Plenty of startups have had to pivot from their original business idea, but Slash may be the first one to do so because of Kanye West. Slash started out providing banking services to sneaker resellers, but after the rapper’s anti-Semitic rants tanked the market, cofounders Victor Cardenas and Kevin Bai decided to create bespoke banking lines for other industries instead. The pivot proved to be a success.
The founders came up with Slash after playing around with different startup ideas while Cardenas studied at Stanford and Bai at the University of Waterloo, and learning about the vibrant community of sneaker resellers. Many of these resellers were generating substantial revenue but were unable to access key bank products, like virtual credit cards, because of their age or unincorporated status.
Many fintech startups with a similar offering—like Mercury, Brex, and Ramp—take a horizontal approach by selling to companies across different industries. Cardenas and Bai decided to instead operate with a vertical model by creating banking services tailored for sneaker resellers, with the idea of expanding to other sectors.
For the past 18 months, Slash reworked its existing infrastructure to target other sectors: namely, performance marketing agencies, crypto firms, and HVAC operators. The pivot worked, with the startup now processing around $300 million a month on its cards. “It’s pretty rare that you get to see a team and a company at the stage they were at facing such a big existential risk, work their way out of it, and just start to thrive,” said NEA partner Rick Yang, who backed Slash in both their Series A and Series B rounds.
“If we continue solving these niche, vertical, specific financial workflows for businesses across different industries,” Cardenas told Fortune, “Then we can sneakily become one of the largest commercial credit card issuers in the country.”
