At 23, I Was Thought My Tech Would Win Clients. Here’s What Did

Eventually, every founder realizes: the product features alone aren’t enough. The technical specifications are irrelevant and few care about the API documentation. What people are buying is how you understand and navigate the market.

I learned this through practice. I founded my company in 2017. At 23, I was an entrepreneur with a technical background and a belief that the payments infrastructure was flawed. Everything was fragmented, with separate contracts for acquiring, payments and banking. Integrations were endless, and so were compliance audits.

The industry called it “best-in-class solutions,” but it was chaos, and chaos kills trust. Trust emerges from seeing the whole picture and voicing long-lasting solutions.

Finding the value of thought leadership

When our company’s PR presence was just forming, my public role as a thought leader was minimal. I cared about the architecture, compliance and scalability — not about telling the story. I was wrong. The road to popularizing our product was much longer than it could have been. Months of negotiations, endless explanations, careful and slow client adoption — we literally educated the market and it was hard. It was also a labor of love, of course, but none of these efforts could replace a trusted voice from within the company that clearly articulates the vision.

When I started writing and speaking publicly about fintech pain points through a lens of personal experience, the very nature of the conversations with clients changed. People no longer ask, “What does your product do?”. They asked, “When can we integrate?” and the difference was striking.

That’s when I realized: Thought leadership is not just about marketing. It’s a leader’s responsibility. And it can’t be fully delegated even to the best sales team, because you’re not just selling a product, you’re delivering your vision and ethos to the market. This has to come from the founder.

Why writing matters when building matters more

Some founders ask me: why waste time on articles, keynotes and interviews when there is a business to run? It is a fair question.

Over time, I have come to understand that thought leadership is not something separate from real work. It is a form of doing it. When you, as a leader, can show people the whole path of your product — from basic principles to ready-made architecture, with logic for each decision — you prove that what you do is not an attempt to adapt to a trend, but a natural result of many years of work on real business problems. It solidifies your expertise, showing you know what you’re doing, and attracting the people who value that.

Thought leadership creates a powerful feedback loop. When you’re open and honest about your vision, you naturally become a magnet for the partners, clients and teammates who actually get what you’re trying to do. And the more you learn from those conversations, the clearer and stronger your own vision becomes.

The three pillars of trustworthy thought leadership

From my first interviews in 2021 to my recent speech at Dubai Fintech Week on “The Consolidation Imperative,” I’ve learned three things that separate authentic thought leadership from empty commentary.

1. Speak from experience. When I speak about the challenges of implementing Open Banking, I’m talking about years of work building C2B accounts to collect payments through it. Behind every conclusion voiced at panels and during interviews, there are tens of millions of processed transactions. The audience has a keen ear for authenticity and a hunger for real, lived narratives. “Just be yourself” has been generic advice for ages, but it rings very true in the current era of AI storytelling. When vague buzzwords and marketing jargon create a new type of white noise, unique human perspectives cut through the static.
2. Connect innovation to problems. Make your listeners confront their pains. The result of your work is not just a product – it is a response to SOMETHING. Be purposeful and make your audience understand that any inefficiencies they may put off as a “tomorrow problem” are actually both costly and solvable today.
3. Take a stand. In an article for The Payments Association in December 2025, I wrote that “payment complexity stifles growth” and that unified ecosystems are the answer. The vendors capitalising on this complexity and companies that prefer a best-of-breed approach disagreed, but thought leadership is about trusting the people to see your point.

The returns of thought leadership

Growing your revenue and corporate pipeline is important, but the real gains of thought leadership are harder to measure — and more valuable. They manifest as a client who comes to you already understanding the philosophy, and thanks to this, the sales cycle is reduced from months to weeks. It’s a regulator who reads your articles and starts a conversation with trust. It’s a young founder who comes up after your speech and asks how to overcome the challenges that you talked about — and reminds you why you started this business.

In fintech, trust is the most important factor. Features can be copied, technologies can be replicated. But a clear vision built on years of work and consistently communicated to people can’t be bought or borrowed; it can only be created.

I remain committed to thought leadership. The National Payments Vision, articulated by the UK government, aims to create “a world-leading payments ecosystem, powered by next-generation technology”, and the FCA Chief Executive emphasises supporting growth through investment and innovation – these are the discussions I want to join.

Payments are getting more integrated, global and complex. Businesses need partners who understand the context in which their technology operates. They need leaders who anticipate the future and earn trust by sharing a clear, personal vision.

Eventually, every founder realizes: the product features alone aren’t enough. The technical specifications are irrelevant and few care about the API documentation. What people are buying is how you understand and navigate the market.

I learned this through practice. I founded my company in 2017. At 23, I was an entrepreneur with a technical background and a belief that the payments infrastructure was flawed. Everything was fragmented, with separate contracts for acquiring, payments and banking. Integrations were endless, and so were compliance audits.

The industry called it “best-in-class solutions,” but it was chaos, and chaos kills trust. Trust emerges from seeing the whole picture and voicing long-lasting solutions.