How Sentoo Is Fixing Digital Payments in the Caribbean | Vincent van Rutten | EP 255

Can fintech truly scale in the Caribbean?

We sit down with Vincent from Sentoo to unpack how a Caribbean fintech earns the trust of banks, builds secure account-to-account payments, and creates solutions for businesses operating across small and fragmented island markets.

Vincent shares how studying in the Netherlands introduced him to seamless account-to-account payments, why Sentoo built a working platform before approaching banks, and why the biggest challenge in cross-border Caribbean payments is often not technology, but agreements, KYC standards, regulations, and trust between banking systems.

We also explore what Sentoo actually is, why it should not be confused with a digital wallet, and how payment links, recurring payments, online bookings, memberships, and e-commerce integrations could help local entrepreneurs operate more efficiently.

Beyond the product, Vincent opens up about competitive swimming, discipline, adapting across cultures, delegation, founder pressure, and why having peace at home can directly affect how you perform in business.

An honest conversation about fintech, entrepreneurship, persistence, and building products in small markets with ambitions that go far beyond one island.

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Transcript

Curacao Event Plug

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Curacao, we're finally coming back. Join us this July 25th and 26th for the MacWorks Wine and Work Tour. It's going down at Papagayo Beach Club. We'll see you then.

SPEAKER_00 0:11

If I

Why Fintech Must Expand

SPEAKER_00 0:12

would only operate in Aruba, we're only in Curacao, there's no viable business plan possible. We would not be able to reach volumes to keep lights on, keep up with all the security stuff that we need to keep up with. That's not possible. We need to expand.

SPEAKER_03 0:25

Being in the States for work, being in Mexico for work, and you get to go out and see different cultures, different food, different kinds of way of thinking and way of living. When you come back to Aruba, you're like, yeah, the beach is right there. The beach's always gonna be there, like whatever. Then I go somewhere else. I go to South Carolina. Let's go to the beach. I'm like, I get that. Like, what the fuck is this?

SPEAKER_02 0:41

What is this? We'll make the process easy for you to bring these people, but then they have to teach a few locals something or like some type of like program where then it's guaranteed that some locals got some of this knowledge as well.

SPEAKER_00 0:52

That sounds very nice from a political standpoint, but in practice, we'll put a burden on certain companies.

SPEAKER_03 0:58

I don't know how Curacao is, but like what's one thing like governments could do to help like fintech companies grow in Aruba Bonera Curacao?

SPEAKER_02 1:06

Um,

Meet Vincent From Centu

SPEAKER_02 1:15

what's up? Allah, comeister.

SPEAKER_03 1:17

Guys, welcome back to the ABC Islands favorite podcast, No Filter in Paradise. You already know a show about anything and everything between two friends, one is straight and the other. Your favorite black homosexual. Guys, today we have a um a guest. I mean, you already saw in the thumbnail, and he's from Holland, but lives in Curacao.

SPEAKER_00 1:35

Um, no. Was born in Curaçao? Born in Curacao, yes.

SPEAKER_03 1:38

See, I don't like doing my research apparently. See now we got Mr. Uh Vincent um from Centu. Welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 1:44

Thank you for having me. It is definitely a pleasure. Okay, we have a we have some questions, and I feel like we're gonna go into some stuff.

SPEAKER_03 1:51

Actually, we have a hella questions. I'm I'm I'm literally scrolling. Usually I don't have this much questions for people, but definitely before we even jump into anything, on behalf of both Shark and I, thank you for being uh a supporter of No Filter. You you guys have actually been a sponsor for over a year. You guys were a sponsor of the No Filter Eats, the podcast, and now you're a sponsor of the radio. So thanks for that, and shout out to you, Wendy. We see you.

SPEAKER_02 2:15

Hey, shout out to our girls, both our girls. Okay, they've been on it.

SPEAKER_03 2:19

Yeah, so for sure. Thank you for being a supporter.

SPEAKER_00 2:22

Um, well, it's it's a fun show to listen to. Yeah, um, I hope so. So so apart from you know, sponsoring and reach, it's it we like to uh to support local initiatives. You know, you always hear about podcasts around the world, yeah, the big names, and you're like, yeah, but we also have really cool content creators locally to support them.

SPEAKER_03 2:42

I agreed. Everybody knows Joe Rogan, everybody knows like Jay Shetty, all these other guys, but yeah, now you know about no filter.

SPEAKER_00 2:49

Yeah, all right, that actually talks about stuff that matters to you, yeah, right? Okay, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 2:53

People can relate with us. We're talking about things that are happening, you know, in our region, whether it's Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao. So we try to tackle as many. Although in Aruba, we're a lot of Aruba focused, but sometimes we do tackle Curacao and and Bonaire, especially when we travel. So now before we talk about Santu,

Swimming Discipline And Ambition

SPEAKER_03 3:10

like tell us a little bit about yourself. Where did you grow up? What did you do?

SPEAKER_00 3:14

Um, so grew up in Curacao.

SPEAKER_03 3:17

Um, not the alarm shark.

SPEAKER_00 3:20

So um born and raised in Curacao. Um during my youth, I did swimming. Okay. Uh so at a pretty good level. Um F or like no, like competing. Like competing. Oh, okay. So competing, um Curacao champion, um, Caribbean champion, Dutch champion.

SPEAKER_02 3:41

Okay, excuse me.

SPEAKER_00 3:43

I thought it was like, all right, Caribbean, a little hobby.

SPEAKER_02 3:45

Yeah, you didn't all humble, like, oh I didn't drank some water, like I had a model, like it's whatever.

SPEAKER_00 3:51

No, that was my whole life. So um gotta say from 12 to about 17, 18. It was training more morning, and actually, two times a day. Oh, the discipline. Only some yeah, only on Sundays was off. It was yeah, it was intense. Yeah, and going to school, I I assume. Yeah, that was kind of a side job. That was the hostile school. That's why I go see my friend, that's it. And happily be in class. Thank God, thank god that that that went. Yeah, uh, it took three different schools for me to finally on the small island.

SPEAKER_02 4:26

You've been like that sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 4:28

Yeah. Um, but I graduated

Failing University And Finding HBO

SPEAKER_00 4:30

and then went to Holland to study. Um didn't go well my first year. Really? Why not? Because I went to university and um I was having a lot of fun. So my parents said you're gonna go to Maastricht because all your friends are going to Rotterdam. So at least in Maastricht you can focus. Yeah. So what happened is that I lived in Rotterdam and I went to school. Oh shit. Yeah, and you know, if you come wait, sorry, how long is it commute? Uh so that's about two and a half hours by train.

SPEAKER_03 5:04

One way? Yeah, I don't understand. Okay, good. Yeah, so it's crazy.

SPEAKER_02 5:10

It's smart though. For as for them, it's smart because now you don't have the time to play around. Now you have to commute.

SPEAKER_00 5:16

Yeah, but what do you do? What are you doing two hours on the train? But then I was staying at Friends all the time in Ratford and not spending enough time studying. Studying. And really technical, but it's really stupid, is in school in Five O we had the advanced calculator, right? Where you can do um uh Sinus and all that kind of stuff. The water, everything, yeah. Yeah, everything on that one, like the advanced calculator. Then you come into university and you look at at the book, and I'm like, oh, this stuff is all this easy. You know, I at um at Vivio at home. You've been did this. I've all I know all of this, it's easy. Yeah, you know, I have the calculator, I know how to work it, I know how to do all of this. I never went to any of the preparation meetings for exams. So I came to the exam, and it was the only exam you had to fin to do to get your propagation to go to the second year. If you failed that class, you couldn't go. So I get there, and um, I'm there with my calculator, and the people there said, No, no, you cannot use that calculator, you have to use the basic calculator. No idea. So I failed that class. Oh my god. So it didn't even matter if I did the rest of my class as well. Yeah, I couldn't go to the second year. And then they have a rule: if you do not get your proper dose in the first year, um, you need to leave the university, you cannot come back for that same study. So then I had to do um uh what is it? Um Habio. So I did, but that's actually the best thing that ever happened. Habio was fun, HBO was very practical. I learned a lot of stuff. I did an internship, I did exchange, all kinds of stuff I couldn't do in university. Um, that was your destiny. Yeah, I started a company and we had a school company and all kinds of stuff. I had a lot of freedom, and that was just you know, trying out a lot of stuff that would not have happened in university.

SPEAKER_03 7:18

You know, yeah, it's a cheesy saying where like everything happens for a reason. Yeah, you were supposed to bladder door and be like, ah, easy. You're supposed to go through the exam with no calculator, be like, hey, sorry, use the abacus or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 7:28

Here's a life life curve wall. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And now you gotta go. Explain that to your parents.

SPEAKER_03 7:34

So, what was the reaction when they found out you failed? Hey, you have to go to Javi.

SPEAKER_00 7:38

It was silent for a while.

SPEAKER_03 7:39

Yeah. Oh yeah, figure out how you're gonna pay your groceries and your rent, go work.

SPEAKER_00 7:44

Uh yeah. So it was it was a very tense time. Of course. But eventually, you know, at the end everything went went alright. Um then I when I came back in universities to do a master's, then I was I think twenty-three when I came back to do my masters, and the other people in my class were all 21. No, because at 18 you start university. That's crazy. You do three years of um so universities three years. It's three, yeah. So then most of the guys that I was in class with were 21, 22.

SPEAKER_03 8:24

And you were 23?

SPEAKER_00 8:25

I was 20, I think I was turning 23. Uh but these guys had zero life experience.

SPEAKER_03 8:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:33

They they were we were doing entrepreneurship, so I have a master's in entrepreneurship. Um, they had zero experience. I have already started two companies and traveled to the US. So I did my internship um exchange in um the US and I did my internship exchange in Monterey, Mexico. So I already have seen a lot of I've already talked to people and actually worked in an environment which is

Internships Abroad And Early Tech Curiosity

SPEAKER_00 9:00

totally um alien to me. Do you still remember the companies you work for? Yeah, so when you in um in Monterey, I worked for Dumco, that's a daughter company of Mersk logistics the Mersk um container lines.

