From Deloitte to Disrupting Finance: Aldrin Clement's Novel Journey

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Welcome to our podcast, From The Ground Up, where we interview startup founders exploring their journeys, their success, challenges, and lessons learned. We hope to be inspired in discovering what it takes to build a thriving startup. I'm your host, Jake Aaron Villarreal, and here with us today we have Aldrin Clement, co-founder and CEO of Starlight Financial. Aldrin, welcome to the show.

Aldrin Clement: Thanks Jake, glad to be here.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Great. So a little bit about Aldrin. He leads Starlight. It's a business bank, uh business bank account designed, designed for global businesses. Prior to that, Aldrin led growth at Deloitte Digital under, under Andy Main, taking revenue from 300 million to over a billion in less than 18 months. Closing over 50 major accounts including Amtrak and a federal government. I like your background. Now you're a startup entrepreneur. Before we dive in here, Aldrin, where, where are you joining us from today?

Aldrin Clement: I'm actually joining you guys from my um, my family home. It's kind of right after the holidays. I haven't quite left yet. So I'm here in chilly Minnesota. But I'll be back in New York where I'm originally based here uh not too, not in, not too long.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Great. Are you originally from that area where you're at today?

Aldrin Clement: Absolutely. So uh when we went through Y Combinator, we found out that we were one of seven people in the history of Y Combinator that are ever from Minnesota. Because as you can imagine, there's not a lot of high-tech here. We're trying to change that little by little.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great, yeah, I know. Well we work with a lot of companies that came out of Y Combinator, and um I know there's a lot of businesses in Minnesota uh and come from the Midwest. But yeah, it's great to uh, to have you on the show and we'll dive into that a little bit as well. Um uh as we, as we look into your background a little bit. Prior to starting Starlight, did you have any startup experience, or is this your first go at building a company?

Aldrin Clement: I've been working on projects for a number of years. Um you know, even as early as college when I probably had my first real formal success, which is to say I made an actual dollar from the projects I built. And um that project was actually a competitor to um an anonymous social app called Yik Yak. And we were competing with them. We had a little over 30,000 monthly active users in Washington, which was the market... high schools in Washington. That was the market that we'd penetrated. We, we eventually shut that business down because we really couldn't manage the um the moderation of it. Uh in between classes I would get online and check out what was going on. I'd find that there was a lot of um indecent posts that certain users had made, and we were trying to keep that under wraps. And eventually we realized we just wouldn't be able to do it unless we quit school, which our parents certainly wouldn't let us. So that was one of my first formative experiences.

But after that I tried many things. Um kind of the big ones are really focusing on uh agency. So I ran an agency business uh out of college. I was doing Swift iOS development, and I remember uh Swift had just come out and I sent an email to Chris Lattner, who is the uh author of the LLVM compiler, and he's very famous at Apple. And I sent him probably the dumbest questions uh that were in the first chapter of the Swift textbook. And he was so kind. He emailed me back and he said, "Hey, this is how it is," and he linked me to exactly where in the book I could learn more. And he even introduced me to his team and said, "Hey, if you need more help, feel free to email us. Thanks for uh, thanks for checking out Swift. We hope you like it."

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Wow, that's, that's actually amazing. So your background, is it as a developer or a finance person? What's kind of your...

Aldrin Clement: So my formal education background is uh Management Information Systems. So it's a business degree, but with a uh IT focus. So the Carlson School of Management here in Minnesota is actually the second ranked program in the, in all the United States, right after MIT, for MIS. So it's one of the top programs and it's been that way since you know, the early 1900s essentially. And uh I did that because I was really interested in technology, but as you can imagine here in Minnesota that wasn't really... there wasn't resources available for me to really dive deep into that. And so when I got to school and studied that, I started to do things on my own because there really wasn't a super in-depth network of tech companies or investors at the time that I was doing this, which was the 2010 era.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Got it, that's cool. Um let's talk a little bit about your company, Starlight Financial. Um what, what inspired you to build it and what exactly is it that it provides for business owners or users?

Aldrin Clement: Yeah, absolutely. So what we provide is very simple. We provide businesses with a business account, which is to say a US bank account, along with 40 other local accounts um in various countries around the world. And the customer that really gets the most benefit from our product is any business that's serving globally. So I'll give you a quick example. We have an e-commerce client that's based in Australia. They sell in Europe, they sell in Canada, and they sell in the US. They use our product. And instead of having bank accounts in all those countries and managing them, and then of course the accounting and the tax uh related stuff with that, all of that, they just use our account. And we issue them all those uh local accounts, and they're actually issued at major banks in these countries. So for example, in Europe it's with Barclays, and you know in Australia we actually work with Bank of America, and so on and so forth. And so that's kind of the real value proposition for our product.

And the reason we really started this uh was because earlier on we were helping international founders incorporate here in the US. And this was right before COVID. And we realized that hey, a lot of these people were really having a hard time getting access to banking. And we really weren't able to find a bank partner here in Minnesota that was willing to support them. We spoke with Chase, we spoke with Bank of America, Wells Fargo, anyone who'd be willing to have a conversation with us. And ultimately the only bank that was really willing to help us was Silicon Valley Bank. And so that's how we initially uh realized, "okay, we might have to go west for us to actually be able to solve this problem." And we realized Silicon Valley Bank was ahead of the curve and that they had actually figured out the regulatory side of it, and were willing to help these international founders open a bank account.

