Zuben turned his personal experience with crippling overdraft fees into Brigit, a fintech he sold for $460 million after hitting $100M ARR. This episode gives early-stage founders the unfiltered truth: how Zuben discovered massive market pain hidden in plain sight, validated the idea with real customers, built bulletproof unit economics early, and navigated brutal early-stage fundraising. It’s a real story about solving problems banks deliberately ignore—and getting rewarded big time.
You don’t want to miss this.
Why You Should Listen
- How Zuben turned a personal $1000 overdraft nightmare into a $460M exit.
- Why solving your customer’s deepest pain point is the only way to unlock real growth.
- How to validate product-market fit fast (and what most founders miss).
- The surprising reason Zuben says unit economics matter way earlier than you think.
Keywords
fintech, overdraft fees, product market fit, earned wage access, early stage startups, customer validation, fundraising, founder stories, lending, unit economics
00:00:00 Intro
00:08:47 Inside the Hidden Overdraft Market
00:16:34 Validating Your Idea the Right Way
00:27:37 How Brigit Cracked Customer Acquisition
00:33:38 Why Unit Economics Saved Us
00:37:08 Navigating a Crisis and Coming Out Stronger
00:45:14 Behind the Scenes of a $460 Million Acquisition
00:48:57 The Moment of True Product Market Fit
00:50:22 Advice Every Early-Stage Founder Needs
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