Introducing David Wexler, Co-founder and CEO of PortX
Sara:
I'm Sara Lindquist from FUSE. We're an early-stage venture firm based right here in the Pacific Northwest - and just like the founders in our portfolio, we are just getting started. We believe that founders deserve more: more urgency, more community, more expertise, more reliability - more of everything. And we aim to deliver. Join me as I introduce each of our portfolio companies in the FUSE Family to date.
Today you'll hear from David Wexler, Founder and CEO of PortX. Join us as we discuss the entrepreneurship journey, and how this company is revolutionizing the way community financial institutions can deliver enhanced customer experiences.
Let's get started!
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Sara:
Welcome, David, appreciate you taking the time to join me here today!
David:
Oh, thanks for having me! Excited to be talking about this topic and looking forward to working with all of you.
Sara:
Well, likewise, we're super excited to be working with you. And to kick things off, I think it would be great if you could share the quick overview about your story, but particularly, what PortX is and how it's serving customers today.
David:
We've been in this business for quite a while. So my background has been in -he integration space for a long time. And so the idea for PortX and the technology behind that was really born out of that experience and working with customers on a day-to-day basis, helping them deliver connections to systems - initially working with a lot of banking cores, and customers that needed to access those systems. And then as we've actually started to pivot and build the technology, we found that there's a near constant need now for "how do we get data out of our key systems?" - that's a solution that we provide for them.
Sara:
Love it. And so David, obviously, would love for you to share a little bit about the ModusBox (David's prior company) journey, but when did you know that you needed to build this and spin out of your prior company? Can you walk us back in time through that journey and maybe what the key "aha moment" was, if there was one?
David:
Yeah, absolutely. So ModusBox really was born first out, really my background and experience in the integration space. Originally, I got my start working with Microsoft and with my co-founder Kent Brown, who is now our CTO here at ModusBox and PortX. He and I worked together to help build out the integration strategy for Microsoft and to help drive that forward. But we had realized at some point that it really made sense to start looking at the latest and greatest in the space and start looking at where the next generation technology are coming from.
And so, we made the leap to actually start ModusBox a few years back. And that was really built around that experience and working with some of the latest open-source-based technologies in this space. And so ModusBox originally started as a systems integration company, but during the course of working in that space, because of our background, we really got placed with a lot of financial institution customers, community financial institutions, FinTech’s, and the like, and so we realized a few years back that the technology we're using - while it was great from a capability standpoint, didn't fit the space very well.
David:
And so, we made the decision to pivot the company to actually start building software. And at the same time, we were also starting to work with our friends at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation around driving some of their initiatives, around financial solutions for the poor, internationally in Africa and Asia. So between those two projects, we realized that there's a real need, not just in the US with credit unions and community banks, but also internationally with microfinance institutions, co-ops and mobile money operators internationally. So as we started pivoting the organization, we realized we needed a software platform to do that.
So, that's now become what PortX is. As we started to take this forward, we realized that we've started to really build out what I'd say are two businesses that are really in their own right self-sustaining. And so earlier this year, we made the decision to spin out the PortX brand and the technology so that we could really focus on helping serve those community financial institutions directly and help to scale out and help them drive their connectivity needs. Both, not only to the core banking systems that have been our bread and butter, but also drive access to payment networks and new technologies that we started to partner with.
Sara:
That's super helpful. I'd be curious for you to paint the picture a little bit, just for those who aren't super ingrained in what you're doing...what does the current landscape look like with your customers, for how they're trying to do these integrations and what they're currently facing, and then would you mind putting some color onto that landscape on what you're engaging with?
David:
Yeah, absolutely. So if you take a look at the community financial institution space, which in the US is really encompassing. Community banks, which are your local community financial institutions that are probably serving you every day, they're your local next door financial institution. And then the credit unions that serve a lot of the different sorts of membership bases and stuff like that. And so again, those have been our primary customer base for the last little bit. And so what we've found is that with a lot of these institutions, they're looking at what's next from an innovation standpoint, but the struggle has consistently been like, how do we access the technology and the data in a way that allows us to actually start to bring a new technology and experiences for our customers?
And so the challenge that they have is that they don't have the capability in-house to actually be able to connect to highly technical systems, and they don't have a model and method in which they can actually deliver that. That really is the thesis for what we're doing here, is we're bringing the technology platform. We're abstracting a lot of the complexity around the hosting that those very technical solutions and then bringing in the capability and the partnerships that allow them to rapidly start to bring those connections in-house and then start to leverage those to the drive business value by connecting to new systems and applications.
