Building a startup for emerging markets from Silicon Valley| Mark Heynen VP @ Stellar, co-founder of Payjoy

Over the last episodes, we’ve focused on people and companies in emerging markets building for their markets. There’s also been a wave of companies in Silicon Valley building for emerging markets. Those include Payjoy which focuses on selling smartphones via loans and Branch, Tala and Kiva who give microloans to everyday people. Today we have Mark Heynen, who co-founded Payjoy, helped Google and Facebook expand its products to emerging markets and has worked in emerging markets since 1999. We discuss key trends in emerging markets including: the digitization of everyday transactions, the “mobile multiplier”, the tremendous growth of the middle class in emerging markets which is growing faster than it is in the US, the popularity of super apps, and how infrastructure startups enable more innovation to come. We also talk about how to operate a startup focused on emerging markets and social impact in Silicon Valley and how to craft a narrative that VCs care about.

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