# HIFI raises $37M Series A led by Left Lane Capital as volume passes $7 billion a year

Stabledash Live, a Stabledash show. Oct 7, 2026. Zach Walsh.
https://live.stabledash.com/shows/the-live-show/episodes/hifis-37m-series-a-why-7b-a-year-is-still-early-innings-MW5cZGjJ00I

CEO Zach Walsh casts HIFI as infrastructure for tokenized money rather than an on-ramp, and points to a new Visa Inc push-to-card product as the next step.

HIFI has raised a $37M Series A led by Left Lane Capital. CEO Zach Walsh said the round wrapped up earlier in the summer and that this was the first time the company announced it. He says more than $7 billion a year now runs through the system across 50 platform customers.

## More than an on-ramp

Walsh does not want HIFI defined as an on- and off-ramp or a payments company. "We really want to be, like, the technology company for the next decade to build out completely new financial products," he said. The volume runs across multi-party disbursements, escrow logic and cross-chain settlement, and he points to developer retention as one of the strongest signs the product works, with teams expanding into new product lines once they are on the API.

## Stablecoins to Visa cards

The new Visa Inc push-to-card product, now in early access, lets developers build on HIFI's APIs to send stablecoins directly to Visa cards, which Walsh says other companies cannot do today. It aims at markets where building local regulatory and banking presence would take years. Walsh says all of these transactions settle at T-zero over Visa's network, and he expects use cases nobody has anticipated to appear within the next six months.

## Who is using it

Besides the 50 platform customers, Walsh says HIFI has onboarded about 10,000 businesses and 200,000 individuals. Dapper Labs was probably one of its first five customers, now runs its full settlement stack through HIFI, and gets support for its Peak Money business unit. Sumitomo Corporation uses the platform for cash management. Walsh expects a much larger capital markets push over the next 12 months.

## Against chasing volume

Walsh is critical of inflated total processed volume claims in the stablecoin industry and says HIFI takes a long-term view of how it treats partners, customers and teammates. His advice to founders is to build a good product and let the volume follow.

He applies the same thinking to the team. Everyone at HIFI works in the New York office five days a week, with no remote hires. He puts typical Series A and B attrition at 40 to 50%, while HIFI has lost three or four people in its history and average tenure is over two years.

Walsh's case for HIFI has three parts: regulated customers who stay, card-network reach through Visa Inc, and a team built for the long term. In his view, $7 billion a year is a base for a move into capital markets, not a number to chase.

## Key takeaways

1. HIFI has announced a $37M Series A led by Left Lane Capital, a round it closed earlier in the summer.
2. Walsh says HIFI moves north of $7 billion a year across 50 platform customers, and 70% of its customers are regulated themselves.
3. A Visa Inc push-to-card product in early access lets developers send stablecoins straight to Visa cards with T-zero settlement.

## Chapters

- 0:00 HIFI announces a $37M Series A led by Left Lane
- 3:53 In-office team and a deliberate push into high-quality content
- 7:09 HIFI wants to be a tokenized money platform, not an on-ramp
- 9:58 Visa push-to-card turns stablecoins into instant card payouts
- 16:09 $7B a year across regulated, upmarket customers
- 19:37 Chasing headline TPV is the wrong North Star metric
- 25:51 Culture has to be built on purpose as the company grows
- 29:09 Closing banter about tattoos, media and PR

## Transcript

**Zach Walsh** (0:00)

The new core for the next era of finance.

**Host** (0:17)

What a gift it is to hang out with you on a day like today. Zach Walsh,

**Zach Walsh** (0:22)

thanks for hopping in here. How's it going today? We've known each other for years too, and that that opening is crazy. I feel like I'm in, like, the, like, the Superdome right now. This is... It's You are. Awesome.

**Host** (0:34)

Yeah. Welcome to the Modern Money Show. It it gets a little bit better. I know we... You've you've come on the show before, but you were just meeting Andre on the team who's been building a lot of this technically. So it's fun to build together. And I think we originally met back when I was at Bastien. We're meeting with Nas later in the show. It's funny. It's a small world, but bring us bring us into today's news and what what you're sharing with the world today. It's a big day.

