto. But. And we talk a lot about the different hats a small business owner has to wear. But I've never thought about it in terms of it's brave for that entrepreneur to dive in of I want to go do X. And now I'm going to learn the 10 other things that it takes to Sustain my business. And two, just that idea of getting close to cash flow. Getting close to something that's absolutely critical for that small business. That's the key or the unlock for providing better solutions. So let's jump into, give us maybe just the quick breadth of how Relay does that, the features you offer, how that idea, you've already, I think, teed it up. But that idea of cash flow confidence, how do you feel like you're delivering on that value proposal?
Speaker A: Yeah, so I think there's like different kind of layers to it. Relay is definitely like a. It's an online business bank account. You can set up online inside of 10 minutes. It's no fees, like really easy. And that's great, right? Like faster, better mobile, like all great things. Small business owners, yes, they care about that stuff, like table stakes. Right. What they want from a, uh, Relay and their business bank is actually like cash flow visibility. Like you see it all over our website, we are all about that cash flow clarity, helping them be on the money. And the way we deliver this is through what I would call like banking is designed to be flexible to their workflows. Our core products include like checking accounts, savings cards, payments. But you can set it up in a myriad of ways. So you could say, hey, I want to have different checking accounts and use it, use each checking account almost as my own version of accounting. So some people have income account, a payroll account, a tax account, an inventory account, an opex account, um, and for them, you know, when you're a small business owner, you're so busy, like just trying to, you know, help your customers, grow your business, um, and deliver your product that, um, you know, actually being able to have confidence that, hey, the money I've set aside for payroll, I'm not actually going to accidentally spend it, right? Or the money I've set aside for my taxes, I'm not going to accidentally spend it when I go and purchase more materials for this project that I'm working on. And that's a pretty common use case. And small business owners find that level of confidence that they get from like that Kennedale, that basic set of functional is hugely valuable. And then when you start to layer on things like spend controls, I can set up limits on my cards. I can actually like submit receipts and post them to my accounting. I can use checkbooks. With Relay, a lot of our customers, they're all like heart of America small business. So they need America runs on checks. And they can set up like authorization rules to ensure that the checks that are get the checks they've written that are getting deposited are legitimate. I was just on the phone to a, uh, small business owner this morning, and she was talking about this event she had experienced with Wells Fargo where there was check fraud on her account and there was nothing Wells could do in this context. And it was really challenging. And we talked through how with Relay, you could say, hey, you have a, uh, limit of saying, hey, anything under $2,000 from a check perspective, don't worry, just let it run through. But anything above will actually notify you and you can approve or reject that check, which is really great. And so these are the types of things that really make a big difference for these small business owners and why they flock to Relay and Yousef.
Speaker C: I think it's implied. I want to be clear. It feels like that's a big way that a Relay period or a Relay account is very different from called a traditional business bank. The flexibility, the control, some of those pieces you mentioned. I'm curious though, to get that, forecasting, that visibility, uh, what's the relationship with the accounting side of the house? Meaning do you need a deep integration with an accounting provider, or are, uh, your clients able to give you some of the details, or are you able to produce some of the details such that you can basically make that checking account function not quite like the ledger, but with enough detail in, in advance so you can forecast accurately enough and give folks that confidence.
Speaker A: Yeah. So I think us all being in the tech world, we assume that when we're talking about, like, cash flow visibility, we're talking about, like, reports and forecasts and predictions, and those are all, like, things that are important. But for small business owners, it's really about getting the fundamentals right. So when we're talking about, hey, they set up separate checking accounts, it's almost their version of accounting. I know how much came into my income account, I know how much I have my tax account, I know how much I have in my payroll account, and that's really where the value is. And just to put like a, uh, finer point on, like, unfortunately, how low the bar is for most small business owners when they're talking about their banking experience. And we'll talk about, like, the accounting integration, we talk about all this stuff. But I was talking to a small business owner a, uh, while ago and I was like, hey, what do you love about Relay? And this is like a digital checking account. You can set up checking accounts in seconds, savings accounts, invite people in, set up cards, do all this stuff. I love the mobile check deposit and you're like, okay, cool, great. In the back of your head, you're like, why, like most bank offers? Yeah. And I was like, okay, tell me more. Like, why is this helpful for you? And he's like, well, you know, I was at bank of America, wherever he was, and there my check deposit limit was $10,000 a month, and they wouldn't change it. So I always had to go to the branch to be able to, like, deposit the money I made. And with Relay, I, you see me as, as the business that I am, and, and you can set up limits and control so I can actually, like, deposit and do my business as I need to m on the go. And so it saves me so much time. And I was like, oh, like, that makes so much sense. Right? When we're talking about the technology and the value of the financial visibility, it is these, like, foundational, seemingly small things that make a huge difference to small business owners. And so that's really what we see.
