theCUBE + NYSE Wired: Actai Global | Mark Pereira, Wam & Raquel Seville, Dataffluent

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Mark Pereira, Wam & Raquel Seville, Dataffluent

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(INTRO)

John Furrier

>> John Furrier, host of The Cube. We are here at The Cube's NYSE Wired Studio. Of course, we are Palo Alto studio connecting Silicon Valley to Wall Street. It's part of the ACTI Global Community Series. We have a great presentation here. We have a series of delegates that are part of the Global Agentic Buildathon. The Future of the Caribbean is here at the NYSE. Will be presenting to investors and media and experts their projects that they spent 21 days building. Love this build-a-thon concept, 21 days of building. We have Raquel Savelle here at Data Fluent and Marc Piera with WAM. WAM, thanks for coming on. Appreciate you at the big event. It's kind of like a pregame. We're going to do a little dry run. Yeah, but you get the big presentation with the investors. Congratulations. Awesome opportunity. I love the entrepreneurship, love the energy. You know, as we always say in theCUBE and on SiliconANGLE, and then we see why problems are opportunities and where there's constraints, you see entrepreneurs, you see money. So congratulations. Raquel, we'll start with you. You guys are both doing some innovation around finance.

>> Yep.

John Furrier

>> I can imagine the swath of opportunities.

>> Yeah, man.

John Furrier

>> Raquel, we'll start with you. Give the pitch.

>> All right.

John Furrier

>> Go.

>> Thank you. Thanks for having us. So we're DataAffluent and we've built an option for MSMEs who struggle to get access to capital and funding. And we built a capital intelligence layer. So this will allow them to pretty much get alternative credit scores. Scoring. So financial institutions, credit unions can use our platform to be able to assess them to get access to capital.

John Furrier

>> So the problem you're solving is institutional or is it the users or both? Or

>> it's both. So in the Caribbean, there's about 80 to 90% of the businesses are MSMEs, are small businesses, right? Small and medium enterprises. But they only get about 15% of capital. And we have an issue where companies are not growing and scaling the way they should. They don't get it

John Furrier

>> because

>> they don't get it because the financial institutions typically look for collateral and looking for more traditional ways to assess companies. So we're providing—

John Furrier

>> and all hurdles.

>> There you go.

John Furrier

>> And you guys streamline that to make it better.

>> So we're providing an alternative, looking at other things, looking at their transactions, looking at their compliance, looking at the things that they're doing as opposed to focusing heavily on collateral.

John Furrier

>> So on the 21 days of Buildathon, what was the focus?

>> So the focus is we built a platform, we built 4 agents, we have compliance agents and KYC agents. We have an agent that assesses credit risks. So instead of typical collateral, it looks at your transactions and your bank statements. We also have an agent that looks at your documentation, all the things that you're doing and how you're managing your business. And we use that to create a credit profile for the MSME. And in that platform, lenders can easily assess and also track all the history as well of how that MSME would have achieved that score. And we also have a recommended rate if you're going to give that instrument to them as well.

John Furrier

>> And how far along are you? Did you get through? Are people kicking the tires? What's the results?

>> Yeah, so we fully built out our capital intelligence layer and we're able to demo the actual product. So what we're looking for now is partners and institutional vendors for us to do a pilot with them.

John Furrier

>> And the ask to the investors and community. So partners, so people to sign up with investors.

>> So investors, we're trying to raise $500K. We were previously backed by Techstars where we actually built an equity platform to show all the data across all the English-speaking exchanges in the Caribbean, which is stuck in PDF files. And we did a full flow to automate that. So we're raising $500K now for this.

John Furrier

>> So you help do all the heavy lifting. Yeah, the grind of like Okay, if someone says, hey, I want to get money, you got to go get everything organized. And then the assessment side is,

>> yeah,

John Furrier

>> old school.

>> Yeah.

John Furrier

>> And most entrepreneurs aren't creditworthy. We have the same problem with data centers too, by the way. It's like, what's the contracts you got? Well, I'm not working with OpenAI, but I have a lot of other customers. So again, the old school kind of needs to get modernized.

