The Renatus Podcast

The episode delivers solid practitioner insights on revenue-based financing mechanics, underwriting data sources, scaling sales operations, and CEO decision-making challenges. However, it relies heavily on Aidan explaining his own business model rather than breaking down genuinely surprising market dynamics or counterintuitive principles. Some sections (tariffs, AI impact, Dublin's talent) add texture but don't fundamentally challenge existing operator knowledge.

“So $100,000 there is a 7% fee and I'm going to charge you, I'm going to get paid back by taking 15% of your daily sales”

“operating data. So outside of the classic information that you would gather, for example, bank statements, financial accounts, bureau information, what we really look at is operating data”

Aidan articulates a sensible thesis about RBF unlocking capital for e-commerce operators banks ignore, but this insight is not particularly novel - the market gap is well-documented. His contrarian takes (Dublin's actual advantages post-COVID, under-promising being wrong in fast environments) are thoughtful but relatively incremental. The tariff analysis is straightforward observation rather than first-principles rethinking. Most frameworks map to standard VC playbook thinking.

“if I left Waveflower in the morning, Greg and we set up a competitor, we'd probably be out of business by the end of July because Waveflow would be able to offer all the customers in the market more money at a lower price”

“under promise and over deliver works really well in a big bureaucracy and people get the sense of you being reliable. If you under promise in an ambitious environment, you can't actually overdeliver”

Aidan Corbett is the CEO of a fast-scaling fintech (€100M+ revenue, Series B-backed by serious institutional investors, hundreds of employees across four continents). He has demonstrated operational chops: built and exited two companies prior, raised capital in March 2020 when VCs were pausing, scaled a direct sales org to 100+ reps, and navigated real regulatory and market headwinds. He speaks with concrete authority about building from 2 to 500+ people and managing board-level investors.

“Founded by Aiden and Jack Pierce in 2019, Waveflyer helps high growth e-commerce brands to scale using data-driven revenue-based financing”

“last year. In 2024 year our revenue was 100 million”

Aidan provides concrete mechanics (7% upfront fee + 15% of daily sales, $15M largest customer, $10k smallest, 80-85% third-party debt funding) and operational details (100-person sales team, four offices, scaling outbound from 85% to 50% of leads). However, specificity gaps remain: no named customer examples, no specific metrics on underwriting accuracy or default rates, vague timeline for profitability ('next quarter'), and hand-waving on data moat resilience. Numbers are often ranges rather than precise figures.

“So $100,000 there is a 7% fee and I'm going to charge you, I'm going to get paid back by taking 15% of your daily sales”

“I think the largest customer we have right now is probably about a 15 million outstanding 15 million and the smallest 1010”

Greg conducts a smart, structured interview with genuine follow-ups on how money flows, customer acquisition economics, and the transition to scale. He probes the business model clearly ('just to go back a little bit because you have your product now in the plainest of plain English'). However, questioning lacks edge - Greg rarely pushes back on optimistic claims (profitability 'next quarter' goes unchallenged), doesn't dig into competitive vulnerabilities, and misses opportunities to stress-test assumptions. The tone is friendly rather than journalistic.

“Just going back to the data thing, this appears to be your kind of secret sauce as far as I'm concerned anyway. What sort of data are you looking at”

“But you should have it. So for the smaller deals, you shouldn't be spending a lot of time on them”