Jay:  This week’s show guest is David Rosa, co-founder and CEO of Neat. Neat is a Hong Kong-based fintech company that gives startups and SMEs an alternative to the traditional corporate bank account. Neat provides access to credit cards and traditional banking services as well as startup-tailored solutions. David, welcome to the show.

David:  Hey, Jay, thanks very much for having me.

Jay:  Fantastic. I’m very excited actually to have you on because I’ve heard a lot about your company, and you’re actually solving a huge pain point, particularly for people that are based in Hong Kong and are well aware of how difficult some of the startup challenges are to set up bank accounts and this sort of thing. Before we get into that, perhaps you could give us a little background of yourself — introduce yourself to the audience.

David:  Sure. My background is 20 years in financial services. I spent 16 years at Citigroup, starting in New York. Then I moved to London. And then 17 years ago, I moved to Hong Kong. I used to be Citi’s youngest managing director in Asia, and then I moved to the buy side of the business, setting up my own asset management company. And by doing so, I became what’s known here as a responsible officer. So this is pretty important because it’s the most senior compliance title you can have in Hong Kong and something that is very relevant to what we do today at Neat. I’ll come back to that in a moment.

I ended up selling that asset management business three and a half years ago, which is the time when I met my co-founder, who is the CTO of Neat, and together we embarked on this journey.

Jay:  I can relate very, very much to your background because I spent a career on the Southside as well myself, and currently, I am working at a hedge fund, and I am also a responsible officer. So I know exactly what you went through. It sounds like you guys spun out, and you decided to tackle perhaps one of the most challenging avenues or niches that is actually possible because, like you mentioned, the high level of regulatory and compliance that needs to be addressed.

What about the niche caused you to say, “I want to tackle this problem”? You have such a broad background and very seasoned in finance, you could have probably done many different things. Why tackle this problem?

David:  There’s two primary reasons that drove me to tackle this issue. One is an extreme level of frustration with technology in general, whether it was the sell side but also the buy side. You know, the grass is always greener when you’re sitting in a traditional type of job. Basically, I noticed systems were either patchworks of older M&A transactions that happened, and they just would put rubber bands around them to make them work and attractive to one another, which was ridiculous. The highlight of that in my career on the banking front was in 2008 at the height of that crisis. I went through several, but that one was particularly special because I had me and my team frantically compiling spreadsheets at, literally, 2 a.m. here in Hong Kong to basically report risks to headquarters, which was in New York at the time.

At the time those spreadsheets reached New York and were re-compiled and were aggregated, there is, of course, a change. Driving a car and looking in the rear-view mirror. And I thought it was just so pointless. And it wasn’t the only institution. All institutions pretty much on Wall Street were facing that same issue. And I thought that was really, really bad.

Moved to the buy side, nothing much better, to be honest. A leaner system but still very legacy. So I thought the best way to go about this one day, at the time I was thinking, you’ve got to start from scratch with an entirely new stack. And of course I’m not a technical guy by background. I had to find a co-founder, and I really lucky to find Igor, who is my co-founder and CTO of Neat. So that was one.

And the second one is that being closer and closer to the regulatory world as I progressed in my career, I noticed that regulations weren’t changing, chief of which was the regulators in the UK. The environment is very pro-competition in the UK, again, a byproduct of the 2008 financial crisis. But then that kind of created ripple effects across regulators around the world. And the writing has been on the wall that typically Asia is a follower, especially given what happens in the UK. And to me, these e-money licensing, these light kind of banking licenses, junior banking licenses were going to come online pretty quickly, and they did. So that’s why we launched ourselves in that space because, to me, that was a big opportunity that, as a total startup, you could actually make a big impact and improve people’s lives.

Jay:  I believe that that’s exactly what you guys are doing and will continue to do. Why do we jump right in? What is Neat? Give you a general overview. Maybe you can start with the name itself because I’ve always been curious as to why it’s called Neat.

David:  Sure. Well, it’s kind a 3 a.m. result when I was just staring at the ceiling, couldn’t fall asleep. I thought of a cool name. Let’s check whether domains are available and stuff like that.

Jay:  That’s right.

David:  That’s the history. So we wanted something that described the type of experience, the type of emotion that we would want to deliver to our customers. So that’s one. What is Neat? Well, Neat is an alternative to a traditional bank account, simply put. We cannot call ourselves a bank, from a regulatory point of view, and we offer an alternative to that.

