Sal Rehmetullah, Founder and CEO of Worth AI, is a highly accomplished entrepreneur and business leader, known for his innovative contributions to the payments technology industry.
As the co-founder and president of Stax Payments, Sal has led the company to over a 140+ Million in ARR and to becoming a leading provider of cloud-based payments technology solutions, serving clients across a wide range of industries.
Sal has been recognized for his leadership by Inc’s 40 Under 40 and EY’s Entrepreneur of the Year.
Connect with Sal on LinkedIn.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode
- Advice for new entrepreneurs with a big idea of vision
- Mentors and the impact of mentorship
- About Worth AI
- How Worth empowers enterprises to make more informed/effective decisions and instill confidence in approving more customer
- Finding product market fit (PMF)
This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.
TRANSCRIPT
Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.
Stone Payton: Welcome to the High Velocity Radio show, where we celebrate top performers producing better results in less time. Stone Payton here with you this afternoon. You guys are in for a real treat. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with Worth AI, Mr. Sal Rehmetullah. How are you, man?
Sal Rehmetullah: Oh, I’m living the dream. So happy to be here.
Stone Payton: Well, we’re delighted to have you on the show. I got a ton of questions, Sal, I, I know we’re not going to get to them all, but this whole idea of AI and its application for a variety of businesses, and candidly, our business at the Business RadioX network just fascinates me. Uh, but I think a good place to start would be if you could share with me in our listeners mission. Purpose. What are you and your team over at worth? I really out there trying to do for folks, man.
Sal Rehmetullah: Yeah. I mean, at the end of it, um, you know, I’m sure we’ll get into my background here shortly, but, uh, we really want to just level the playing field for small and medium sized businesses to have access to capital, access to loans. Um, it’s easy for a lot of consumers out there to really think about their personal credit score and know how to leverage that when they need their own credit card or they’re buying a car. But when you think about that same concept, when it goes to growing your business, there’s nothing out there that exists. There’s no business credit score that exists. There’s no standard way to be able to underwrite loans or get business credit cards or get an SBA loan approved. And so our goal is to standardize that, create equality for all, and, um, you know, bring way more data into the ecosystem so people can get a loan or a credit card in their businesses and minutes. Not in months.
Stone Payton: Well, your instincts are right on track. I do want to know about your backstory. How in the world did you land here doing this for? For these kind of folks?
Sal Rehmetullah: No, it was, uh, it was a rainy day. September 2nd, 1989. No, I’m just kidding. Um, you know, I was I was born in the United States and, uh, a big background for us, obviously, just being immigrant children in the, in the US. And, you know, we were blessed to have, um, you know, a great education. I went to school, I went to I worked for Deloitte, Morgan Stanley, I did a variety of things, and I ended up starting a business with my sister. So I started a payments company called Stax Payments, where we integrated and provided think credit cards, ACH for small to medium sized businesses. And we grew that business from just the two of us to over 40 billion of payments, 100,000 small, medium sized businesses, and we were the first folks to sell that business for over $1 billion. Uh, we were the first unicorn founders out of Central Florida. First brother, sister team out of Florida. First Muslim Americans to do it. Uh, and so it was a crazy ride, but, uh, just been in the entrepreneurship journey and we, for some reason, were always around small and medium sized businesses.
Stone Payton: And you couldn’t just hang it up and sit on the beach and drink cocktails. Now you’re doing this. Tell us what compelled you to start this new venture.
Sal Rehmetullah: You know, that’s a great question. We get that. I always get two questions. They always ask me, like, why would you do this again? And then the second one’s usually followed up with, why would you do this again with your sister? Um, but I’ll answer them both for you. But, um, you know, we were absolutely blessed to have built an amazing business. We had great partners, and we really wanted to provide tool sets for small, medium sized businesses when it came to payments. You know, when you think about what’s really rapidly changed in the last ten years, all of us can buy everything off our phone. We tap, we jump in the cars. We, you know, have payments through Ubers or Lyfts and all sorts of things are sort of just dominated by payments. And we were sort of at the beginning of, of really making and enabling small and medium sized businesses to have access to that technology. And so it was something that we felt, you know, compelled to do and really excited to have delivered the results we did. And you’re right. We, uh, we went, you know, we saw a couple beaches. We worked on our golf game. Um, but I think that when you’re an entrepreneur, you you find yourself, um, always wanting to solve problems. And, and I will say when at least I’ll speak for myself. When I left Stax, there was this feeling of, um, almost like mourning. Like if you if you lose a loved one, you know, being and building that business for ten years, having, I don’t know, 500 or so employees here in the United States and a few international. It just became a part of my identity and not having that anymore, um, felt kind of like a loss.
Sal Rehmetullah: It was like, how do I contribute to society? How do I, you know, add value back into this world? And it’s a space that we really knew. And, um, to your point, we were really blessed to have had a great outcome. So personally, financially, everything was sort of checked off. But we really wanted to see how we can make a broader impact and leave a legacy behind. And, um, you know, we had this crazy idea that was like, well, why is there no business credit score? And why has nobody ever, you know, been able to solve this? And the more we unpacked it, um, it was just very complex. It was something that everyone struggled with and it was very hard to do. And that’s sort of where the magic happens for us. And so we all got into a room and kind of thought about it and said, well, let’s be the ones to go figure this out. And so we’re really excited to have the first, you know, business credit score called the word score. That brings in almost 100 data points for any SMB with frankly, just a few clicks and really excited to empower not just the enterprises to be able to use it for making decisions, but also for all the small businesses out there to be able to see your own credit score very similar, like how you would manage your own personal credit on a credit karma or or things along those lines, but giving you visibility in how to manage your business, which frankly, is seem to not have always had the best of resources. And so we felt compelled to do it, and crazy enough to get back on the saddle to go solve it.
Stone Payton: Well, I got to tell you, you have my attention. As you know, my business partner, his name is Lee Kantor. He and I own the Business RadioX network, and we’ve been fortunate. We’ve been blessed. We’ve made we’ve made a comfortable living. We feel like we’ve made a dent in the universe by helping people leverage this platform to share their story and promote their work. But also we now have, you know, studios around the country, not nearly as many as we want. And they’re able to do that. And if if Lee and I really felt like we just absolutely cracked the code on on scaling to the level we want to, and we wanted to go borrow money to get that going. Um, I mean, based on my body of knowledge around it, I think he and I are still putting our own personal, um, financial. You know, we have to put our, our house up or whatever. Our own personal scores, right? We we don’t know anything about this.
Sal Rehmetullah: No, you nailed it. And your story right there is a story for almost every American, let alone business, frankly, in the world. And it comes with a couple of reasons, right. So when you think about like how why can I go on, you know, and buy a car in 15 minutes and use my Fico credit score and my W-2 and get it. But if I try to go buy that exact same car using, let’s use your example, the radio station and the P and L, they require two years of tax returns, three months of bank statements. They want me and my partner to both sign personal guarantees. And the reason is, is they just don’t know how to underwrite and understand your business, your viability and the growth. And it’s as simple as that. It’s the fact that businesses are just so unique. You know, if you grab Sally’s Shoe Store versus Joe’s Pizza Shop down the road, both of them have wildly different profit and loss statements. You know, one of them might have $10,000 of inventory just like the other, but Sally’s shoe store might be rising if they’re, you know, collectible Louboutins versus $10,000 at the pizza store, you know, in dough may go bad if the electricity runs out.
Sal Rehmetullah: And so how do you manage all of that differences when it comes to businesses? And that was sort of the challenge. But we sort of landed in this perfect world. Nowadays where you have all of this area of concepts of AI, large language models that can digest all of this information. And we had this crazy phenomenon of Covid that happened, you know, in 2019, 2020 that actually pushed all the businesses to go digital. And so even if you think about your radio station, you probably adopted a lot of the tool sets, from online banking to ACH and payroll to paying all your bills through autopay. So you actually started to contribute a lot more information into the ecosystem on a digital world that now we’ve been able to harness, but nobody’s ever consolidated it together. And so what we did is we said, well, can we give you an entire viewpoint and a holistic view of your business and now allow the banks and, or, as you mentioned, opening new studios to be able to see that history rather than just having a personal guarantee of your personal credit score or your net worth attached to the all the work that you put into the business to leverage it for growth.
Stone Payton: Man, I love it. Okay, so let me get clear about who is the customer. Maybe the answer is both. Is it me and Li or is it the the people who should be willing to loan us some money or both.
Sal Rehmetullah: You know, you’re spot on. So where we started, like anything else, to make change at this level, you need the large enterprises to adopt the fundamentals, right? So the first place we started off is we went to the large banks. We went to the Department of Defense in the small business associations. We went to the large enterprises that provide, frankly, risk and underwriting, you know, within these organizations. And what you learn from them is like anything else, any all of us have probably purchased a home or gone through some sort of credit risk underwriting. They’re laborious, they’re paper driven. There’s so many documentations and it’s sort of a pain for both parties. And so the first thing we said to them was, well, what if we can help you bring all of this information together by just a few clicks? Right. And that is the first place we started with the large enterprises. And as we evolved and learned with them, we then started to show them our word score. We started to show them that they don’t need to grab all of these documents. What they really need is just to give authorization to a few of these accounts, and we can really predict out the future of these businesses for them. And that’s sort of where we landed first.
Sal Rehmetullah: And we’ve had amazing adoption in the large enterprises we’re in, you know, a variety of large banks that you would know names of, or in a lot of large credit card providers and loan originators. And after we did that, the first aha moment was, well, now we have all this information on the SMB. We understand why people are approving. We also understand why people are denying. And so why wouldn’t we give people like yourself that information to help you grow your business? And if you do want to open more studios, well, what does that actually have to look like for you? And we sort of followed the model. If you’re familiar with like Credit Karma or managing your own, you know, individual credit, they provide you a bunch of solution sets to say, hey, did you know your credit got hurt because you didn’t pay this bill. Did you know that because you have so much money on this credit card that’s costing you so much, you’re getting dinged? Well, if we have that same information on your business, let’s expose that to you. And so that’s our word score platform. Um, that works directly for you and your partner. And that comes out in early Q1 this year to really enable you to manage your own business credit.
Stone Payton: I’m excited. I, I tell you what, gang, if you want to meet some really smart people and get a leg up on whatever you’re trying to accomplish, get yourself a radio show. Man, this is this is fantastic. So now that you’ve, uh, been at this new venture for a little while, what are you. What are you finding the most rewarding? What’s the most fun about it for you these days, man?
Sal Rehmetullah: You know, um, I think it’s it’s just rebuilding again. I think you get to see real impact. And and to your point is just hearing your story, right? Like the the reality is, it’s so true for so many Americans, so many folks out there in the world that are all coming across a variety of these challenges, and you sort of get everybody just nodding their head of like, yes, I’ve experienced that. And and being at that forefront of actually making a material impact in that world. And, you know, you and I could probably all know that the statistics of what loan approvals probably look like for, you know, specific folks of color or women, etc., and other, you know, youthful businesses, um, being able to make an impact at that level. And, and I truly I see the world with rose colored glasses, and I believe the banks and associations really want to do the same. But it’s not always easy because that data hasn’t existed and immaturity of their models are there. And so for us to be able to be at that forefront of really paving the way to think about the future in this style of business, I think is just something that’s, uh, just very fun to be in a space that’s sort of unchartered and having to sort of set the new guidelines and new areas. And I think that’s probably the most fun part about it.
Stone Payton: I know the answer to this has to be yes, but I’m going to ask anyway because I have a feeling I’m going to enjoy where you take it. But I am interested to know to what degree have you had the benefit of one or more mentors to help you navigate some of this crazy new terrain?
Sal Rehmetullah: You know, you nailed it. I think my dad, he passed away a few years back, and he used to always tell us, me and my sister, as I said, we work together. He always said it to us is if you’re the if you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room. And, uh, and, you know, providing that statement, Senator and I have been huge proponents of surrounding ourselves with really, really smart people. And so when you think about some of the words that I said, and I might have said them quickly, but being able to walk into the Department of Defense and the Pentagon to talk about the Small Business Association and how to change that to partnering with Equifax, which is the largest data holder across private citizens and business citizens. To have a strategic partnership with us with worth, um, doesn’t just happen because we walked in the door and, you know, had a really, really cool product, right? We want to believe that’s the case. But you have to have the right mentors and the right folks. And, um, we’ve been blessed with, obviously, our history to have met so many different pioneers along the way, um, that have sort of opened that door for us. And so, you know, we’ve worked with a lot of the old executives that we knew, um, we forged great partnerships with folks at Equifax, etc., that have all really opened the right doors for us to share in the mission and vision that we’re trying to accomplish. And so, um, it’s definitely, I think the old age saying is that if you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together. And so that’s that’s sort of the mission we’re on here.