SPEAKER_03 9:14

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 9:14

Um so there's a couple of big names. Mersk is one of the bigger container companies, and they had a logistics company, and I worked there, and I helped them with the um the structuring of all the negotiations for pricing to get everything that uh um the the import they have the HEB, is their their it's kind of like Walmart, but then for Mexico, yeah. All the stuff that has to come from China needed to be uh routed to all those um all their locations, and that's a whole that's one of the biggest clients they had. So, how do you get the stuff from China from China to the door of one of their locations for the cheapest price?

SPEAKER_03 10:03

A bunch of logistics, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:04

It's just puzzling, puzzling, and today you go through this route, two days later you go to through that route because it's cheaper.

SPEAKER_01 10:13

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Radio Show Promo Break

SPEAKER_03 10:14

In case you didn't know, every single Saturday from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m., Shark and I are on the radio XFM 102.7, talk about different topics. We have fun conversations, and best of all, we do fun games like movie and music trivias, anything for you guys to win every single Saturday on XFM 102.7. Tune in, we'll see you there. Anyways, back to the show.

Culture, Travel, And Big Thinking

SPEAKER_03 10:35

Were you always interested in technology?

SPEAKER_00 10:39

Yes, yeah, yeah. From a very young age, I was fascinated by um technology. And when I still remember what it was to not have internet at home and then get internet at home. How old are you now? I'm now 39. Okay, I I can I can relate. So we mom leave the whole thing yelling at you, you're using too much. Yep. Or when you're on Napster, yeah, and you're downloading bunch of virus, lime wire. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:11

We've all been there. That was the one.

SPEAKER_00 11:13

And you're downloading and it's almost done, and your mom picks up the phone to call someone, throw off the whole thing, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:19

Now I gotta wait like three fucking days for this movie to download.

SPEAKER_00 11:22

Yeah, yeah. So um, all those things. But when one of those times my dad said, you know, we're gonna get internet at home, and I asked, What is internet? And my dad has said, 'Yeah, it's a way that we can connect through the to the whole world.' So in my mind, I had that there was a camera, magical camera, with which I could see the whole world, I could travel everywhere. Okay. And so that's what's what later became, you know, these these public webcams. But that's kind of the for some reason what I had in my mind. I didn't understand. I didn't understand anything until we started using it. So we got internet at home on a computer, and yeah. Oh, die love. Yeah, yeah. Um, and then you know, just experiencing it, it was like, okay, this is really cool. But I'm not a very technical guy, I'm not a coder or anything. I'm just you got the vision, you got the idea. I have ideas, and then yeah, I need very smart people to make a reality. Execute it. Yeah. So um, but that's a little bit where it came from. From the first day that my dad brought home a computer with internet, I was like, okay, this is this is cool, this has my attention, and then yeah, throughout my my me growing up, yeah, all the gadgets and things, it's very, very cool to uh to to play with always attracted me.

SPEAKER_02 12:50

Yeah, that's nice though. Yeah, so base just to like take it back just a little bit, based off of uh what you've experienced like when you were like a foreign exchange student and your stages and stuff like this, what from those experiences like you would say has been like your biggest learning, and how did you apply that to what you do today?

SPEAKER_00 13:13

Um different cultures, right? If you're well, actually, we have a huge advantage growing up on the islands, which is we get um confronted with a lot of culture, a lot of different cultures, yeah, a lot of different languages. Um and even if I talk in different languages, my wife always tells me you're a different person when you speak English to when you speak Spanish to when you speak Papi Mento. It's true. I'm and in Dutch I get very um straight to the point, and we've got harder in Spanish because yeah, my wife is from Venezuela, so we speak Spanish at home. Ah, okay. So my love language is Spanish, so I'm I'm way sweeter.

SPEAKER_02 13:56

Yes, and Spanish Spanish language is more on like hi papi, rilarate.

SPEAKER_00 14:03

So yeah, I can see that and and you know mi amor and in in Dutch, I never say my leafy. I'm like feels weird, yeah, that's yeah, right. That that feels weird, yeah. So you know, but also going to um so that's cultures coming to your island and you're experiencing them, but people are in a different mindset. But if you with your I grew up in Curaçao, then I went to study in the Netherlands, that was already a culture shock, you know. Even though my whole family is Dutch, don't matter, and it's it's it's a huge culture shock. And then you go study in the um, so I did my exchange in the in um the US in the US, in Missouri, in Merrifield, Missouri, which is the Bible Belt, Cowboys, and I've only seen that on TV, and then going into college life in that setting is really cool, and it teaches you to how you can adapt to those cultures, how you can make it kind of give it your own twist, yeah, staying true to yourself, but being able to blend in um not offending everyone. And accept it, exactly. And um same happened in in Monterey, Mexico, right? There it's again totally different from the US. Um, even though I was working in yeah, what you would say, um yeah, corporate Mexico, uh still like it's a big culture change, and you know, being able to or being invited by your colleagues, even though you're an intern, being invited to go out to eat with them, um being invited to to go and for drinks, uh to parties, go to their home for a birthday party, being invited, yeah. That for me was really cool. Of course, and it's the only way that the only way you can do that is by you know, yeah, adapting. You go to a place, you know, be respectful of of them. But that's one of the biggest choices or the lessons that I had, and that's also yeah, how we set up the company. Everybody's welcome. Um, you can be whatever you are, as long as you're not imposing your views on others, you know, we're all fine. That's and I think that's how the whole world should should work. We're all very different. Agreed, we have to celebrate our differences, and we don't have to put our differences on other people. Respect it, respect it.

SPEAKER_03 16:29

If we don't see things the same way, like me and Shark, a lot of times we don't see things the same way. We fight, yeah, but it's and we're still being we've been doing this show for six years. So, like it it's I can relate to a lot of things that you just said because I've also been in the position of being in the states for work, being in Mexico for work, and you get to go out and see different cultures, different foods, different kinds of way of thinking and way of living. Yeah, and it makes you when you come back to Aruba, you're like, sometimes, like, yeah, the beach is right there. And I'm like, Oh, the beach is always gonna be there, like whatever. But then I go somewhere else, I go to South Carolina, I just go to the beach, and I'm like, I get that. Like, what the fuck is this? What is this? Brown water, I get down knee deep, I can't even see my toes. There's jellyfish all over the beach. Yeah, and you think about like, damn, Aruba has it good. Yeah, my career style has it good. We good in a career. So, like, be going out there and explore new things opens your mind to different possibilities. It shows you different cultures and it makes you sometimes appreciate where you come from.

SPEAKER_02 17:26

Like, oh day, like but it to me, and this this is why I always I always thought, like, we a few days ago we were having this conversation on the radio, and people that don't travel, I feel like they don't, their minds just don't open it like nothing happens for them. But people that do travel, you get to experience, and I feel like that also gives you the a great starting point to when you're back to be like, okay, so all of this is out here, and none of my people don't understand that this is what we're supposed to be doing. So you get to be like the pioneer of something new that people don't even know that they need yet. And I tell all my friends all the time, because I have like this one friend, she tells everybody like that, like people that want to come back from Holland, like students, she's like, don't come back to Aruba. It's hard, it's miserable, don't do it. And I'm like, that's not true, you know. Come back, but come back with a plan. Yeah, come back with a plan. Do your research on what Aruba doesn't even know that we don't need, we know we don't need yet, or we need it, but we don't know that we need it yet. That is where you have to be enforcing. Look at the government, see what they got going on and what they don't have going on. Those are the departments or pockets that you need to start targeting.

SPEAKER_03 18:35

Like it's trying to try to define a problem that nobody can solve, and they're like, oh shit, like the solution is right there. Take that, figure out how to tweak it, come back to Aruba or Curissa or whatever, and be like, hey guys, I have a solution for this problem. But when you do do it, do it fucking fast because Aruba Lec's like, oh, he's doing it, I'm doing it too. Like, and I'm gonna do it fast, I'm gonna block him, but um it happens.

SPEAKER_02 18:57

Yes, it happens. Yes, but I would I would not suggest anybody to do anything fast. I think always take your time with what you're gonna do and do it right. Yeah. I think that is the the the the most the the your focus should not be on oh fuck, who's gonna be joining on to my shit? Let me hurry up. I think it should be more on if I'm going to expose this to the world and my name is on it, yeah. That's my brand. Yeah, you're not gonna say, oh, you give me a shitty product or what no no no no no no no. I'm gonna give you the best of the best. So whoever wants to copy, that's cool.

SPEAKER_03 19:29

Do your thing.

SPEAKER_02 19:29

But look what I mean. Like, look at this shit right here. That's how I see it. I don't care, I don't care about the quickness. I care about it working right.

What Great Payments Should Feel Like

SPEAKER_02 19:38

Like it just the the process, everything works, it's functionable. It's I with a like my whole heart, I want to tell other people, hey, check cent too. Cause like it's quick, it's easy. It's you don't have to do. We all have been there where we're like like trying to reload the screen to be like, did you get it? Did the money go through? Like, you don't want to spend too much because you don't know, like I didn't pay you back.

SPEAKER_03 20:03

Then you then you do it again, and it went three times. What the fuck? Yeah, hey D mapaga's beam. Let me do this beyond.

SPEAKER_02 20:09

Let me know. What are we doing? Yeah, and bitch, here's a link. I have to I have to put your code and bitch, you don't have to do shit. Click the link and give me my money back. Thank you. I'm sorry, I love sent to I can swear by sent to because it is that easy. Yeah, you know what I mean? I'm sorry, it just went off.