It’s a purely digital solution, so you can open an account remotely. It’s all online. For business accounts, it takes 10 minutes to apply for an account, and we verify the application within 48 hours. For a personal account, it’s a five-minute application on an app, whether it’s iOS or Android. So it’s very modern as an experience and something that’s a bit revolutionary out here, especially in Asia.

Jay:  Absolutely. Maybe you can also give us a brief overview of the current regulatory and banking environment in Hong Kong. And so I alluded to it earlier where one of the greatest challenges that new businesses or even subsidiaries of existing businesses that want to relocate and set up shop here in Hong Kong, certainly for startups who have no history of doing business, no invoices or receivables or any sort of thing like that, it is nearly impossible to open up a bank account in Hong Kong. And it’s sort of a vicious circle, and I’ve personally experienced it myself trying to open up accounts for my own personal businesses and stuff. It’s just ridiculously hard. And this is one of the big issues that we have, actually, in Hong Kong, because it’s driving away a lot of the talent that could actually be recruited to start these great companies here in Hong Kong.

Maybe you could give us a little bit of an overview of how Hong Kong got to this place and exactly how Neat aims to help break through that challenge.

David:  Absolutely. First of all, I think the word that is typically used in this context is compliance. That’s why it’s so difficult to open accounts for your average SME or even startups. And that’s not necessarily because your average company is dodgy. The reason is because of the costs that a traditional bank has to incur to put that application form through its own traditional compliances processes to onboard you and to maintain you. Those costs are widely prohibitive for companies that… Let’s face it. Young companies are not going to generate a lot of revenue for whoever banks them. And so the unit economics just don’t stack up. It’s basically a money-losing business for a traditional bank. I can tell you. I’ve been sitting on the other side of the table for many years.

And so couple that with the fact that Hong Kong, although it’s part of China, it is ranked, year in year out, as the freest market economy in the world. So in other words, the regulator cannot force the banks that operate in a free market to do the right thing from a social point of view because the banks turn around and say, “But hey, you cannot force us to lose money” at the same time. So therefore, to put it simply, it is a space that the traditional banks, they don’t advertise that. They don’t want to be in this business. It makes no business sense.

It’s therefore a very acute pain point because, as an entrepreneur, you’ve taken the plunge, first of all, and you’re lucky enough to have had product market fit, and now you customers who are willing to pay you for your goods or services, but then again, now you cannot receive the payment. So how can you employee people and create new jobs? How are you going to create economic growth?

So Hong Kong got to this point, one, because of, clearly, cost cutting all across. Let’s don’t forget Hong Kong, on a global scale, is a world-class financial center. We have, I believe, 70% of global banks, having either a regional headquarter in Hong Kong or some kind of a presence. So everybody pretty much plays in the Hong Kong markets. And everybody is going through a drastic and continuous cost-cutting exercise.

So that’s really the ultimate driver. When people use the word compliance, I think it’s being misused. The costs of compliance are really the driver.

Jay:  Right. That’s very interesting. That’s an interesting perspective, because I don’t think that comes to mind to the average user or applicant, if you will.

You mentioned that you guys are not a bank, but potentially, in the future, you would like to become a bank, or that might be a possibility. I did read that there has been a lot of buzz recently about the virtual banks that the HKMA were trying to…licenses they were trying to either give out or bring online. What can you tell us about that? And are you guys in the process of trying to apply for one of these licenses?  

David:  Thanks for raising the point. It’s extremely exciting, first of all that, again, the regulators have followed, effectively, what has been happening in the UK primarily but in the Western Hemisphere, if you will, out here. So that’s a great thing. We were really excited by the fact that particularly the HKMA’s angle for these virtual banking licenses, as they’re known, was really financially inclusion, which is clearly what we do. And yet, what we discovered by going through the application process is that, to begin with, the minimum capital requirement is quite high, equivalent to 40 million USD of minimum capital. To put it in perspective, it compares to 5 million euros in the Eurozone. So we’re talking about magnitudes of minimum capital. It’s much higher.

And then anywhere from corporate governance all the way to technology, security — actually, the standards for these virtual banking licenses are higher than the traditional banking license in the market. And so what this translates to, unfortunately, is, again, a cost-structure that, though it’s very likely to be lower than a traditional bank because, by the way, you’re going to need to have physical branches and in a place where you have the highest office rents in the world — Hong Kong — that’s going to be a cost saving, of course. But you’re going to still have a cost structure that’s going to price you out of the financial inclusion market. Now a lot of people may not care, but we do.

