Episode 546: Jeeves CEO Dileep Thazhmon on Scaling a Borderless Banking Platform

**Lance** (0:12)
Welcome into another episode of the Inside the ICE House podcast. Today's guest is Dileep Thazhmon. He is the founder and CEO at Jeeves. Dileep, thanks so much for joining us inside the ICE House. Happy to have you here.

**Dileep Thazhmon** (0:23)
Thanks, Lance, for having me. I'm excited to be here.

**Lance** (0:25)
So let's start at the beginning for just a couple of minutes, the days before Jeeves existed. What was sort of the moment or the set of experiences that made you realize that there was a real gap in financial infrastructure for business? And how did sort of that initial insight help you in saying to yourself, hey, this is a company I want to start, this is a problem I want to solve?

**Dileep Thazhmon** (0:46)
Yeah, so actually my last company before Jeeves was based in New York and we had an office outside the US as well. And a lot of the problems that I saw in that company is what we're trying to solve with Jeeves. So what that means is, if you're a company that operates in more than one country, US plus Mexico, US plus Brazil, your financial stack is pretty convoluted. You need one provider for a corporate card in country A, you need another provider for a corporate card in country B, a different provider for payments in country C and so on. And so to me, it was an actual lived problem because in my last company, it would take us about 30 to 45 days after the month closed to get an idea of where our cash was. And this is a common problem for most companies that operate internationally, most companies that operate in more than one or two countries. And then that idea was accelerated really by COVID, because after COVID, companies are now global by default. If you have one contractor in another country, you have one employee in another country, you have a vendor you need to pay in the third country, by definition, you're a global company. And so that's been a big accelerant for the growth that we've seen at Jeeves. But the problem to me was personal, it was lived, it was actually based out of New York that I saw that for the first time. And that's kind of driven a lot of what Jeeves has become today.

**Lance** (2:00)
And Jeeves has scaled and had really great growth. How do you sort of stay true to your roots, that original vision that you had while that skill happens? Because I think it's very easy for leaders, for founders, for CEOs, whatever you totally want to put on to it. It's very easy to, as you grow, sort of move away from what sort of got you there. How do you stay rooted and make sure that that problem that you were originally trying to solve remains sort of like in your mind and in your focus?

**Dileep Thazhmon** (2:28)
So two thoughts are, one, I think it's really important for founders and CEOs to be on the front lines. And you can ask anybody in my team, my company, I pride myself on being the fastest to respond to customers because they don't give an F about the company, about me. They'll tell you exactly what the issue is. And if you hear it from them, it's unfiltered. And it really kind of helps you keep the focus on what matters, which is really the customers, they're really my boss at the end of the day. And the more you can interact with them directly one-on-one, the more you keep that touch on to what is important for them. And if it's important for them, then it's important for you. And if it's important for you, then it's important for you. So that, I think, one, is just having that touch point with the customers. And then two, what's really interesting now is a lot of the technology itself is changing. So the problem hasn't changed. The problem is still finances are fragmented.
Banking is country and currency specific. Companies are global by default. Like, how do you kind of consolidate that? But the technologies to get there has changed. So to your question of like, how do you stay grounded, the question is like, what are you trying to solve? And so for me, that solving hasn't changed, which is our goal is to build a global business bank and to make it so that if you're a company that operates in more than one country, you only need to have one partner. That's the goal. And the technology is the stacks, the stable coins, the AIs, it helps you get to that point faster.