Stone Payton: Yeah. So talk to me a little bit if you could, about getting the the product properly aligned with the market. And and this is very personal to us because we’re wanting to work through some larger systems like we’re of the opinion and it’s purely hypothesis. Here’s Stone getting some free consulting again. But it’s it’s our opinion that there are professional services businesses and groups of them, like even franchisors that have like a lot of, let’s say, coaches or business brokers, that might very well be served by having their own business, radio X studio, in their community to serve their community at large and to help them do all the things that our platform does. But you know this, Lee and I have not been either of those things like, like talk, talk about. I guess that’s the right term, right? Like product, market fit, alignment. Speak to that a little bit if you would.
Sal Rehmetullah: Yeah. Look you that’s probably one of the hardest things that as an entrepreneur, uh, you have to go through. Right. So all of us have high conviction. We’re slightly crazy. Uh, we’re willing to take on sort of the leaps of faith. But what you do learn is when you get out into market is that your thesis generally is correct, but there are a lot of things that you thought would be there that aren’t. And that that’s been true from, you know, the day of every single startup I’ve worked with to every single thing that we’ve done and to the large businesses that I mentioned, billion dollar businesses we have built, we have pivoted on a consistent basis. Right. And so if there was, you know, a screen saver I’d put on there, it’s that famous friends episode where I think Ross is, you know, yelling pivot, pivot, pivot. Um, that that’s sort of the way that you see every single day. And so even when we came up with the word score, um, our first intent was to be able to just have a business credit score. You know, we thought, oh, it makes so much sense. Well, when you got into those enterprises, Prizes. Well, they have 15 data scientists, and they’ve spent millions and millions of dollars on this. So the first question is like, well, why is your score better than mine? Or why? Why is it that I have all this information and you think you can do a better job? And so all of a sudden you have to start to be like, oh, well, I can’t just prove it to them by saying I’m better.
Sal Rehmetullah: I have to think about, well, what’s the way I’m going to describe it, what’s my explainability? And so you start to like break it down. And then the more you unpack you start to learn their biggest challenge. And for us, with worth, you know, as much as we wanted to start with the score, what we really realized is the reason people struggle with data scientists and scoring was capturing information from small to medium sized businesses like your business, the way that you use QuickBooks or ADP or whatever systems you use are wildly different than probably another radio station to let alone a different small to medium sized business. And so the first thing we had to think about with them was, well, can we help them on this onboarding journey of collecting information from folks like you and helping them onboard them quickly and easier, which would then lead to a score. And yes, the score is a great outcome and that’s where they want to be. But we had to sort of tweak the way we went to market. We had to meet them where the conversations are had. And the biggest other thing that we learned was when you’re an innovator and you try to drive this, people, um, you know, challenge status quo and challenge, um, why it’s important now.
Sal Rehmetullah: And so a lot of times you have to meet them with what they’re used to buying. And so for us, we were like, okay, yes we’re doing scoring. Yes, we’re doing this. But you also still have to do risk and compliance. You still have to bring all these things as part of a business. Let us sell to those departments that are already used to buying those solution sets. Let’s pivot to have conversations with them. And that’s what I would tell you in any other person is like product market fit is just an iterating approach where, um, you’re probably in the ballpark, but how do you get there? And so I think for you, you’re spot on. I would definitely think that it’s a great concept, but maybe you do it as an incubator. Maybe you do it inside of startup communities. Maybe you find that your niche is inside of weworks or industrious, where there’s a ton of traffic flow. And I’m not saying any one of those are right, but I think that that’s going to be your, your, your constant tweak is going to say, hey, how can we do this? Quickly pivot and learn. And I think that’s what really drives great entrepreneurs.
Stone Payton: So now given where you are in your timeline, what’s the how’s the whole sales and marketing thing? Is it is it just getting the word out about it, or do you have people that are out there selling to these two different constituencies? Yeah. What’s how are you going to sell it? Yeah.