>> Exactly. Exactly.

John Furrier

>> Well, good luck. We'll, we'll, we'll chat with you after, see how it goes. Mark, go ahead with your pitch. What's your pitch?

>> Well, what we're building in the Caribbean is that, that innovative financial layer that companies like Data Fluent would want to tap into to get that data from their customers. And the biggest problem, as she mentioned, is the financial institutions and banks in the Caribbean. They outsource a lot of their technology. They don't have open APIs. So what we've done is we've gone through all of the hard work of getting licensed. With both the central bank and registered with the SEC. And we're now building that neobank in the Caribbean so that we can connect not just our country of Trinidad and Tobago, but to the entire Caribbean. And on top of that, companies like Dataflow can offer better services to MSMEs, which are the real backbone of the economy in the Caribbean. That could bring democracy and also raise our GDP so that we become more resilient and sovereign as a— as a—

John Furrier

>> you're building more plumbing critical infrastructure for access to more people.

>> Yeah.

John Furrier

>> So more innovation comes in to the streamlined front end.

>> Yeah, exactly that. So

John Furrier

>> you guys are partners.

>> Let's go.

>> Yeah, definitely.

John Furrier

>> And what is your— the main problem you're solving is just continue to evolve access and just get more aperture for access to capital,

>> correct? Yeah, we, we actually started about 4 years ago building our technology ecosystems in Trinidad and Tobago. Which coming from the blockchain world, which I think is about 5 to 10 years ahead of the Caribbean and the Caribbean is about 10 to 15 years behind. So we've filled a massive gap in terms of innovation, which, as you would know, has a lot of value arbitrage solving a big problem like that. And we've done it in Trinidad and Tobago with the Buildathon that accelerated the Caribbean implementation. And we've connected— we connected the Trinidad and Tobago dollar to the Barbadian dollar in the Buildathon, thanks to Lilly accelerating our growth. And that was on September 1st. And now we want to take it to the region, partner with regional banks, partner with regulators, and then also we're raising our seed round now too.

John Furrier

>> And what's the ask on the seed round?

>> $3 million US. That's the scale throughout the region and also the peripheral markets. So we have diaspora using the app right now, also Latin America and Africa.

John Furrier

>> And what about partnerships? What would be some key partnerships you'd like to look for?

>> Definitely banks. And other financial institutions in the region, as well as other financial institutions outside of the region. So our biggest unlock has been our US partners. So we've partnered with Visa, we've partnered with Bridge, which is a Stripe company, and also Rain, which is also based in New York. And those have brought incredible financial products to the region, and we're just connecting it to the, to the Caribbean.

John Furrier

>> And this is where AI shines. You got the simplification of all the grunt work and the grind and the toil, the Undifferentiated heavy lifting. Get people on the assessment side. You got the plumbing to connect the systems, to move the money, get money in and out. That's real strong work. That's game-changing to the environment.

>> Yeah. Compliance is— as Rachael probably backs— is one of the biggest things. You know, you— the Caribbean, it's a very risk-prone region for you to be able to sift through the mud to find those gold nuggets of people because a lot of criminal activity. You need AI, you need to be responsive, and you need to build systems that are resilient.

John Furrier

>> And you're fostering at the end of the day, the entrepreneurship, which is if people see that the hassle is so much, they just give up, they abandon. I mean, we see people abandon entrepreneurship because they just think it's too hard. Oh yeah, it's always hard to begin with, but if there's no light at the end of the tunnel.

>> Yep.

John Furrier

>> Really appreciate what you're working on. Congratulations. Good luck tonight. Thanks for coming on theCUBE, NYC Wired.

>> Yeah. Amazing to be here. Thank you for building this platform over the years. I know it's been a grind yourself, so thank you.

John Furrier

>> Thank you. Joyful grind. Appreciate the grind. You got to love the grind. Yeah, we love what we do. Again, this is examples of, again, the societal change that's going on. Global entrepreneurship, global AI platform. You're starting to see efficiencies be taken away with AI and entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs and money come together, they go at problems, they solve them. Faster than ever before. It's an accelerated environment. I'm John Furry, your host. Thanks for watching.