SPEAKER_03 20:29

I'm like, I'm gonna give it guys clip this moment. Clip it. But like it's gonna be a meme. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The Real Origin Of Centu

SPEAKER_03 20:36

I mean, take that meme, put it in the app. Now, well, speaking of a SEM2, um, where were you? Where were you sitting? What were you doing when the idea came? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:48

I I don't think it's just one moment. Yeah, it's um when I was in Holland to study, that's when Ideal came up. It started, it was launched, and by the time I left, it was 2012, it was already mainstream. Like for everything online, ideal was uh big part, big part of the of the market was only ideal. So when I came back, that was always in my mind. Like, okay, this is something we we need. You know, I want to order something online. Sorry, just just so people can understand what is ideal? So ideal is um the same as uh Centu, where you pay um you give an authorization to pay from your bank account into the bank account of the receiver. Okay, okay, you can okay.

SPEAKER_02 21:36

I feel like you just had to understand that because I've never heard of ideal.

SPEAKER_00 21:40

Okay, but you can continue now. So so um we are the ideal, and ideal is the cent to. It's kind of the same. Um we do a lot of things differently and a lot of things extra, but I'll I'll get back to that uh later. But the idea was always in my mind, and um But setting up a payment method, it requires a lot of time, a lot of resources and a lot of money. Time I kind of had, but resource and money, you know, I'm just starting stop studying, working for a boss, yeah. I didn't I wasn't earning bad, but not that type of money.

SPEAKER_02 22:21

I wasn't living, yeah, you know, the way you wanted to live.

SPEAKER_00 22:24

Yeah, so so um I couldn't start it from myself. So um then in 2015, 2016, um, my current business partner, he came. Um his company was bought by the company I was working for. We met first day that we talked together. Uh yeah, talked. We already had a click and we were like, yeah, this is a problem that needs solving. Pretty quickly after that was an opportunity for an organization that had very big issues with payments, uh specifically in reconciliation, where they get thousands and thousands of payments coming in per month per week, uh sorry, per day. Um, but it says uh tax 2025. Figure out who's who's paying, what tax type. Um so it was just like I'm like yeah, so it's messy. So the reconciliation part for that company was a lot of part a lot of was done manually. So then we got asked, okay, how can we fix this? So we looked at a couple of options, nothing was really it was either shady with things outside of Curaçao, uh you know control no oversight, yeah, a little bit hard, difficult, or it was um expensive. So then we said, okay, now is an opportunity to pitch internally our idea. So that's what we did. We pitched our idea within um the company we're working for. That was Bering Point at the time. Now they're Bleis, so they changed names. Um, we pitched it internally, we got Green Light, and then we got some resources to start working on it. Um, and then in 2020, um I remember it. That was me and my co-founder. We were sitting, uh, that's Yogis. Shout out to Yogis for Sunday. Um, we were sitting um with lunch, and we said, you know, we're working on this, but there's not really progress. Um, because we were doing all kinds of other stuff for the company we're working for, because that's what we were that's your main job, yeah. Yeah, you grab the builds. We need to go separate, we need to go cold turkey, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:36

Um like basically jump and build the airplane on the way down, yeah, and try to fly.

SPEAKER_00 24:41

Yeah, so we we made a deal um so we could get the IP out of that company, set up our own company, and from there on, yeah, it was trying to get uh keep the lights on and and you know just go, go,

Getting Banks To Say Yes

SPEAKER_00 24:54

go. Uh so we started with one employee, so we were the three of us in a very small room, um, with no rooms to the outside world. No windows, no windows, yeah. We had a window, but it was a window into another office. Yeah, so we had the blinds closed, yeah. So basically basically no window, yeah. Um uh and from there, yeah, you know, the first bank went live. Um, we had a couple of merchants, then another bank went live, another bank, and you know it started growing, and now we're about 23 uh people in total. The whole company, the whole company, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:30

So what what was that moment like? I because I feel like one you you can have something going, but I feel like once the first official one comes in, it's like well, I don't know what it's like. So what is that what is that feeling like once you got like the first bank to sign on and you got those the the first transaction into the company? What what what did that feel like?

SPEAKER_03 25:50

And to add to that question is what were one of the the hills you had to go over in order to get a bank on board?

SPEAKER_00 25:56

Um so what what we did is we didn't go with an imaginary plan. Of course not. We didn't go to the bank and said, hey, we have this idea. Um, in about two to three years we will have something built. Um we want to work together. No, we already had built a whole platform. So that's what we did. We built the whole platform and went to the banks and said, you know, this is the platform we want to connect. The bank was like, at first, no doors would open. So it was a lot of via via trying to find someone who would listen and then say, okay, you need to talk to this person and this person and this person. So we talked to a lot of people within the banks, a lot of people that had no power of any decisions, but who could guess get us to the next door? Get you to the next door. Yeah. Because yeah, who is Vincent or who is Joris? Like, we're not known in the banking world for like fintech guys. We are starting and we're here asking to connect our platform to their platform to do transactions.

SPEAKER_03 26:59

The most important thing, people's money, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:02

So of course you have to build a credibility with the banks.

SPEAKER_01 27:04

Yeah, at the banks, first thing that goes no.

SPEAKER_00 27:10

So um, thank God Banco di Krive was the first bank that would actually take us seriously, talk with us. Um, and then you know they had questions, okay. What about security? Okay, because we already built the whole thing, we could tell them this, this, this, and this, this. What about um KYC? How about uh this? Or what about if this goes wrong? Because we had already built the system and functioning a little bit, yeah, so we could show how everything would work, so that gave a lot of trust. And then, yeah, once as soon as one bank was publicly launching, the other bank started also you know moving along. We already had a lot of talks, but then you know, as soon as one bank launches, they were just waiting.

SPEAKER_03 27:52

There was like, okay, they were waiting. It's like we're sitting in the corner, we're gonna wait for somebody to do it, and if it worked, okay, now let's have a conversation.

SPEAKER_00 27:59

Yeah, maybe, maybe. I I don't know exactly what they were thinking. The idea was, but it's it's a snowball. As soon as one started, yeah, and you see that people start transacting it, transacting on it, start having um like these better payment experiences. So it was now possible to buy uh travel insurance online and pay with your local bank account. Then back then it was Banco di Caribe only. But you can pay with Banco di Caribe, get your travel polis immediately in your email. Where it's before that you had to physically did it. No, no, you actually could do it on the on the on the airport, do the digital form, then do a bank transfer bank transfer, and then wait one to three days for the bank transfer to be processed by the insurance company for you to get your polis. So those first three days you're traveling without a polis.

SPEAKER_03 28:55

Yeah, yeah, and if something happens during those times, you're kind of screwed.

SPEAKER_00 28:58

It's it's kind of um in bow because you already submitted and paid, but it's not really processed yet, so it's not all the way official, or uh buying gas. So Cure Oil was also one of the first launching clients. Oh, nice buying a gas cylinder online, right? That you know, do that you had to go somewhere, pay, and then they would come up with you could do it from home, yeah. And because it was totally like that, was fully integrated, also, so as soon as the payment went in, it would be sent to their system into their planning system. So the route for the next morning would be planned with them in there. So you would get so would buy your gas, and before 12 the other morning, you would have your gas at home. That was yeah, not doable if it would have been manual payment uh or manual like bank transfers. Yeah, so those were things that people were starting to experience, and then banks were like, okay, this is nice, this is good. Let's have another look at security and and all the other stuff, and then yeah, pretty quickly we were able to onboard more banks. That's good. That's but it was a lot of yeah, a lot of talking, a lot of talking, a lot of talking.

Small Markets And The Need To Scale

SPEAKER_03 30:07

Yeah, ever anybody ever tell you like this is impossible?

SPEAKER_00 30:09

All the time, yeah. Yeah, even my even my parents in the beginning, they were like, you know, I believe you had just pretty sure about the product, the product. I'm not sure which bank is gonna say, Yeah, you know what, connect, sure.

SPEAKER_03 30:25

It's all of all my money, yeah, yeah, yeah. Take it, take it.

SPEAKER_00 30:28

Yeah, so so and also like at the bank, also a lot of people we talked to. Um, a lot of people said, No, yeah, that's not possible. There's no way that you can figure a way out to to make this possible.

SPEAKER_03 30:41

Is this one reason like dealing with the banks? Do you think this is one reason why people could have never built this before? Or do you know why nobody has ever built something like this before? In the Caribbean, I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 30:50

Um for charisma. Maybe, maybe that's a reason. Um could be. I'm I'm I'm I'm not really sure about other people's experiences, but I do know that other people tried and and didn't make it. Now, the exact reason why they didn't make it, I I don't really know. I just know that for us it was you know a very long time that we had to operate, um keep lights on, so take other jobs, side jobs, you know, to fund cent to. What kind of side jobs? Um, so we also did we also build systems for other companies in um billing and operational uh support. So that kept lights on for for quite some time. Um, so we had to do side jobs to to fund the investment we had to do with Centu.

SPEAKER_03 31:42

I'm just thinking like this guy is a very dedicated and structured person. But I feel like the discipline helped, like from the swimming and all that good stuff.

SPEAKER_00 31:50

The discipline helps, and specifically um being very stubborn. Like, um, if someone tells me that's not possible or no, I'm like, you know, watch me.

SPEAKER_03 32:02

It's not possible that you can sponsor their show for five years.

SPEAKER_02 32:04

I'm just saying it's impossible to support their show for five years. We've only shown it's possible for a year, right?

SPEAKER_00 32:12

So we got four more to go. Oh my god. So but that's so there's there's two things that uh motivate me heavily. It's telling me that's not possible. Yeah, and no, and um um another one that hits home very hard is um it's not possible on our islands.

SPEAKER_03 32:35

Because it's a rubber so small. I mean, gross on rubber small.

