As the economic climate continues to intensify, the environment for StartUps looking to evolve their business and flourish is becoming increasingly challenging. 

In the latest edition of StartUp Sessions, we spoke to Pawel Oltuszyk of Frost as he detailed how they navigate ‘a fast-paced and competitive fintech industry’. 

Firstly, are you able to tell us more about your Startup and the role you play in the payments industry? 

Frost is a CarbonNeutralcertified digital account provider with a mission to help people master their money more sustainably.

Every household is struggling with the cost of living, and we all want to do our bit for the environment. But nobody has the time to spend hours managing bills, comparing tariffs, and researching how green utility providers actually are.

Our next-generation app, with various intelligent and intuitive features, is ​designed to solve these problems and help everyday people save time, money, and the planet.

Can you detail some of the challenges in gaining funding and building momentum during a tough economic climate? 

Sure, the economic climate is tough, but the money we need for investment is out there. The challenge is to convince investors that it’s not only the right time to invest, but it’s the right product too. We need to provide them with compelling reasoning and a strong product to back it up, which I believe we have in Frost.

Constant innovation and dedication to building future-proof products are key here. We’ve recently closed our Seedrs crowdfunding campaign, having hit 100% of our target in just three weeks, so we’re feeling really positive about gaining funding and building momentum over the coming months.

In terms of your roadmap, what are your goals for the future and how do you plan on reaching them? 

Our goals are ambitious, and they need to be in such a fast-moving and competitive fintech industry. What differentiates us, though, is our ethos of constant innovation and dedication to building future-proof products. 

While helping customers solve emerging issues in today’s turbulent economic environment, we’ll be evolving our green strategy with various initiatives. Our core product – Save Assist – enables our customers to cut down on essential utility and broadband costs, and we plan to expand this to insurance and mobile contracts.

We’ll also implement green scoring technology into the Frost app, allowing users to make well-informed decisions about the products and services they purchase and engage in a community of like-minded people through our gamified tree-planting referral scheme.

In the coming years, we aim to leverage our team’s varied experience of operating in global markets to expand in Europe, given the increasing demand for digital payments across the region and our ongoing product-market fit. 

As you have grown your company, can you tell us some of the key challenges and how have you evolved to meet them? 

Of course, we knew about the threat fraudsters and scam artists posed to fintechs, but we underestimated the sheer scale and intensity of their attacks following our launch. Managing this took time, which we’d much rather have focused on our customers and other processes. Nevertheless, it served as an important learning opportunity as we tackled fraudulent and harmful activity on all fronts.

In addition, we’re a small startup with huge ambitions. While this isn’t a challenge in itself, it does make it difficult to deliver all the innovations in our pipeline at the pace that we’d like to. Every day is a balancing act of wanting to deliver everything in one go and taking a reality check that we have to cherry-pick on our growth journey. 

Can you tell us more about some of the challenges involved in hiring and acquisition as a startup? 

We’re still a relatively small business, therefore haven’t yet faced the issue of hiring at scale. But the hires we have made have all been extremely successful. This is partly down to how selective we are about the people we bring on board. We try to remain as lean as possible whilst still having the right people to keep maintaining, building, and innovating within Frost. 

Our employees are all multi-skilled, driven, and passionate individuals. They all surpass their basic job title and go the extra mile to bring something else to the table beyond their core responsibilities.