**Zach Walsh** (1:02)

Yeah. We're we're super excited. Obviously, this is years in the making. We wrapped up the round earlier in the summer. This is our first time announcing it. You know, generally, we're super excited to have the left lane team on. They've made now us being their second bet in the space with stablecoins. They did cast as, I think, 80,000,000 series a back in May alongside QED. So think I alongside these two bets being infrastructure and application layer, you know, we're in we're in very much with good hands. No.

We we try to keep the process pretty tight. We spoke with, you know, probably a good number of funds we have relationships with, but we really appreciated, I think, the relationships with the entrepreneur. You know, they're New York based. They're a growth equity fund. They're gonna continue to back us, you know, in future financing rounds. And, you know, the team is like us. They're very much just like hustlers and go getters. Office is super close by, so, you know, we we couldn't be more excited.

**Host** (1:53)

That's awesome. Tell me more about Left Lane. For those who maybe don't know about them, like, what was it about? I I feel like the more I get to know founders and the later stage you go and you really... You realize, especially especially for for series series a and these growth stage rounds, like, how important it is, what VC, and what capital partner you choose. Like,

**Zach Walsh** (2:16)

how did you think through this, and what was it about Left Lane that stood out to you? Yeah. I mean, I think they resemble a lot of characteristics on, you know, how we carry ourselves as a culture and a company. And, you know, I I think that you have now gone to interact with with myself and a few members of the team for a few years now, and, you know, hopefully, that's come out with our interactions. But, you know, I moved to New York when I was 19 years old to sort of, like, pursue a career within tech.

Kind of crazy. I had, like, no money for the first few years. You know, got in some awesome roles at Uber and a fintech company, which kind of, like, you know, propelled me into the space and then founded HiFi, you know, coming up on over four, four and a half years ago now. But definitely not an easy journey, and we just continue to, you know, grow as a company and go up 1% to the right every day, and it's very much like the culture we have. So, you know, Left Lane was founded by a partner named Harley Miller.

I think he started pretty early on at Insight when he was, like, 20, 21 years old. He was there for a number of years. And then they seeded his first fund at Left Lane for about 600,000,000 or so. Don't quote me on that. And then within a super short period of time, you know, they've raised about $4,000,000,000 in capital. His brother, Matt Miller, also led around. My brother works for me, you know, very much... They're like us. They're they're hustlers.

You know, they are very agnostic to, I think, Internet driven businesses that are high growth. So, you know, while they're investing into, you know, stablecoin infra, they've made a number of bets from, like, Build to Lemfi to, you know, some really, really great companies. And so we're just... We're super excited to be partnering with them. That's awesome.

**Host** (3:53)

And you guys, I mean, I feel like you've... Today is obviously a big day, but you've been all over the timeline lately. You guys have had some interesting things going on with Anchorage Digital, your payouts launch with Visa. Maybe bring us in a little bit to what's been exciting before we go into, like, okay. Now what? Raise this year, ending the year. Like, I think it's been about six months or so since we last chatted. Like, what's what's the team been up to?

And maybe bring us a little bit into the the business of HiFi, HighLevel, and what you've been shipping.

**Zach Walsh** (4:26)

Yeah. So a lot of I think what's, like, enduring our factor is the people. Right? So, you know, I I think people have very conflicting views on this, but we're very against... I know this is probably different to to your ethos, but we don't hire any remote workers for engineering, for anything else. Everything is just five days a week in the office in New York. And I think it's allowed us for the past two years to move so fast. And I think you were mentioning about the timeline is that, you know, we're everywhere.

We're partnered with so many different companies, so many different banking providers, so many different, you know, different layers of the stack. And we intentionally, I think, the first, like, eighteen months, try to be super under the radar where, like, if it's not really, really top tier, we don't wanna put anything out.

