For years, FinTech has been defined by a growth-at-all-costs mentality. New markets, bigger customers and faster expansion became shorthand for success.
But after 10 years of building Enfuce, one of the most important lessons I’ve learned is that the rate of growth matters just as much as the pace.
At Enfuce, we’ve been deliberate about how we grow. That includes being selective about the customers we choose to work with. That can feel deeply counterintuitive when you’re a founder. But not all growth takes you in the right direction, and scaling sustainably is not about blindly saying yes to everything that comes your way.
That’s not to say founders simply need to get better at saying no. Blindly saying no can be just as dangerous as blindly saying yes. What matters is understanding your long-term goal and strategy, knowing what you stand for, and being selective about the stepping stones that will actually help you get there.
That provides a useful filter, and it makes you question whether an opportunity takes you closer to the business you want to be in 10 or 20 years’ time, or is ultimately a distraction.
Sometimes the right answer means walking away from lucrative revenue. We decided against entering Russia even before the invasion of Ukraine, despite the commercial opportunity available there.
We apply the same thinking to the customers we choose to work with. That can mean walking away from a ‘smelly’ business that raises red flags or turning down a commercial opportunity because they are not right for Enfuce.
Knowing what you’re building
Walking away becomes much easier when you know what you’re walking towards.
For me, the balance between commercial opportunity and our principles has never been particularly difficult. We selected our investors according to those principles too. Enfuce is built to last, not to be sold within three years, and when your horizon is long, ‘good growth’ looks very different.
That shouldn’t be confused with a lack of ambition, however. I believe in stretching our goals and putting pressure on ourselves. But there is a balance between pushing a business and breaking it, and one thing we should never compromise is quality for the sake of speed.
Things breaking is part of the journey
Things break all the time when you are building and scaling a company. We have had difficult moments, but those moments matter, because they reveal the culture you have created and the strength of your business.
At Enfuce, we have found that we are often at our best in adversity; resilience kicks in when things don’t go to plan.
Five years ago, I might have focused more on growth, launches and successes. Today, I appreciate everything it takes to get there, the setbacks, the uncertainty, and the decisions where the obvious commercial answer wasn’t necessarily the right one.
FinTech should remain ambitious. But ambition and discipline have to go together, and growth needs to be measured against where you are trying to go, not what everyone else is doing.
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