Shotgun-Charlie (GG)

Here's how I scaled a neobank GTM from 0-60,000 customers in 4 years. Founders are DM’ing me asking how they can grow their neobank, here’s the GTM plan: I’m not going to list 100 channels. I’m breaking this down into: top of funnel, middle of funnel, and bottom of funnel. - Top of funnel: Ads/acquisition channels (FB/Google/Affiliate programs/WoM, partners, etc). - Middle of funnel: Your website that converts visitors to leads, and your signup flow that converts leads to customers. - Bottom of funnel: Turning customers (account opened) into active customers (they are at the WOW moment, they are using your product). Just because someone opened an account does not mean they are a customer. A customer in a neobank has money on the account, is transacting and using the product. Avoid vanity metrics. I am just focusing on B2B below, but a lot is relevant for D2C neobanks as well. TOP OF FUNNEL 1. Meta ads don’t work for B2B fintech neobanks because Meta ads are mobile optimized. You can’t sign your business up with UBO information and company formation documents on mobile. You need to sign up on desktop. 2. That limits you to desktop channels. The best desktop channels are Google ads, SEO, word of mouth, referral, and affiliate programs. There are a ton of guides for all of these except affiliate programs. So let’s focus on affiliate programs. 3. Affiliate programs are the most important acquisition channel for fintechs (think: mortgages, credit cards, bank accounts, loans, etc). Affiliate programs were 50% of our acquisition at Penta, and 50% of any other fintech’s paid advertising stack during the first wave of fintech. 4. I’m surprised that wave 2 neobanks aren’t using affiliates as much. Affiliate programs are equivalent to NerdWallet, The Points Guy, and similar websites that show you “the top ten business bank accounts” ranked 1-10. The first ranked neobank pays the most to be there, it’s that simple. That’s what we used as our main acquisition channel. 5. This is the highest intent paid channel because its success is based on a) the user is actively searching for an account b) when they land on your website your H1 should resonate with them c) the affiliate only gets paid if they convert. And if you have a bad funnel, the affiliate will replace you with one that has a great funnel as they’ll pay more. It’s as simple as that. MIDDLE OF FUNNEL This is your website, and the most important part of your GTM stack. The more optimized your website, the more customers you’ll get. 1. What do you want the visitors to do? Putting a CTA saying “Sign up now” as the first thing they see on the hero does not work. You want to educate them, answer all their questions, and then ask them to convert or hop on a call. 2. The better educated your leads are = the more time they spend on the website = the higher the chance they’ll turn into a customer. 3. 1’d bet anyone $10,000 that the leads who convert into customers on their website have spent the most time on the website, compared to those that did not convert. Time spent on the website is directly correlated to the quality of the lead. Optimize for education. 4. As an example, let’s say you have 100K visitors per month; if you improve your visitor to lead conversion rate by 1%, you can double your acquisition. It’s THAT easy. But most founders just focus on ads and forget about the funnel. That is a waste of pipeline. Stop doubling down on top of funnel. Focus on middle of funnel. Ok, the visitor has turned into a lead, now what? 5. At Penta, we had a 50–60% conversion rate from lead to customer. Over 50%. That’s insane. The way we did that is by focusing on the experience. 6. Optimize your onboarding funnel. A bad KYC experience is a choice. Analyze the top 10% of customer support/compliance requests in the onboarding funnel. Add those questions to the funnel so users can answer them themselves, so that your support isn’t drowning in requests, so there isn’t a drop off, and so that the user can have a smooth journey. 7. Use Hotjar to see where users are dropping off. Fix it. Maybe it’s a word that doesn’t make sense, maybe a description, maybe the buttons are hard to find, maybe there’s a bug. Simple math here: improve conversion by 10% and you have now acquired a multiple of what you would normally convert per day. If you convert 10/100, and you now convert 20%, you’ve doubled your acquisition. BOTTOM OF FUNNEL Once the account is opened, it does not mean that they are a customer. 1. Get them to the WOW moment ASAP. Get them to add money to their account. This is user activation. Just because you opened up X accounts does not mean they are active. Make them active. 2. Analyze what the users who are active do. What behaviors can we replicate? 3. Within what time frame do they upload money? It’s typically within 4 days of the account being opened, or you lose them (this is true across all SaaS from what I’ve seen). Send them emails, call them, incentivize them within that period. 4. How much money do the active users upload? Make it easy to send money from one bank to your neobank (eg: Plaid, card payment). The moment they make an “investment” into your new neobank, they are more likely to stay. Issue them a card, get them to use it for a subscription (10% cash back for 30 days). This then equals retention. 5. Your CAC should be calculated on an active user level, not an account opened level, because all accounts opened are not active and therefore don’t generate revenue. Therefore, your CAC is much higher than you have calculated. Be honest with yourself. Ending thoughts: While my examples are focused on neobanking, the same is true for any SaaS product, enterprise sales, healthcare, etc. Your funnels are your highest leverage acquisition channels. Not your “marketing/advertising channels”. I’d also suggest reading about AARRR. What am I missing?