And so, know, you now we're entering into this new phase where we just want to completely take up the mind space of everybody within stable points and tokenized money where, you know, we're gonna be pushing fairly heavily into content, you know, our events marketing team, where, like, if you're not hearing about HiFi every twenty four hours, then I think we're doing something wrong.

**Host** (5:32)

How do you... Yeah. When you when you think about breaking through Mhmm. How do you think about approaching that? Like, have events, content. Yeah. What is the current strategy or thinking as... I feel like things have never been more noisy. Right. Like, it's never been more noisy, and it's also a weird... There's a weird moment where it feels like anything is possible as well, like, with with AI tooling, and there's kind of this feeling like you could do anything and anything is possible. How are you thinking about

**Zach Walsh** (6:07)

where to really focus? Like, when you say events and content, what does that look like? Well, I think, like, in a world of a lot of noise and everything, there's also, like, nothing. And so I think with that, it's pretty easy to to distill, like, the AI slot content that everyone's seeing out there. And, you know, obviously, we we use it internally to some extent, but, you know, we push pretty hard on our marketing team that everything...

You can use AI as a scaffolding, but, like, we're not, you know, sending out slot content. I think that, you know, we we have something to say. You know, we wanna be... Continue to be a thought leader in the space that's, you know, making breakthroughs in terms of, like, how we're thinking about tokenized money. And, you know, we have some awesome research papers even coming out with the Visa team here in about a month or so. So I think it's it's it's...

You can do a high degree of content, but make sure it's, like, of excellent quality. So invest heavily into your motion design, your brand design, great, you know, copywriters. And if you kind of are just, like, always putting out, you know, a great piece of content, it's it's, you know, hopefully, how people come to, you know, view you as the company.

**Host** (7:07)

Totally. Totally. Okay. So let's take a little bit of time to get an update on the infrastructure. So the positioning here lately, which I really love, is infrastructure for money. I'm gonna pull this up. So what does that mean? How has that evolved? I know when we when we first met, the idea of, like, moving and transferring money was... It's it's all... In in terms of speed and cost, like, that's always been very, very top of mind. Like Yeah.

How do you introduce the core, like, inflows, controls, outflows, tokenization? Like, give give us the high level of the firm right now in terms of infrastructure.

**Zach Walsh** (7:49)

So there... There's there's a few ways to to dig into it. One, I think in the in the same way we just discussed content, like a lot of everything, I think there's a lot of stablecoin noise, but no one really do anything that great. And I think it's sort of, like, wrapping these on and off ramps, and people really calling themselves global money movement and payments businesses, but you're just wrapping APIs from, like, Yellow Card in Africa or something in The US and on, off, and ramping them.

And I think there's always been this narrative about programmable money and the different products that you can build once you start to actually deploy that logic, you know, into it. And that's, like, really what we're trying to do at HiFi. We're we're not trying to be an on and off ramp company. We're not trying to be, you know, defined as a payments company. Like, we really want to be, like, the technology company for the next decade to build out completely new financial products.

And so, yes, like, we facilitate the movement of funds from on ramping and off ramping, but, you know, we do much more complex logic in the surface area of what people can build from us from, like, multi party disbursements to, you know, escrow logic to, you know, swapping between a number of different chains. And so we... Kind of like even in, like, the buying cycle, you'll have sometimes people come or or or some of our customers for the first time. They're like, hey.

We're looking at you and two other people, and we'll never even try to, I guess, like, undercut our commercials where our retention is not so high for developers who choose to build on HiFi or move off of, I think, potentially, like, other players in the space. They really don't leave us, which has been, like, fantastic and, I think, a testament to what we've built. And I think if you take that beyond it of, like, this idea of programmable money, you know, a stablecoin is just a a tokenized dollar. Right?

And if you, you know, expand this into any form of claim of value, whether that's cars or assets, you know, we just want people to, you know, build, you know, entirely new products on us from, you know, payments to money movement to issuance. You know, we're doing a pretty heavy push into capital markets right now, which we think we're we're we're pretty well positioned to serve.

