It took 3 tries, but this entrepreneur transformed his struggling startup into a $2 billion unicorn by JeffKauflin
, a payments processor, left a grim board meeting and went for a walk with his lead investor, Arnon Dinur of 83North. Facebook had pulled the plug on a joint initiative, and Marqeta had fallen far short of its revenue target.
Jason Gardner, Marqeta’s founder, in the company’s headquarters in Oakland. Over the past two years, the company has grown from 75 to 275 employees.Despite a rough start, Marqeta has had the right idea since its founding in 2010. It pursued a niche in the payments-processing business that had seen little innovation in over a decade: card issuing and processing, which involves deciding whether a debit card transaction should be approved.
Gardner’s second business product was commissioned by Facebook: a gift card that you could send to friends and was redeemable at places like Target and Olive Garden. Facebook launched it in January 2013 but was disappointed in the sales and shut down the card about a year later. Once customers were set up, Marqeta would make money the same way Visa and Mastercard do, by taking a cut of every transaction. How much? Marqeta is mum, but we’re told the average fee is roughly 1% before rebates to clients.
In 2017 Alipay, the Chinese payment app that has more than 900 million global users, signed on to enable Chinese nationals to use the app at U.S. retailers while traveling. Brex, the credit card startup, became a customer. Marqeta raised $25 million that year from investors like Visa, Granite Ventures and 83North, while bringing in $70 million of revenue, we estimate. It doubled its staff to 160 employees.
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