Why does a company like Float exist?
It’s a direct question, but an earnest one. The spend management platform offers a variety of tools for Canadian businesses to better manage their finances, including accounting automations and even high-yield returns on cash balances.
“The truth is we have a tremendous amount of comfort in the ambiguity of our vision.”
Speaking to Float CEO and co-founder Rob Khazzam, it’s because these business needs require both financial and software solutions, and well, traditional financial institutions are not known to be on the bleeding edge of software innovation.
That doesn’t mean that Float is looking to compete with the big banks, just that the company is customer-focused enough to compete or partner as needed. So much so that Khazzam couldn’t answer many questions about the company’s product roadmap—it doesn’t seem to have one!
But Khazzam wasn’t dodging my questions. “The truth is we have a tremendous amount of comfort in the ambiguity of our vision,” he says on this week’s podcast. Whatever the customer needs most is what gets built next.
Khazzam is paying close attention, however, to Canada’s growth prospects if we don’t get our productivity issues sorted out. On that front, he’s a firm believer in the need for open banking, payments modernization, and increased financial innovation and competition.
But Float isn’t pinning its hopes on the political will for those things to materialize. “We will build as though it’s never going to happen,” Khazzam told me.
So what is Float building next? Let’s dig in.
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The BetaKit Podcast is hosted by Douglas Soltys & Rob Kenedi. Produced & edited by Kattie Laur. Feature image courtesy Float.