So, you know, a little bit of, like, what we're up to, share some thoughts on, you know, where we're gonna be investing in probably in the next six, twelve months or so. Yeah. But that's that's a little bit of everything.

**Host** (9:58)

While while I pull up this video, which is honestly beautiful, let's talk about this push to card and the payouts with Visa cards. Like, one, I love this video. Shout out to whoever made this. This is clean. What is now really happening here? Like, give us maybe a use case that you get excited about. Why is, like, push to card... I remember my my mind goes to... Shout out to Luke from Interchecks. Interchecks is, like, kind of doing this in the traditional fiat world with push to card payouts.

And I I was trying to shill him for so long, like, dude, you gotta enable this with stablecoins. Why is this in your mind so powerful, and what use cases do you get most excited about with this Visa relationship?

**Zach Walsh** (10:42)

Yeah. So I think this is, like, a good example of, like, us starting to push the boundary of, you know, like, a best in class orchestration, whatever type of company you wanna call it. And think it's everyone's competing on these, like, very FBO accounts, ACH and wires, and, you know, maybe RTP, and that's the extent of it. But, you know, we really wanna eat everything in, like, the money movement sphere. So we got connected to the Visa team probably a year and a half ago. Yeah. So end of, you you know, 2024.

And, like, we've been working on this deal for for for quite a long time. So pretty much what this product is is developers can actually build on top of our APIs and take stablecoins and then disperse them directly to Visa cards in their applications, which is something that, you other companies can't do today. And we're incredibly excited to partner with the Visa team on this. So this is pretty pretty relevant to, I think, like, lower ticket size items than I think even, like, we're used to at HiFi.

So think about, like, gig marketplaces or, like, the creator economy or instant withdrawals or, like, an Uber driver in Vanilla. Like, anybody can connect their card, and now we can actually instantly disperse them for withdrawals on stablecoins. So super, super excited about this product, and I can say that this is gonna be the first of many we're rolling out with the Visa team.

**Host** (11:59)

Yeah. What advantages... This is kind of the the part of the conversation that's a little payments nerdy, but, like, what what advantages do you as a builder or developer have with this, like, push to card specific option that you don't have with maybe an ACH or a Swift or something that's, like, more of a traditional rail from a speed cost? Like, what what... What's actually the benefit here that you see being most attractive?

**Zach Walsh** (12:28)

Yeah. So I think it's, like, three different points. So first is actually speed. Like, we're doing t zero settlement on all of these transactions, you know, via Visa's network. You know? The second is, you know, disbursements into all of these local markets in which, you know, candidly, us and, frankly, like, no one in the industry just has access to all of these places. And so it's gonna be years until we can start to build out, you know, the the regulatory presence in some of these markets.

And so now we can just work with the Visa team to to get access to them. And then third, sort of, like, creates instantly spendable capital. Right? So, you know, you can do instant bank transfer to your your account, but, you know, now you can get, like, a Stablecoin funded card or just use, you know, whatever tap and pay card you have in your wallet today.

So this is kind of like anything else that we built where we have our idea how people are gonna use it, and we understand, like, what are those hairy problems today. But, like, we recognize in the next six months, like, there's probably gonna be stuff that's coming out on this that, like, we didn't even, you know, recognize.

**Host** (13:28)

Yeah. What other partners or, like, usual suspects are involved with this? Like, is is RAIN included here? Do you need a company to be involved like them? Are you handling a lot of that stuff? Like, who else needs to be involved when it comes to the card? Or does this type of partnership, you know, allow you to do stuff like that directly?

**Zach Walsh** (13:52)

Yeah. So we have a direct relationship with Visa. And so this is... It comes to fruition through just HiFi and our stablecoin settlement technology and our underlying bank sponsor in The US. And that's that's pretty much it.

**Host** (14:05)

Interesting. Yeah. So it's... Could it... Is, like, a good way to think about it is, like, similar to... It's more of a direct relationship that HiFi is having instead of you commercializing that like RAIN is as a service or, like, you know, go create card programs. You're more so selling and positioning this first party with your own rails, like a similar type of function.

