Benjamin Cohen. He’s the CEO and leading T-REX, with a strong vision for the future of enterprise financial technology and its impact on marketing and making markets more transparent and efficient. He’s built the T-REX team and the T-REX software platform by combining the most sustainable elements of finance with modern SaaS technology.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Influence
What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk
Favorite online tool? — LinkedIn
How many hours of sleep do you get?— Between 6 and 7.5
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “I wished that I knew that not everything was of the utmost consequence for my entire life”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

02:24 – Nathan introduces Benjamin to the show
02:55 – T-REX is a fintech company that makes complex capital markets more liquid by making them more transparent and efficient
- 04:04 – T-REX provides a familiar framework where their clients can slice and dice everything
- 04:15 – “We’re just making the risks more transparent”
04:20 – T-REX has an enterprise SaaS model
04:59 – Customers are paying $2k-20K per month depending on the functionalities they need
05:09 – Benjamin launched T-REX in 2012
05:55 – The Ecosystem Integrity Fund is T-REX’s series A lead investor
06:12 – T-REX has raised $15M in total
- 06:26 - T-REX had 2 priced equity rounds
06:32 – Team size is 21 and based in New York
- 06:39 – Half of the team is based in Tel Aviv, Israel and are mostly software engineers
- 06:57 – The cost of living in Israel is a bit lower
07:35 – T-REX has over 225 users
- 07:51 – The 225 are all paying customers
08:28 – The model of T-REX is that investors are coming in and looking for different deals than what originators have out, which includes different loan portfolios—specifically in the renewable energy sector
09:34 – Loan’s interest
09:44 – The secure ties
10:30 – Average MRR
11:13 – “I invested 2 years of my time before getting a dollar”
11:19 – It took Benjamin 2 years to raise capital
11:36 – Benjamin’s fund was from his previous role in Macquarie Bank
12:12 – Renewable energy presented a great slate of a market
12:33 – Benjamin funded T-REX with a 6-figure capital
12:52 – A junior engineer’s average salary from Tel Aviv
- 13:53 – Everybody in the company has equity
14:03 – Benjamin is the sole-founder of T-REX
14:32 – Customer churn is currently zero
- 14:54 – Benjamin is expecting T-REX to be incredibly sticky
15:20 – T-REX is selling additional seats and their customers can sell more modules
- 15:29 – T-REX can expand horizontally to different markets and vertically where they can sell different models
15:50 – Years ago, T-REX has set up their own broker/dealers
16:05 – CAC is dependent on the customers
17:11 – T-REX will do a $10K conference sponsorship and they need to be there
17:35 – T-REX series B closed in November 15th
20:00 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Be in the space that you know best and don’t fear being a solo founder.
It is actually GREAT to make mistakes and GREAT to fail, as long as you learn from it.
Don’t fear that every decision you make or action you take has a lifelong consequence in your life—it simply isn’t true.

Resources Mentioned:

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

650: TREX FinTech $15M Raised, Breaks Down Securitized Loans From Renewable Energy Orginators So Investors Can Buy with CEO Benjamin Cohen

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders