I'm Suneera Madhani and I'm a mom of two and the founder and CEO of the payment
technology company, Fattmerchant. I've built an eight-figure business,
and now I've made it my mission to help female entrepreneurs to reach
the million dollar mark as well.
I grew in a household of immigrant parents,
so we always had conversations about finances.
My father was an entrepreneur.
I grew up around understanding the importance of cashflow and how if we
manage money, could be life-changing.
Honestly, entrepreneurship was something that I didn't want to do
because I was around it so much.
I ended up choosing finance as my specialization and working
in a financial services company,
and that is how I learned about the credit card processing industry.
I learned quickly that small businesses were being taken advantage of from
a payment processing standpoint.
When the idea of Fattmerchant came about, I had zero desire
to go build a company on my own.
I just wanted to go solve a problem in my market.
I was 26 years old
with no money in my bank account. I had a team of two and I gave myself six
months, moved into my parents' house.
Fattmerchant exists to empower small to medium-sized businesses
in the United States to help take control of their payment ecosystem.
We were the first to do subscriptions in payments,
so we're coined as a Netflix of credit card processing.
I was going to different pitch competitions,
and ended up taking home over $200,000 in prize competition wins,
so that's how we initially bootstrapped the company.
And then we decided to, can go get venture capital.
I was told that it would be nearly impossible for me to raise
venture capital because I'm a woman,
and then on top of that, I am a minority women.
I ended up getting pregnant while I was raising our Series
A funding. I started getting questions around what was my plan
post-having a baby.
And so, at one point I decided to just add in a slide to say, "I'm
pregnant and I'm not going anywhere."
What's ironic is that the venture funds that I did end up partnering with were the
ones that were focused on the KPIs and the data versus what my maternity plan was.
Five years later, 130 employees,
I raised 20 million in venture capital and that five million in payments that we did in
year one turned into five billion in payments last year. Finding balance in working
mom life is probably one of the hardest challenges that I've ever had to solve.
I didn't have a maternity leave.
Mila just really grew up every day at Fattmerchant,
and that's kind of how we made it work.
There was a couple of weeks where I really felt like I had missed
every bedtime.
I started creating rules, such as, I'm not going to travel for more
than two nights away for the week.
Just creating simple rules that you really stick to because once you
respect the boundaries yourself, then others also respect the boundaries.
We need to be hyper-organized
if we are working moms. On Sundays, I sit down and I have a process,
what I call "Sunday Zoom Out".
I look at my calendar for the week and everything goes on my calendar.
I have this three bucket principle.
So for me, it was Fattmerchant, my family, and then social impact.
There's some days that I'm going to be not a hundred percent in mom-mode, but
by the end of the week, I have to make sure that all my buckets are balanced.
I actually believe that we should run our home life
like we run our businesses because it's efficient.
My husband's also an entrepreneur
so we sit down and we do our finances monthly.
We invest together.
It's really just about having a goal in mind, but having a plan
to actually achieve that goal.
I encourage all women to understand the financial metrics and not be afraid of it,
and to ask questions.
It's also important to make adjustments based on time.
I don't need the biggest house.
I want us to have a lifestyle that we could spend time with our kids.
Something that I learned was the fact that less than two percent of female founders
ever break a million in revenue.
And when I heard that statistic,
I set on a mission to say, "what can I do to go create an impact to go
bring female founders to that level?"
And I launched a podcast called, CEO School, sharing inspiring
stories of women that have made it to this fictitious two percent club.
I really fundamentally believe that we as women, we don't just have to choose
being a mom or being a working professional.
I think one of the financial habits that I have that have led to my success is really
that mindset of knowing that there is an abundant amount of money in this world.
I know that I can outwork anybody and so money will come because
we all deserve to have it all.
I'm so happy that my daughters get to see me live this life every day,
and I think it's so important to showcase that to not only all young girls,
but especially young girls of color to see other women of color succeed.