The following interview is a conversation we had with Geert Van Kerckhoven, CEO & Co-Founder of Oper, on our podcast Category Visionaries. You can view the full episode here: $15 Million Raised to Build the Future of Mortgage Tech Across Europe
Brett
Welcome to Category Visionaries, the show dedicated to exploring exciting visions for the future from the founders who are on the front lines building it. In each episode, we’ll speak with a visionary Founder who’s building a new category or reimagining an existing one. We’ll learn about the problem they solve, how their technology works, and unpack their vision for the future. I’m your host, Brett Stapper, CEO of Front Lines Media. Now let’s dive right into today’s episode. Hey, everyone, and welcome back to Category Visionaries. Today we’re speaking with Gert, CEO and Co-Founder of Oper, a mortgage tech platform that’s raised over 15 million in funding. Garrett, how are you?
Geert Van Kerckhoven
I’m very good, Brett. Very nice to be here. How are you?
Brett
I’m doing good. I apologize off the bat here. I definitely said your name wrong. We were joking about that at the start. It’s a tricky name for us Americans. So can you go ahead and just tell us how to properly say your first name and your last name?
Geert Van Kerckhoven
Years to find Girak Hovind, but please don’t try.
Brett
Yeah, yeah. I won’t insult you any further with even trying that, but like I said, super excited to have you here and let’s go ahead and jump right in. So talk to us about what you’re building there at oper.
Geert Van Kerckhoven
Yeah. So we’re helping banks and lenders on the digitization on their mortgage journey. So basically, we help them provide their borrowers with a much better experience from contact to contract, but we also help them support their loan officers in providing better advice to borrowers and also their back office employees to basically underwrite mortgages in a much easier way. So we really take on the origination journey. We basically bring it to the, let’s say, 21st or even 22nd century by reducing paper and by using technology intelligently to reduce borrower anxiety and just make this whole experience a lot more pleasant for everybody involved. And we do that in Europe today. So we’re offering it as a white label SaaS platform. And today we work with over a dozen lenders across continental Europe.
Brett
Take us back to 2018. The founding of the company. What is that founding story?
Geert Van Kerckhoven
Well, so I spent the last almost two decades now on this borderline of banking and technology, and I see it a bit as, you know, I was walking around this industry with my little backpack. And so I’ve done a lot on the fintech side. So I built a lot of technology for banks and very focused always on lending. So it could be mortgage lending. It could be business lending, et cetera. And I was a certain point in time in my career. I changed from building technology for banks to management consulting. And there I got a lot of exposure into, let’s say, how large lenders were struggling to bring their own technology to life. And I also did a small stint on, let’s say, more the regulatory side of things, especially post financial crisis, banks were getting a lot more regulated on the mortgage side.
Geert Van Kerckhoven
So I started seeing, especially the European Union was trying to harmonize more the mortgage rulings. And at a certain point in time, my backpack has three things. I had very good understanding of building technology, a very good understanding of how banks were struggling to build technology in house and to find the right. So I saw this conversion from building stuff to buying software. And thirdly, I saw that actually a beautiful opportunity to build something that we could scale across multiple european countries, which was much more difficult before the financial crisis. And on the back of that, I did my second mortgage around that period and I couldn’t understand how slow, untransparent the journey was. So I also had a very bad b two c experience.
Geert Van Kerckhoven
And I think with all those experiences, and I met my Co-Founder at management consulting, we kind of said, look, there is no reason for this to be such a bad journey. Theres nothing preventing us from building a much better experience. And we feel we can do this by helping banks and really upgrading their tech stack. And that’s a bit how the genesis was. We went to a whiteboard, we wrote down, how would a five star, I mean if today a mortgage experience is basically like a horrible hotel where like the bugs are crawling out of the bed, how would a Ritz Carlton experience look like? How would a five star experience look like? What technology would we need for that? What could we do? Yeah, and that’s when we started building oper.
Brett
From the time you had the idea until you landed your first paying customer, how much time passed?
Geert Van Kerckhoven
Yeah, it was very short because we at three months, because we had this five star journey, we had build a roadmap, a first prototype. And then I started pitching it to my network and we had one client or one prospect at the time that said, look, if this is what you guys are going to build, I’ll happily be your first client. And I want to act as a design partner. And so we basically incorporated the company to send out our first invoice. So basically were hitting revenue as of day one.
Brett
That’s not a very common story. I’m used to asking that question and I hear you know, it took one year, two years, three years. So it’s a very interesting approach, very smart approach.
Geert Van Kerckhoven
Yeah, I mean, because a lot of people say you’ve been so lucky. The challenge we of course had was we had to prove very quickly we could find a second client. So we very quickly started looking for a second client to avoid. We would build something proprietary for that first client, but we also succeeded in that eventually. So, but were indeed very fortunate to have this design partner who is still one of our client today and still super happy of using opera and like taking in all our new features.