It’s exciting because it’s finally a jolt of modernization in the market. That’s great. But it is and remains a big boys game, which is disappointing.

Jay:  Sure. Yeah, that is disappointing, but I’m glad it’s come to a head, and this could be a point to raise, and hopefully it will get on the radar of the HKMA, and maybe they can help relax some of the capital requirements necessary for virtual bank licenses.

So let’s actually dig into Neat and your business structure and your business model and exactly how you are able to operate in this in-between space where you’re not actually a bank but you’re still able to provide very valuable services that startups and SMEs actually need to carry on their business.

So can you explain to us the basic business model, and then maybe you could walk us through a little bit of the user experience. Let’s say I’m a startup, and I want to onboard to your platform. How can we do that? How can you help me with growing my business?

David:  Let me go back to the earlier point I made of the compliance angle. Compliance is our angle of attack in this market. So we took this very, very seriously the moment we were at the idea stage. We devoted a lot of resources into building, effectively, a world-class KYC, the know-your-customer process, as well as an AML and transaction monitoring. So AML is anti-money laundering and a transaction monitoring system that are basically requirements to be legitimately in the business of serving customers directly. This is extremely important. It’s a complex space. It’s a super interesting space, contrary to what people may believe. It’s really very cutting edge. And, at the end of the day, it’s touching every single aspect of finance today. If we do not have a legitimate way and a robust way to onboard and monitor your customers and the transactions related to your customers, you may very well facilitate anywhere from money laundering, terrorist financing, and, generally, fraud, which is clearly what you want to avoid.

So we got an award, actually, by the Hong Kong government last year for our digital KYC. We were granted two patents for the method and process we use, which means that today, we are the only fully compliant and fully digital KYC process in Hong Kong. So that’s a very important building block to our solution.

Now, what’s more important than anything else, let me take you through the journey from a customer point of view because that’s what matters. It’s the customers at the end of the day.

Let’s take the example of a business because it’s the most complex of what’s going on in the background, but yet we really simplify it a lot for customers. I mentioned this before. It’s a purely online process. You go to our website — Neat.HK is our website — and you apply. It’s a 10-minute application process. It’s a pretty colloquial kind of questions and answers. Effectively, depending on how we answer a particular question, the next question is going to be based on the prior answer. So it’s kind of a smart decision tree, so to speak.

We go through to profile our customers, to understand them, to basically, eventually even risk score a customer. And we do that in the lightest touch possible. What I mean by this is that we do not, contrary to pretty much every else, ask customers to go and get certified true copies of their articles of association or certificate of incorporation. Why? Because we actually go and get them ourselves.

What we’ve done — and it’s actually been a tall order to get this done — is to integrate with the company registry here in Hong Kong to begin with. There are 20 other company registries across the world. And so whether it’s a Hong Kong company to begin with or — it doesn’t need to be a Hong Kong company, but more often than not, it’s a Hong Kong company with some holding company somewhere else, or maybe even multiple holding companies.

We have the ability to go up the food chain, if you will, and reconstruct the ultimate ownership. So there’s this concept called the ultimate beneficial owner. It is very important for any compliance process to identify who the key individuals behind a company are. And we do so, but we don’t put the onus on the customer. We do the work. It’s facilitating, number one, the application process for the customer. It’s much easier. No need to scramble around and go and get these documents — by the way, spend money to get those documents — but just as importantly, because we connect to the real source, the ultimate source, of that data, we don’t have to deal with the question, “Is this a fake document that’s been submitted to us or not?” So it’s a lot more robust process.

By the time you’re done with the application, it takes a us a little while to go and make sure that… We download the documents, we extract the data, and we basically reconstruct the ownership profile. But then we verify versus whatever you told us. Right? What that your ownership and directorship is like on your company — more or less to understand the business that you’re in. So this is really important because there are clearly sanctioned countries that we in Hong Kong, like in most other places and jurisdictions in the world cannot deal with — and also importantly some industries that we cannot deal with. So the obvious ones are clearly guns, gambling… But perhaps a more controversial one is cryptocurrency.

Though we get a ton of inquiries on that, unfortunately, guys and ladies, we cannot onboard cryptocurrency-related businesses. This is because we work with banking partners, and unfortunately — and it’s somewhat understandable in the way they operate — they do not want to onboard any companies linked to that sector.

Jay:  That’s a shame, but I’m sure that needle will move as well as the crypto ecosystem starts to calm down a bit and actually expand.