**Zach Walsh** (14:28)

Yeah. Exactly. So... And the same APIs that someone could... You know, what we've seen in the space of, you know, use us to go from USDC into US dollars over ACH. Now you can go into USDC into a Visa card endpoint in, you know, Thailand.

**Host** (14:45)

It's so cool. So It's so cool. I'm I'm interested to see... I think this type of this type of integration done well and and distributed well actually achieves... I know we've talked about this. Like, it actually achieves full stablecoin settlement natively, where, like, you you actually don't even need to... If you if you have a functional utility for payment like a Visa card Yeah.

Whether someone like a gig worker knows that it's backed by stablecoins or not, you actually have a full payment payment method that they can use and just keep funds there. Like, they don't need to withdraw. They don't need to transfer. They don't need to send it to their bank account. That is settlement in their minds, which is so powerful for

**Zach Walsh** (15:32)

native stablecoin payments. I I I think it's so cool. Right? So I I think there's there's there's all this group think of, like, ACH and wires and a non offering thing in orchestration.

It's kind of this, like, you know, cluster of companies that I think are all thinking of the problem the same way, but, like, there's no, like, great financial technology company yet in this space that's, like, pushing the boundary of, like, anything that you can move money to, any local rail, any card process, or any form of stablecoin, any chain, and then move that in...

And then couple that with, like, great developer controls, I think, you know, you you can definitely brain market some, like, super special things.

**Host** (16:09)

Alright. So give me some numbers here. So website says billions moved, zero compromises. What...

**Zach Walsh** (16:17)

This is your time to kinda flex a little bit. So give me some volumes. Like, what can you share around progress so far? Yeah. What's what's probably even more interesting about the volumes and something that we're obviously super proud of is the profile of the customers that are building on top of us. So 70% of our customers are actually regulated themselves. You know, we don't really do any hard to serve territories.

Very cutting edge, either developer teams in series a, series b companies that raise for fantastic businesses, and, you you know, we're continuously moving upmarket into, you know, some bigger logos like Sumitomo Corporation for their cash management system to Dapra Labs to, you know, a few banks. So we're super excited about that. We're doing north of about 7,000,000,000 a year right now, and I think that's constituted across 50 platform customers.

And we've onboarded through business verification about 10,000 through end businesses and 200,000 individuals. So numbers that we're super proud of, but I think it's it's it's very early innings. And, you I know, think the growth, like, where we're gonna go into the next year, hopefully, is is gonna be meaningfully higher than that.

**Host** (17:20)

Yeah. Dapper is super near and dear. I'll pull this up. They're super near and dear to my heart. I think... And and and probably many people who now are working full time professionally in the space came came to market and and became exposed to a lot of the underlying technology through NBA Top Shot. Yeah. Like, what what... How does HiFi... Like, what you can't share, like, how does this partnership come to life?

**Zach Walsh** (17:51)

What does this look like within the context of Dapper? I know they have a lot of different business lines and Yeah. Things like that. No. Dapr is an amazing customer. They were actually probably one of our first five customers at HiFi, and I think they were having, you know, an issue with providers. And, like, in the early days, they just absolutely pressure tested our system. Like, our engineers were online. Like, the amount of volume that they do is is is unbelievable, unchanged.

Just massive amounts of transactions per second, deployed wallets. And I think that really got us into a good spot pretty early on. They have another business unit right now called Peak Money that we're helping support on as well. And so, you know, Debra, I think, has integrated the entire suite of HiFi products up until this point, and we're super grateful for the partnership. You know, we're hopeful that we're gonna continue to, you know, work with them. And, yeah, they're they're amazing.

**Host** (18:41)

Is this peak money? Am I in the right spot? I think so. What is a... Yeah. Bring me into this, and we can, you you know, don't have to speak on behalf of them. But it looks like... Is this sort of the underlying financial rails brought into, like, a neobank or fintech type of front end? Or bring it... What is peak... How should we think about peak money right now? Yeah. I'm gonna give, like, the the one or two sentences, and I'm I'm not versed in this at all. So apologize.