Brett
What do you think they saw in you? You know, like why did they give you a chance? That’s something that obviously every startup struggles with is, you know, getting those first customers or those early customers to trust what they’re saying. If we’re looking at the space that you’re in too, I’m sure it’s especially high risk. Right. This is serious stuff. It’s mortgage tech. So why do you think they gave you a shot?
Geert Van Kerckhoven
I think the management team, they were early adopters and they were loving technology. Also at the time, the CEO did have a lot of experience in angel investing in fintech. So I think they’re not your common bank management team. I think that’s one. And secondly, was that, I mean, if you look at the founding team we had built, I mean, I had built already at that time maybe eight or nine similar systems, proprietary and more on prem software. So we did really know what to do. And I think they at that point in time just said like, look, maybe those guys are not going to build the most successful company, but at least build good software for us. And I think that’s how it took off. Ultimately, we built a great business around it, but there was a lot of trust involved, definitely.
Brett
When it comes to the market category, what is the market category?
Geert Van Kerckhoven
I think mortgage technology, we’re not really defining something completely new, but I do think we have, I think like cloud native mortgage platform that allows banks to still sell, let’s say the mortgage production day to do, but they do it in a fully digital way and really do it much faster than they would do it with any existing technology. I think we are redefining that category. But it’s really like mortgage technology, mortgage origination, that’s where we feel. That’s where we feel good.
Brett
Some of the founders I’ve had on from the mortgage tech space in the US have said that generally it feels like the mortgage industry is sometimes slow to adopt new technologies. But that’s just the US. Is it similar in Europe?
Geert Van Kerckhoven
It’s very similar. Well, I think banking as such is moving slow and I think the mortgage space is also very slow to move. So the good thing is I’ve never done anything else in my career. So for me it’s normal. If I would go to another industry I would be super surprised. But we know that things take time. On the bat of that, things are also really sticky. So when we do business, we also do business for the long run. But I think its very similar to the US in that regard.
Brett
What about the marketing approach? So if you have to summarize the marketing strategy, what does the marketing strategy look like today?
Geert Van Kerckhoven
Well if you look at marketing strategy, something we realized two years ago is that we had a few new salespeople coming on board and they came from other vendors in the banking space and they told us, look, when we seed, let’s say, the founding team and the product team going to clients, it’s an experience we’ve never seen. You guys really know what you’re talking about. I think in house, I think we are really in Europe, one of the, let’s say the best experts when it comes to how do you now really digitize this process? We’ve done it many times. We’ve seen what works, we see what doesn’t work with people that also have the B two C experience. But what we learned is that magic only happens when you have us in a meeting room and a meeting room doesn’t.
Geert Van Kerckhoven
So what we started doing two years ago is really saying like how can we basically broadcast what we do? So we write a lot of reports, we write a lot of content, we go to a lot of conferences, we engage, we bring together our clients and our prospects. So we build communities. So we’ve really said like look, maybe not every client is going to buy a license of oper or use opers themselves, but we really want to spread the word to bring better mortgage experiences to borrowers and loan advisors. So our marketing strategy is really content, content. And really also the lessons we learn, best practices that we try to make available to everyone as soon as we can. So that’s really our marketing strategy. And so far I really have some crazy download numbers of our latest reports.
Geert Van Kerckhoven
So I think we’re doing a good job in that regard.
Brett
What do you think you’ve gotten right there with content? I feel like everyone these days knows that content is important, but creating good content, that a, actually stands out with all the other content out there, and b, is just good. It’s pretty hard to do.
Geert Van Kerckhoven
Yeah, I think it’s good because we write it with a lot of passion and I think I get a lot of feedback. Like, I see it sometimes a bit as my own, like weekend job. So I do it together with a few tech people in the team and we solicit feedback from the market. And so far we always see that our articles get referenced, et cetera. So I think that’s really good. But to your point, what I see as a risk is that with all the genial and the LLMs today, everybody’s just going to write content. Sometimes I think we’ll probably have to modify that strategy and we are going forward to not just be a handwritten report amongst the automatically generated report. So I think we’ve cracked it in a non LLM world.
Geert Van Kerckhoven
I think in the Genai world, we’re going to have to modify and adapt.
Brett
Makes a lot of sense. I would think that there are a lot of marketing teams who are currently going through something similar.
Geert Van Kerckhoven
Yep, exactly. But I mean, this is true. Everything you read from us, it has been auto corrected by Genai, but it’s written with probably my keyboard or with somebody else of the team’s keyboard.
Brett
That’s awesome. Now, we also like to ask about milestones. So this can be any milestone that’s significant for you. So if there’s a revenue milestone you want to talk about, if it’s a certain customer number that you’ve reached, what’s a big milestone that you recently celebrated, that you’re really proud of as a team?
