Today, @sarxhxu is joining our marketing team at @naturalpay from Cognition. We’ve been recruiting to add to our marketing team for a while, but I’ve been incredibly selective. It’s tricky to find someone who can marry technical marketing, product marketing, brand, and storytelling. Sarah is one of the few people I’ve met who has that combination. Increasingly, you’re seeing decision-making shift from humans to agents. Whether that’s procuring software, booking restaurants, or moving money. What happens when our job is no longer putting up billboards targeting founders in San Francisco, but instead getting your Muse agent to choose Natural? That’s Sarah’s job. At the same time, I want to be driving towards that future because of how much more human the world can become, not towards some dystopian, hyper-technological future where technology becomes the point. That’s an ethos Sarah and I share. It’s going to be an exciting year ahead. Natural is about to enter its most consequential four quarters. There’s a massive wave coming, and either we paddle fast enough to catch it or we don’t. Either way, we’ve spent the last year preparing for what we believe will be the most dramatic change in financial services in decades. Very excited to have Sarah here for it. natural.com/blog/why-sarah-j…

Today, @jerrylu is joining @naturalpay as our first GTM hire after spending the last five years investing at @maveron. Your career is long. I first met Jerry in November 2022 while pitching Ivella. Different company, different vision, and, frankly, a very different level of ambition and execution. When you’re in the throes of fundraising, it’s easy to become myopic. Someone passes and you think, “I’m never going to engage with them again.” Going on six years in the Valley, I can tell you that’s basically never how it works. I remember meeting Jerry and immediately liking his energy. We didn’t get to a deal, but we stayed in touch. Turns out the world had more in store for our story. As we started building out GTM at Natural, I kept thinking about how valuable it would be to have someone come from venture. Someone who had spent years talking to the exact customers we were selling to, and understood the landscape because they had spent years sitting on the other side of the table. The harder part was finding someone who was also a culture fit, and willing to put all of their eggs in one basket because they believed that deeply in the mission and vision. Turns out that person was Jerry. Jerry was already driving customers toward Natural before the first day of his onsite. By the time he showed up, it felt like he belonged here. Today is technically Jerry’s first day at Natural, but it already feels like he’s been here for a while. So excited to have him. He’s going to be a big part of our story. natural.com/blog/why-jerry-j…

Today, @davidyiworks is joining @naturalpay as our Founding Talent hire after helping scale Ramp as their Director of Talent. I interviewed a lot of recruiters to find David. One of the beautiful, but challenging, parts about building a team is that recruiting, to me, is not primarily about parsing resumes for conventional signals of status or success. Building a team is about energy. My interviews tend to be far less about the work someone has done, and far more about the person. What motivates them. How they think. What they care about. What kind of energy they bring into a room. If you’re going to help scale Natural, you need to understand those things deeply enough to recognize who someone really is, whether they’re going to thrive here, and why they should want to be here in the first place. David is that person. Watching him come onsite, quickly understand the culture, dissect what motivates each person on the team, and introduce exactly the right amount of process to help us scale has been incredible. We’re going to be growing the team aggressively over the next few months, and I’m excited for a lot more people to get to know Natural through David. As part of that next phase of growth, we’re also expanding Natural to New York City. Going forward, we’ll be building teams in both San Francisco and New York. If you’ve been excited about what we’re building but geography has kept you from joining us, that’s changing. We have a lot of hiring to do. Read more about why David joined below. natural.com/blog/why-david-j…

Today, @kishansripada is joining @naturalpay as an engineer after founding a @ycombinator backed startup last year. Meeting Kishan, it was immediately obvious he was going to fit at Natural. He made it clear he only wanted to work on hard technical problems, and had strong opinions on economics, technology, and the future of the world. During his onsite, he fit naturally into the product engineering org. His time as a founder showed — when you’ve had to own the product, engineering, and strategy yourself, you tend to think about problems differently. His broader love for economics pairs especially well with getting to help shape the financial infrastructure that will eventually move a meaningful share of global payment volume. We’re super excited to have him on the team. It’s crazy to think I did YC five years ago now, but as an alum, I have a particular inclination to hire as many former founders as I can. If you’re a former founder looking for your next role, Natural is where you want to be. And if you eventually decide to leave and start something new, I’ll happily be your first angel check. natural.com/blog/why-kishan-…

Today, we're announcing that @naturalpay has raised up to a $100M credit facility from Upper90, on top of the $40M in equity we've raised. Payments isn’t just a software problem. At scale, it’s also a capital problem. This gives us even more capacity to build the best payments infrastructure for agents. If you’re building agents that need to move money and access credit, reach out. natural.com/blog/100m-credit…