David, what you said earlier is fascinating to me, the fact that you were able to actually link into the company registry. That little act right there is actually quite a pain point for if you want to go open anything, because then you have to basically… I’ve done this process many times where I have to go to my corporate services guy, and I have to say I need a copy of the business whatever, and then you have to pay for it, and then you have to mail it over to them, and then they have to upload it into their system. And so you’ve basically sliced all of that out. That’s what you’re saying. Am I accurate?

David:  Exactly. Because, let’s face it, the customer should not be bothered with that. Technology should take care of these integrations and, of course, there should be compliance checks backed, ultimately, also by humans. Make no mistake. We have algorithms that put through… About 80% of our applications go through entirely automatically, but we have this traffic light system. Right? So green light is entirely automatic. Red light, obviously some sanction came up, and we cannot proceed. But orange light is something that requires human intervention, and we have some of that happening, which is why we have a compliance department in house that takes a look at that.

Jay:  So let’s continue with this user process. So I’ve submitted my application. You’ve connected to the registries. You’ve done the KYC. Everything checks out. I’m good to go, so an account is opened. It’s a Neat account, I guess. Is it called a bank account?

David:  It’s not. Good point. It’s a Neat business account for businesses or a Neat personal account for individuals. So your account is open. You’re greeted with a very easy to use and intuitive, beautiful dashboard where, amongst others, you will find your own dedicated bank payment instructions in the name of your company. So what it means is that you as a company director or founder, you turn around and you give those — bank account number, branch code, a swift code — to your customers around the world, and they can pay you in the dedicated account.

It’s a huge advantage for companies because they get, very legitimately, their own dedicated bank payment instructions, just like you would with a normal bank account. The first step.

Then, on the back of that, once you receive money, we also enable our customers to make outbound bank payments. Those can be domestic payments here in Hong Kong or international payments. And when they are international, we give them the best exchange rate in the market. To be very candid, it’s not hard to be the best because banks just rip people off these days. So we’ve very competitive, even by international standards.

Last but not least, we have a partnership with MasterCard where we give corporate debit cards. So our customers can very easily issue those corporate cards for corporate expenses to any team members they may have around the world. So it’s very streamlined as a process. It’s very intuitive, again, via our dashboard.

All in all, let’s face it, it’s a very simple kind of product. It’s a current account of sorts. You can receive money. You can pay money. You have cards, and off you go.

So that, at heart, is the basic solution, but, again, the majority of young companies, that’s all they need. They don’t need necessarily trade finance at the very beginning — which, by the way, watch this space, because that’s coming. They don’t necessarily need insurance. Again, watch this space because it’s coming. They don’t necessarily need to borrow money. Again, watch this space, because that’s coming.

But all I’m saying is that even the very basic product is a major advantage and really gets you into business.

Jay:  Yeah. Two questions I have just based off of your example here. The first one is if you are, say, a mom-and-pop shop or an online merchant, are you able to connect the Neat business account with, say, a payment process such as PayPal or maybe Stripe?

David:  Absolutely. About 70% of our customer base is broadly defined in the e-commerce business, receive payment via payment gateways, solutions that are really cool like Stripe, as you mentioned, PayPal. We also have quite a few customers who are traders on the Amazon marketplace. So what we built is integrations with all these payment gateways that allows our customers to flash out the money that they have in these payment gateways to their Neat business account and then, in turn, either make outbound bank transfers, for example, to pay salaries or pay your suppliers, or make payments via the Neat business cards. So wherever MasterCard is accepted.

Jay:  You just kind of alluded to my second question which was, how do I get money out of this Neat system?

David:  You have different routes — either bank transfers, domestic and international…

Jay:  I can literally transfer from the Neat business account into, say, my personal HSBC account if I wanted to.

David:  Absolutely you can.

Jay:  Got it. And so that leads me to the final question on the business model on this side. It’s basically, you talk about compliance and risk and this sort of thing, when it comes to money, that money is being held somewhere that’s not a licensed bank. Right? So there’s risk involved there. What are the risks there, obviously, from a client perspective? Some of these small SMEs can be turning over quite a large amount of money. So there’s some operational risk there, counterparty risk, this sort of thing. And then, just out of curiosity, is there any legal issues of operating within this space of where you’re kind of like a bank but you aren’t a bank?

David:  Thanks for raising the question. The answer is that we are governed under the HKMA’s umbrella — this is the Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s umbrella — via the SVF licensing. This is a Stored Value Facility, and for those of you who are familiar with the UK equivalent, that would be e-money licensing. So this is junior banking double licensing.