And essentially what we did was we said, "let's streamline this process for people. We don't really need to get into the banking side of it because it seems like everything's kind of handled with Silicon Valley." But after about a year of doing that and helping over 10,000 uh companies get formed, we realized that, "Oh my gosh, it's not just the bank account, it's actually a lot more." And the reality is, is that in the US financial system these international folks are treated as second, and often third-class citizens. And that's mainly because they don't have a Social Security Number. And there's a lot of debate around "okay, can you even legally access these uh financial services without a Social Security Number?" And after COVID, when everything went online, the consensus became, "yes you can." And slowly we're starting to see things open up for international founders, but it's still very early. There's still a lot more that we have to do to make the playing field level for these folks.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Why do you think that's the case? What is the risk that banks don't want to take on if you're, say an international business owner in Argentina, that you want to build a business and you know, scale it, and you want to go into the US market? Why would a, why would the US banking, I don't know, Association, or whoever is making the decision, decide "no, that you know that's not a company we want to support, open an account for"?

Aldrin Clement: I don't think it comes from malice whatsoever. I think what it comes from is fear. And the fear is that they're not able to properly understand the risk that these customers present. And it comes down to the regulation that emerged after 9/11 with the Patriot Act, and in particular also after Dodd-Frank in 2010, where essentially uh the government said, "you need to have very stringent KYC and KYB requirements. You need to really understand who these people are." And that in and of itself poses a large problem for these banks. The truth is, is here in the US when you have a Social Security Number, they can look up information. They can find out where you live and all that stuff is registered and accessible. Now if you go to Argentina, and someone in Argentina says "I live here," it's very hard for you to verify "is that actually where they live?" Documents can be falsified, especially with the internet. And so it becomes very challenging for the banks to meet the regulatory obligation they have to actually serve these clients. Now even if you do cross that boundary, as we found ways to do over the last couple years, there's a big question mark around how you handle real issues such as anti-money laundering, terrorist financing, and things that really matter when it comes to national security. And so I think these are the big things that prevent banks from jumping into this. However, with the rise of technology, this is inevitable. The question is just "how are we getting there?"

Jake Aaron Villarreal: So tell us how you got there. What is it that you do differently? What's the risk that you take on as a company that's opening accounts for um you know, international businesses, or the structure of the partners with US banks and those international businesses? How does it work?

Aldrin Clement: Yeah, absolutely. So the first thing is, is we spent about 16 months or so building a regulatory program which we shared with our partner banks. And where we went deep into "what does the law say about what is required to meet KYC and KYB, and how do we actually meet those obligations so that the legal team at the banks as well as the regu-, regulators will be satisfied?" So that was the first thing that we did. And through the process of doing that we discovered there's a lot of different, bigger problems that we had to solve. The first is global addressing. How do we validate this person lives where they say they live? And we developed essentially a list of acceptable documents uh that we went deep on and researched, "Okay, from this country we can accept this document, from this country we can't accept this document," so on and so forth. And we built that and we validated it and showed definitively, "Okay, this is government issued, this is not government issued." And so that helped allay some of that concern.

We've also done innovative stuff like we're able to collect through our mobile app detailed information about where that person's location is and do some more sophisticated modeling internally to say, "Is this person actually where they say they are?" Especially when you're talking about a global business, it's not just the person who, who forms the account, it's also all the authorized users, anyone who accesses that account. When you start to get into larger businesses, they have a lot of people that might be touching money in that company. And so managing all that risk is a really big uh question mark. So that's the first thing that we did, that's to get in the door.

Now after that, the second thing is actually being able to monitor and ensure that we're meeting AML uh requirements here in the US. And what we've done with that is we've partnered with a number of companies in New York and other places to actually help do this. It's a very big and complex problem. You first have to collect data on these people, which is very hard to do because oftentimes the data doesn't exist. It's siloed, or often it's in a different language so you're going to have to translate it. There's translation inaccuracies and many other challenges that come with that. Once you've got some of that data, then you can take that and create a profile and better understand, "Okay, this is who this person is, this is the activity, does it match with the expected patterns that we learned are normal for this customer?" And the first difficulty there was building the baseline, which over the course of 6 months we worked with our partners to build. So that's to start and get going, and again, this is just to get an account and to use an account. Something that we take for granted here in the US. We haven't even begun to talk about credit cards, uh other types of loans and you know, any of the other financial products we also have access to here in the US.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Who can legally get a US bank account from outside the States?

Aldrin Clement: That's a great question, and this is probably the most commonly asked question uh from pretty much anyone who even hears about this, because most people think it's not possible still. And the truth is, is anyone who is not living in a non-sanctioned country can get one. So essentially the government publishes a list of countries that are sanctioned, probably the most well-known one is Iran, but there's others. And essentially as long as you don't live in any of these sanctioned countries, you are, you are eligible to get a bank account. And so that's a little over 170 countries um that I recall off the top of my head that are eligible.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: So most places in the world. And do you have to be physically in the US to open an account, or can you be online anywhere?