Sal Rehmetullah: So we have a we have a team of over 50 people now. Oh, wow. Um, and we’re, we’re focused on, as I mentioned, the enterprise side primarily right now, um, our wort score. Com which you can join the waitlist to be able to get your own word score for your business goes live in February. Um of early next year. And that will be fully digital. Fully online. Um, you know and people can can go to the website and be able to attain that. And for us, that’s going to be done a lot of marketing, a lot of specific areas of being able to advertise, frankly, you know, your own business health. And we really believe in the mission of being able to see that. And we’re going to have very, very low cost barrier to entry, because we really believe that the power of the solution comes by providing that information to those SMBs. And so our goal right now is to, you know, work with the large enterprises that are looking to solve this problem. And, you know, we’re blocking and tackling every single day. And, um, you know, so if there are banks or, you know, credit card companies or people that are in fintech or payments that are out here listening, that are looking to improve their risk and underwriting, uh, give us a call. But that’s we’re tackling one at a time right now.
Stone Payton: Well, Sal, I’m excited for you. But quite candidly, I am excited for us. I mean, me and Lee and our Business RadioX team. This is fantastic. So, uh, before we wrap, I wonder if we could leave. Uh, leave our listeners with a pro tip or two, and I guess I’m really talking to those new entrepreneurs or those entrepreneurs that, you know, they’re not just opening another ice cream shop. They’ve got their, you know, they’ve got a big idea or vision. Maybe you can share some lessons learned or maybe a do or a don’t or something they should be reading or thinking about. Let’s just leave them a pro tip or two.
Sal Rehmetullah: Yeah. Look, I think, um, you know, you mentioned it whether you meant to or not. Over the course of the call, as you brought up your partner multiple times, uh, you automatically aligned with, you know, he’s dealt with some of the financials. You said, I think we signed our personal guarantee. And what I gather from all that is that you guys have roles and responsibilities and places where each of you contribute. And so as a entrepreneur, that’s building a new business, I think it’s important to understand where you’re good and understand where you could use help. And being able to find partners that can help bridge those gaps for you. Right. And so I do work with my sister every day. And Sierra is a marketing genius, great at being able to have creativity and product vision. I’m a sales and execution guy and our third partner knows how to build technology, and so can all three of us help each other? Can all three of us do parts of our job? Of course we can. But I think the biggest thing I’ve learned across this journey is knowing your strengths and building a really good team around you, and trusting them to do their parts of the job. I think you can do so much more. And so for any entrepreneur that’s out there, finding the right partners that you can trust and really, really build and share a similar vision, I think is something that’s very, very impactful for for you to make it.
Stone Payton: Yeah. So I’ve already written down here in my notes worth score. Com I am going to go go there for sure probably right after this conversation. But let’s leave our listeners with whatever coordinates are appropriate to continue to tap into your work. Follow what you’re doing, whether it’s a website, LinkedIn, whatever. But let’s make sure that we can follow what’s going on here.
Sal Rehmetullah: Yeah. No. So once again, Sal Rahmatullah, um, feel free to reach out to me always, always willing to help new entrepreneurs mentor, uh, in that space. And so you can feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn or Instagram. My handle is just Sal Rahmatullah. Uh, and then I mentioned, uh, word score. Com sign up for the waitlist. If you’re a business owner. Um, you know, we’d love to have you in our early stages and provide you with solution sets and hopefully free solution sets to really help you grow your business and be really successful in your own journey.
Stone Payton: Sal, it has been an absolute delight having you on the show this afternoon. Thank you for your insight, your perspective, your enthusiasm, and for what you’re creating here. Man, you I think I mentioned the phrase earlier, put a dent in the universe, man. If anybody’s doing that, you’re doing it. The work you’re doing is so important. And we we sure appreciate you, man.
Sal Rehmetullah: Well, I appreciate you guys. And I share the same sentiment. It’s great. Great to be able to tell a story. And, uh, a fan of the show and all the other, you know, entrepreneurs and folks that have been on prior.
Stone Payton: Well, it’s absolutely my pleasure. All right. Until next time. This is Stone Payton for our guest today, Sal Rehmatullah with worth, I and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying, we’ll see you in the fast lane.
