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Jeeves serves up fintech innovation, enabling capital to flow at a global scale

Riley Kaminer
Riley Kaminer
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By Riley Kaminer

The world continues to globalize at a rapid clip. As an example, McKinsey researchers note that global capital flows “representing knowledge and know-how, such as IP and data, and flows of services and international students have accelerated and are now growing faster than the flow of goods.” Meanwhile, flows of data grew by more than 40 percent each year over the past ten years.

Miami-based startup Jeeves aims to facilitate this increasing global flow of capital by providing medium-sized businesses and early-stage enterprises with a range of fintech products. “About three years ago, I started Jeeves with the idea to build a financial platform for companies that operate in more than one country,” founder and CEO Dileep Thazhmon told Refresh Miami.

So far, that mission has been met with major interest on many fronts. Not least of which: investment, with Thazhmon sharing that Jeeves has raised upwards of $260 million. It took part in a YCombinator cohort. And it has a base of around 4,000 users from more than 25 countries – a figure which Thazhmon said the company is trying to keep steady for now. “The hope to align with companies that grow with us and eventually use more than one of our products.”

This early success is not surprising considering Thazhmon’s background, which includes a $100 million exit, a stint at PayPal, experience in M&A consulting, plus a smattering of engineering and business degrees.

Jeeves started with expense management tools to help businesses dig themselves out of the inevitable mountains of receipts that come with running an international business. More recently, the company has expanded its offerings to include corporate cards, prepaid cards, and cross-border payments.

“For us, the goal is simple: We want to be this financial operating system for global companies,” explained Thazhmon. Jeeves makes revenue each time one of their clients makes a payment with their card, as well as through fees related to cross-border payments..

So far, the company has 185 employees globally. While around three quarters of its team members are located outside the US, about 10-15% are in the US – many of whom, including much of the leadership team – are based in Miami.

Thazhmon, who grew up in the Orlando suburbs, landed in South Florida after spending much of his adult years in California and New York. “Seeing some of the resurfacing of Miami has made it really exciting to come back to Florida, especially because I feel like I bump into more founders investors here than I did even in some of the other places where I lived.”

Miami also made sense for Thazhmon from a business perspective because more than half of Jeeves’ revenue comes from Latin America. “It feels like Latin America is experiencing a tipping point,” he said. “We’re at a really interesting point where the economy is starting to open up.” Being in Miami enables Jeeves to be poised to take advantage of this positive change.

Another macro trend that excites Thazhmon: building fintech products at a time of major innovation. “Fintech is very interesting now because in many cases you’re building on new infrastructure that wasn’t even there a few years ago. You can almost rethink how expense management and spend management looks like because you have new infrastructure that you can plug into.”

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Riley Kaminer
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