TFN Talks with Brandon Timinsky
TFN Talks sat down with Brandon Timinsky, the prolific young American CEO and Founder of SadaPay, Pakistan’s first neobank and the former co-founder of GasNinjas - an on-demand fuel delivery company acquired in a multimillion dollar deal, about what it takes to become an internationally successful entrepreneur.
Brandon, tell us a little about your journey as an entrepreneur. Where did you grow up? When did you come up with your first big business idea?
I was born and raised in Miami, Florida, which had a thriving real estate sector. After teaching myself some basic programming skills at the young age of 15, I decided to build a website that sold Twitter followers. I targeted the real estate agents who were trying to promote themselves on social media and growth-hacked my way to over 10,000 signups in less than 2 weeks. The business was making me about $500 per day, which is quite a lot for a kid in high school!
How did you come up with your breakthrough startup GasNinjas and where has that journey taken you?
I reinvested my savings from that first website into a number of other “startup” ideas. Most of them failed, but about eight years later I finally got to GasNinjas in 2015. My co-founder and I were brainstorming ideas related to how the Uber for X model would disrupt a number of other verticals. We both agreed that gas stations were pretty unpleasant and decided to try “uber for gas.” We self-funded the project, quickly built the tech, and started serving our first customers only 3 months after coming up with the idea. We pivoted the fuel delivery business model a few times but eventually landed some Fortune 500 customers and sold the company to our main competitor in Silicon Valley only 2 years later. We never raised any venture capital investment, so the exit was that much sweeter!
Tell us more about the thought process behind your entrepreneurial spirit. Do new ideas just come to you out of the blue or do you seek out gaps in markets and find opportunities to fill them?
Entrepreneurs usually get fired up about pain points they experience personally. In the case of GasNinjas, it was our disdain for filthy gas stations. Over the last decade or so, I’ve been overcome with immense frustration from the inefficiencies of cash, which led me to start exploring opportunities in fintech.
After discovering a pain point, I think of how I can leverage connections in my network that would help solve for things like product development, distribution, or strategic investment. I’m a strong proponent of networking and I believe luck can be created; you simply have to set yourself up to be lucky as many times as possible. Eventually, you’ll get lucky. Expanding your network multiplies your chances to get lucky with the right business partner(s), in the right place, at the right time.
Tell us about your new brainchild SadaPay. How did the idea come about and where do you envision taking this extraordinary venture?
After landing our exit for GasNinjas, I started exploring opportunities in developing markets; I became infatuated with the idea of fintech having the potential to make an outsized impact in an emerging economy. When I first visited Pakistan at the end of 2018, it didn’t take long to realize what had been hiding in plain sight. Poor perception of instability from a bygone era of geopolitical turmoil has kept many would-be entrepreneurs from taking the market seriously.
Surprisingly, in Pakistan, over 87% of 220 million people remain formally unbanked, but the country already has 81 million smartphone users and about a million more are coming online every month. The traditional banking system still runs on paper-based processes and legacy back-office systems that are very costly to manage. The banks have thus been highly reliant on fee income, which resulted in the exclusion of the mass market due to high costs. At SadaPay, we’re delivering financial services via smartphone and issue free debit cards for access to cash. By removing the costs of the physical infrastructure (expensive networks of bank branches), we can pass those savings onto consumers.
A digital bank can deliver nearly all of the same financial services as a traditional bank but at a fraction of the cost. Since we don’t have to pay for bank branches, we can invest more in our customer service operations and technology development. This, in turn, helps us deliver a 10x better user experience through our app. It’s a huge competitive edge over banks that run on legacy systems and still rely on paper-based processes. About 100,000 people have signed up before we even issued our first debit card.
List the most important qualities you believe make a young entrepreneur successful.
I’d say relentlessness and resourcefulness and the two most important characteristics. Even in the face of adversity, an entrepreneur has to power through the ups and downs. As they say, persistence wears down resistance. Furthermore, making the most out of a small amount of resources is crucial when you are a small startup in a game of David vs. Goliath. The best founders are those who don’t need to ask for help; when they don’t know how to do something, they figure it out themselves.
When you are not in the office, how do you spend your time? Do you have any hobbies and passions outside of business and how do you wind down?
These days we’re all working from home. But in my spare time, I usually wind down at the end of the day with yoga or I go for a jog while listening to podcasts/audiobooks. As far as hobbies go, I’m a huge fan of diving. My partner and I clocked in over 50 dives in 2019, most of which were in Indonesia in the “coral triangle,” which has the highest diversity of reef fish and corals in the world!
You have traveled the world and experienced many cultures. Which place(s) stand out for you and why?
I’m sure I don’t need to elaborate for your readership on how special Bali is, so I’d say my second favorite place on this incredible planet would be Iceland. This is one of the ultimate adventure travel destinations that I’ve been to. My partner and I embarked on a 10-day road trip back in 2018 exploring all the top sights and activities. The remote island-country feels extraterrestrial; as you drive, the landscapes change every 30 minutes or so and it seems like you’re driving across different planets. Iceland is breathtakingly beautiful, while also having amazingly kind and welcoming people. Not to mention the extremely tasty, protein-rich Icelandic cuisine. They have great fish (sometimes dried), wholesome lamb dishes, and fantastic artisanal breads.
What makes you get up in the morning and do what you do, where does that drive come from?
I’ve started a lot of different businesses over the years, but none resonated at such a high frequency with the target audience as much as my current venture. SadaPay has gained a lot of popularity here and I have strangers who reach out to me every day just to thank me for coming to their country to work on fixing the deep-rooted problems in their financial system. The immense traction we’ve experienced with customers over the last year has left everyone on our team in awe. The opportunity in front of us to make such a tremendous impact for millions of people is really what gets me up in the morning!
You have been a Fearless Nomad for a while. Do you have any plans of settling anywhere in particular for a period of time or is the nomadic lifestyle more appealing?
I had a great run as a nomad over the last 3 years. Moving forward I’ll be spending most of my time in Pakistan, but I do plan to visit Bali a few times per year as we’ll have a few members of our engineering team working from Canggu!
What’s next for Brandon Timinsky and where do you envision yourself in five years?
I’ll still be in Pakistan - running the largest bank in the 5th most populous country in the world!