For Nick Gospodinov, the young Bulgarian mind behind AI-driven financial controller Fynt, it was never a question of “go big or go home”. It’s more about “doing it big from home.” And it is precisely this mentality that managed to get the Bulgarian startup accepted into the Y Combinator (YC) program.
Fynt is only the second Bulgarian company to launch into the famous Silicon Valley accelerator. The startup received $500,000 from YC, including $125,000 for a 7% stake and $375,000 in a SAFE note that will be converted into its next fundraising round.
For Gospodinov, born and raised in Burgas, it was also a journey full of different challenges, which started and ended in Bulgaria. Part of the problem was that they didn’t have a clear structure, with their initial product being an open banking solution – something that completely changed after he joined YC.
However, as the young entrepreneur explains, until that moment, foreign venture capital firms did not like the fact that the startup came from Bulgaria and there was only local traction , while all Bulgarian venture capital firms were extremely conservative, even though most had insisted that “they wanted to be the first check.”
Therefore, traction outside Bulgaria became a key requirement for many international investors, while the traction they already had in Bulgaria was not enough for Bulgarian VC firms to back them.
“We have not proven the results of the markets. All of our traction was in Bulgaria and even though we were doing pretty well, I felt like everything was kind of working against us. At that point, everything was financed by us. We left our jobs. And we had to invest all the money in the startup. And of course we borrowed a lot of money. It was really difficult when no one wanted to support us, even with a little money,” Gospodinov tells The Recursive.
All that changed when Nick and his co-founder Alex Bonin decided to apply to YC. Things become radically different when it comes to financing opportunities.
“After YC, we received a lot of interest from investors. YC gives you a network of investors, so the day we launched or launched YC, we probably had 40 to 50 investors contacting us. On the day of the demonstration, there were still 40-50, so a lot of investors are coming,” says Gospodinov.
The confidence and courage to pivot
What was even more important to him was that YC gave the company the confidence and courage to pivot.
“The most important thing is that YC inspires more confidence in you than anything else. You need to be confident that even if you’re currently lost, you need to be confident that, okay, you might not be product market fit, but you’re looking for it. You also need to have confidence in the pivots. And one of the biggest lessons is what Michael Seibel (senior partner at Y combinator) said: You’re still missing two or three key pieces of information to become a billion-dollar company. And this key information comes from experimentation and not from sticking to the actual playbook,” says Gospodinov.
And that’s exactly what Gospodinov and Fynt did. From an open banking payment solution, the Bulgarian startup is now doing something completely different, which Gospodinov describes as “an AI brain for autonomous decision-making in operations and finance.”
“AI has become a tool maker, something that allows you to be general in how you interact with it, but also quite specific in the tasks it can create and perform. What we’re trying to do is connect it to all the companies’ operational and financial data, see how your data interacts within the company. Then the AI can, on command, answer questions about what’s happening within the business, predict the data in terms of how your business will perform in the future, in terms of how to optimize your pricing, and so on. “, he explains to The Recursive. .
Here, Gospodinov learned another important lesson: working on solutions that bring total innovation to the market.
“I’ve learned that I don’t like working on solutions that aren’t ‘zero to one’ – solutions that provide something that wasn’t possible or completely manual before. I felt that with our previous product we weren’t delivering that and that it was a secondary innovation. This was something that allowed merchants to save a lot of money by avoiding card networks. But I have the impression that consumers don’t care what they pay with,” he explains.
Obstacles and potentials of construction in Bulgaria
After YC, Gospodinov’s choice was to return to Bulgaria – and build big from here. As he says, there are many reasons for such a decision.
“Given how expensive the United States is, especially California, we decided it was smarter right now, especially during our seed phase, to hire all the great, smart people we can. Bulgaria, to develop the product, to get as much traction as possible. possible, and expand the team to the United States,” he says.
However, he remains very cautious about Bulgaria’s shortcomings. As mentioned before, it is firstly about how Bulgarian venture capital firms approach startups, but also how startups approach the problems they are trying to solve.
“I think there is a misconception that Bulgaria is like the Silicon Valley of the Balkans. We’re probably a little more developed than some other countries, but I feel like if you thought you could build a billion dollar company targeting the region, sure, there’s a chance that the money be there. However, any startup must aim to maximize its chances of success. And you can’t optimize it if you target the market here,” says Gospodinov.
However, talent is just about the biggest advantage that Bulgaria can count on and offer to anyone who wants to start a successful business abroad. And this is something that Gospodinov strongly defends. The key to success according to him? Always be international, even from day one.
“Go global from day one, be ambitious. I think with the number of talented people we have in Bulgaria, people try too hard to just solve Bulgarian problems. And thanks to the large number of ambitious people we have here, we can solve bigger problems. With all this talent, there is potential for not just a billion-dollar company, but a $100 billion company coming out of the region,” says Gospodinov.
And this has practically become the motto of Fynt, which aims to be much more than just a local Bulgarian fintech.
“I sincerely believe that we have exceptionally intelligent people here, this has been proven by Payhawk success, proven by INSAIT recently, and this was proven by almost everyone I met growing up in high school and seeing all the champions in math, etc. And I feel like I want to have the best people possible who believe in this future and want to build it with us,” he concludes.
