Slice

Enjoyed this chat with Adam Miller & Sachin Shah. Thanks for having me on! We talked about bootstrapping, navigating crises and pirate mode 🏴☠️ (link to pod in comments) PS: we're hiring for various roles in early 2025. If you resonate with our mission, reach out.

Check out our latest Installment which details Cara Davies, our Head of Product, journey joining Slice Pay After selling her startup Steppen, Cara joined Slice. Initially, she thought it was as a stopgap while she figured out her next steps. But she quickly realised Slice was the place for her! Read about why Cara joined Slice and her experience so far (she and we are just getting started! 🚀🚀) https://lnkd.in/gQwB6tFJ

Thanks to Express Travel Group for the amazing Xchange conference in Ho Chi Minh City! The Slice team which included Farouk Ismail, Michael Krywyn, Yannick D. and myself were able to gain a lot of insights from top suppliers including Singapore Airlines, Qantas and Air New Zealand 🛫 It was great to connect with other travel agents to share insights and collaborate on our new product offering Slice Pay. Slice's consumer brand Pay Later Travel was a lucky receipt of a Diamond award making us one ETG’s top agents! 💎 A shout out to Yannick D. for doing a great job on the agent panel. It was great to hear Yannick share the Slice story and approach with other agents. We look forward to continuing to deepen our relationship with Express Travel Group and those who were at the conference 💓

We so appreciated the guidance and expertise of Elizabeth Henderson and the Herbert Smith Freehills team on our recent Seed fundraise and would be delighted to recommend them to all startups looking for a knowledgeable legal advisor in capital raising.

When Yannick D. was a kid, trips overseas were magical and treasured occasions. When his relatives returned from a trip, the whole extended family would gather to watch VHS tapes of their holiday. He remembers crowding around the TV - feeling both excitement and longing. Working at a big bank, Yannick realised his dream to travel wasn’t rare - hundreds of customers were saving for a holidays. Travel was aspirational - a dream that kept people going through all the hard moments. But he also realized that banks didn’t have a good product to help people access travel in a financially sustainable way. He thought, there ought to be a way to allow customers to book flights in advance at a fair price, and assist them to pay in manageable instalments leading up to their holiday. Yannick teamed up with Farouk to found Slice, a startup with the ambition to make travel accessible to everyone. We were proud to share our fundraising announcement last week, but we're just as proud of the blood, sweat, and tears that happened behind the scenes - the first hundred flights the founders financed using our own credit cards, or the first thousand bookings Yannick processed manually on the bus home from work. For a peak behind the curtain at the bootstrapping journey, including surviving a near-death moment during COVID lockdowns, check out Instalment 2 of our blog - Yannick's story.

Loved this roundup of the latest news in Aussie startups, including 🚀Gemma and Will's thoughtful discussion about Slice!

It took as a while to raise funding for Slice - we were frequently bucketed as 'just another BNPL provider' - even though our product isn't BNPL! But Peak XV Partners (formerly Sequoia India and SEA) team grasped our business immediately. When we met, they asked insightful questions and were impressed with our metrics. We were first introduced to them on a Thursday. On Friday, they sent us a 'Request for Information' (RFI) document. We completed it over the weekend and sent it back on Monday. The following Thursday, the team got on a red-eye flight to Sydney to meet us in person. And now the rest is history! We are thrilled to be partnering with Abheek Anand, Nadia Aldora, and the rest of the Peak XV Partners team 🛫

As a kid, trips overseas were magical and treasured occasions. When our relatives returned from a trip, the whole extended family would gather to watch of their holiday. I remember crowding around the TV - feeling both excitement and longing. When I worked at a bank, I realised my desire to travel wasn’t rare - hundreds of customers told me they were saving for a holiday. Travel was aspirational - a dream that kept people going through all the hard moments. I also realised banks didn’t have a good product to help people access travel in a financially sustainable way. I thought, what if we could allow customers to book flights in advance at a fair price, and assist them to pay in manageable instalments leading up to their holiday? This spark of an idea became a flame. More accurately - it became Slice, the company I co-founded with Farouk Ismail - my good friend and now business partner. Building Slice together has been a rollercoaster. It's too long for a LinkedIn post, but I've written an expand version of the founding story here: https://lnkd.in/dNKEXTJt Today, I’m proud to share that Slice’s products have helped over 70,000 customers access travel in a financially sustainable way. We’re launched in Australia and the US, and it’s been extremely heartwarming to read so many customer reviews about how much being able to travel has meant to them. We’re also excited to announce an inflection point in our growth - we’ve secured an additional $10 million for our debt facility from Roadnight Capital, and a $7.5 million Seed round led by Peak XV Partners (formerly Sequoia India and SEA). This capital will help us expand and improve our product, as well as scale our B2B product for travel agents - which allows them to offer our payment method to their customers. As a founder that’s bootstrapped until this round, I must admit I’ve always been sceptical of the fanfare that surrounds fundraising announcements. The coverage rarely shares the blood, sweat, and tears - the first hundred flights we financed using our own credit cards, or the first thousand bookings processed manually on the bus home from work. Today’s fundraise announcement means so much - not because it’s a big number, but because it validates the business we’ve built, and propels us to the next phase - scaling Slice into a global company that makes travel more accessible for everyone. I feel blessed with a wonderful team, supportive friends, and to have helped thousands of customers go on wonderful trips and create core memories. The best part is, we’re only getting started! There are still millions of customers worldwide, falling into unsustainable debt and we’re here to do our part to change that! To read more about our story and recent fundraise, check out this article in the Australian Financial Review! #venturecapital #fintech #startup #technology #funding

We're excited to share the news of our $7.5 million Seed round led by Peak XV Partners, as well as an additional $10 million of debt funding we've secured from one of our first believers Roadnight Capital. We were happy to share a little about the genesis of Slice with Simon Thomsen: 'Slice is the brainchild of Farouk Ismail and Yannick D., who met when they both worked in a big bank;s Collections and Hardship department. “Between us, we had spoken to over 10,000 customers who were struggling to make their credit card repayments,” Ismail said. ”Many customers we spoke to were using credit cards to pay for overseas trips. A large number of these customers were migrants with young families, who were travelling back home for weddings, births, or big family reunions around Christmas. We didn’t want these customers to miss out on core memories, but we didn’t want them to take on unsustainable debt" While the last decade has seen a plethora of buy-now-pay-later for a range of consumer products emerge, Darmalingam says Slice's products are not BNPL. ”We’re not a credit product. We’re a smart savings product – if anything, we most resemble traditional lay-by – you don’t get the product until you’ve paid off the whole amount,” he said. Full article here:

🚀 We're Hiring! 🚀 PayLater Travel is looking for an Operations Lead - Collections to help shape and scale our Payments and Collections Processes for ambitious growth targets! If you are or know a customer-obsessed and tactical operations leader ready to make an impact, I want to hear from you! Don't miss this opportunity to: 📈 Optimise and scale Payments & Collections processes 👥 Lead and develop a high-performing team 🌟 Drive customer satisfaction and compliance Apply now and join our dynamic team on our journey to revolutionise travel 🚀