SPEAKER_00 32:38

Yeah, it's like this can only be possible in in Europe or in the Netherlands or in the US. No, that's where you can do that. It's not not possible here.

SPEAKER_02 32:47

Stop by Tropical Bottle and Carry Out and purchase two cases of Balashi or Chill and receive your red card or yellow card. Visit any of the participating bars on the list and hand in your red card or yellow card and receive one balashi or chill bucket completely free. Enjoy the world club. Because if it's always been said like our market is too small. I feel like we when we've had like conversations on like with the bank, for instance, or just different companies, like, hey, you know what? Why don't we have like Cash App? Or why don't we have all these other Caribbean market is way too small, there's not enough people that would want to sign up, or that's it wouldn't make sense.

SPEAKER_00 33:24

And that is true, it is way too small. Um, and to be able to operate a company in such a small um environment, it's it's very hard, but it makes the companies that do make it very lean, very agile. So we do not have any excess fat in our company. Everything we can automate, we automate so we can keep our costs low. Because even our margins, we we we're the cheapest or the lowest cost payment method, right?

SPEAKER_03 33:57

I've said this before, like whenever we did like bank transfers, like we use bab up, they're one of our sponsors, and you see like Aruba Bank, you see Sandbank NSC Santo. One percent, like fuck it, is yeah, one percent transfer instead of 3.5, I think, on other banks.

SPEAKER_00 34:12

Yeah, or for card. Yeah, yeah. So um, but that's that's that also puts more stress on us as a company. Yeah, so yeah, if I would only operate in Aruba or only in Curaçao, there's no viable business plan possible. It's not possible. I could I we would not be able to reach volumes to keep lights on, um, keep up with all the security stuff that we need to take to keep up with. It's not possible. So we need to expand. So that's why now we operate on seven islands of the Dutch Caribbean, and we're now busy with expansion in the rest of the Caribbean. Just because we need to open up our market, our market needs to be bigger than just the the islands we operate on.

Cross Border Payments And Central Banks

SPEAKER_00 34:58

That makes total sense.

SPEAKER_02 34:59

Yeah, it makes total sense. Now I'm just asking for a friend. Will there be a possibility where like we could transfer island to island?

SPEAKER_00 35:09

Yes. Yeah. Um, but you know, to understand how Centu works is we are um we are a layer on top of the infrastructure, existing infrastructure in a cur in a in a country. So here the central bank has near-instant settlements between banks um through IPAGO and Curaçao St. Martin. We also have a kind of the same system, and Bunair also runs on our central bank system. So that means that transactions between banks is instant or near instant, and that's how we can, and we are that that layer on top of that, right? The the the experience layer. So you as a consumer, you can click a link, pay, and the receiver can get through our app a notification that it has uh been paid without having to check any bank statements. So but it the transaction you could have also done it by hand through the same infrastructure that's underneath that moves the money from your bank account to your bank account. Correct though. We just make it an experience which is actually usable.

SPEAKER_03 36:18

I was about to say, yeah, yeah, so there's more user user-friendly, user I was not user-friendly, but user fun.

SPEAKER_00 36:23

Yeah, easy, yeah. To make it something that okay, I would do this again and again and again, and not out of necessity because my lights will go off. No, I would use this more often because it's easy to use. Um so what countries are now looking into, what for example, in Europe it was easier because they had the whole of Europe and they have a um cross-country, cross-bank system already in place in real time. And in the Caribbean, what you're seeing is that the CODICOM countries are now looking into connecting their central bank systems to each other so they can do real-time account-to-account transactions cross-border. Um, the central banks of Curaçao St. Martin and of Aruba are also playing with the idea of connecting our systems.

SPEAKER_03 37:16

In my mind, I'm like, why are we still playing if we know everybody else's like Europe? I mean, Europe is a big country, but like it's already working, it's already something that's you know in place. Just look what they're doing, make adjustments for our area. And it's not a technical issue. What is it then?

SPEAKER_00 37:33

It's an agreement issue.

SPEAKER_03 37:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 37:36

So in Europe, yeah, it's easy. Everybody uses the euro. They all have kind of the same rules on on um on customer due diligence. Um, so because they have a lot of um legislation in place that's standardized across all those countries, that's a good point. Yeah, it's easier to connect. Now, Curious on Aruba is easier to connect because our our laws are similar, kind of sim, yeah, kind of similar in a lot of sense because they are Dutch-based, right? So, but Aruba compared to Jamaica, you might have totally different rules. Yeah, Jamaica is also a totally different country in terms of uh data privacy identification, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 38:27

There's a lot more radio, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:29

Yeah, so it's it's it's and then you say, okay, no, but we're gonna connect, and then our banks need to trust that if I get a transaction from a bank from Jamaica, that I can trust that that person is not committing fraud, money laundering, or anything, right? So all those things come into play when you start going cross-country or cross-border. That makes it a little bit hard. So there, there you really need to work on okay, what kind of agreements are we gonna set up? And are our banks trusting that the banks in another country are doing their due diligence up to our standards? So it's technically it's pretty simple. That's not even the hard part.

SPEAKER_03 39:11

But it's just the conversation of agreement between the countries. They're like, hey, you gotta make sure everything is on your end is good, because if it comes over here and it's fraud or something, we're gonna have a problem.

SPEAKER_00 39:20

Yeah, okay. So that's that's one of the main issues where where you see that there is a want, there's also a way, of course. But those things need to be yeah, figured out.

SPEAKER_02 39:31

That that makes total sense. Again, this is people's money, you know. I don't know, maybe somebody's life savings is on his account or whatever. So I completely understand. Again, this is why I say I would prefer you take your time and do it than hurry up and be like, okay, now we're in seven different countries, then yada yada, check us. Like, nah, take your time, relax.

SPEAKER_00 39:49

Yeah, and that's why that's why now we cannot do cross country. Um, but as soon as central banks say, okay, we will connect, then we are able to do cross-country.

SPEAKER_02 39:58

Perfect. We'll wait. We have the patience, we'll wait.

SPEAKER_00 40:00

Then you can send you send to me to someone in Curaçao or the other way around. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 40:04

Because that will help, especially, like, for example, if like if you want to sell merch in Curaçao, exactly.

Why The Name Centu Works

SPEAKER_03 40:09

I mean Aruba, you can like bank, like transfer it to Centu. It's done. And then, like, hey, wait for me to get there. We'll be in there in two weeks. Yeah. But about the name. Why Centu? Where'd that come from?

SPEAKER_00 40:21

Like, why that's Wendy.

SPEAKER_03 40:24

Really? Really?

SPEAKER_00 40:25

What? I did not.

SPEAKER_02 40:28

Wendy. Tell yeah, tell us about this.

SPEAKER_03 40:30

So you better have a conversation about like you know, percentages.

SPEAKER_00 40:33

So we we um we wanted a local name which could be used internationally. Very quickly, you guys. You see a lot of companies that are like uh Yuana, Iguana, it's true, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:48

Um, Kadushi, Lagadishi, Shoko, the same, the same typical things.

SPEAKER_00 40:54

They're very typical and they're harder to translate to international.

SPEAKER_03 40:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:59

So we wanted to have a um local, something local, local touch to our name. Um back in at that moment, um, you know, we had Google, you had Weebly, you had certain companies with double um like what do you call that? Um clinkers, yeah. Um in the name. So he said, okay, that's also something we want because that's catchy. Um and then Wendy came up with okay, but what are we doing? Yeah, we're moving money. Seng. Yeah. S-en- yeah. And what are we doing? Yeah, we're sending it to someone.

SPEAKER_03 41:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:38

Send to Wendy. Hope you know Wendy, don't play.

SPEAKER_03 41:44

Were there any other names prior to Sendu?

SPEAKER_00 41:47

Yes, but I've never seen them.

SPEAKER_03 41:50

Or do you just do it?

SPEAKER_02 41:51

We got that vote.

SPEAKER_03 41:53

It's kind of like we have your first email, like, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:55

I just yeah, we don't talk about we don't talk about Bruno. We don't talk about that email.

SPEAKER_00 41:58

We had we had um like we had a working name, it was iPay. Um, because then you had iTunes, iPad, iPhone. Yeah, so we had iPay, but that was a working name, that was a technical name. Um, but commercial name. Uh I only know of Santo. So when you ever speak to Wendy, um Wendy, we're gonna see you in a few weeks. Yeah, talk with Wendy about you know what else what else was on the table? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. When what did the process look like? But for Santo, for me, it was yeah, that was the best choice that they presented at the time, and that was the one that stuck.

SPEAKER_02 42:38

I feel like now with the story breakdown, you feel you feel you feel even more now personal to it. It's like, ah yeah, it makes Totos a sing. That's what we like. Sad, nami sang, what Nami Sang. I love it, I think that's super great.

SPEAKER_00 42:54

That's where it that's where it came from, and it's so cool because we can we can talk about the name anywhere in the Caribbean. It's true, and it it yeah, it's they would see it like sending to or something, but for us that we know sang, we're like, oh, now I now understand the wing.

SPEAKER_02 43:14

Yeah, I like that, I really like that. It's like a double entendre with it. It's like I don't know. For y'all, it's send to, yeah, but for us, it's sang to you. We'll send you your money.

SPEAKER_03 43:25

I thought it was any the whole time.

SPEAKER_02 43:26

Now I know the story about it. Exactly. That's like a double entendre. Now you get to play with it. Yeah, that's crazy.

Centu Me, Merchants, And E Commerce

SPEAKER_02 43:33

Now, speaking of send to and all this, we know this, but again, people that don't know this. So there's sent to and then there's send to me.

SPEAKER_00 43:43

Yeah. Break this down. So that's good. So when I was talking about earlier, you know, we're ideal, ideal is sent to that's not completely uh the case. So um ideal is the mechanism of Doing the payment, you know, from one bank account to another, authorizing it in your mobile banking app. That's the payment method itself. Now in Holland, you also have an app called Tiki. Yeah. And that's a or in the US you have Cash App and all the other apps that you have. Basically, they all work kind of the same. You can either you can create a payment link or you can let someone pay into your handle without having to share banking information.