Now because of the guidelines — and you can look them up; they’re in the public domain — every money that is stored under an SVF — and we have an official partner. There are 13 such licenses handed out in Hong Kong, and one of the 13 is our official partner. They’re called ePaylinks. They have, by mandate by the central bank, the HKMA, they have to store any float — so any money that is in those accounts — with a licensed bank here in Hong Kong. So in a trust account effectively. So ultimately, the money is actually held by a bank, it’s just not in a traditional bank account. It’s held under this stored value facility.

Jay:  Okay. That makes sense.

David:  So if, God forbid, something goes wrong with us or  [inaudible 0:26:31] or anybody in the chain, your money as a customer is held in a trust account with a licensed bank here in Hong Kong.

Jay:  Got it. So no worries there.

David:  No.

Jay:  Excellent. Fantastic. That’s great, David. Thanks for walking us through that example. It’s very clear to me now the clear solution that you guys are providing.

Just one last question quickly on the business before we move on to the next section here. On the personal side of things, let’s say I was a personal client applying… I assume that, obviously, the Mastercard function would be pretty… Let’s say you weren’t able to open up a bank account or maybe you had just moved here, and you don’t have a pay statement or this sort of thing. I guess that would be a very good solution for someone that was looking to open up some sort of “bank” account?

David:  That’s right. That’s how we started. What we noticed is that really our early adopters were entrepreneurs, and they were using the personal solution for a business type of purpose. So that’s why we ended up designing a business. So Neat personal solution today has become a companion solution to the Neat business account. Why and how?

I’m sure you’ve come across this way of behaving for young companies. A lot of young companies use freelancers to, for example, do marketing, design, software development — you name it. And a lot of these freelancers, they live in emerging markets like Brazil, Ukraine, Thailand where, invariably, there are capital controls in those countries. So although we enable our Neat business customers to pay them via international bank transfers, for the individual, for the freelance, when he or she gets paid, he or she often has to go to the bank branch to fill in some paperwork, to pay local taxes, and it’s very inconvenient. So instead, our company customers can tell them, “Look, you’re a freelancer. Why don’t you open a Neat personal account here in Hong Kong? I’m going to pay you 24/7 to that account. You’re going to get your MasterCard, and you can spend the money that way. So off you go.” And it’s much, much easier for everybody involved.

Jay:  Is there any sort of minimums that you need to keep as a personal customer?

David:  No, we don’t. So that’s another aspect of financial inclusion. We don’t have any minimum amounts in the account.

Jay:  And then finally… Sorry. I keep asking final questions here. But fees… What’s the fee structure? I guess that’s basically it. The revenue model is what I’m asking for.

David:  To be very clear, I need to account whether it’s personal. Business is free. There are some fees on the Neat business solution, and this is how we eventually make some money. We take a very small cut on any outbound bank transfers — maybe domestic or international. For the business cards, these debit cards, the MasterCards, we have a fee for Neat businesses. So whenever you need a corporate card, there is a 60 HKD fee per month on each card. And that’s, again, where we can generate some revenue. And last by not least, we have an affiliate program with MasterCard where, as you may know, whenever you use a card to pay, there’s a merchant fee. So the user doesn’t get hit with a cost, but the merchant does. And we take a small cut of that fee that the merchant is charged. So that’s a very aligned way of generating revenue, and those are the three revenue lines we have today.

Jay:  Got it. That’s great. This solution is quite revolutionary, particularly in Hong Kong, but I can see how this can actually be adopted in many, many markets. On that note — and you kind of dropped a few hints earlier — what do you have exciting planned in the pipeline? What are you looking to work on in the coming 12 to 18 months? Anything exciting that you want to share with the audience?

David:  Sure. Actually, fresh from the oven, it was announced yesterday by Xero, the online accounting software, we have a formal partnership now with Xero. We’re the first ones as a non-bank to use their new API feeds. What it means is that our business customers are going to enjoy what we’ve been actually doing for ourselves, which means any money coming in or going out of your Neat business account is automatically pushed to your books and records. And I don’t mean… What a lot of people do, unfortunately, out there with these accounting systems, they put the logo of the accounting system on the website. And really, what it is, it’s a CSV file export that you need to re-upload. This is a real true link and a push through to your accounting books and records. So it’s a huge time saver.

And this kind of features is definitely what we’re continuing to work on because, ultimately, our motto is that we are entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs. We have gone through the pains and continue to go through the pains of building a business. So we think we have a pretty good understanding of what founders go through with their companies. And we know that one of the rarest commodities is time. You shouldn’t be wasting your time on dealing with payments, banking, financial-related matters. You should just focus on your business, and we help you do that. So that’s one thing.