Speaker C: Yusuf, I also want to talk about you've. The competition in this space is not just your traditional business bank. There are also, uh, a handful of other modern fintechs who are trying to deliver a similarly smooth, flexible, like you said, fast and better sort of experience. Now, some of these folks have said they want to focus on small businesses. They've decided maybe they want to go up market, so on and so forth. There's been some waffling from a few players in the space. But as a general principle, how do you think about standing out for them from those folks? Or do you feel like, hey, the lion that we want to go tackle from a competitive standpoint are traditional business banks. And we'll think about some of the other neobanks or fintechs later.
Speaker A: Yeah, People often ask us, like, you're building the space. It feels really busy. It feels like there's a lot going on as outsiders. I completely understand, like, that perspective. In 90 to 95% of the conversations we have with customers, they're comparing us against a traditional bank. I think of our, our market opportunity as like, Capital One. Like, that's who we're trying to grow up and be. So we don't really think about anyone else except for Capital One. They've been able to build this amazing deposit base. I think of, like, $25 billion off businesses that do between 2 and $20 million a year in revenue. Right. And in that context, we've built a business that I would say is predominantly focused on businesses that do half a mil to two and a half million dollars a year in revenue and our opportunity as we build these additional tools. So if we have like our core banking, we're building tools around the key areas of the SMB wallet. So income, bills, expenses, payroll and, and as we do that and consolidate that like financial picture for a small business owner, we'll be able to move up that stack so from two and a half million on the top end to hopefully three, four or five million dollars a year. And so that, that's where I look at as our opportunity. When we think of like our digital competition, there's definitely some overlap with some of the ones that are more like tech focused or startup focused because that's just the nature of digital. You can call up someone at uh, one of them and they'll be like, yeah, a landscaper showed up and signed up for the product. What am I going to say? Oh, I'm going to, I'm going to do that. But I think the incentives that exist for those businesses is to continually to go up market and they're going to serve these larger and larger customers and it's going to be harder and harder for them to stay connected to true small business. When you are heart of America, like small business, whether it's like real estate, trades, professional services, nonprofits, retail, uh, that is a different set of use cases. You need checkbooks, you need cash deposits, you need integrations into the tools that you use every day. And as we continue to focus on this segment and be able to serve them profitably and this is something that the, in the landscape folks have really struggled with and we are doing successfully and perhaps one of the only folks that are have done this successfully. It's because of our deep understanding of how to make these folks successful on our platform.
Speaker C: And you mentioned the profitability side, uh, that comes back to acquisition costs at times and out. We're not asking to get into a ton of detail here, but I am curious. The question I want to ask is what trends are you seeing in terms of buying behavior or what trends are you seeing work in terms of acquiring? Like you said, those Heart of America sources, small businesses and maybe I'll phrase the question as is there some sort of a wedge product? Is there a, hey, the Capital one has that $10,000 limit. Boom, you can start and you're starting as a compliment to the Capital One account and slowly replacing or are you finding folks coming in and saying I want a whole different banking experience from the get go.