SPEAKER_03 44:28

And putting like phone numbers and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_00 44:30

Yeah, phone numbers, email addresses, like sell is on email addresses, cash app, I think is phone numbers. Um and Tiki, I think you can also create your own handles. But it's all based the same thing is you know, it's two consumers, and they need to ex I need to exchange payment information with you so that you can do a transaction to me and facilitating that. So we wanted to launch something like that. Um because in in the Netherlands or in the US, it's two different companies. One does the payment method, one does the app, cash app, and they have nothing to do with the cardrails that they're running on. Yeah. In the Netherlands, Tiki has nothing to do with ideal. So um we said, but who's gonna build it? So we build it ourselves, and then we built so we are both ideal and ticky. So we have sent to me and send to me. And send to me is is purely a consumer app, that's the app that consumers use um to request money from uh from friends and family. From each other, yeah, yeah. And then we have Send2Go, um, which is then our merchant app with like a soft PUS terminal where businesses can uh yeah, request money.

SPEAKER_02 45:48

And I feel like this is something I think all entrepreneurs will like thank y'all for is that y'all are not available like on Shopify and these websites.

SPEAKER_03 45:59

Yeah, sharks happy.

SPEAKER_02 46:03

I like this means the world, it really does, because the possibilities of where we used to think that we we wanted to go, and the road that y'all just actually, this is the road to the Wizard of Oz. Like, you really just open doorways, and now I feel like there is no excuse for nobody in the Caribbean not to be. If you have a business, if you have anything, if you're part of the orange economy and you want to make money from what you do, Santu just made it possible and easy for you to do this now. You could make money you could make a living off of what you do if you just do it the right way.

SPEAKER_03 46:41

Even with Arosa, our our flower business, too. Like we we use Santo for people to pay their products if they're ordering local.

SPEAKER_00 46:48

Yeah, but even for so um even for international, we also offer card. So we can also do card processing. Yeah, well, actually, we don't process, but um, the banks are acquiring banks to the processing, but we can offer merchants to accept uh card payments. Um and in Curissa, we also launched Ideal so that Dutch tourists that come to the island can just pay like they do at home. Uh pay like a local. It's it's easier.

SPEAKER_03 47:17

Um sorry to cut you off. I've been getting I've been getting calls the whole time rejecting, rejecting, rejecting. What I'm in an interview. It's a five up eats.

unknown 47:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 47:27

Can you tell your wife that they're outside? Oh my god. Yeah, real quick.

SPEAKER_02 47:32

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_03 47:33

Actually, let's go to commercial. Sorry to interrupt the episode, but I just want to let you guys know real quick, every single week on Mondays and Fridays, Shark and I, we drop a new food review on our no filter eats channel on Instagram. Take that stays the same, no filtering paradise, or just click the link in the description. Go check it out. Anyways, enjoy the show. All right, guys, we're back from now on. We're gonna only speak Spanish because we just heard him speak Spanish. You busted out. I'm not gonna do it. Oh god, okay. Sorry, continue.

SPEAKER_00 48:02

Yeah, where were we?

SPEAKER_02 48:04

Well, this is where we are right about now.

The Ideal Sunday Reset

SPEAKER_02 48:07

Yeah, I need you to first quickly look back and you see the cans. Yeah, choose one. Choose any which one that's that sparks your attention.

SPEAKER_00 48:16

Um, chill.

SPEAKER_02 48:17

Pick it up, pick it up, pick it up, pick it up. It is yours. What's underneath it? What number do you see underneath? Uh, number one. You got number one. All right. So your question is, and I feel like you probably wouldn't know this, but it's okay. We're still gonna ask you, okay? What is your ideal Aruba Sunday? And which beer is in your hand? Is it Balashi? Is it Balashi Chill or is the magic mango?

SPEAKER_00 48:41

Um, I would go with original. Balashi?

SPEAKER_01 48:44

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 48:45

Okay.

unknown 48:45

All right, all right.

SPEAKER_03 48:46

What are you what are you doing? And it's a Sunday.

SPEAKER_00 48:49

Yeah, what's your ideal Sunday with your Balashi? Um, no phone, no internet. Oof. Um, not really, not specifically on the beach, but I can see the beach and I can smell the ocean. The ocean um and listen to the waves. That that would be are you just like are you just staring out? Yeah, staring out, talking with my wife, playing with my son. Tis vibing out, yeah, and no interruptions. Tis vibing out. Like my whole day is like normally my days are in from interruption to interruption. Yeah. So like a Sunday, it's like turn everything off.

Work Life Boundaries For Founders

SPEAKER_03 49:25

How do you do it? Because like that's that's something I'm struggling with heavily for sure. Is like, I'm not gonna lie, the last three days is supposed to be off on my company, and I'm it hasn't been off. Like, I'm not how do you turn it off?

SPEAKER_00 49:38

Um, you don't really turn it off, but you learn um not to actively think of it or or to be actively thinking about all the other stuff you still need to do figure out, right? Because you end your week with a big to-do list, and you don't want your whole weekend to be spending on that to-do list in your mind without every without ticking things off. So you need to find a way to um let me say it like this. So when I was when I started working and I started to get more responsibilities, I started to have issues sleeping because I would come home and then for three hours stare at the ceiling and you know, just go through all the problems, go through all the things and trying to solve them. And I was not sleeping, so my manager at the time, she asked, I I she asked me, like, what's happening? Like, okay, I'm parting a lot, but I'm also having a lot of issues sleeping. So she said, you know, mentally, whenever you walk out the door here and you close the door behind you, try to make it like a mental game that you put everything from work behind that door, close it, and everything stays there. And it sounded really weird, but I started doing it, and little by little I could leave stuff at work. Now that's when you're an employee, right? So once you start your own business, yeah, that there is no door. It's a different ballgame. So the first years it was on 24-7, you know, working six days a week, and on Sunday, whenever something popped up, I would be on on the phone. We use Signal a lot, so with Signal, with uh with Yoris, talking about stuff, and then on Monday, bang, bang, bang, bang, going again. But you get to a point where that's not sustainable, and thank God we could grow our team so we can delegate responsibilities. And you know, you need to get through that first phase where everything everything falls on you. And in my case, I was really lucky that I have a business partner. Um, but everything would fall on our on us two, and at some point, you know, you start delegating, delegating, and delegating, and when that goes better and better and better, you get more free time in your head. Mental peace.

SPEAKER_03 52:03

Yeah, that that's like I mean, Shark knows this. Like, this is where I'm struggling right now. It's just like trying to find a way to like shut things. I'm gonna try this door thing you just mentioned, but like I just one thing I am trying now is with my wife, like Sunday is like almost a non-negotiable in the morning. We go to the beach. 9 a.m. We go to Arashi and we just chill there for like two hours or until the sun just burns us the crisp. Like, okay, I have had enough, like we need to go in the shade. But uh we're starting with that, and then throughout the day, we're like, all right, let's grab lunch somewhere on the way home. Hey, let's go to the movies tonight. So, and we've only been doing this for a few weeks, so it's it's I'm still learning how to turn things off because I do multiple things besides the podcast, I do other things as well. And one, I close this door, close that door, but these two doors are still open. I'm like, fuck, leave me alone, you know. But yeah, I I I need I need to learn on how to push. Yeah, I mean, we're working on that.

SPEAKER_02 52:57

Delegation is what helps.

SPEAKER_03 52:58

Our team is slowly growing, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:00

And and what also helps is if at home you have peace.

SPEAKER_03 53:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:06

So um, that's what my wife and I worked on a lot, and yeah, she really helps me with that. Giving me peace at home. Coming home, and she can already sense if I come home stressed. So she's like, Okay, here's your half hour, won't bother you for half an hour. Go do whatever go do stare at you know, whatever you want to do. I'll leave you alone for like half an hour.

SPEAKER_02 53:34

But before y'all could get to that point, y'all had to communicate it, right? Like she, y'all had there had to be some point of where she's like, okay.

SPEAKER_00 53:42

It was a roller coaster, it was rocky. We had a lot of um yeah, unnecessary discussions and fights, and and you know, she doesn't understand me, I don't understand her. I'm like, I coming home, I I don't want to deal with um we need to pay electricity. I'll I'll I'll figure it out. We're gonna pay it. I mean, it's a statement. At some point, we're gonna pay it tomorrow. I don't know. Give me a week, I'll even if it's it's really small things that um become really big because you come home from stress from from an environment, and um she would also come home from work, and then either I was home earlier or she was home earlier, and you know, little things that have no business of being an issue would become an issue just because both of you are in a whole different mindset. Yeah, so now it's like okay, let's first both of us be ground ourselves at home and be relaxed, and then we start talking about stuff that we might not agree on or that someone didn't do, or I need someone to remind something of. No, let's first get relaxed. Yeah, then we can talk about certain stuff and not get you know in this on state and immediately go into new things.

SPEAKER_03 54:50

Yeah, because now you're expressing like your stress on her, and like, what the fuck? Like, I didn't ask, like, why am I getting the blame here? And vice versa.

SPEAKER_00 54:57

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So those are yeah, you know, I'm very fortunate that we're now in a situation where yeah, we can work like that.

SPEAKER_03 55:07

I mean, like Shakar was saying, it took, it takes time and like the the roller coasters, but now that you know how to navigate the seas, okay, now it's easier, a smoother sail, let's put it that way.