I founded Penta one of Europe's largest neobanks during the first wave of neobanking in 2016. We launched in 2018, and went from 0-60k customers, and a 9 figure acquisition 4 years later. Here’s the playbook for how to build a neobank in the 2nd wave of neobanking: From 0-1. 1. It’s all about distribution. If you don’t have an unfair distribution advantage you will lose. Advertising is not an unfair advantage. 2. Focus on a niche. Build a monopoly in that niche. Expand to other niches. At Penta, we focused on companies that were incorporating, they needed a specific type of bank account. We made signing up take 10min, compared to 4 weeks. That was our initial PMF wedge. 3. CAC/payback period is critical. If you’re not paying your CAC back within a reasonable time frame (<12 months max) you’re going to hemorrhage cash. 4. Engagement and retention is your #1 metric. 10% is average retention/activation for D2C neobanks. <25% for B2B neobanks. That is garbage. Users who are active are your real number of customers, not the ones who signed up and are dormant. Optimize for >50% retention defined as a minimum of 2 transactions per month. 5. Your onboarding funnel is your most important acquisition channel. It’s not only about top of funnel. Mid and end of funnel are probably more important if you have top of funnel even slightly even figured out. The whole company should be focused on optimizing the funnel from visitor -> lead -> customer -> active customer. Read about AARRR. 6. Churn should be below 2%. Card programs enable high retention. Customers don’t switch banks, when’s the last time you switched banks? Make sure that aligns with your metrics. 7. Focus on the power users, then find more of them. Break user engagement groups into 4 buckets, 25% least engaged, to the 25% most engaged/power users. Focus only on the top 2 buckets while trying to convert the bottom 2 into the top 2 buckets. What behaviors do the power users have that the other buckets don’t? Force that UX and those behaviors on the other 3 buckets, which makes more power users. 8. Focus on B2B niches instead of B2C, unless you have a unique problem in consumer you’re solving which enables a low CAC, better distribution, and better economics. Most don’t. B2C is typically full of fraud and typically makes no money. FX worked in the first wave of neobanking (Wise/Revolut) but isn’t a USP anymore. Find a niche. 9. Get to scale in 1 geography. Not multiple. From 1-10. I’ve seen what a 0-1 looks like, and then what 1-10 looks like. When companies hit scale, most plateau (ie: Brex, N26). Others like Revolut turn into $100B+ outcomes. 10. Your best new customers are your existing customers. Make your current customers happier. That also means higher NRR and ARPU. 11. Neobanks are card companies + deposits. That’s what you do. Increase card spend which equals retention which equals higher deposits. Launch treasury products as a result. High yield keeps customers, and steals customers away from others. Steal customers. 12. Don’t get into lending until you’ve crossed a large number of deposits. Lending only works for your top 10% of customers, and only 20-30% of those will actually want a loan. When launching a lending program, don’t lose money. Focus on quality. 13. Fire the bottom 10% of performers. Your company will swell and reduce speed and therefore quality. Keep the team sharp. This is a silent killer. 14. Don’t hire for experience, hire for hunger. 15. Move fast, test things, and fail fail fail. The more you fail the more you’ll succeed. Neobanks that become large become comfortable and they stop launching products that fail. You need to fail if you’re gonna launch a breakthrough. Look at Revolut, they have 20 projects running at once, maybe 1-2 will survive but they’ll be a home run. 16. Most importantly, don’t focus on the competition. Focus on your customers. Talk to your customers every single day. You’re more likely to die of suicide than murder, so forget what others are launching or doing. Focus on your customers. If you’re building a neobank, let me know what I’m missing!