Federico Travella | Financing SMEs | The Curious Learners Ep. 19

My guest at The Curious Learners is Federico Travella. As a venture builder, he has been involved in the foundation of very successful start-ups in South East Asia (e.g. Lazada).

He then went ahead and started his own company, Novicap, which is an end-to-end financing provider for SMEs.

Federico and I had a great conversation about financing SMEs, inefficiency in the market and the opportunity to unlock financial inclusion. Some of the specifics that we discussed are below:

- Opportunity in fintech lending --> Inefficiency of incumbent banks and their non-functioning unit economics due to lack of technology

- Most critical building blocks of a fintech lending business --> Cutting edge technology, legal & regulatory knowledge, capital markets expertise

- Opportunity for AI + Blockchain combined --> Automated risk underwriting and enhanced financial inclusion

- Effectiveness of fintech & bank partnerships --> Not great due to complexity and regulated nature of the banks

- Team vs. idea debate --> Choose team over anything (if there is a large enough market)

Please enjoy my conversation with Federico Travella.