SPEAKER_02 55:18

And I love that you mentioned this just because I feel like it's something that entrepreneurs go through and they don't even they don't prepare mentally for this type of wave is coming. I like that you really mentioned that that mental peace from home is what is super important because that is your resting piece. That that is the place where your creativity will spark. That is the place where you're supposed to get all these things or where you're supposed to unwind. This is a home. Home is that place. Yeah,

Home Peace And Better Communication

SPEAKER_02 55:45

so getting stressed out at home where you want to like not be home is an issue.

SPEAKER_03 55:50

Yeah, because now you're leaving like a stressful environment, and like fuck, I'm about to step into another stressful one. So it just it just if that's if you have a stressful environment at home, it's like you're bouncing back and forth, and then the only peace you have is that 10-minute car ride from your office to have like now you're sitting outside, like, I don't want to go inside yet. Like, let me just camera. That's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 56:09

I've heard of people doing that. Not not standing in the driveway because your wife would see you, but I've heard of people. No, I'll I'll take a long route home. Yeah, I want to make it.

SPEAKER_02 56:19

There's something what is your message for people that think like that?

SPEAKER_00 56:23

Well, it's it's hard because you need to be in a relationship where you can communicate with your other health, yeah. Right. Um, but you need to find a way to be able to communicate that when you're in a certain um state of mind, state of mind, you're not capable or you're not ready to listen and uh make logical decisions, you become very emotional. So everything escalates very quickly. Yeah, and you want to so find a way when you are very both in a very happy state, and then talk about okay, these are a couple of things we might need to adjust so that when I give you a signal or something, it doesn't mean I don't have time for you, I don't want to listen to you. It's more like I'm not there right now. I I will not be able to handle it in the way that you need me to handle whatever you're asking me. Because respectfully, yeah, yeah, very respectfully. I mean, yeah, and you cannot use that flag or that signal anytime there's a hard question, right? That's not how it works. But you know, from time to time, you know, it's the other person cannot always see what's going on in your head. So if you need to tell the other person, like, okay, do she I really need a little bit of me time. Alright. You're talking to your wife, right? Yeah, yeah. You gotta say mami. Uh no, the mi amor.

SPEAKER_03 58:03

I was I was surprised when when when you said your wife's gonna smell it, and then um and then you bust out that Spanish. If you guys didn't see it, maybe we'll clip it, we'll put it in there a little bit. But like it was you have a really good Spanish.

SPEAKER_00 58:16

My my wife really worked on that.

SPEAKER_02 58:19

Well, kudos mommy.

SPEAKER_00 58:24

Because I was speaking Mexican Spanish when we met. Oh shit. So it's like uh we're changing that. Yeah.

A Wedding Night Meet Cute

SPEAKER_00 58:34

So how did you how do you and your wife meet? A little segue. How did you guys meet? Um when I came back to Curaçao, uh, one of my best friends, he was getting married, and he had one of those um I know um wedding parties, which is multiple days. Uh so on Wednesday they got married for the state. I was at that party um because I was one of the witnesses, and there I met a woman, um her mom, and everybody was dancing, dancing, dancing, and I saw her, and she was not like nobody was really interacting with her because she was a friend of the mom of my friend, yeah, nobody really knew her, and um, so I was like, I'm just gonna ask this woman to dance. So we danced a couple of things and didn't really think anything of it, and she's like at the end of the night, she's like, Yeah, my daughter is coming on Friday, you need to meet her. I'm like, I'm not I I don't want to be set up to her. Or anything. No, no, no, nothing. And then on on Friday, the there was the the the church wedding and at the party, and I didn't see her anymore. They had issues with uh a flight coming in from Venezuela, and then they went to the wrong venue, and then finally when they came to the right venue, it was pretty late, and I was really drunk, and and then her mom introduced us, and uh um yeah, there I was like, Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:07

Actually, take back what I said.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:09

Nice to meet you. Like, absolutely, and that was history, yeah. And then we started dating. Um, and then but she was living in Venezuela at the time. She was living in Venezuela, and her parents were living in Curaçao. Okay. Um and yeah, then little by little, you know, every time she would come over, come over, come over, come over. Little dates here and there. And then I was like, you know, if we're if this is gonna be something, I need you to live here. I cannot, I this this I we cannot just go back and forth. So she came to live with her parents. Um, we dated another year and a half, I think. Um like a year. Then I then we moved in together. That was a big step.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:58

Um well, not for me, because for me it was kind of normal, but for her, it was a yeah, for her family was a big step. But yeah, in my mind, my logical Dutch mind was like, let's give this a try first, like a try run. Because the long distance doesn't count, like you have to listen to you. Yeah, right. Now it's official. Yeah, now we're officially dating. You need to know what it looks like when I come home, and my shoes are everywhere, and my clothes are everywhere. I need to be okay with that, and uh, whatever quirks you have, I need to find out, and we need to that's a good way to see it. Yeah, but it's very Dutch European way of thinking, so very much so. So her parents were like, hmm, and then about a year later, we uh uh we got engaged. Nice man, yeah, and now 10 years married.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:44

Now 10 years married, yeah. All because you didn't want to meet the lady's daughter, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:50

You know how that goes, right? So you meet a lady and she's like, you know, I have I have a daughter. I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. If she like I I don't know your daughter, I don't want to know your daughter because if you need me to set set me up with your daughter, not have an obligation for this whole wedding.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:04

Well, I want to have a good time, but now you know, yeah, so it was like you know, does she know this story about your mom about you and her mom? She's about to watch it, like, ah, so you didn't want to meet me.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:20

Yeah, no, no, she didn't know that story because for her it was the same, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:25

Her mom said, like, you need to come. I need you to present you someone. It's just like mom, not again. Oh god, we're not no no no, we're not doing this. So when we met, she was really not not interested either.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:39

Like, here we go.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:40

Hey guy, that's a funny story. And I was really drunk, so I told her, you know, let's dance, and she was like, uh-uh. Like, you know, okay, whatever. If you want to dance, yeah, I'll use it. I'll be dancing myself over there. So at some point she came to the dance floor, and you know, we started talking, and yeah, from uh, that is so cute.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:02

I wanna I want to know what changed her mind to go and like dance with you. Like, you know, oh he's actually pretty good dancing for white boy. Like, hey, yeah, actually he got some weird dances, just like salsa or something.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:12

Salsa, merengue, bachata. Okay, yeah. Yeah, I like that shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I had I had so my the friend my friend that got married um when I was about five or six years old. We moved into a house and they moved in next door. So he was my friend's neighbor growing up, and they're Venezuelan. Uh so from there, I learned how to dance and you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:36

Okay, it makes sense with the connection with her mom now. And and a little bit of also like you're already you under you knew the culture a little bit already because of your friend. Yeah, okay. She did a little background check. I should do that. Oh, wait, neighbor Venezuelan. All right, so we understand Venezuela. Okay, cool. Let me have a conversation with them.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:50

Yeah, yeah, because their moms are are very good friends. So that makes total sense. That

Misconceptions And Underused Features

SPEAKER_00 1:03:55

makes total sense now.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:55

Kirosao, we're finally coming back. Join us this July 25th and 26th for the Macworks Wine and Work Tour. It's going down at Papagayo Beach Club. We'll see you then.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:07

So you got a little segue. So, what is the biggest um misconception of people that believe about Cento? It's a big pause. Yeah, I'm I'm I I for example, it's not a wallet, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:32

It's it's not a wallet. Um so your money stays within the banking system. Yeah. Uh so that's a sometimes it could be a misconception where people think I need to load up a wallet in order to make payments. So that's that's not it. Um another thing is that you if you need an app, right? You don't need an app. You have your banking app already.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:57

That's actually the best part, one of the best parts about it.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:00

Um you need the app to create the link, by the way. But you don't need the app to receive the money.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:05

Yeah, so you need you need an app to create the payment link, which sent to me. You need to register because we need to verify your bank account before sending money to a bank account. But if you do the payment, if you are the paying side of the transaction, you use your mobile banking app. My pause is because we're changing that. Oh.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:26

Um something you can talk about or not not really.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:29

Okay, not really yet, but that's where the pause came from. So how much can you say right now in the yeah? So there's gonna be some changes in in how it works, and it specifically um changes for the usability of um of yeah, doing doing transactions, making it much more easier to do transact with uh with Centu.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:50

Okay, so it's only gonna get better, of course.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:52

Yeah, yeah, that's no actually going backwards. Well, actually, well, that's the time time time will tell, right? So yeah. We're gonna do something new and um yeah we'll see what the market says about it. But I hope that yeah it is for the better. That's that's what the idea that we have behind it.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:07

But yeah, I like it just said, like that the market because I always I always tell people not always, but like I always think that you can have a somebody can come and tell you, like, I got a great product, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever. You can paint it however you want. But at the end of the day, it it even applies to content, creating content. You can create the best fucking video in the world, but at the end, if the market doesn't like it, it it means at least my opinion, it means nothing. Because the market has to accept the content, the market has to accept the product because that's how you're gonna grow. Because if they don't accept it, then you're fucked.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:37

Yeah, what are you doing? We have we have uh a whole load of features that that we have available that nobody uses. What's one of your favorite features that you have that nobody uses? Um yeah, we have a feature, it's called recurring payments. So for people, you can make you can create a membership in our um in our platform. So I can create a um you, I can say Samil, and you need to pay me every month 50 gilders. Like a subscription, like a subscription, and then every month you get an automated an email with a link to pay. So that's oh shit.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:18

This is actually connect. Sorry, gotcha. This is great because for example, if you have like uh Arubarba, the product I use for my beard, if you have like um beard oils and I have a subscription or like whatever it's called subscription with with Arubarba, now he gets a payment. Okay, now I deliver, and then you just put hey, just deliver the thing from your monthly whatever, whatever. Yeah, fuck that.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:40

Start sending it to all of our sponsors. Here you go. Um month, excuse me, email, thank you for the invoice, and it's a link.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:49

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pay me, thank you. Yeah, so we do not do the invoicing itself, we just the payment. No, that's why we'll make the invoice, and then we just make the right to them.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:57

Hey, make sure you do it, huh?

