Fintech Leaders

Shensi Ding, Merge Co-Founder - Lessons for First-Time Founders, $75M to build API Infrastructure in an AI World, The Truth About Fundraising

Mar 18, 2025

30:10

Miguel Armaza interviews Shensi Ding, Co-Founder of Merge, an integrations infrastructure platform that has quickly grown from serving early-stage startups to powering integration layers for some of the largest financial services companies in the world including Revolut, Airwallex, Ramp, Brex and many more. They have raised a total of $75 million from great investors including NEA, Addition, and Accel.

In this episode, we discuss:

Building credibility with engineers and product teams
Unique advantages of being a first-time founder. Plus some hard lessons learned.
How customer obsession and early security investments shaped company strategy
Why fundraising is a game with rules first-time founders need to learn... and a lot more!

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Miguel Armaza is Co-Founder and General Partner of Gilgamesh Ventures, a seed-stage investment fund focused on fintech in the Americas. He also hosts and writes the Fintech Leaders podcast and newsletter.

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