Mark Pereira, Wam & Raquel Seville, Dataffluent

search

(INTRO)

John Furrier

>> John Furrier, host of The Cube. We are here at The Cube's NYSE Wired Studio. Of course, we are Palo Alto studio connecting Silicon Valley to Wall Street. It's part of the ACTI Global Community Series. We have a great presentation here. We have a series of delegates that are part of the Global Agentic Buildathon. The Future of the Caribbean is here at the NYSE. Will be presenting to investors and media and experts their projects that they spent 21 days building. Love this build-a-thon concept, 21 days of building. We have Raquel Savelle here at Data Fluent and Marc Piera with WAM. WAM, thanks for coming on. Appreciate you at the big event. It's kind of like a pregame. We're going to do a little dry run. Yeah, but you get the big presentation with the investors. Congratulations. Awesome opportunity. I love the entrepreneurship, love the energy. You know, as we always say in theCUBE and on SiliconANGLE, and then we see why problems are opportunities and where there's constraints, you see entrepreneurs, you see money. So congratulations. Raquel, we'll start with you. You guys are both doing some innovation around finance.

>> Yep.

John Furrier

>> I can imagine the swath of opportunities.

>> Yeah, man.

John Furrier

>> Raquel, we'll start with you. Give the pitch.

>> All right.

John Furrier

>> Go.

>> Thank you. Thanks for having us. So we're DataAffluent and we've built an option for MSMEs who struggle to get access to capital and funding. And we built a capital intelligence layer. So this will allow them to pretty much get alternative credit scores. Scoring. So financial institutions, credit unions can use our platform to be able to assess them to get access to capital.

John Furrier

>> So the problem you're solving is institutional or is it the users or both? Or

>> it's both. So in the Caribbean, there's about 80 to 90% of the businesses are MSMEs, are small businesses, right? Small and medium enterprises. But they only get about 15% of capital. And we have an issue where companies are not growing and scaling the way they should. They don't get it

John Furrier

>> because

>> they don't get it because the financial institutions typically look for collateral and looking for more traditional ways to assess companies. So we're providing—

John Furrier

>> and all hurdles.

>> There you go.

John Furrier

>> And you guys streamline that to make it better.

>> So we're providing an alternative, looking at other things, looking at their transactions, looking at their compliance, looking at the things that they're doing as opposed to focusing heavily on collateral.

John Furrier

>> So on the 21 days of Buildathon, what was the focus?

>> So the focus is we built a platform, we built 4 agents, we have compliance agents and KYC agents. We have an agent that assesses credit risks. So instead of typical collateral, it looks at your transactions and your bank statements. We also have an agent that looks at your documentation, all the things that you're doing and how you're managing your business. And we use that to create a credit profile for the MSME. And in that platform, lenders can easily assess and also track all the history as well of how that MSME would have achieved that score. And we also have a recommended rate if you're going to give that instrument to them as well.

John Furrier

>> And how far along are you? Did you get through? Are people kicking the tires? What's the results?

>> Yeah, so we fully built out our capital intelligence layer and we're able to demo the actual product. So what we're looking for now is partners and institutional vendors for us to do a pilot with them.

John Furrier

>> And the ask to the investors and community. So partners, so people to sign up with investors.

>> So investors, we're trying to raise $500K. We were previously backed by Techstars where we actually built an equity platform to show all the data across all the English-speaking exchanges in the Caribbean, which is stuck in PDF files. And we did a full flow to automate that. So we're raising $500K now for this.

John Furrier

>> So you help do all the heavy lifting. Yeah, the grind of like Okay, if someone says, hey, I want to get money, you got to go get everything organized. And then the assessment side is,

>> yeah,

John Furrier

>> old school.

>> Yeah.

John Furrier

>> And most entrepreneurs aren't creditworthy. We have the same problem with data centers too, by the way. It's like, what's the contracts you got? Well, I'm not working with OpenAI, but I have a lot of other customers. So again, the old school kind of needs to get modernized.

>> Exactly. Exactly.