SPEAKER_00 1:07:58

No flop, Wendy. So there is so those are our features that we do have available, but they're not really being used by our merchants. Um we will see in the future what it like what happens. But um, yeah, we also have we've also built some other stuff that we haven't launched yet, that is waiting to launch. Um go ahead, sorry. Yeah, so things are waiting to launch more because we're launching so much stuff. You want to give everybody a chance time to get used to something. Yeah, so if we keep launching new things, it could be too much for the consumer.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:41

Yeah, it's like it's just overload, it's too many things. I don't know. It's like it's like you you give a menu. Here's 50 items, like yo, how too many options. Why do you give me like one by one? Like every every three months, hey, new feature, new feature, new yeah.

Teaching The Market What Exists

SPEAKER_00 1:08:53

So, for example, a lot of our merchants don't know that we are not only sent to pay by bank, but that we also do card and other payment methods. So sometimes you're talking with a merchant and they're saying, Yeah, I have this problem because yeah, I have now have sent to, but yeah, my the tourists cannot pay me. I'm like, Yeah, but we do card. Oh, you do card, right? So that's that's also something that that keeps happening where we do have stuff available, but people don't know about it yet. And in terms of marketing, it's quite hard because we have such a broad scala of stuff that we do. Yeah, um, you cannot market everything very specific.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:33

So it there is there is um what if I mean I might be wrong, but like there is a way if you create videos like for every single feature, right? Let's say the recurring payments. Hey, if you guys didn't know, like here's your your two cents, about a centu. Um, we have recurring payments, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Um, I know there is a way through using many chat. You know many chat? It's like it's like a it's like a messaging. You know, like how in on Instagram, like comment this and we'll send you a that's many chat. It's a it's a it's a software service, whatever. I know there's a way now that you can link a video, comment certain words, and then it will send you a specific video that you already created on your Instagram to the person. So it's kind of like, hey, I'm looking for this video, and then you kind of get a DM on Instagram from a specific video from that feature that you're looking for.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:32

So but then you need to know about what you're looking for, yeah. So you need to know about a certain feature that you're looking for. Yeah, so that's why you have to create videos like a lot. Yeah, but most people don't even know what they're looking for. True. So um, and in terms of videos, we have quite some videos online. Um, nobody's looking at them.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:54

What about your Instagram? Let me get your Instagram.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:56

That's what I'm on right now. Yeah, so I'm trying to go over to be like, okay, I think what he's saying is kind of like what is kind of needed, but just based off of what I'm seeing here, where between all of these there should be a specific video. So from I wanna see, I wanna see you in your send to little office, yeah. And maybe like Wendy passing back, and you're just saying, like, hey, so today this we're gonna talk about this specific feature. Yeah, and it doesn't even have to be like a long video, a few seconds, and text on screen or whatever, but that hey, did you know? And you can just call it like a like a series. Did you know?

SPEAKER_00 1:11:39

We we have, I think we have those. You do, yeah. So there is a couple of where there's a couple where I speak, and then there's a lot of um where um Sumi is speaking or Amber is speaking.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:55

Yeah, as Amber over here, but you know, I see a picture.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:58

I will I I mean no Amber Amber has a couple of them about ideal and about Vincent. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:06

This is good.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:07

Yeah, I think I think here I'm talking about send to me and some uh some stuff. So we're we're trying we're trying certain things. Maybe they're not easy to find for people. Maybe that's but you just have to be consistent with it.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:19

Like, I mean, I I also run a content agency on the island. We do multiple companies like Boogaloo, Jolly Pirates, like we have a few clients, and we're just you just have to be very consistent present. Just because you made a video one time doesn't mean like, ah yeah, we already made it. Like, so what? Make it again, have a different hook, a different beginning.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:36

Yeah, but um so what we do is um Instagram is pretty um business, like like Santo minded, and then we have our fun channel, and that's on TikTok. Um I'm literally I'm gonna look it up right now. That's that's where we have more the that's more based um for sent to me uh focused, uh really consumer focused. Um and so yeah, that's what our team because now we have three people in the marketing department, so that's what they're the whole time. So I get like these agenda items, like okay, yeah, I need you for half an hour because we're doing another video, and then I got the scripts and yeah, yeah, go talk.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:17

It'd be like that, it'd be like that, it'd be like that. All right, but okay, I'll probably have to check out the TikTok one. Yeah, and I'll give you feedback, but I'll give you feedback from that. Yes, yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:26

So anything, anything to improve, right? Of course, 100% will send it.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:30

It's only to win. I mean, all of us benefit from the app just becoming better and better and better. It's something for everybody to benefit from. So it's not like okay, you're only gonna win. No, everybody wins if the app wins. Yeah, so yeah, no, definitely get some feedback

Making It Safer To Start Businesses

SPEAKER_02 1:13:48

on that. And we'll also try to like instill. So what let me let me ask you this what is your dream goal or the the thing that you want to accomplish with Centu or Centu Me for in general, just for like the Caribbean in general, what what is your goal?

SPEAKER_00 1:14:08

Um, one of the the the main things is the issue you have a person that wants to start a company. There's a lot of stuff you need to figure out before starting a company, and then payments. That's always a problem, or it has always been a problem. We haven't solved everything yet, but you know, we're working on it. But for us, it is okay, I want to start a business and I want to start a business with as least risk as possible. So make it very easy for people to start, fail, but not be bankrupt um immediately, or have like the big contracts and problems and issues. So I want you to start, fail, start, fail, start, fail without having to do big investments. Start, make it, and then you know, so I want to have we want to create something that can make it possible for companies to start innovating, to start trying new things that haven't been possible before because you didn't have that online payment part or the digital payment part.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:17

Even the Shopify part is a huge part, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:19

So Shopify was on our wish list. Um, it took us about six years, um, because Shopify closed their system. And back in 2016 or 17, they closed their system, so they did not they stopped allowing uh third-party payment processors onto their platform because they went into Shopify payments, they went into payments, partnering with local uh payment processors in different countries, so they just stopped. So we could send emails to their partner page, uh payment partner email, no reaction. So it was um through a lot of LinkedIn search and you know, starting to talk to people and talk to people and just keep knocking on that door until someone was like fed up and like what do you want to open the door? And like look, the Caribbean, you guys do not have a local payment partner. Um, we're not aspiring yet to become your payment partner, like to white label everything that we do because we don't have the setup to be able to do that yet. But could we please make apps right on your um your platform so we can start supporting our businesses? Then we gotta relate, uh yeah, like a quite difficult contract. So we got negotiating about the contract to make it less um limiting to us. Um went through it, and yeah, now we were able, we're a payment partner of Shopify, so we can create payment apps in the Shopify platform. Fun deal. And yeah, it took a lot of time, and it was also um showing okay, we already do all these other companies, we do tax office, we do insurance companies, we do telecom, so e-commerce. Yeah, I need e-commerce. We do WooCommerce, we do um another another new one that we have is Simply Book that's uh for nail salons, um Pilates companies are using it, where you can book um a Cita, an Asfrak online, and immediately pay, right? Because that's something that done that that how many times do you go to the to the barber or to uh to a hairdresser or do your nails and last minute I cannot make it. Yeah, well for them, they have an hour or half an hour open now in their agenda that they are not filling. Yeah, so you want to have people prepay. Um, we also have rovert. That's good for for uh they do tour operators. Um, so you can support tour operators with a platform with integrated payments.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:06

It seems like paving the road was like a very fucking hard job. Was

The Next Step When It’s Foggy

SPEAKER_03 1:18:14

there any point in time where you just wanted to quit? No, like never that was never never never. That was a quick answer.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:20

No, that wasn't that was an option. Yeah. Um if if if it gets hard, if it gets hard, you work harder, you find the way. Just like your marriage. Just like marriage, yeah. You mean you make a commitment, you say yes to each other, you do it um before someone from the from government you say yes, then in church, uh before God, I'm not gonna break that promise, yeah. Right? Same with business. Okay, this is something we really want to do. I it's yes or yes. I strongly believe there is a way to make this happen. So even if it gets hard or seem impossible, we need to find a way to continue. So, no, there was not really a time that we said, okay, this is we're gonna quit. There were times that we didn't really see where like where we had to go, but I have I have this really cool thing on the on the um on the wall, and it's a little bit cheesy, but it's from and I don't even know where it's from, but it's from a book, and it's about a guy walking in the woods with a horse and um niblina. Um how you say that? Um like the clouds at night, yeah. Um mist. Yeah, okay, fog. Fog, yeah. Fog sets in, and um the boy tells the the horse, um, I don't know where we're going. And the horse said, But can you see the next step? Yes, you can take that one. Nice. And yeah, that one, when I read it, I was like, you know, this is what I'm gonna use every time I'm in the dark and I feel pressure. What is the next step? Don't think about where you have to go next.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:10

What is that?

SPEAKER_00 1:20:13

If you cannot see two steps ahead, fine. Well, you're not too much. But you can two steps, you do know the next step, and when you're there, figure out the next step. You might find out, you might find the next step and the next step and the next step, and that's how you go forward. And that's an analogy I keep using in my mind. So I love one.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:31

Yeah, yeah. What's that book called?

SPEAKER_00 1:20:33

Because I I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:34

I have to I need to look it up. Okay, look it up, look it up.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:36

No pressure, but look it up. I have I we I have it printed out and it's on on your own.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:41

Because I like I like the step of books, I like that.

