17 Oct 045: Cracking the crowdfunding code with Laura Wagner, CEO and founder of Digitzs
Payment systems platforms are continuously changing how individuals and companies are sending money, making payments, and processing in between. And it’s a huge market – well over $1 trillion globally.
Digitzs is a painless, quick and profitable way to build payments into a platform, app or marketplace.
A 20-year proven entrepreneur in the payments space, Laura has compiled an all-star team including PayPal’s first CFO David Jaques; Visa’s Linda Perry (named Most Influential Women in Payments three years in a row); Ben Way, a world-renowned startup technologist, and Stacey Moore, an award winning technologist, strategist and entrepreneur.
As the first female founded company to reach the number one position since the Crowdfinance 50 Index was launched on CNBC in early 2015, Digitzs holds the number one position for the largest capital raise by a female founded company since Title II of the JOBS Act came into effect in the fall of 2013.
Check out the full episode and find out what makes Digitzs such a success story for its customers, stakeholders and investors.
1:16 – Introducing Laura Wagner, CEO and founder of Digitzs; background on the company and the industry of online payments.
3:43 – Applying the example of charitable giving in disasters and where Digitzs fits into that.
5:24 – Describing more of the difficulties for ecommerce that Digitzs helps to resolve for both companies and platforms.
7:59 – Where the company fits into the overall ecommerce landscape, what the value proposition is, and what their market is.
11:32 – How Digitzs can work with different industries, even local governments for things like paying utility bills.
12:38 – The overall scale of credit card payments and ecommerce; Digitzs business model within the sector.
14:10 – Background on identifying the opportunity for this business and how they’re getting started.
16:11 – The scalability of this process and being a process improvement rather than a disruption.
17:52 – The upcoming crowdfunding round and why they’re pursuing crowdfunding.
19:59 – What Laura sees as the critical thing that built trust with their investors.
21:03 – The importance of both your team and your idea in a startup.
21:47 – Creating businesses that solve a problem with a clear relevance to the market; Laura’s vision and goals for the business.
23:40 – The value that Digitzs could bring to the legacy payment processors.
24:49 – How Laura went about building a great team for her idea; a story from earlier in her career that demonstrates her dogged determination.
28:36 – The importance of sticking to the vision and persevering through being knocked down by being almost relentlessly positive.
29:33 – Laura’s view of the company’s potential from early on.
30:17 – Information on Laura’s upcoming book, Crowdability.
33:08 – The information in book as a way to open up startup funding for more people.
33:38 – The questionnaire.
36:25 – Finding out more about Laura and getting involved with the crowdfunding campaign.
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