Startup Interview With Ryan Edwards-Pritchard, Founder & CEO of Cape

HackerNoon Reporter: Please tell us briefly about your background.

I’m a Fintech nerd from the UK. Previously ran Europe's largest digital marketplace for SME Finance in Funding Options. Left just before the pandemic to move to sunnier shores in Australia :-)

What's your startup called? And in a sentence or two, what does it do?

Cape is a technology startup developing corporate cards designed to save businesses time and money.

What is the origin story?

Cape is an idea of how workplaces could and should be different. We want to help support the creation of workplaces where people are respectfully trusted to have access to company funds so that they can get on with doing their jobs. A workplace that can say goodbye to expense reports and tedious receipt management processes.

What do you love about your team, and why are you the ones to solve this problem?

The culture. Culture happens whether you plan it or not, so we’ve focused on creating one we love and with people that share that.

As we’ve grown to our first 10 Capers, we asked them what they like and what they didn’t about their past jobs and companies. This list has now become ingrained in our philosophy as to how we work, interact and make decisions.

Why we are the ones to solve the problem of business spending - Our founding team has built and scaled some of Europe’s most well-known startups that have collectively supported hundreds of thousands of small business owners and unlocked access to billions of dollars of working capital for them in process.

If you weren’t building your startup, what would you be doing?

A marine biologist. I love the ocean, and it was always and still is my dream to work on conserving it.

At the moment, how do you measure success? What are your core metrics?

We’re pre-launch and gearing up to onboard our first set of customers in the coming months.

Our core metrics are all focused on building our spend management platform. Specifically, the velocity at which we’re completing ‘stories’ and ‘epics’. As well as the volume of points that we attach to those associated tasks per sprint.

What’s most exciting about your traction to date?

Organically we’ve had over 1300 companies sign up to our waitlist. We also just secured a strategic partnership with Mastercard as a Principal Member recently. Something that’s practically unheard of as a pre-launch startup.

What technologies are you currently most excited about, and most worried about? And why?

Excited about? Defi. Permissionless-ness and totally transparent access to finance to anyone in the world to allow them to lend, borrow, send or trade blockchain-based assets with an easy-to-download wallet. Without having to use a broker or bank.

Most worried about? Artificial Intelligence. As it continues to advance we need to be careful with how we regulate it, as it’s almost impossible to protect ourselves against and control. The emergence of Deepfake audios and videos is of particular concern.

What drew you to get published on HackerNoon? What do you like most about our platform?

Love the ability to easily discover new innovations from the worlds of technology that interest me. Otherwise, it's all about the community and the ability to tap into a network that has some of the sharpest minds from around the world.

What advice would you give to the 21-year-old version of yourself?

Listen, learn and then talk. Put in the work to really understand something before putting your opinion out there. And don’t be an armchair expert.

That being said, don’t listen to the noise. Whether it’s positive or negative, if you let what others say in building you up or breaking you down, you’ll never be in control of your happiness.

It’s a marathon, not a sprint… Be sure to make decisions that optimize for long-term value as much and as often as you can.

What is something surprising you've learned this year that your contemporaries would benefit from knowing?

Money is a mercenary. It goes to where it's treated best. Never forget that.