**Zach Walsh** (19:11)

But... Yeah. Absolutely. So if you think about, like, Dapr is, like, an an incredible business of sort of, like, pushing the boundaries of, like, what is an Internet marketplace. I think, like, Peak is their extension of, like, how do you actually, like, spend those funds? How do you actually bring that into a mobile banking application from the things that you're trading? So it's it's super cool how they're thinking about it, like, everything from, like, a blockchain first company.

**Host** (19:36)

Yeah. Okay. So so enough. I don't wanna, like... I don't wanna feel like I'm grilling you here. Just excited excited for the excited for the news. Time is short, and we gotta just pepper you with a bunch of stuff. What... I I know, Zach, for you, like, you, you know, you've you've been in founder mode for years now. You've Yeah. Kind of been in this, like, shared pool of stablecoin land with with us for a while. What do you... What have you found What beliefs have you grown stronger in since founding the business?

Like, opinions or, like, I don't know if frustrations would be the right word, but just, like, can... Where does, like, the conviction feel deeper than ever? Yeah. Is is question number one. And then where have you actually let go or been wrong or changed your mind? Like, I would love to maybe close with with those two.

**Zach Walsh** (20:35)

I think, like, it it... Such a more, like, makes you stoic in the entrepreneurial journey. Like, I have such a respect from, like, so many of the founders in this space, like, many who have been on your show. And, like, it's not easy. And so, like, everyone's trying to think about it differently, but you can't really knock anyone for the sake of it. I think, like, we... In our ethos at Hi Fi is, like, we're very... I don't know. Like, what's the word? Like There's intensity. You guys have intensity over there. Yeah.

We're definitely, like, pretty intense, and I think it's like a give a give a shit environment. And we're very detail and design oriented. We really deeply care about how our products look, what we put out there. We we really... I think, like, one thing is, like, detest some of the smoke in mirrors that you see for the for the most part of, like, this... The the silliness of the explosion in TPV in the space. And and maybe now that we've raised a meaningful round, I can start to, like, share these thoughts.

But What does that mean? Like, does TPV and what are talking about? Every other company doing another 10,000,000,000 a week, it's it's been, like, absolutely crazy to me, which may or may be right so. But I think it's... Like, we take a very long term play on, like, how we treat our partners, how we treat our customers, how we treat our teammates, and just go up 1% of the right... Into the right 1% every day, and it just compounds from there. Right? Like, care really deeply about your work.

Get people together that actually, like, want to work on a company and, like, do meaningful stuff, and almost, like, block out the noise, like, as you're saying. I know that's that's very much us, and it would very, like, stoic take to the people. And I think, like, Bennett Braille, awesome. Nas, awesome. Obviously, like, Zach and Bridge, like, what they've done is, like, unbelievable.

And I think, like, the guys that are, like, builders and, you know, really trying to, like, just, like, push the industry forward to just, block out the noise. Like, we we we like being in their camp.

**Host** (22:28)

Yeah. Yeah. It's great. So are the the specific numbers or, like, volume, like, is that... What is that suggesting to you for those who aren't following what you're... Like, I haven't been following these charts or these numbers. Like, are you sensing that there's, a sense of padding to... Like, what does that suggest to you? Where where does that...

**Zach Walsh** (22:50)

Does that leave you suspicious of? It would be, like, my recommendation to all these founders too, and I'd... I think it's, like, perpetrated in the industry. It's, like, your top line number of, like, what's your TPV. So everyone's trying to chase, like, one upping each other. But, I mean, there's a lot that goes into that you have to pay attention to. Like, your concentration profile of your customers, like, how much is being made up by your top five, 10 businesses? What are the profiles of those businesses?

