How We're Building in Public and Bootstrapping a Fintech Company | Thomas Ketchell, CEO and co-founder of Curvo

Market Like a Fintech

Building in public takes guts. Being truly transparent takes guts.

That’s because it’s easy to be transparent when everything is going well. But what happens when things don’t go so well? Like when you’re having to delay projects? Are you transparent then?

Curvo is an investment app based in Belgium that has been building in public for two years. Their founders, Thomas and Yoran, have been bootstrapping the company, which means they are learning everything they can about marketing, product, regulation and investing themselves, and taking their audience along the way. Their build in public approach has helped them build trust with customers as well as helped with marketing their product. And yes, they have been transparent even when projects were delayed.

In this episode, I’m chatting with one of their founders, Thomas. We talk about the initial days at Curvo, and what their most effective customer acquisition channel is to date. We also talk about why they are so transparent, how they’re educating people and how leveraging the audiences of influencers helps them gain more reach. Finally, we chat about the regulatory obstacles Curvo faced and how the team cleverly overcame them. Thomas also explains why they’re deciding to bootstrap rather than raise money for the time being.

I have a huge amount of respect and awe at what the team at Curvo is doing, and what they’ve managed to achieve in the past two years. They just recently launched their app a few months ago, and are steadily acquiring customers. It’s super exciting to follow their journey, and the plan is to check in with them in another year or so. Thomas is very transparent about how they do things at Curvo, which makes this podcast episode particularly useful to other fintech marketers.

Thomas on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-ketchell/
Curvo website: https://curvo.eu/