Speaker A: It, it honestly depends where they are on their journey. So we have a Mix of folks that, hey, I just incorporated my business and I need a business bank account, right. And so what do I want to do? I want to lose an afternoon in a Chase branch. Probably not. And I also don't want to pay their fees. So I'm going to go to Relay. Like that's an easy equation. An existing business is another case. So I maybe I want to practice like profit first. That's like a very popular thing. And they want a bank that is friendly to, that has automation behind it to automatically do all the splits and transfers that. So that's one use case where we see people come to us and we're like, yep, I am done with SunTrust bank or wherever they previously or Sunrise. Then we see folks who want like more financial visibility around a specific workflow. So it's hey, I want to be able to issue cards to employees. I don't want to capture receipts, I want to publish to my accounting. That's all I'm going to use it for, is I'm going to move some money across from my main bank and move it to Relay or do the same thing, uh, on like accounts payable automation. And then there's the third bucket where people are mad at their existing bank. Wells Fargo didn't stop that check fraud. I need to find a better solution. And so they're actively in the market ready to switch across to Relay in that context, it's a mix. And oftentimes what we hear is once people try it, they, it's a land and expand. They're like, okay, I see this works, I can trust it. And, and they just fall in love with the product.
Speaker C: So is it safe to assume then that that land, the expand part of that motion, a lot of it is call it product led growth or do you have a sales team? Do you have folks who are like actually consulting with and advising your clients on how they could get more value out of Relay?
Speaker A: Yeah, it's predominantly organic today that like, I think our perspective generally is that if you are a business that does, say a million dollars a year in revenue, you'll probably get a sales touch as you come in the door because we want to help you be successful. And at that stage you have 10 employees, you have a real business, you're trying to manage it all and making a change. It's just, it's harder than when you're like a solopreneur as an example. And so we want to help guide you through that process. And then folks can also call our customer service line and Talk to a human being like, you know, there's no minimum deposits to be able to go do that. And so we can also help folks and make recommendations how they can get the most out of Relay.
Speaker C: I feel like that's a lesson that Gusto had learned a while ago as well in terms of, hey, even though you're serving a smaller segment than say the incumbents thought they could serve really profitably, giving these business owners the ability to talk to somebody, if you can find a way to do it profitably, can really be a superpower in terms of that user experience piece. But I want to shift gears just a little bit. We've talked about the value delivered to a lot of these clients. I want to talk about what it took to build it. And specifically you're on record speaking very highly of Unit as a banking, as a service platform. But more generally, as you're thinking about compiling, you're building on tops of other types of financial infrastructure. What do you look for? What do you and your co founder look for in the partners you're going to build on? Where do you think about, hey, this is the piece we want to build ourselves. This is what we consider secret sauce generally. What are some of your, call them frameworks in terms of how you go about building with these types of uh, underlying technologies.
Speaker A: So yesterday someone asked me, how do we balance short term decisions like short term optimization with kind of the long term strategic lens or long term impact. And when we started Relay, you know, Paul, Paul's my co founder, we had this view and still hold it today, that it takes 10 years to like do anything meaningful. And we were like, hey, if we're going to do this, we're in it for 10 years at least, right? That's what we're excited to go out and do. And so every decision that we make, we try to do our best to always have that long term orientation of hey, we're just going to be working on this thing for a while. So let's make sure we make a high quality decision as opposed to one that might, you know, cause issues in the future. And in that context, when we're thinking about like partners, whether it's a unit or you know, any embedded partner, I think there's a couple things that, that really matter from our perspective and in our set of experiences and learnings over these six years that that we've been building this thing. Number one, technology. Is the technology high quality? Has it been battle tested? You know, operating at our scale, which is like pretty material, we need to make sure this is not, unfortunately not something that's like net new, that's just existing in the world and we've got to battle test it with the founders or whoever. Like we need it to be something that we can rely on and scale with our customers because they're trusting us with their lifeblood basically really going deep on like technology. Is that high quality? Do they have great customer references? Are they operating at scale? Where does. And just finding out where it breaks because it just will break somewhere. Like tell us the truth and let's just talk through how we would figure that out. I would say two and almost as important as the technology. I think you have great technology. But are the people, uh, are they long term oriented? Will they show up in the hard moments? Do you feel like you can trust them and do you have shared cultural fabric? I think that's like really critical. Our experience and part of the reason why I am on the record speaking highly of unit is the people behind that business are really great and they show up and they run towards problems. And every partnership has its challenges. It's just the nature of it. You have people that are going to like when there's a problem, are they going to leave you in the trench by yourself and be like, go figure it out or are they going to jump in there with you and you're going to kind of battle it out and figure it out as a team. And so that, that is the second piece. And then I would say the third thing is especially operating in Fintech, it's uh, really important. The regulatory and compliance considerations. Is that something we've invested in? What's their level of maturity, what's their level of understanding? Like this really matters to us. It's something we've built into our DNA as a company since day one. You look at the competitive set and some of the hot water they found themselves in. We have not and knock on wood, found ourselves in the same scenarios. But it's something we really like index on because we're trying to build something great that's going to last a long time.