Are they hard to serve and high risk in which you're actually getting, you know, pretty high margin on things that are a little bit more gray area? Is there, like, regulatory arbitrage that you're taking over? And, you know, not to say you can't build big businesses here, but I think there's, like, this, like, culture, like, chasing TPV versus TPV. And I think maybe, like, more naive or earlier founders might fall into that trap.

And it's like, just build a great product, you know, focus on your business, and just, like, keep moving forward. And, like, the volume's gonna come. Like, if you build a great product, like, it's going to be there. Like, don't don't put everything into that bucket because, like, you're gonna make yeah, cut corners in compliance or maybe an onboard a customer that you shouldn't just because they're gonna move a lot of volume. And so that...

That's, like, my one, you know, thing that I've I've recognized is that, like, I feel like it's it's important, but I think it's, like, the wrong North Star metric.

**Host** (24:02)

Why do you think founders... Or what what what would your what would your advice be to founders who are debating or, like, having that internal dialogue with themselves? Like, what would you say to them, and and what is the approach at HiFi? Like, what does the alternative approach look like in your view?

**Zach Walsh** (24:19)

Yeah. I think it's like... Don't care about, like, what other people are saying. I think it's like, okay. Like, pay attention to, like, how the market's reacting to things and what people are putting out, but, like, don't let that influence your decisions. And even to take it back to, like, our content, like, put things out that, like, you think. Like, this is really interesting to say, and this is, like, how we're thinking about the problem.

Don't look at how someone else is thinking about the problem and then just, like, one up their number. Like, that's not that's not conducive to, like, a good environment. But, like, how do I knock every... Anyone? Right? Like, this is super hard. It's it's it's it's really competitive. Everyone's trying their best, you know, for the most part. But, you know, there's a lot of people, I think, with, I think, less mature TPV, but, like, there's some awesome companies in this space.

**Host** (25:02)

So that's total processed volume, and you feel like that's the... You feel like that's one of the most high signal data points for those in the payments industry right now? Like, how many payments... What's the total volume going through the going through the rails? Is that kind of the North Star metric for most folks in the space from your view?

**Zach Walsh** (25:21)

Honestly, I mean, no one would ever really, like, put it out there. But, like, behind the closed curtains, I think it's very much, like, both your gross and your net revenue. Like, how much are you making, like, on a monthly basis? How much is that growing? And of that TPV, how much are you taking of it? And are those customers qualified? Are they continuing to... Continuously driving more usage? Are they expanding into other products?

Like, you you gotta look at it from, like, a a microscope to, I think, like, understand the dashboard of your business versus just, like, straight TPV.

**Host** (25:51)

Yeah. And then what... I guess on the second point of this, what would be... What what is something along the way that you've realized is like a strong opinion you've held loosely that you've actually let go of or something that you've you've had a change in heart with in terms of maybe how you've built the the business or adapted with certain product lines Yeah. Because that may have not been true.

**Zach Walsh** (26:18)

I think... And we... We've definitely experienced this as we start to, like... We cross, like, 30 or so people, and it definitely went around, like, 15, 20. But I used to think that, like, people would just, like, harp on, like, culture. Right? Like, in the early days, everyone's like, oh, like, the Fugazi founder and a turtleneck talking about, like, the culture of this company with, like, five people in a room. And now I've come in, like, in in in retrospect that, like, your your culture...

Like, when you're super early and it's, like, all... Maybe, like, 10 people in a room together, that's just, like, diffused by your interactions you have. But, like, as you start to grow, you have to be very intentional on, like, what your culture is and, you know, sharing that on, you know, a consistent cadence with the business and always making sure that, like, even in your own actions, like, as a founder, you're, you know, you're you're taking that on.

And so I used to think, like, in the in the early days that, like, culture was just, something that happened, and it's like... It's it's almost like building a product too. Like, you have to be very intentional about it. And in everything that you do, right, from, like, when you're interviewing people to, like, performance reviews to, like, how do we speak to our customers? Like, everything is culture.