Aldrin Clement: You can be online and anywhere. And I think that's a really important piece, because when you step back and look at where the world is going, people expect as a default to be able to do it online from wherever they are. And as you can imagine, for banks that's a very scary thing. But little by little they've started to adopt and get comfortable with that new reality.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. You know, there's so many people that are, you know, innovators that are not in the US, that have an idea, the technology is there, they can build, they can develop, um but financials are important and cash flow and being able to open accounts in different parts of the world. So it's good to hear that there's innovation that's allowing them to do that. But also, um you know, the technology helps in the process too. If you, if you look at startups today uh you know, and you look at you know, the growth of those, you know, the question could be posed as: "Startups are now default global versus default US." Talk to us a little bit about what that is and what that means.

Aldrin Clement: Yeah, that's a really interesting point Jake. Because essentially since the 2010s we've started to see, especially in Y Combinator, a shift in the percentage of total startups that are from international. And if I recall, uh from 2020 I believe it was over 50% of the startups that were funded by Y Combinator were global startups. Which, when you look at what the media says and what you might read on, on Twitter or, or X, you realize "Oh my gosh, we kind of have a very myopic view of where things are being built and, and who are they being built by." And so I think the reality now is that a majority of companies will be started by people who are international founders. And there's an interesting sort of irony to it even here in the US, which is that many of the companies, and certainly many of the most successful companies that are started here in the US are actually run by immigrants. So it's, it's literally quite funny that it's international people in some form or fashion that are launching these um companies and products that are changing the world that we live in.

And so if you look out forward, what we think is, just statistically speaking as the internet distributes more globally, there's going to be far more successful entrepreneurs that come from outside the US. And right now we still see the limiting factor as being access to financial services. And while we think accounts are a great start, we think credit is the next major thing that, when unlocked, is going to be massive. If you step back and even look at how venture capital has expanded and how that's transformed prosperity and the ability for entrepreneurs to build in many of these countries, it's incredible right. India for example, over the last 7, 8 years has really transformed into a technology hub. And partly you know, it's attributable to the capital that was available right. Venture capital is taking risk. But we think that when you think about what the role of a bank is in an economy, it's to issue credit. And we think that certainly in the US, the big banks are not doing their job, and of course they're not even doing their job in the US. Why would they be doing that outside the US? So other players need to step in and do that.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, makes a lot of sense. What are the trends you're seeing from the data that you receive, of where's the growth happening? Where, where do you see startups really building? I mean we know sort of big companies are India and you know there's you know other parts of Europe and Eastern Europe as well. What are you seeing? Where, where is a lot of innovation starting from, from your perspective?

Aldrin Clement: So I think it would be uh remiss for me to miss LatAm. I think LatAm is having a moment, and I think that moment is going to kind of go on for the next 5 to 7 years at least, uh potentially longer. Um Brazil, Mexico, um even some of the other countries who have historically um been more challenging right to operate in, Colombia, um are really taking off when it comes to investment as well as uh actual entrepreneurial activity. Outside of that right, I think the main areas that we look at are India. Um Southeast Asia is also having a lot of opportunity. And in certain segments, for example in e-commerce, Australia, New Zealand have a lot of activity.

And so we, when we look out, the only other one that we don't operate heavily in, although there's a tremendous amount of growth, is Africa. And that's mainly because Africa has a big sort of question around identity right. How do you validate the identity of these people, especially when in certain countries you can't rely on the validity of the government-issued identification? So there's some open questions there, but there's no doubt that massive growth is happening and there are many successful companies that are coming out of there. Uh Europe, there's certain pockets, certainly some parts of Eastern Europe. Even the UK I think is having quite a few successful startups, Germany and a few others. But still at the end of the day the US is still the number one spot for uh for startups, and it will be that way we expect at least uh for the near future.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: When you look at the market, uh how big of an opportunity is this for you? When you put your thesis together and you started to look at what you wanted to build, what are you, what are you really looking at in terms of potential growth opportunity?

Aldrin Clement: We think the growth opportunity is, is enormous. Uh the analog that I like to give is HSBC or DBS Bank or some of these major global business banks. They are hundred billion dollar revenue businesses, not hundred billion dollar valuation businesses right. And so we're talking about an enormous opportunity, and these guys are in most markets right. So HSBC is in pretty much every major market in the world and they're serving hundreds of millions of clients all over the world. And so when we step back and we look at the business segment of it, that's one of the most valuable segments. And the reason it's the most valuable segment is because they're doing the most volume, and they're the ones generating the activity. And the reality is, is that these existing banks are not serving the needs of this new wave of business right, the new digital businesses. They're not getting the tools and services they need. They're getting ripped on fees because the old banks have basically been conditioned because there's no competition to rip these people's eyes out when it comes to fees. And I'm sure anyone you ask you know, "Hey, do you love your bank?" they're going to say "No, screw that."