The other is that you may have read in the press a couple of months ago now that we’ve done a funding round led by Linear Venture, which is a very exciting venture capital fund out of Shanghai, and as two white guys as founders, raising money from a Chinese VC, it’s a feat, I can tell you. So we’re extremely proud and very, very happy of doing that. And that is actually opening up the doors to the mainland China market for us, which is extremely exciting because there’s a ton of businesses in China who are looking to go global, and Hong Kong is the obvious choice. So no surprise that we are opening an office in Shenzhen, and there’s a lot of real great activity between Hong Kong and Shenzhen now. So big expansion from a geographical point, as well, for us.

Jay:  That is huge news. Congratulations, again, on that funding round. You basically are going after the big fish now, David. You’re going right into China. That’s definitely very commendable what you guys have accomplished, and we’re certainly going to track your progress here going forward.

Last two questions — and thank you again for the time and for walking us through this very, very exciting business. Being from Hong Kong myself and having gone through this frustrating pain point of opening a business bank account a number of times, I’m very excited to see how you guys do. And obviously I’ll be cheering for you.

Last two questions. The second-to-last question is basically now you’re quite a seasoned entrepreneur, but you’ve been on the other side. You’ve had a career in finance, a career on the buy side. And now you’re building about business, which, I imagine, is probably the hardest of the three parts of your career that you’ve ever done. What sort of advice would you give to someone? Let’s say that were stuck in the banking rat-race hamster wheel, and they’re wanting to get out. Maybe they hear this podcast and are inspired by your story. What one piece of advice could you leave for our listeners today?

David:  That’s a great question, by the way. Thanks for asking it because that’s where it gets very real. If you are in banking and you’re having wet dreams about going and becoming your own boss — you know, the grass is always greener — make no mistake. This is going to be the most brutal experience and life-changing adjustment you’re ever going to have, in terms of a professional move. It was humbling. It was costly. And if you do not have what I call personal runway ahead of you, which, more often than not, it doesn’t only depend on you. Right? Chances are, at some point you got married, you’ve got a family, and if your lifestyle is one where you have to keep up with some appearances — and there’s nothing right or wrong in that; it’s a choice, and more be the choice of your better half — you’re going to have a real hard time adjusting.

You may luck out. You jump from the corporate world into the entrepreneurship world, and you just hit the ground running, and you’re an instant overnight success. I haven’t seen many of those, by the way. But it can happen.

The reality is that you’re going to have to go through a grind that’s going to literally skin you down and humble you, humble you enormously and make you realize that the networks of people, connections, and all this ego — for lack of a better word — that was driving a lot of everyday life, is worthless. It’s a big world out there. You have to rebuild your own personal brand along with your own company’s brand. And it’s a very satisfying thing to see, to come to fruition. And we’re still going through it, to be very honest. It’s really, really invigorating because you’re actually doing something that’s a lot more real and a lot more tangible than working for a larger corporation. But it is debilitating, I have to tell you.

The ultimate thing I will say to this is if you’re not comfortable about the concept of a pivot which is effectively changing course for your business plan because something has not been working out, then really think more than twice about jumping ship because it is not about saying “Sir, yes, sir” and following instructions. It’s about having the guts — for lack of a better word — of following your instincts and finding product market fit. And it’s easier said than done. Every entrepreneur has gone through it at some point, and I think it’s, for me, for sure, has been the most difficult adjustment over the years.

Jay:  That’s very real, real advice. Thank you for sharing that with us. Man, it’s been really good hearing about your company and your journey, David. So thank you again for the time. The last question is simply where can people find you or follow you or connect with you and learn a little bit more about either you as an entrepreneur or your company, Neat.

David:  Sure. First of all, obviously, our website at Neat.hk and finally on LinkedIn. I think it’s the best way to reach me if we don’t know each other already.

Jay:  Fantastic. Thanks again, David. Again, I have a soft spot for Kong Kong-based entrepreneurs because I’ve lived here for not nearly as long as you but close — 13 years myself. So I always like to see really good startups and people that are actually changing the world here. So best of luck to you, David. We’re definitely going to be cheering you on. We’re looking forward to hearing more good news about your company.

David:  Thanks, Jay. It’s been a pleasure.

Jay:  Alright. Take care.

David:  Bye.

Jay:  Bye.