Speaker C: I love that comment. It takes 10 years to do anything really meaningful in the world. But also I just want to recap those three points you said. First, technology, second, people. And third is called the compliance infrastructure. But really what sits behind that? I don't know how to phrase the compliance piece, but I am curious, the technology piece. You and Paul can go and do a deep dive on what the platform looks like. Things like that people, very subjective. But I feel Like I'm hearing you say you've got to spend time with folks, look for shared values. How do you assess that third bucket? Is it say I know you all are part of the Coalition for Fintech Ecosystem Standards. Is it joining associations like that, Is it experience? Uh, how do you assess that third bucket?
Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So the Coalition for Financial Ecosystem Standards is a group of fintechs that are looking to create kind of a SoC2 for fintech. Right. We want to be regulatorily compliant. We want to be like good actors in the ecosystem and we need to kind of like advocate for a set of standards that regulators will be excited about and give clarity for them and for us. And so that's like our goal there. When we think of how we assess compliance and like the maturity of it, I think there's uh, a lot of experience that we've had over the years that have that guide this candidly. We will spend a lot of time with their compliance teams. We will talk through problems that we've faced in terms of servicing customers and hey, maybe it's asking for additional information on wires as an example and we're like, hey, how do we deliver this in a great way that delivers a great experience for our customers. But catch is the people that sometimes unfortunately bad people will get on, they'll get on bank of America, they'll get on relay like that will just happen. But how do you deliver a good experience for the good actors but a bad experience for the bad actors and, and talk through how do they go and solve that. And you can get a feel for the maturity of the organization based on their answers because you've probably worked through a lot of this stuff yourself so you're well informed and I think you can talk through a number of scenarios like that and then talk through the key workflows, the key financial workflows would be the other piece where whether you're talking about onboarding the customer or what the payments flow is or where there might need to be step ups for additional information and see how they think through it and think through from a customer lens as well as from a compliance lens and kind of marry those
Speaker C: together, I love it. And I think the follow on from that is if you're going to talk through scenarios with a potential partner, you as the potential buyer in this case, you need to be educated enough on the use cases yourself to go and have those conversations. You can't come into a KYC conversation not knowing the basics because then you won't really know if as we get into the scenario, is my partner giving me BS or not? So to speak. Yusuf, to change gears again just a little bit. Let's start to look forward. SMB still face a lot of economic uncertainty, but there's also a lot of reason to be optimistic. New technologies, so on and so forth. I'm curious, where do you see the future going? What are you feeling kind of demand from small businesses? And to the extent you can share, how do you see Relay executing on some of that demand or satisfying that demand in the future?
