Business Talk Magazine

Only a few entrepreneurs have built a business valued at an eleven-digit figure. Globally, there is only a small group of people that have built a double-digit billion-dollar business in their life. Building a $50 Billion Dollar company in less than a decade is iconic.

Michael Gastauer is the entrepreneur that did it. The founder and CEO of the digital banking group Black Banx is the “one of its kind” FinTech entrepreneur that has achieved this unique growth. His banking group, Black Banx, is growing faster than any other FinTech banking company. With more than 15 million customers and monthly payments of over $20 billion USD, Black Banx is the largest digital bank that has been established in the recent FinTech age. It took Michael less than nine years to get there, and his business growth is far from peak.

To understand how to grow a business that fast, we spoke to Michael Gastauer in an interview:

Business Talk Magazine: Thanks for joining us today. First of all, could you tell us how you came up with the idea to found a digital Bank?

Gastauer: I have been in the banking and payment industry for more than 20 years. I have worked at and with banks in almost every part of the world. One of the biggest hurdles for a customer in banking is to open an account if you are not living in the same country where your bank is located. When you send or receive payments internationally, things can get expensive and complicated.

Experiencing these pain points in banking, I realised that a digital solution that would allow customers from any country to get a bank account in minutes and use the full garment of retail banking without unnecessary restrictions would solve an enormous problem.

Business Talk Magazine: This sounds like a perfect solution for millions of customers, how did you fund the company and this kind of growth?

Gastauer: I had the fortunate situation that I didn’t need any 3rd party funding to grow the business. When I sold my last business—a global payment service provider—I set up our private family office. I started funding Black Banx with my own money with the goal of having enough cash flow to foster its growth. Sure, this might not be the smartest way of funding a business, and maybe we could have grown even faster if we had raised venture capital, but I am a bit of an old-fashioned man when it comes to ownership and selling company shares too early. For me, it was just not an option to sell my company shares knowing that we don’t really need 3rd party funding and the biggest growth potential is still ahead of us.

Business Talk Magazine: This is quite impressive; most startup companies would try to find a Venture Capital Investor for getting the funding. Did you ever think about getting a 3^rd party investor onboard?

Gastauer: We had a few requests from venture capital firms being interested in investing, but I saw some disadvantages to selling shares of the company before reaching a certain valuation. Most founders get diluted when they bring a VC investor on board, especially in the early stage. The VC usually takes a board seat and wants to be involved when making decisions. If you want to grow a business fast, you have to be able to make fast decisions. What’s quite funny, when I said no to the VC guys, they went ahead and invested in another company in our space that also had a good growth rate, reaching a $33 billion valuation last year. I guess the venture capitalists found what they were looking for, and the founders of that company had no issue getting diluted.

Business Talk Magazine: This makes a lot of sense. How did you get to a $50 Billion Dollar valuation?

Gastauer:  First off, I would like to point out that I would never say Black Banx is worth $50 billion. It could be worth more or less. The $50 billion valuation is a number you came up with. Of course, I would also not deny the fact that such a valuation is not completely unrealistic, given that other companies with similar key metrics in our industry have been valued at $33 billion last year, claiming they would be worth much more today, considering the growth they had within the last twelve months. If you would analyse peer groups to compare similar characteristics, you could come up with a $50 billion valuation for Black Banx. However, as we all know, as long as a company is not publicly traded on an exchange, any valuation is completely based on what the shareholders think their business might be worth if they were to sell it. I guess with the current market situation, no shareholder of a privately held company wants to find out how the market would respond to those kinds of valuations in a listing.   

Business Talk Magazine: A Multi-Billion Dollar valuation is already impressive. Most business owners would be happy to ever reach that. What are your goals for Black Banx in the next few years?   

Gastauer: Given that we only launched a few years ago, I believe we haven’t even seen 10% of our growth potential. The business model of being a global company from day one, serving customers in 180 countries, allows us to grow into a digital bank with more than 100 million customers. We should also be able to reach one billion USD in revenue in the near future. The technology and business model we use allow us to transform the global banking business to work like a social media network, where users can interact – exchange funds – instantly, anywhere, anytime on a global scale.

Business Talk Magazine: When do you think could this happen?

Gastauer: We could see this happening in five to ten years.

Business Talk Magazine: Michael, this is a truly unique and impressive approach to building a business. Thank you for your time and for sharing these insights with us.

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