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, let me raise my hand! Yeah, no, I hear you. So if a company wants to, to, to sign up with your platform and they use you, um walk us through what they get today. What, what services aside from opening up an account for them uh will they get? If they have, say, facilities off in multiple countries, uh they have employees, maybe contractors, maybe full-time employees that they're hiring and they have to do payroll. Like how deep does your services go today, and, and kind of where do you want to take it moving forward?

Aldrin Clement: Great question. This is always the hardest thing when it comes to product vision because there's so much that you want to do and there's so much that customers are asking for, but you only have a certain amount of time and energy and focus and resources. So when we step back and we look at what we have today, it's, it's quite simple. So we have our global business account, which includes a US denominated account, which is FDIC insured, issued through our partner banks here in the US. Then we have our local accounts, 40 local accounts that are local currency accounts as well as USD accounts in about 40 different countries. And the major ones that you'd expect. So in Europe. So we have one in the UK which issues EUR denominated accounts, Singapore, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia and many, many others. And we have a full list of that on our website which you can take a look at if you're interested.

After that we have our global payouts capability. And so our current payouts capability is payout to 170 countries and 140 plus currencies. And, and the reality is, is this is not just SWIFT, which is what most, most people are used to. We also offer SEPA, which in Europe is very popular among our European clients. And we also offer local rails in many countries. And we're very excited because very soon, basically before March, we're actually going to also have local wallets. And a lot of our customers have been very excited about local wallets, and I'll give you a quick example. We have a real estate client, they do a lot of real estate in Mexico and Costa Rica and a few other Latin American countries. And it's very challenging for them to pay their construction workers. And so they're piloting our product to be able to pay those construction workers through the local payout method in just Costa Rica, it's cash pack, don't recall off the top of my head what, what it is in Mexico. But that is helping them streamline the product.

And, and the cool thing is, is it actually is exciting for the end user, right, that construction worker. Because now he doesn't have to worry about his local bank taking a fee off of the top, right, and him losing less money. And it's also super fast. He doesn't have to wait a day or two days for it to clear and to credit to his account, it's instant. And so these are some of the things that we're really excited about when it comes to our payouts. And payouts is what we're really working on really over the next six months. And not only on the side of being able to do the direct payout, the cost of the payout. So right now our business clients actually get um rates that are half the cost of TransferWise [Wise], which we consider the market leader. And the reason we can do that is because we aren't focused on only making money from fees on transfers. We are focused on delivering value through our software, which is where we want to demonstrate value and capture [a] portion of [it], not from taking off the fees. And we think this is a fundamentally different model than what other players have done in the space, because really we think it's because of greed. It's very hard to look at that, those fees and not salivate. And honestly most bankers, they see that and they say, or entrepreneurs they see that, say, "Oh we want to do that." But that's not how innovation happens. Innovation happens by saying, "Hey, we think that's unfair," right? And if you talk to a customer, they're going to say, "That's really unfair." And then doing that because it's more aligned with the customer. So those are some of the things we're working on.

The other thing, I'll tease it here but I don't want to give you too much detail, is our business credit card. And this I think will blow your socks off. Right now the only real credit cards, although they're not really credit cards, are charge cards like Ramp, which you may be familiar with, Brex, and, and so on. And then you've got the ones from the big banks which are really hard to get if you're an international founder because you need to get, have an SSN. The Ramp and Brex cards you don't, and you also don't have to put up a personal guarantee. But the reality is even for Ramp you need to have at least $50,000 in your bank account, which is hard for a lot of these smaller clients. What we're working on is actually being able to issue a real credit card right, which is to say there is no um requirement for you to have that balance in your account. And we're doing that by actually doing the underwriting as well as all of the other parts of the process from you know program management to debt collection at the local level with our local partners to be able to issue these cards for example in Mexico. And there's a set number of markets we're going to launch in first, and then we're going to expand from there. But the clients who've heard about this, they have been banging on my door non-stop asking "When am I going to get this? Uh I really want it." So we're excited.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. Wow, that sounds amazing. That's something that a lot of... I mean I've traveled to you know over 50 countries and you know interviewed a lot of different industries, and I can tell you that if that's an option, uh you're going to make a killing. Because that is a big hurdle for a lot of companies, uh especially if you don't have capital in the bank but you need it and you have a real business that you can build and grow. Um yeah, I can understand why they're banging on your doors. Um the, the underwriting and all that, interesting. What's the, how are you able to manage the risk? You know, you take on say 10 new customers that are in different parts of the world, you know, you want to support them, you want to provide a service that they don't have access to, you also want to make sure you're sustainable as a company and you don't go south or go under because you know, you took on the wrong customer base. The next thing you know, you're not getting you know your fees are paid, what you should be getting paid. What's the... how do you protect yourself?

Aldrin Clement: Great question. So the primary way that we make money, right, is through our paid plan. And so we have a free plan which is what most people expect when they get their bank account. And if you're small and you don't have much activity, that's perfect for you. You can run your business. Let's say you're just getting started, you don't have a project, you're not making any revenue yet, you can still use our product and service and get the value out of it. Um and for those folks really, that, that free plan is essentially subsidized by our higher value customers. And that's the reality of doing business uh when it comes to banking.

