Robett Hollis Chats with Dosh

Dosh co-founders James McEniery and Shane Marsh enjoyed a great discussion with Robett Hollis on his RobettLIVE TodayFM Show about the Dosh journey so far. Make sure you’re logged into Spotify to hear the talk, it’s an interesting listen! Or read the abridged audio transcript below.

Click on the link to listen to the interview, then scroll along to 45 minutes into the show.

https://lnkd.in/gq9qcvbb

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Dosh and Robett Hollis – Audio Transcript

[Abridged]

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Robett

‍Let’s go. All right. So maybe let’s jump into this for a second. How’d you beat a bank in an award – cause banks always win everything. So let’s, let’s just jump there. How’d you beat the banks? What are you doing?

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James

‍Thanks, Robett. Basically, we were two Kiwis living in Singapore. We were up there using some pretty cool tech that was fun to use. Tech that let us pay people instantly, let us buy business services, scanning things, getting loyalty. When Covid hit my Kiwi neighbour, Shane Marsh and I both decided to return with our families to New Zealand. We were in the pool having a few beers one day and I said I’m looking forward to going back to New Zealand to use this tech, surely someone’s done it. And he said, it doesn’t exist. I’m a curious guy. And I just said, well, why not? I’m not a banker, but Shane is, and so Dosh was born in our living room in Singapore. We arrived home and during the pandemic last year we just got it done. We leaned into it, surrounded ourselves with great people who knew how to do this stuff. We plugged in bits of established tech and bits of new tech, and now we’re away. Dosh basically allows Kiwis to get paid instantly, something 27-odd banks can’t do today in New Zealand.

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Robett

‍So, Shane let’s jump for a second. So what does Dosh do, and how does that actually work? I understand the concept, but talk me through it.

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Shane

‍Yeah, sure. So Dosh is a mobile app on your phone. You download it from the Apple or Google store, and then you open an account. You can put money in the account and then you can pay your friends instantly. The money moves from your account to their account instantly, 24/7. And you don’t pay using their bank account numbers, you can just pay to their mobile phone. It is a much faster and much easier to pay people than the way people do it in New Zealand today. So today, payments made via bank transfer are delayed and in the weekend they don’t move at all. We’ve brought real time, instant payments to New Zealand, which is something that most of the other leading countries in the world already have today.

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Robett

‍So James, how are you guys still alive right now when you’re literally just going straight at the banks? What has the feedback from this been and who are you a threat to? How has that been going in terms of the growth of a small Kiwi startup going against literally billion and trillion dollar banking behemoths. Talk me through that whole experience, James.

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James

‍That’s a good question. The tech is the easy part really; the hardest part was launching this product in New Zealand. Due to the compliance and regulation we have here in New Zealand, we have to hold the clients’ funds in a trust account at one of the big four banks. That’s table stakes for us. We went and engaged all four of the major trading banks. Some of them were really open to innovation and supporting a small New Zealand fintech trying to do good for Kiwis. And they were the ones that we ended up partnering with. They were the ones we sat down and had good conversations with. They didn’t see us as competitors. They saw us as helping Kiwis access their money instantly – something today they cannot do. It was very much a ‘let’s go and engage; let’s have a chat and talk through the opportunity for New Zealanders’.

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Robett

‍What is the business model of how you guys get money and how does this scale out? Like how does this work and how do you guys buy your Lamborghini before you get bought out by one of the big boys?

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Shane

‍It’s really about introducing this new technology to the market. Payments is a great network builder, because you don’t tend to pay yourself, right? You pay other people, and that brings more and more people onto the platform. It scales out in that way. What we intend to do is to introduce new, innovative financial services products that give Kiwis great value for the money they hold in their accounts, and to make these services really easy for New Zealanders to access and use. We started with payments and as the years go by, we’ll be adding more and more innovative new products to the market.

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Robett‍

And directly through the app. Obviously, the transaction is almost like the feeder that brings the funnel of people in. They engage with the app, you build the data off the back of it, and you add on additional products and services on top of it. It’s awesome. Gosh, it’s really cool. So James, how would you describe the journey of growth to date? Like, how are you feeling? How’s the head space, how’s the balance, how’s it all been bubbling and how do you feel it’s going?

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James

‍Shane and I have long corporate backgrounds in terms of our careers. This is the first time we’ve owned a business, you know, mid-forties. We’ve told our families that we’re throwing in the corporate towel, and we’re going to go and remortgage the house and lean into an opportunity that we think is pretty exciting for New Zealand. With that came a lot of soul searching and risk. It was a bit of a leap of faith. Shane and I work really well together. He’s the ops guy, he’s got the banking and the payments expertise and I’m sales and marketing and customer focused.

I explain to people who ask me that it’s like a fast train, moving at pace. And we’re trying to repaint the train while it’s moving. We’re trying to add new carriages. We’re trying to onboard people onto the train all at the same time. Some days we’ve got so many multiple balls in the air trying to do so much, but the lucky thing is we’ve surrounded ourselves with cool partners who really understand what we’re trying to do. These people are media buyers, advertisers and creative partners. Visa is a good example of that. They get what we’re trying to do and they want to help. I guess the biggest learning that I’ve had coming back to New Zealand after being away for four or five years was I never really used the network that I had built up. Everybody in New Zealand who I’ve reached out to so far has given me a coffee for half an hour.

Some have given me a fast no, which is fine as well. That’s my biggest learning: take those connections and then reach out, because somebody’s got an answer. You’ve got an answer about your experience. Who is in strategy that can help me develop a new value proposition for a new product? And don’t underestimate people’s time. You know, they want to help if they can.

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Robett

‍ totally agree. The majority of Kiwis don’t reach out to other Kiwis to actually help them. I always have this thing – New Zealand wins when new Zealanders win and I’m here in Silicon valley, in The States, the world is flipping massive. And I hate when people, especially in the tech space, think of the small little bubble, like it’s us against the neighbour or the guy across the street or north versus south or city versus city. It’s New Zealand to the world, you know, it’s like local to global.

So Shane, I’m interested to ask, is this the first time that you’ve jumped into the world of entrepreneurship and startups? Is this all new, or have you been down this route before, out of the corporate world?

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Shane

‍ It’s very new for me as well. The first time. I mean, when we’re at university, we get told ‘Go and find a really good corporate job’. And in a lot of ways, I look back at the career path and it’s great. Because you do learn a lot of discipline and you learn how big organisations work. Within us I think there was always something that was like we want to have a crack at doing our own thing. But when you step out of the corporate world you quickly learn that there are a lot of skills that you haven’t picked up through that career path.

For example, fundraising. James and I have done two rounds of fundraising. And while it used a lot of the skills that were picked up through our corporate careers, it’s all very new as well. So it definitely feels different thing in a startup. You know, we look to our next fundraise or our next revenue earn. And your job is connected to the success of that, which makes it feel quite itchy. But it’s really exciting as well. And there’s a lot of enjoyment and passion that comes from feeling like we’re bringing something new to the market and we’re making a difference.

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Robett

‍Good on you. James are you allowed to, would you prefer or not prefer to say what bank was brave enough to actually partner with you on this venture? Are you allowed to say, would you rather keep it discreet and stealth for now?

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James

‍We’re quite open about it. BNZ and Kiwibank are the two providers that said ‘let’s go’, and are really engaging us. We’re open about those relationships and we’ve got a good partnership at this point. So it’s exciting to see that they’re up to helping us take potentially some of their customers as well on a bit of a journey.

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Robett

‍Thanks guys. Go to the Apple or Google app store and download Dosh for free.