John Furrier

>> Well, good luck. We'll, we'll, we'll chat with you after, see how it goes. Mark, go ahead with your pitch. What's your pitch?

>> Well, what we're building in the Caribbean is that, that innovative financial layer that companies like Data Fluent would want to tap into to get that data from their customers. And the biggest problem, as she mentioned, is the financial institutions and banks in the Caribbean. They outsource a lot of their technology. They don't have open APIs. So what we've done is we've gone through all of the hard work of getting licensed. With both the central bank and registered with the SEC. And we're now building that neobank in the Caribbean so that we can connect not just our country of Trinidad and Tobago, but to the entire Caribbean. And on top of that, companies like Dataflow can offer better services to MSMEs, which are the real backbone of the economy in the Caribbean. That could bring democracy and also raise our GDP so that we become more resilient and sovereign as a— as a—

John Furrier

>> you're building more plumbing critical infrastructure for access to more people.

>> Yeah.

John Furrier

>> So more innovation comes in to the streamlined front end.

>> Yeah, exactly that. So

John Furrier

>> you guys are partners.

>> Let's go.

>> Yeah, definitely.

John Furrier

>> And what is your— the main problem you're solving is just continue to evolve access and just get more aperture for access to capital,

>> correct? Yeah, we, we actually started about 4 years ago building our technology ecosystems in Trinidad and Tobago. Which coming from the blockchain world, which I think is about 5 to 10 years ahead of the Caribbean and the Caribbean is about 10 to 15 years behind. So we've filled a massive gap in terms of innovation, which, as you would know, has a lot of value arbitrage solving a big problem like that. And we've done it in Trinidad and Tobago with the Buildathon that accelerated the Caribbean implementation. And we've connected— we connected the Trinidad and Tobago dollar to the Barbadian dollar in the Buildathon, thanks to Lilly accelerating our growth. And that was on September 1st. And now we want to take it to the region, partner with regional banks, partner with regulators, and then also we're raising our seed round now too.

John Furrier

>> And what's the ask on the seed round?

>> $3 million US. That's the scale throughout the region and also the peripheral markets. So we have diaspora using the app right now, also Latin America and Africa.

John Furrier

>> And what about partnerships? What would be some key partnerships you'd like to look for?

>> Definitely banks. And other financial institutions in the region, as well as other financial institutions outside of the region. So our biggest unlock has been our US partners. So we've partnered with Visa, we've partnered with Bridge, which is a Stripe company, and also Rain, which is also based in New York. And those have brought incredible financial products to the region, and we're just connecting it to the, to the Caribbean.

John Furrier

>> And this is where AI shines. You got the simplification of all the grunt work and the grind and the toil, the Undifferentiated heavy lifting. Get people on the assessment side. You got the plumbing to connect the systems, to move the money, get money in and out. That's real strong work. That's game-changing to the environment.

>> Yeah. Compliance is— as Rachael probably backs— is one of the biggest things. You know, you— the Caribbean, it's a very risk-prone region for you to be able to sift through the mud to find those gold nuggets of people because a lot of criminal activity. You need AI, you need to be responsive, and you need to build systems that are resilient.

John Furrier

>> And you're fostering at the end of the day, the entrepreneurship, which is if people see that the hassle is so much, they just give up, they abandon. I mean, we see people abandon entrepreneurship because they just think it's too hard. Oh yeah, it's always hard to begin with, but if there's no light at the end of the tunnel.

>> Yep.

John Furrier

>> Really appreciate what you're working on. Congratulations. Good luck tonight. Thanks for coming on theCUBE, NYC Wired.

>> Yeah. Amazing to be here. Thank you for building this platform over the years. I know it's been a grind yourself, so thank you.

John Furrier

>> Thank you. Joyful grind. Appreciate the grind. You got to love the grind. Yeah, we love what we do. Again, this is examples of, again, the societal change that's going on. Global entrepreneurship, global AI platform. You're starting to see efficiencies be taken away with AI and entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs and money come together, they go at problems, they solve them. Faster than ever before. It's an accelerated environment. I'm John Furry, your host. Thanks for watching.