Now on the paid plan, the re-, the way we make money is: number one, subscription. Number two, we make some modest interest off of the deposits that client hold, clients hold with us. And we make a modest amount of money on the FX that customers do through our platform, which is to say transfer uh volume. And really our goal with our product, with our professional clients, is to help them save time and money. And what we found is that as long as we're focused on that North Star, the business unit fundamentals work out. Because the reality is, is that as long as you have these clients that are using the product and they're using it as their account for their business, we're getting enough volume through those to subsidize all those other costs.

Now the only other thing we have to be very careful about is over-hiring, being too aggressive about our spending, having too lavish of an office. And let me tell you, all of us are from the Midwest, and when it comes to our ethos, we're very much sensible, frugal, you know, very thoughtful when it comes to how we manage and spend our money. And so that isn't really super a big part of our DNA, which is to say we aren't going out there and spending crazy amounts of money like you might have seen with other startups certainly over the last couple years.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, yeah. The market has changed and you know, path to profitability is what we hear a lot more of versus you know, growth, and you know find product-market fit later. Uh sounds like you are doing it the right way. Uh as a company, how many years have you been around now and you know, quite frankly, how big are you?

Aldrin Clement: Yeah, great question. So we, we've been around about 2 years. We're still a relatively small team. We've got about 25 full-time folks that work with us, about half of them based here in the United States. Um our business has been profitable pretty much since the beginning because we've been really focused on making sure the core unit economics have been great. And also the pain point that we're solving is really strong. And most of our growth to date, since we haven't really done much marketing at all, has been word of mouth and through our partnerships. And we're really excited because we're going to go out and do a, a major launch a few times over the course of the next year. We're excited about telling more people about our product because we're seeing the value that customers get. Um after they start they're like, "Wow!" They'll move their volume over and you know we're surprised some of the things that we've heard from our customers about you know why they change. Because when you think about it, changing your bank account is, is a painful thing, no one really wants to do it. And so once people see "Okay, this is valuable," they're like very excited and willing to do it. They have the energy right. We call it activation energy internally.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, it's very true. And, and you'll put up with a lot of the, the negative issues you have with your bank even if you don't like it, just because to transition to a new bank is, is tough. And then when you do, you stay with the next bank for you know the next 10 years too. So I like the model. I think it's a sticky model if you do the right job and you serve your customers well, you're going to keep those customers. And that's a, that's a part of the business that a lot of industries don't quite have. So that's really... I think you're in a great, great niche. There's a lot of competition in financial services, um but it sounds like you're doing it differently. Um if you look at your company today after being you know, in business for a few years, um what would be something you would have changed in the beginning that other listeners or other entrepreneurs can, can, can learn from? That you wish you would have done differently that, that you now have learned um you know, maybe the hard way? Or, or maybe there's nothing. Sounds like you've done everything right so far. So you know, there's nothing to share, then maybe there's nothing to share.

Aldrin Clement: I wish that were true Jake, but no, there's, there's always many mistakes on, on, on the journey that um that I've made. And I'd say a big one is not relying enough on primary sources. And so a lot of times, especially in fintech right, there's a lot of what I call shallow information: "Hey this is what you do, just go here and do that." But very rarely is that all that's needed for you to properly run whatever it is you're trying to run. So for example in a credit program, they might say, "Oh you can just go talk to this bank, you can get a line of credit and you can launch a program." Let me tell you, there's many companies who did that in the last cycle who are really feeling the pinch from not properly managing that part of it. And on the compliance and regulatory side, this is where it bites the most right. Because a lot of people say, "Oh yeah, we're doing the compliance, we're doing the regulatory." When you step back and you really read the primary source material, which is to say the actual legislation, you find that there's a lot more nuance to it than people actually understand from the outset. Nor is it communicated unless you have a specialist. And most of these startups don't have a specialist for cost reasons. It's very expensive to have a specialist.

And you know, we learned that lesson uh early on because we're serving a customer base that is kind of in a gray area when it comes to this legislation. So I'd say if anything, when I went back I would say, "Let me get to the primary source material faster because I wasted a lot of time trying to figure out some of these details, or assuming I had them covered only to get caught later with someone from the compliance team calling me and saying, 'Hey, this is, hey, this is something that's being escalated, we need to deal with it,' and you know losing sleep over it."

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, that's great. You know, part of building a startup is making sure you have the right people on the team. You got people in the US, you have people international. Um what do you do... what's worked for you in ensuring that you get the right people when you recruit? When you go out and hire, what's the, what's the process that's worked for you that others might learn from?