Sara:
That's great. That was really helpful. And so David, now I want to talk about the PortX team, or your broader team. So in your words, why is your team the team to do it?
David:
I've alluded to that a little bit earlier, and that's really that we are very deep in the integration space. This is what myself, not just myself, but my team. This is where we come from. And so historically when we've hired people, we've always looked for people that know the space really well, understand the complexities and really one of the most technically difficult areas of FinTech and technology in general is the integration space. And so you need to have a team that really knows what they're doing. And so that's the type of people we hire. We have architects, enterprise architects, organizations that have run the IT departments of Fortune 500 companies. We have people that have worked for the largest integration technologies in the space. IBM, Microsoft, obviously, MuleSoft, and other key technology providers. And so we brought together this truly expert team and also some of the strongest players in financial technology as well. And so again, we know the integration space probably better than anyone and we know financial service technology. So we bring that to our customers and that's why they want to work with us.
Sara:
That's great. And so I know obviously the spinout was recent and you've brought some team members over, but I'm curious if you have a word to describe your culture, what would it be, or the culture you're trying to build and continue to build?
David:
That's a difficult question to bring it down to only one word, but-
Sara:
You can use a few too, or sentence, or couple sentences.
David:
How about we do two words: rapid innovation. That's what we believe in. And what does that mean? Maybe if I could give a couple words on that and we believe that one method, or way isn't necessarily the right way. And so we have a constant state of change when it comes to how we think about developing technology, how we think about working with customers, how we think about business models. And I think its critical path that as part of growing and evolving an organization like this, you really have to be able to shift technology and meet the market where it's at.
Sara:
Awesome. That was great. Great answer! Well, David, we're so excited to be a part of the journey and see your awesome team transform and supercharge the way that banks can deliver better customer experiences across the board. So my next question for you is about the startup journey at large. Being a leader of a company is hard work and comes with all sorts of challenges. What keeps you going? And what key learnings have you garnered along the way, especially given that this isn't really your first rodeo?
David:
We've gone through a number of different changes the organization. And so we've learned a lot in going through the journey. And what we've realized is, number one, it is critically important that we are listening to our customers and that's become an absolute critical path for us. And we know that not only do we need to just be talking with them, but we also need to start creating systems and processes in place that allow us to operationalize the feedback needed to evolve the technology. Technology doesn't change and get better unless we're all working together.
That's really at the end of the day, what needs to happen to move the space forward. We also need to have truly the best team out there. And that's what we've tried to assemble as part of the PortX team. And so we believe, again, both bringing in the expertise and experience from across the industries, but also trying to bring in a mindset that really drives innovation in this space. And that requires a level of understanding around the urgency needed by these customers that we're working with. And so we expect that we're going to see rapid change here and we think we're going to be the ones to bring it together.
Sara:
Love it. Thank you. That's great. Thanks for sharing that. Okay, David, so in closing here, I have one final question for you: what right now, do you need more of? How can anyone tuning into this - how can they help or get involved?
David:
Wow, we need so much right now.
Sara:
All the things!
David:
So we've been growing a very rapid pace. We believe that we've got to really get in front of the demand that we're seeing coming out of the work that we're doing. And so there's a wide variety of roles that we need right now. We absolutely need to bring in some key resources around working with our customers directly. So we're hiring across our sales work and our marketing and those kind of typical roles. As I mentioned, we really do bring the best and brightest from a technology standpoint. So if you're a cloud architect, or a financial services security type of person, those are the kind technical roles we'd like to bring in to support our ongoing development here.
Sara:
And what's the best way for people to get in touch?
David:
We've got a great recruiting page on our website, so they can take a look at our careers page and we respond to just about every one of those.
Sara:
Awesome. Yes. And of course, anyone can reach out to us at FUSE and we'll get them connected as well, but that's great. Cool. Well, David, thank you so much. Really appreciate you sharing the story and just thrilled for your team and excited to watch you build something truly special at PortX. So thank you for being here! Thank you for allowing FUSE to be a part of the journey.
David:
Thank you, Sara.
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Sara:
Thanks for joining in on the conversation with David. Check out PortX job postings directly on their careers page. And you can always go through the FUSE website via our careers page as well. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time!