Speaker A: Yeah. So I think if we step back from kind of this moment in time, right. So we ignore where interest rates are, we ignore about like economics or uh, government uncertainty, any of that stuff. And we think about what the uh, like macro trend has been for the last 10 to 15 years around small business and small business technology. The core focus here has really been like how do you take the tools of a larger business and make them available for a small business? That's what we've all been working on. Ignore AI any of that stuff. That is the thing over the last 10 to 15 years that we've all been doing with cloud accounting. Amazing point solutions like Bill.com, this is the trend that has existed. And if you continue to pull along that trend into the future, I think you see a world where small business owners, what they're asking for today is honestly and uh, I say this with so much love and I think this is the right thing for them to be asking for. They're asking for more from their financial institutions. Right. And they want tools that are actually going to help them be financially successful. Right. What a crazy thing to ask for right from your financial institution. Give me tools so I can be financially successful. And I think that is the demand and that is the expectation. So what we're going to see in the marketplace is folks like Relay go from hey, this natively collaborative banking platform that I can collaborate with my team, I can do all this stuff to something that is a combination of banking plus like software. So I can manage all my invoicing inside of Relay and the money drops into my account same day and I have more cash flow oxygen as a result. Like I have more time with the money or I'm able to manage my bills in one place as opposed to the funds being debited three days before the bills need, the payments need to arrive. I do it all on the same day cause I have same day ach or whatever it is. And so they're going to expect this more uh, comprehensive experience and that's really what we see as the future. And then I think all of that is like super exciting. I think that's like the next five years and we'll see how traditional finance tries to lean into that. I hope they do because it'll help small business. And then I think the next opportunity that exists is we all hear so much about AI all the time and I almost feel a little lame talking about it. But I think it's actually really exciting because I think if you take that core trend of, uh, hey, we're trying to take the tools that a mid sized business can afford and can use and make it available for small business now we can think about that in the context of people. A mid sized business might have a payables clerk, right? Hire someone to manage their ap. What if there was like an AI agent inside of Relay that could do that for them? That'd be pretty powerful. Or someone uh, to call up their customers who haven't paid. That's an expensive resource in the traditional world. But in a world where you have AI agents, maybe that's something that could be automated. I think that stuff is going to get really exciting. I don't think people are asking for it yet, but I do think that's the future.
Speaker C: And I think it's worth just reiterating that comment. It is a little bit subversive or it is a little bit radical to think my customer, that small business, they're not really just asking for more tools or even they're not just asking for more tools in one place, they're actually asking for an outcome, they're asking to help make them successful. And obviously the features, the software that we build, the tools are the way that might be delivered. Obviously as you mentioned, the AI, uh, can play a big role there. But, but that is a really interesting and somewhat radical, I think for the traditional financial industry. Ask from a customer. And so I think how Relay and others are able to deliver on that should be very interesting in the future as well. Yousef, I want to wrap up quickly with, I'm sure you talked to a lot of other founders, a lot of other folks who want to start things. What's the advice these days that you find you're giving to many other folks? What's that piece of advice or that lesson that, that you feel like you are imparting often to other folks, building new things, particularly for small businesses.
Speaker A: I think the best piece of advice I ever got was become like best friends with your customers, give them your phone number, be on a texting basis, especially those early ones. They are special people. They're taking a bet on you that they probably shouldn't be taking. But for whatever reason, they've decided to do this with you and continue to build that depth because you'll understand the core customer set so much better. I think the thing people struggle with understanding when it comes to, like, small business owners and building for them is it's all good if you save them time.
Speaker C: Sure.
Speaker A: Like they want more time. There's no question. They want things that are cheaper. Yes. But I think the bar has been raised where we have hit a maturity level where, as you said, these small business owners expect an outcome. They want an outcome. And part of the reason why we're winning in the market for small business is because we're delivering an outcome. We're not delivering cheaper banking. That's mobile, that's faster. We're delivering cash flow clarity or cash flow confidence. That's what we're here to go and do. And so when you think of small business, thinking in that context, I think is really important.
Speaker C: Well, Yousef, I can't think of a better way to wrap this show up. So thank you so much for taking the time sharing your insights with us today before we close. If folks have questions, they want to go deeper. They just want to connect with you because they're interested in learning more. What's the best way for folks to reach out?
Speaker A: Well, for me Personally, I'm on LinkedIn, Yousef West, YOS EPH, Last Name West. Just like the direction. And then to follow Relay and learn more about what we're building, visit relayfi.com or at bank with Relay on all the social sites you frequent.
Speaker C: Joseph, thank you again for the time today. I really appreciate it.
Speaker A: Thank you. This was fun.
Speaker C: Thanks again for tuning in to this episode of the SMB Tech Innovators podcast. We'll make sure to link to any resources that were mentioned in today's show in the show notes. Please also feel free to leave us a review wherever you listen to your podcast or to connect with the Gusto embedded team via LinkedIn. In particular, we'd love to hear any future guests you'd like us to have on the show. Thanks again for listening and keep a lookout for the next episode.
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