Aldrin Clement: Oh, there's a lot of little tricks. I'll share a couple. So one thing that we do when we hire in uh foreign countries is we translate all, all of our um job posts in the local language, and we post only in the local job boards. So we won't post in like a global job board, because it's too broad. And what we find is that as long as we say "English speaking is a requirement," there are folks who are not looking on a global job board but are looking at a local job board, and then they find our, our company. And they're able to reach out to us and we can actually set up time. And we find that there's many, many really top-notch candidates that are kind of hidden, right. They're working at a local company, they're being underpaid, they're excited about a challenge, they don't have that opportunity to get that challenge. And then when we go to them we say, "Hey, this is what we're doing, this is why we're excited about it." And in particular because many of the folks that we hire internationally are intimately familiar with trying, or getting access to financial services, even US financial services in many cases. They understand the pain point and they're like excited to work on it. So that, that's one, one thing.

The second thing is being very upfront and transparent about our culture. "Here's how we work, here's why we work, work intensely and why we care about what we do." And then also asking the candidate what they care about in their career. I find that the best people that we have in our company... and many of them have non-traditional backgrounds. One guy we have is a geology major, which is a random major um to hire from, especially for a tech company, especially a technology-first bank. And the main reason that you know he ended up working out so great was because for him, he had this drive, this desire to say, "I want to work in technology, I really want to learn about this. I'm already doing this in some form or fashion. And to hell or high water it's going to happen. So you know, if you're, if you're willing to have me it's going to happen at your company, if not it's going to happen over there." And I said, "Jump on board, we'd love to have you." And so stuff like that I think is like underrated. A lot of companies go to the, to the, to sort of the negotiation table and say, "Hey we want this from you." And of course you have to be communicative about what you want. But you also have to ask the, the other person on the other side, "Hey what is it that you want?" And find a middle ground. And ask him about the important things. Not about the comp, [that] will come right, but "Why do you care right? What's the reason that you want to do this at all?"

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, really cool to hear that. You know, you're building this company, you went through Y Combinator, you have co-founders. Talk to us a little bit about how you found your co-founders and, and what do they do? What do they bring to the table that maybe as the leader that's really helpful for you? And, and, and what do you bring to the table that they don't bring to the table?

Aldrin Clement: Yeah, great question. So my first co-founder, I, I met him in, in the back of my, my parents' vehicle. My mom gets in the car uh and uh and she goes, "Hey, I want to introduce you to your brother, um his name is Paul." I said "Oh okay, great." Um and so he's, he's my second brother. And obviously I've known him my entire life. And um I always like to say a co-founder relationship is like a marriage right. And so you've got to figure out what are the things that keep you together and what are the things that could drive you apart. And over the years as family um, me and him have had a very close relationship. We've obviously had our fights and uh we figured out you know, how do we work together in the best way possible? And we also happen to have very complementary skills. He's much more creative, he's much more capable on the marketing side and he understands uh deeply sort of like psychology uh in, in relation to marketing. Um he's a little bit quieter and shy, and I'm kind of the opposite. I'm more brash, you know, as some might say. Um I'm more gregarious and, and forward. And um so those skills complement.

Our third co-founder, I've known him for a little over 12 years. So we met originally in debate in high school. And so um really we were at different schools but we would compete with each other quite a bit. And we became friends over the course of that competition. And essentially after uh our debate competition, he actually went to school with me um at Carlson. And so he's older than me but I was, I graduated two years early from college, so I ended up in the same class as him. And essentially I remember he would not show up to our statistics class. And he still beat me on the final despite not showing up to our statistics class like, ever! And I would literally write his name down uh on a piece of paper for attendance and he'd be like, "Thank you man, I appreciate it," you know, buy me like a beer you know, buy me lunch as a thank you. And over the course of time we stayed connected.

And eventually you know he wanted to leave his job at the Timberwolves. He's working at the Timberwolves here uh in, in Minneapolis, and he was doing, he's running their Esports team, NBA 2K. And what happened to him was their, his boss had essentially promised him a bonus and then at the end of it they tried to stiff him out of it. And over the course of doing that he was like "Hell no, I'm done," and that torched that whole relationship. So he gave me a call, we met December 23rd actually a couple days before Christmas at a Caribou Coffee (which is a local Minnesota chain, I don't know if people know what that is). Um and we just got to talking and he said "Hey, I really want to do this entrepreneur thing. And like I, this is what happened to me and I'm just not interested in doing this again, um dealing with the corporate environment." So I said "Great." And so he started to work on a couple things over the years. And eventually I said, "Hey, why don't you come work with us?" And he said "Okay, sounds good. I know who you are, I know what you guys are about, looks like you guys are working on something interesting, I'd love to join."

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Wow that's interesting. That's great. Yeah, you know you touched on something uh that I want to go, go back to. Communication is so important as a leader of a company. And debate has a lot of foundational skills in communication obviously. What's been the value of debate for you as you continue to build and grow your company as a leader?

Aldrin Clement: It's a great uh question. I would say debate actually changed my life. In the sense that when I was in high school I was mostly a slacker, and I know people who meet me now would say that's not possible. Um but I certainly was. I was mis-, far more mischievous and, and sort of like contrarian uh in the sense that I was rebellious against authority and I didn't want to do anything that anyone was telling me to do. And it was only when I joined debate that I started to get a feel for like, comfort around a competitive spirit. And at our school we actually didn't even have a debate team. Um a girl one year older than me ended up starting it. And basically I joined very shortly after and helped her build that team. And essentially over the course of my experience there I actually started to build real skills around communication, being able to speak (and I did speech as well with original oratory). And also critical thinking and being able to actually step back. And what I found is, over the last 5 to 7 years in particular, as the media and the internet has made it very difficult for you to believe anything that you read online, it's helped me go back and say, "Okay what are the primary sources? How do I reason about these things from the first principles? And what's the conclusion that I make from what I believe and what I've understood, versus what I'm reading online that probably is biased or has a specific angle to it to get a certain reaction out of you?" And so I'd say those are the main things.