What Governments Should Fix

SPEAKER_03 1:20:44

There is a what's what's one thing like I don't know how Curacao is, but like what's one thing like governments could do to help like fintech companies grow in in Aruba Bonarin Curacao? Like, what do you see? Like that's that's a big red tape. We need to remove that.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:57

Um there's quite some stuff that can be done. Um, I think one what's what's important is um legislation, yeah, so that we can have a level playing field for all fintech companies. Um I think it's it's dangerous for fintech companies to operate without uh playing rules, rules of the game because for us, for example, even though we don't have to have specific legislation in place, we look internationally what is internationally accepted, and we try to adhere to those uh standards. That's a deliberate choice. Um, it's also a choice that makes us able to talk with banks um and integrate with banks. But if other fintech companies would come onto the market and they don't care about certain stuff, which makes their costs way less, and they can do a lot more stuff um to make it interesting for consumers to start using them and then having issues and going bankrupt or whatever kind of issues come up, that hurts the whole fintech sector. Yeah, take a few steps back. Yeah, then everybody that's been playing uh nicely nicely goes a few steps back because one person wanted to fuck it up for the rest.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:20

Yeah, one bad Apple and Mass.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:22

And maybe they don't want to, but it it happens if you do not have certain things in place, you are not forcing people to set up some sort of a foundation to build on, and then yeah, if they don't have a strong foundation, things can crumble, and that has detrimental effect to like fintech as a space. So that's that's one thing. Um, another issue, and that's not really for fintech, but more for tech companies, and I think more companies are having that issue, is getting people to our islands.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:53

What do you mean by that? Like as in workers or yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:57

So there's quite some red tape for to get people that do not hold a Dutch nationality. I don't know how it is in Aruba, but in Curaçao, if you have a Dutch nationality, it's pretty easy to get someone to Curaceo. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:11

But I'm not familiar with Aruba?

SPEAKER_00 1:23:14

No, I'm not not married to Holland. Yeah. I mean, if I find a good developer, yeah, or a good content creator or a good designer that lives in another country that I want to bring here, um, it's it's the process is long and it's also not that easy. It just takes a lot of time.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:33

So, and I I'll tell it everywhere to make that very easy, and I'm not sure I'm not a politician or I don't know anything about the rules around it and the risks and other things that are taking into account. For me, can we please make it simple that we say, okay, for certain sectors, if we bring someone to the island that earns above a certain threshold, that means that the company that's bringing them into the country has done the qualifications and is willing to invest a certain amount to pay them monthly, right? So if I pay a person 80,000, 90,000, 100,000 guilders a month uh a year. A month like send me up. Yo, shut this down. Like if if you're starting to earn in those ranges, yeah, um you're not gonna be a criminal. Um, right? Exactly. So so but I but I must say I don't understand all everything that goes on in you know getting a migrant to the country. But if I am willing to invest 100,000 guilders a year into a person, I have vetted that person for a specific reason.

unknown 1:24:49

Right?

SPEAKER_00 1:24:49

I'm bringing that person here because the person will bring value to my company. And that are value greater than a hundred thousand guilders. So if I have already gone through that process, could we just say, okay, for certain sectors, if you earn above a certain threshold, okay, you will not be a problem for our country. You will not bring um problems, you will not be a burden on our on our country, on our systems. You're actually here to add value. Add value. Yeah, yeah. And that's I'm I'm I'm with the people I get to talk with sometimes. I'm trying to float that idea, and I'm gonna keep necessary. Keep laying on that sea, yeah. Eventually we'll grow. Hopefully, it makes it easier for us to get uh highly qualified, uh skilled workers uh to the island.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:39

I think what I saw, or I've read this before. Um some places what they do with that is that okay, cool, you can we'll make the process easy for you to bring these people, but then they have to teach a few locals something or like some type of like program where then it's guaranteed that some locals got some of this knowledge as well.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:03

So you brought the professional here, but then they also benefit because it that sounds um very nice from a political standpoint, um, but in practice it's hard and it will put a burden on certain companies. So my my vision on that is create um the environment where where certain companies like I'm now specifically talking about tech companies, where tech companies can grow, when tech companies grow, they create demand. Demand cannot always be bought from exterior from the outside. So as soon as demand grows, people will start studying what you're looking for. Yeah, the universities will start investing in programs because they know that they that people there's demand for those kinds of jobs, so people will start to study those kinds of jobs. So if you look at our universities, um we have accounting, we have a lot of finance things, right? Because those are things that are um needed on the on the islands, but also a lot of hospitality stuff. So why isn't not a lot of tech stuff? Because if I create a um a class of 20 students in tech, like developers, I right now, maybe I'm not saying that there isn't, but maybe there is, but it's probably it's harder to find a local place for them to work, yeah. So it I think first the first wave is importing skilled workers, creating the demand, creating demand, and then the demand will come from uh locally. And once you have a um country where you import a lot of skilled workers, um that that trickles down to value goes up. You're right, I take it back. You're right, yeah, you're right, you're right. So it's I'm I'm looking at because I'm looking at everything that people say. I'm like, okay, how would I implement this in my business? And how could I implement this without um yeah going bankrupt or losing sight of what I'm actually working on? You can't lose, of course. That's not the point. Yeah. So in Curaçao we have a um tech organization. It's called SEMIA. And there we're, you know, little by little talking with government, talking with other organizations about, you know, let's lift up the tech industry as a whole and get more skilled people to the islands, people that earn a lot of money, that spend a lot of money locally, instead of focusing only on tourism and refinery, for example. Um, because if you look, for example, at a um it someone in tech that works for me, they earn between three or four times minimum wage. So imagine um what kind of uh taxes they pay to the government.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:07

Yeah, and imagine if you if you increase the demand for that, that means the government will actually benefit for having more tech workers because the salary is already so high.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:13

Exactly. So yeah, so they're um what they add to the country is much more than if we get a migrant to come and work in hospitality. So the salaries are so low.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:26

Plus, they make money on tips, and tips aren't taxed in Curacao. So, like, what's the government actually benefiting? Nothing really.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:33

Exactly. So those are it's very black and white, yeah, right. I know that there's a lot of new one, more nuance to it, but I'm I'm trying to make it very black and white to to show now simplify it, of course. Simplify it to show the difference. Um so that that's kind of what I hope for for our countries that governments start uh to make it easier for tech companies or for other um sectors uh to be able to expand their operations.

Rapid Fire And How To Download

SPEAKER_02 1:30:00

I agree with that. I feel like that was a very valid good point. So thank you. He did his research on that one, okay? So Vince, it's it's something I'm very passionate about.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:10

100%. Oh my god, yeah. No, I was gonna say we don't have a lot of time left because you have to go um for the event. It's almost five, and he has a radio in four minutes. Yeah. So I'm gonna ask you some some rapid questions and give you a quick, I'm sorry, quick answers. What is your favorite app besides Centu? Um now it's whoop. Okay, it's a fitness tracker. I was gonna ask you about that, but we're not gonna do that. Worst business advice you've ever received.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:37

Yeah, I've I've not really had bad advice.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:41

Nobody ever told anything like that's dumb, you know?

SPEAKER_00 1:30:44

No, they tell me that I think dumb things. Yeah, but um no. You mean business advice or idea?

SPEAKER_03 1:30:52

Business advice. Like, what's like one business? Hey, you should really invest in this, or like you should really be doing this. Like, why would I do that?

SPEAKER_02 1:30:59

You probably never took the advice, clearly, but yeah, nothing comes to mind.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:03

No, no, not that good, not this good. Um, you need to spend money to make money. True.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:10

Reminds me, reminds me of Justin Neeson, like, hey, you need money to make money.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:14

But it's it exactly, but it's really hard because if you don't have money to spend money, right? But but it's it's very good advice, but it's very hard to follow. And what's one entrepreneur you admire? Um, there's a couple. Um, Elon Musk for me is is one of the bigger ones. Um just because he's able to think of solutions that we don't have the problem for yet.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:40

Yeah. What about one entrepreneur in career style? Um, I'm not really familiar with you're just so locked into your own thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:53

Yeah, Wendy. Um Yeah, there's a there's a couple of people that that um you know give back to to the country the eigen. That's that's nice. Um but yeah, but so what we have is we have a lot of entrepreneurs that do a lot of great things, but they're not very public. Okay, yeah. So that's why it's hard to find yeah like certain people or to know them.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:25

Behind the scenes, like you know, like they're they're behind the curtain doing all this, but nobody knows that.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:28

It's like if you know, you know type of situation. Okay, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:31

So my last one's gonna be what is one thing about your background, or maybe a talent that people would never guess about you, except for speaking Spanish, because that was yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:41

That's kind of superpower, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:43

You can't use that one because you already know that one. Yeah, um, I was really thrown off by it. Like, whoa, what the fuck?

SPEAKER_00 1:32:49

Um, I think well, the the the the underestimation that of my how determined I am.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:57

Okay, awesome.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:58

Like stubbornness, very, very stubborn.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:02

Yeah, I want I wonder like how your wife deals with you being so stubborn. Like, oh in your like you never do you ever lose an argument? Um or win an argument.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:13

No, I don't I don't ever win one. That's if you ask my wife, I always have a reason or uh it's it's very hard to argue with me. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:23

Okay, cool. Well then thanks for uh coming on the show. I've I know you're only on the roof for like four to eight hours, but um thanks for coming. And I hope you guys learned something today. I hope you guys do me a favor, go download the app. It's santu.io, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:33:37

Yes, yeah. But the app on the app store is santu.me. There you go.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:41

And it's right now it's yellow with the current flag. Yep, but um look it up. It makes you like it.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:47

The Instagram handle is sentu.io.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:49

Yeah, yeah. We'll put that we'll put their Instagram as well in the description. Go look it up, download the app. Trust me, I've used it a lot. My my veterinarian has used it. My one of my favorite cafes, I forgot to pay one time. He texted me, Abra with Napaga. I'm like, I'll come tomorrow. No, no, no. I think we sent them like, god damn it, all right here. So if you learned something, comment down below what you learn, and we'll see you next week. Peace. Are you? Thank you. Bye. Nice.