Well before Capital on Tap opened its office in Midtown Atlanta, the London-based fintech startup already had deep roots in the city.
Co-founder and CEO David Luck is an Emory graduate. COO Damian Brychcy grew up in Metro Atlanta and holds degrees from both Georgia Tech and the University of Georgia’s law school.
Brychcy was just on vacation in 2014 when he met the Capital on Tap team at a London pub. By the end of the night, he had a job offer and decided to move to London to join what was at the time a small startup trying to make waves in the small business credit card space.
Capital on Tap has grown significantly since Brychcy joined the team. While the startup got off the ground selling small business loans, it launched a credit card option in 2017 for small business owners looking for better payment services. Brychcy told Hypepotamus that drastically increased their customer base and growth trajectory.
After years of building Capital on Tap in London, Brychcy has returned to Atlanta and is helping to lead the charge on building out the team’s US hub.
Joining Brychcy in the US is Zoe Newman, who has served as Head of Partnerships and Head of International Expansion before taking the role of US Managing Director for Capital on Tap.
Both Brychcy and Newman said the startup is focused on changing the relationship small businesses have with their banking and credit providers.
“Historically, banks have put the small businesses to the bottom of the pile when it comes to building new products and new features,” said Newman. “The feedback we got from [those small businesses] it takes a really long time to apply for credit cards, the credit limits that are offered are often too low, and often they would wait a very long time to speak to somebody…We save a small business time and get them back to focus on what they’re good at.”
Capital on Tap’s Atlanta Team
Since opening its Atlanta office in April of this year, the team has grown to a team of 50. Brychcy said Capital on Tap isn’t necessarily looking to recruit people with 20 years of experience in financial services. Instead, he looks for people who are ready to work hard, want to pilot new initiatives, and have a “bias for action.”
The London and UK hubs will still hold the core finance and developer teams, but Atlanta will be home to business operations, analysts, and customer experience teams.
The team recently raised a $200 million round of private equity funding from Minnesota-based Värde Partners and HSBC to help facilitate international expansion efforts.
The team is expanding at a time when many consumer-facing startups are bracing for an uncertain economic climate. Brex, a fintech giant out of San Fransico, announced earlier this month it is dropping all of its small business accounts to focus on tech-focused startup customers.
But Brychcy said the expansion into the US is a way for Capital on Tap to serve more small businesses and prove the startup’s new approach to credit cards.
“Businesses really struggled to serve small businesses. They’re really hard to market to, because they aren’t an individual consumer and they aren’t a corporation. If you’re selling something like software to a Chief Marketing Officer, you send a message on LinkedIn to them. If you are talking to a consumer, you may buy Instagram Ads. But how do you find small business owners? That’s just really hard,” added Brychcy. “We look at traditional banking and credit cards and ask…what if we just made that experience better?”