And you know also winning, it helped me find a love for winning. And kind of the first year I did alright. Um the second year I won state. The third year we actually got knocked out right before because there was a... the woman who basically heard, was her reason for why she said um "you guys aren't going forward," "Hey, only say things that your mom would believe." And I was like, "My mom would believe everything that I say, what the hell are you talking about?" And so, so we got knocked out. And so I had a real vengeance. I was wanting to come back. And basically the, the following year we came back and when we won state we beat literally... our, our team had no budget... we beat every single private school in the state, including ones that have tens of millions of dollars of budget, kids of the richest people here in the state, we absolutely demolished them. And we're the only team to have ever done it in Minnesota history here. And Minnesota is one of the top three states when it comes to debate. And so this is like really part of the undertone, tone of my life, which is that you know we haven't been given the best and most fair playing field. And this is why I'm so hungry about leveling the playing field, because I've seen it, I've felt it, but I know that if you have the passion and the drive you can win, especially in America.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, no, that's great. I love that. And for me um I had a little bit of a, a debate experience as well, not at the level you had at any stretch of the imagination, but it was during college. I took one class and I, I thought it was so instrumental in, in really understanding what you're talking about but being able to back it up with the detail. Going to the source and then really forming your own opinion. But you know you can, you can influence others based on what you know and how you communicate it uh in a good way. Um and the only challenge I had with debate, the personal side of the story is that the partner I had (I was in a fraternity, went to San, San Diego State, okay), uh my partner wasn't as focused on studying and researching and collaborating. And showed up at the final and we were on two different planes, and I was presenting one topic and he'd come in with backing it up and we were off sync. The lesson for me there was, if you're going to debate and you're going to do it as a team, make sure that you're on the same page so you know what you're talking about, you're in line and in sync with you know each part of that process. But I really do believe at any age um you should have um some course in debate whether it's online or going to your local college, whether it's a junior college or whatnot, because that's a tool that you can use for the rest of your life and I think it's incredibly important. So glad to hear that. I didn't, had no idea it was that influential for you, and as it sounds like a big part of your, your background but really, really valuable. Um thanks for sharing that. As uh as we wrap up here I just have three questions for you. We're going to just kind of go more into three personal questions, super simple, super uh you know one-liners. Um what's my uh, oh yeah great. What uh, what um... where do you, where do you go to think big or to brainstorm?

Aldrin Clement: Hawaii. Uh Hawaii is, is for me paradise on earth. And um every year I try to go, I don't always get out there to go, but I try to go for a week or two weeks if I can. And I go there and I leave my phone always in the hotel room, I leave it in the locker, I leave my laptop there as well. And I go and I'll do a hike or I'll do a swim or I'll do a surf. And I'll just spend my time after that when I'm tired, I'm physically exhausted, but I'm mentally fresh from the water, being alive from the activity that I was doing, to just think. To think about the future, what it is I want to do with my life, what do I want to do with our business, about the people that matter to me, how do I want to help them. That's where I go to really think. And whatever ideas I have, I then go back and I take some time to just sit and write. So either in my hotel or you know somewhere where it's, I can still see the sun and enjoy um a drink or two. And I'll just write, and I'll write for a few hours.

And then I'll take that back and I'll revise it for about a week. And once I've revised it, then I'll share it with a couple people that I really care about and I ask them for feedback. And once I get that feedback that's when I'll continue to it-, iterate on my process until I feel "Okay, this is a great idea. This is really core, like I've distilled it down to the core," and then that's what I use. And a lot of times that's the same process I use to build our product roadmaps. Um it's the same process I use to think about how I'm going to hire people um, and hire the best people um that align with us on our values and are also motivated towards our mission. I would say that's, that's it, it's not that complicated. It's just you've got to do the, you got to trust the process right. You got to have a process, you got to trust the process, and then you've got to do it.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah that's great. And you actually come up with playbooks out of that it sounds like, and then you could execute on that which is really cool. Um what uh, what do you do to stay positive in the roller coaster of the up and down journey of a startup?

Aldrin Clement: This is very tough. And I'll tell you, last year has been very uh difficult for me um in the sense of personal uh issues. My, my grandmother uh sort of very close to passing, had a sort of a very severe heart attack. She's doing okay now, but you know it's, it's a ticking clock. And I know many people share this experience because as we've gotten older um, they always have family and friends, and had some close friends who ran into some more serious health issues. Um and so all these things are like very difficult in the life of an entrepreneur. And also it's naturally very lonely too because you're trying to chart a path that people don't understand. And you know you'll talk with someone and say "Hey this is uh..." they'll say, "Oh you know I'm upset with my friend Sally." And you'll go "Cool. You know one, one of the, one of the folks on my team their spouse just had a miscarriage and it's affecting his work," you know. So fundamentally different things. And when you think about like your responsibility as a, as a founder, that, all that stuff weighs on you.

