Executing on Obvious Trends

Jonathan Ebinger, BRV General Partner and Paystand Board Member, shares his views on how Paystand’s Series B continues the digitization of payment processing

Macro trends are often obvious to spot; however, how and when to capitalize on specific trends can be murky. The unmistakable trend of replacing physical paper with digital equivalents has experienced various adoption rates across different industries. Despite financial services’ heavy reliance on computing technologies, payment processing is one of the laggards in the movement to electronic processing.

While some of the best ideas are the most obvious, the success of these ideas often depends on plan execution. Timing the adoption within a given market can be an expensive proposition for a venture-backed company. Given this, it’s important to work with a company that can cost-effectively drive adoption vs. wait for it to arrive.

When we initially invested in Paystand’s Series A, “digitize business payments” felt like a “how is this not already done?” problem. We decided that the right team, solid market education, a simple-to-use product, and fair pricing could turn this idea into commercial traction. A strong vision and plan execution is exactly what we’ve seen from Jeremy and the team at Paystand.

With Paystand’s recent Series B investment, the company brought in several new investors whom had previously followed BRV at Coupa (NASDAQ: COUP). This new group of investors and I are delighted to see the same signs of breakout success that we did when we invested in Coupa. After this recent influx of capital, it is clear what needs to be done and I look forward to working with the company and other stakeholders to make it happen.