#353: Yacine Sibous, Co-Founder of Parker, the Financial Stack for Scaling Your E⁠-⁠commerce Brand Faster and More Profitably

Yacine Sibous is the Co-Founder of Parker, the financial stack for scaling your e⁠-⁠commerce brand faster and more profitably. After studying Physics and Computer Science at McGill University, Yacine left to attend 42, a unique software engineering school in France. It’s there that he met his co-founder Milan Ray. Yacine and Milan went on to participate in Y Combinator in 2019. They have since raised $157 million from investors and have processed more than $550 million on their platform, with customers that include brands like Caraway, Venus et Fleur, and Dolls Kill. Topics Covered by Yacine Sibous in this Episode 0:00 Parker: A digital banking platform for internet-based companies 1:05 How a friend’s business selling phone cases on Instagram in college led to the inception of Parker 5:36 Attending Y Combinator and how COVID led Yacine and Milan to return to their original idea after many pivots 8:50 How Yacine met his co-founder, Milan Ray and decided to work together 10:08 Attending the unique school 42 in France 10:59 Early feedback on Parker that led Yacine and Milan to stick to their original idea 12:01 Understanding the fundraising game and raising their first round from YC 13:35 The mistake of under-utilizing funds and burning too little 15:09 What fueled Parker’s growth 17:19 Leveraging events for growth post-COVID 18:09 What differentiates Parker from its competitors 21:45 How customer feedback enabled them to build a credit model unique to e-commerce 23:58 The key to raising debt 24:49 Yacine’s best fundraising advice 27:03 Tips for building hiring both junior and executive team members 31:12 How a focus on growth has enabled Parker’s success 33:30 How Yacine invests in himself 35:21 What’s next for Parker 36:52 Parker’s target customer 37:10 Where to connect with Yacine Connect with Parker and Yacine Website: Parker LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/yacine-sibous/ Twitter: @YacineSibous Email: yacine@getparker.com Learn from other world-class founders: https://www.justgogrind.com Follow Justin Gordon, the host, on Twitter: https://twitter.com/justingordon212