And so the way that I found right, to actually keep balance in this, is routine. I have a very simple clear routine. Uh when I get up, I have a coffee, I have my protein oatmeal, and I get started on my work right away. After work I go and hit the gym. I hit it very hard so that I can get my you know, my anxiety and other things down and it helps me with my overall health. And then I have a few close friends who I share a lot of these things with, how I'm feeling. And they help me navigate some of those things and I trust them since I've known them for well over a decade, some of my closest friends. And those are some of the things that I do to help stay balanced. And I'd say the last thing is I talk to other founders. Because those are the only other people who understand the struggle and they're the people who can relate, who can share their experiences, and there's some comfort just in that.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, that's really true. Thanks for sharing that. I know there's a lot of you know, one of the patterns that we've learned, we're on episode 120 now of this podcast, and I think almost every founder we've talked to, at least most of them, uh sort of that loneliness at the top or that you know, navigating the, the road map with no one there to kind of guide you is always that psychological feeling that you, you had to kind of deal with some of that on your own. But collabor- in- and getting that mental support from other entrepreneurs is very, very helpful. So I think that's important to think about and keep a good perspective in the process as you go through it. Um last question for you here. Um what have you learned from other founders that you felt was great advice, that was priceless that you could share with other listeners?

Aldrin Clement: Think way, way bigger. Think way, way bigger, move way, way faster, and have a lot more confidence in yourself. One of the things I'll share is, as an immigrant myself, so a lot of people don't know this but I was actually born in India and I immigrated here, became naturalized under my parents. And essentially I've always had a frugal mentality. And sometimes frugal, a frugal mentality can lead to scarcity mindset. And scarcity mindset is a very dangerous thing for an entrepreneur. Because you've got to balance um being frugal with taking risk. And taking risk requires an abundance mentality. And because you have to have hope and optimism that that risk is going to play out in your favor, but still be emot- detached from the outcome because it may not happen.

And so uh those three pieces that other founders have told me about: "Hey, be able to step back and say, 'this is an issue that you have when it, because it's of your identity right.'" My identity was as an immigrant, as a frugal person going up, my parents didn't have a lot of money growing up and that was a part of who I am. And so that was affecting my business and feeding into how I was making decisions. And so stepping back, and a founder told me, "Hey, I'm seeing this in you." And I said, "Wow, this is crazy. Like, I feel it, I recognize it, but I have no clue like where to even start." And he also helped me build some of the tools, and there's a lot of, I think this has become popular over the last two years um, which is the idea of like being able to reflect on what it is in your identity that is keeping you from achieving the thing that you want, and then trying to build the tools to be able to reshape your identity right, so you can become that person you want to be. Ultimately then does get the success, whatever outcome that is you're looking for. So I'd say those are a couple things that founders have told me that I still hold on to to this day, and I think about on a regular basis.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, inspiring and definitely something that a lot of us have. And you go through, thinking big is hard to do sometimes, but you know every, every founder that we've seen that's really made it has multiple breakthroughs in their process and sounds like you're on that path, which is great to, great to hear. If uh as we wrap up, Aldrin, if anyone wants to find you, connect with you, or find your company, where do they go?

Aldrin Clement: Yeah absolutely. So they can find me at, on Twitter at @aldrinclement, which is just my first name and last name. Uh as it's spelled like Buzz Aldrin, A-L-D-R-I-N. Clement like clementine, C-L-E-M-E-N-T. Uh you can find our, our website at starlight.com um and you can read about us there. And you know, feel free to shoot me an email which is just my name at, my first name at starlight.com and I'm happy to answer any and all questions.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Great. Well Aldrin, thanks for coming on and sharing your story and having the courage to you know, be vulnerable and but be truthful and share in your experience. Um I hope others can learn from it, I certainly did. Uh as we look to the future, um look forward to hearing how things go for you and these breakthroughs and these other uh innovations that are coming out in 2024. Be great to have you come back and do an update at some point. Um want to thank you for coming on, also want to thank the listeners for listening, means world to me that you've chosen your time to spend with us today. My name is Jake Aaron Villarreal, host of the show. Can't wait to connect with you all again on the next episode, episode. Until then take care.

Aldrin Clement: Thank you.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Before we wrap up, I want to give a big shout out to all the entrepreneurs that have joined to make this podcast possible. And for all the listeners for listening, it means the world to me that you chose to spend your time with us today. I'm your host Jake Aaron Villarreal signing off for now. We can't wait to connect with you all soon on the next episode. Take care.  

This show is sponsored by Match Relevant, a company that helps venture startups find the best people in the market. And they do it in three simple steps. First, they sit down with founders to understand their story. Second, they tell their story into multiple candidate channels. And third, they schedule interviews within 48 hours. Find us at matchrelevant.com to learn more about how we do it.  

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