Lillian Roberts, Founder and CEO of SaaS accounting disruptor Xendoo joins us in this GlobalFintechSeries interview to share her learnings and predictions in Fintech while also talking about her experiences being a serial entrepreneur.
Catch the excerpts:
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Can you tell us a little about yourself Lillian (including your hobbies, what a typical day at work is like for you!) and what your fintech startup journey has been like so far.
As a serial entrepreneur, I love building companies. A typical workday involves anything I need to do to help support my team to meet our goals. Outside of the office, I’m an active member of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization and enjoy living on the edge. I consider myself a “ledge walker,” which involves anything with speed or a hint of danger.
How did the idea/inspiration for Xendoo come about?
Having exited the print manufacturing business, I knew I wanted to be on the other side of disruption. I knew my new business needed to be wrapped around technology and be able to scale.
One of the pivotal moments came from a self-derived personal scorecard that listed certain goals and milestones that I wanted to reach in my next entrepreneurial chapter. I took those goals and milestones and turned them into actionable opportunities on what it would take to get there. For example, one measurable goal is to build a $100M company.
During this exploration, I was looking for industries that were primarily “analog” and had not bridged the gap with technology to allow the customer and product/provider to adapt to the new world of cloud-based infrastructure.
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What are some of the other big challenges in accounting/finance that you wish you could solve with new fintech solutions?!
Data insights are a big challenge in the accounting/finance industry that we’re aiming to solve. Small business owners don’t have access to enterprise-level data solutions that’ll give them valuable and actionable insights on how to optimize their business processes. Xendoo is on a mission to aggregate data in a way that’ll help small business owners understand their industries better and ultimately improve profits.
We’d love to know what some of your top FinTech predictions for 2020 are?
We believe that small business owners will continue to digitize all aspects of their businesses in 2020. They’ll continue to seek deeper integrations and access to all aspects of their business from their smartphones, which is driven by a change in the global economy to expect instant, cloud-based solutions.
Can you talk about some of the most innovative fintech solutions today that according to you are set tso create new benchmarks for this segment?
Some of the more innovative solutions in fintech I have seen include how companies are providing personalized experiences that are driven by data. Take a fintech company that integrates with Alexa, for example, to allow their users to speak with Alexa and receive relevant information about their current account and purchasing behavior in return.
Read More: Aiera Raises $7M to Further Event Intelligence and Insights Platform
What are some of the biggest challenges you face when marketing your new fintech product and trying to better the overall customer experience for them?
In general, B2B marketing can be somewhat challenging compared to B2C. Small business owners are busy and can be hard to target in traditional ways of marketing. It’s necessary to get creative or even cast a wide net in the beginning.
Given the rapid pace of change in fintech today, what would your top five tips be for reskilling/upskilling initiatives for teams belonging to this niche?
While the technology and tools we use to interpret technology are continuing to evolve every day, it’s important to keep up-to-date with the relative constants, such as cybersecurity, an agile programming foundation, and cloud-based infrastructure. For reskilling teams, it’s important to hire lifelong learnings to combat learning atrophy and keep up with fast-moving technology. Remember, your product isn’t an island – API integrations are key and data doesn’t live alone.
Tag (mention/write about) the one person in the fintech industry whose answers to these questions you would love to read!
Marc Andreessen, cofounder and general partner of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz
Your favorite FinanceTech quote
“Software is Eating the World.” – Marc Andreessen
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Xendoo is a fin-tech company that provides bookkeeping and accounting services to businesses. Its technology enables to provide three monthly rates that include bookkeeping, sales tax, tax planning, corporate tax return filing, and unlimited access to dedicated CPA tea.
A South Florida native, Lillian Roberts prides herself on building customer-centric companies that are built on teamwork, technology and integrity. A serial entrepreneur with a passion for small business, she is known as an innovator with an enviable ability to foresee market trends. After a successful exit from the manufacturing industry, Lillian serves as CEO and Founder of Xendoo, a cloud-based fintech company based in Fort Lauderdale.
