Pave founder for understanding your audience

The latest UKTN Podcast has been released now. This week’s guest is Sha Sugihara, co-founder and CEO of Pave, a fintech company that helps people improve their credit ratings.

The London-based company provides a free service that connects to consumers’ bank accounts to scan for recurring subscriptions and accounts. Its application then provides alerts to encourage payments. It also provides a paid service with additional features that help those with a bad credit rating recover their score.

Founded in 2017, Pave grew to over half a million monthly customers.

During the show, Sugihara told UKTN Podcast host Mark McDonagh how his time working for a non-governmental organization in Brazil helped provide inspiration and lessons for Pave’s launch – and how he was nearly electrocuted in the shower.

The founder of Pave also recalls “lesson number one”, which he learned from a mentor female entrepreneur in Brazil. He also talked about registering as a Deliveroo rider to conduct a market research on people who find it difficult to get credit.

Sugihara describes this experience as “super irritating”, but that “you get used to it”.

There is a big difference between consumer market research and B2B, and Sugihara delves into the main contrasts, explaining why community feedback promoted by people like Monzo “doesn’t work much” for Pave.

On the marketing front, Sugihara is discussing creating a successful marketing campaign for TikTok, including a video of an employee talking about the Pave app.

“It looked like it was shot on Nokia – really low quality output. But it worked, “Sugihara said.

Elsewhere in the show, Sugihara shares his thoughts on the thriving buying industry now paying later and explaining how it can benefit people “when used responsibly.”

You can listen to all this and more in the latest episode of the UKTN Podcast and watch all the previous episodes here.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the Spotify UKTN Podcast, Apple Podcasts or wherever you catch your favorite podcasts.

The UKTN podcast is sponsored by No coverwhich provides investments without a share capital of £ 10,000 to £ 5 million to founders and companies that are changing the world.