Brick Founder's Encouragement to Change Profession from Legal to Financial Technology

Starting from developing an API (Application Programming Interface)-based financial health data management service, Brick has now developed into a service treasury tools which can be used for all aspects of the business.

In canal podcast titled "Startup Simplified, a Kedot Podcast", Brick Co-Founder & CEO Gavin Tan revealed his career journey with an educational background in law, until he finally decided to enter the world of fintech 

Gavin admits that he has a strong interest in numbers and matters related to finance. Growing up, he began to be required to focus on things that would be his career choice. After considering several things, he finally decided to focus on entering the law department.

After graduating from college, Gavin had a career as a lawyer focusing on criminal cases, public interest, as well as for the Singapore government for about two years.

"I see what lawyers do well, decided this as a career choice. This science is not only about thinking logically, but also there are elements humanity which requires us to be able to process a lot of things in a short time," Gavin explained to Co-Founder & CEO of KeTitik Bipin Mishra who hosted the show podcast.

Then, at one point he recalled his childhood filled with numbers and an interest in the financial industry.

He thought hard and finally spoke to himself, "If I continue to work in the law field, it will be very easy to get stuck here." While his first love is still on financial market, he kept thinking hard about how he could marry the two of them. At that time, fintech nothing, not even considered a job.

From there, he began to follow related communities fintech, wealthtech, and attend various events. Until finally he received an offer to work for a company e-money from Kuala Lumpur operating in Myanmar. He started to rebuild his dream in the financial industry with the platform fintech Aspire.

Gavin has spent the last 8 years helping develop the platform fintech in South East Asia. At Aspire, the team managed to expand to three countries in just 6 months. He saw many challenges while working at Aspire, one of the main ones being the infrastructure that was still lacking in emerging markets.

"This actually inspired me to develop Brcik," he said.

Developing Bricks

Gavin learned many things and got an amazing mentor while at Aspire. One of the best lessons he learned was "Momentum is the lifeblood of startups", that momentum is very important. When you know the direction, you have to move, fast.

This is also what convinced Gavin to start Brick. He admits that his initial motivation was the fear of missing out on a good opportunity. While he does not feel as a businessman "by nature", never even thought of becoming one. But he works among business owners and "got hit by entrepreneurship bug".

Starting a business is not easy at all, there are many things that must be put together. "It's not enough just to get a brilliant idea, you also have to love the idea. From there, the idea must be able to be executed into a profitable business. Time is also very crucial. When there are so many competitors in the market, it will be more difficult to penetrate," he explained .

In addition, he also admitted that he had co-founder with value the same is essential. He met Deepak Malhotra who is also Brick's Co-Founder and CTO when they were teamed up at Antler. They interact socially through this accelerator and find that both have a strong interest in the same subject, fintech

They started Brick as a developer of financial health data management services based on API (Application Programming Interface), its capabilities allow actors fintech or technology companies to get insight deeper into the financial health of its users. The goal is to bring financial applications that are more personalized and inclusive.

When initiating this platform, Gavin realized that one day they would grow and enter the realm money movements. With clients mostly coming from industry fintech, bootkeeping, hence more demand for more comprehensive services. From there, they finally entered the realm of transactions.

"Right now, I'm positioning Brick as treasury tools which helps business owners, as well as the financial division, to be able to improve financial functions in companies with smart payments, automate jobs, and determine financial agreements quickly. We have grown very much from just a platform open finance"

Future plan

Not even three years into operation, Brick has raised a total funding of more than $8 million in 2 rounds funding. During his journey, Gavin also admitted that it was not easy to run a business amidst the onslaught of a pandemic. The company had adhered to the value of "grow at any cost", but in the end had to start shifting to "revenue oriented".

One thing he is proud of is that the company has been able to maintain it so far healthy runway which makes them easy to do pivot or change the focus. As a company, even in critical times Brick has survived. This is inseparable from the people in the company.

"As founders, I myself have to be able to manage expenses well while ensuring that we can still do experiments. I see that in several European countries, the investment climate has started to improve. The hope is that it will happen in Indonesia," he said.

Regarding future plans, Gavin emphasized that currently they are focusing on being able to doubling down for being a treasury tool. The movement of money is very essential, it touches all aspects of the business.

"What we're doing now is looking at gaps use case the big one and still can't be resolved, then comes as a solution. The hope is not only related to the world of payments, but also in terms of automation," he explained.

For platforms real-time financial data, Gavin also revealed that they had span off become Boiva, an authentication system that makes it easy for consumers to login no process long and repetitive.

"The vision for Brick from day one was always to make financial services more accessible, across SEA. Indonesia is just the first stop. We also plan to expand to the second and third markets in the next one to two years. However, right now we are still focusing on the Indonesian market before we go out to other markets," concluded Gavin.

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Disclosure: DailySocial.id is a print partner of the "Startups Simplified, a Kedot Podcast" program