And so I I think that's, like, one of the defining characteristics of what I found as, like, a hopefully good company. And, yeah, I think that was probably one of my biggest misconceptions is it just happens. Yeah. What's the most, like, unique thing about

**Host** (27:38)

the culture at HiFi? Like, what should people know about it? And what, like, what do you find is... We talked about a little bit of the, like, intensity of how you do things, but what what would you say to a new hire? Or even, like, this... Hi fi isn't for this type of person. Like, if you're expecting this.

**Zach Walsh** (27:57)

It's just like... It... There's there's a lot of good parts, and I think there's parts that might be, like, dissuade to other people where it's like, HiFi is... It it, like, becomes, like, a part of, like, who you are. You know, one thing we're super proud of is that I think at an early stage company, like, series a b series a b, attrition is probably around, like, 40 to 50%, and we've only lost maybe, like, three or four people in the history of the company. And our average tenure here is, like, over two years now.

So people come to us. They stay, and it's a culture of very low ego. Right? Like, I'm I'm the CEO, but it's so weird. What I've always found is people that, like, go around their office and act like a CEO to people in, a small room. It's like my sets of responsibilities are different from, you know, other people on the team, and that's pretty much about it. You know, super low ego culture. We just really deeply care about the work.

If something needs to get answered in the late evening, people aren't, like, logged off. Anybody will hop in, and it's just like I got your back. You got my culture. And, like, everyone is just so enthusiastic and jammed up to... You know, about the work we're doing. And it's Yeah. I I hear myself, and it almost sounds like a little bit of, like, the founder and, like, drinking the Kool Aid, like the other ones I hear. But, like, we're we're so happy about, like, the work that we're doing. I saw this pulling up

**Host** (29:09)

I'm pulling up Nabil's city of, That was so cool. Shout out to Nabil who... Nabil just fin.com in our lane a little bit, but I think he got... I think this is his arm. Got it tattooed on his bicep. So

**Zach Walsh** (29:24)

So I I was thinking about doing something similar to that. I would tell him too. I'm like, that's awesome. And I was just like, now you just, like, hope to God that you never do, like, a rebrand of your company. Well, that... What's funny is he was... This is the tweet. He's like, someone offered us $10,000,000

**Host** (29:39)

for our domain. Only problem, I have a tattoo on my body.

**Zach Walsh** (29:43)

My gosh.

**Host** (29:45)

It's so It definitely digs your digs your heels in a little bit, especially with the domain because he he did the .com on there too. So he's he's pretty... He's stuck on that one. It's funny. Nice. Dude, what have we missed? I know this was a little last minute. Anything that we that we missed that we would be remiss to not cover before we part?

**Zach Walsh** (30:06)

No. No. I mean, kudos, like, everything you guys have built too. Like, obviously, we've known each other for years now, so it's so cool to, like, build relationships and see, like, people come up alongside you. They're obviously, like, colleagues, but friends. And, I mean, this is such a a great program, and, like, you guys have carved out such an awesome niche.

**Host** (30:25)

Thanks, bro. Yeah. Appreciate that. There's a lot more to do as you guys think about as you guys think about content. Like, we want to be... The more I think about StableDash into the future, the more I think about it as co creating media with the most influential brands and money and really being commissioned to go do that really well and and think through ways to use media as a way to... Like, some of the most meaningful relationships we have include events. They include content.

They bring those two things together. So let's talk more about that if that's top of mind. That could be fun. Yeah, man. Love to. Let's let's definitely jam. Hopefully,

**Zach Walsh** (31:08)

you know, I'm not... I feel like I don't come on these things too often, and I'm not too brash. I feel like I need to get, like, PR trained or something. No. No. Honestly,

**Host** (31:17)

I'm I'm waiting. Maybe when I raise a $37,000,000 series a, I'll finally tell the world my true thoughts on p r... Public relations. There's a lot of opinions there. But, yeah, I think you're doing a good job. Being a little rough around the edges and candid is way better than overly polished and scripted. That's all I'll say. Awesome, man. Thanks for your time, brother. Congrats on a big day. Yep. See you. Bye.