Geert Van Kerckhoven
I think for us, I mean, there are many, there like many milestones that. And I said, as a Founder, sometimes you don’t properly celebrate them. But I think the day went, we had six markets live, so six european markets one code base. That was for us, like all, let’s say, mid sized to larger financial institutions. That’s something we’ve celebrated really strongly, because I’ll tell you why, of course it links to revenue, etcetera. That’s all very nice, but for us, it really meant that this pan european software, which has been really hard to do, got validated. So for us, that was a huge milestone and a set that was appropriately celebrated.
Brett
It’s always hard to celebrate things, I think, as you just mentioned, I think I have that and every Founder I know has that. It’s very hard to celebrate anything because you just instantly move into the next round of problems to solve that come with that celebration.
Geert Van Kerckhoven
Yeah, exactly. And you know, when you hit the milestone, you’re probably already thinking about, how am I going to hit my next milestone? And you want to do meetings and you want to talk about the next milestone while you forget to celebrate that, you just hit another one. I totally get that. I sometimes say to myself, look back, enjoy the view, but it’s hard sometimes.
Brett
Yeah, I think we all have our little things we say to ourselves, but honestly, I haven’t found anything I can say that works.
Geert Van Kerckhoven
True.
Brett
If you look at the go to market motion, how would you break that out today? What is the go to market motion?
Geert Van Kerckhoven
Yeah, so when we sell into classical institutions, so we really have an enterprise motion in that sense, I have a team of quite experienced account executives that cover a certain region, build up the relationships and just work on accounts and make sure that when in that region, something’s cooking up that we can be there to support. I think that’s the direct approach that we do in the core markets where we want to be active or where we’re active, and then alongside that, we are developing a partnership function. So often our implementations, I mean, when clients want to use us, there’s often a lot of work around customization. We do that with partners, and those partners can be consulting companies, can be system integrators. They also sometimes bring us into accounts and we also develop markets together.
Geert Van Kerckhoven
I think one side we have the direct side that’s still dominant today. But I think already this year, and I see on the pipeline for next year, we see more and more coming in through these system integrator partnerships and cloud partnerships.
Brett
Today. What do you think has been the most important go to market decision that you’ve made?
Geert Van Kerckhoven
Well, it’s a great question. I mean, one thing that is we cut on sdrs so we stopped using sdrs. I might change my mind in two years, but I felt that having really junior people just cold calling everybody every day really didn’t generate any meaningful relationships. And also I think you can automate so much today that today I think full stack is just a much wiser choice, especially in the segment we are targeting and the ticket size that we have with clients. I think that is one and a decision or a realization that I’ve also had. And I mean theres a lot of good podcasts on that is that a lot of VC’s will tell you that they don’t like to see too much Founder driven sales and I understand that.
Geert Van Kerckhoven
But when I started studying a lot of companies that are at the 5100 million ARR in our space, I always saw that founders were still heavily involved in sales. Like founders of 100 million ARR, banking core banking technology company, that founders still knew all the big clients, was involved in all the big sales. And so a second pillar for me is that two founders, I mean me and my Co-Founder, we are still very involved in sales. And I mean I will never truly delegate a big client to another team and I also don’t aspire to and that doesn’t mean I want to micro match revenue ops and the sales teams. That’s another topic. But I think you need to be always very close to your clients.
Geert Van Kerckhoven
And I sometimes hear founders say, yeah, I’ll be happy when I don’t have to do sales anymore. I think that’s a fallacy and I think that’s something that, I mean realizing that and building my workload around that I think was a good decision.
Brett
I have another podcast called Unicorn Builders where we interview founders who built billion dollar companies and a very large portion of them are still very active in sales because I always ask them about that, you know, transition away from Founder led sales. And of course they build out sales teams, they have sales team but most of them are still very involved in a lot of sales aspects. So I think that’s an important call out for founders is like this myth that you can step out of sales probably doesn’t exist, or even if you can do it’s probably not the best idea.
Geert Van Kerckhoven
Yeah 100%. A small anecdote there. I was talking to a very big technology company in banking. That’s by the way, they’re stock listed and they have a very small client here in Europe. And I was watching, I added the founding team on LinkedIn and I noticed that they had mutual connections with the whole management of this super small lender. And that’s when I really realized, and they only signed them up after the IPO and that’s what I really realized. Just what you said. Like if you want to build unicorns and you’re in enterprise sales, you need to be involved with your clients. You need to have them all on WhatsApp.
Brett
That’s interesting. That makes sense. Id buy into that. Lets talk a little bit here about fundraising. As mentioned there in the intro, over 15 million US raised to date. What have you learned about fundraising throughout this journey?
Geert Van Kerckhoven
A lot probably. But I think what I really learned is that I think a few things. First is plan your way. Thats something that went through techstars but I think probably at YC it will be similar, is plan your way through fundraising. You know you don’t have to optimize for your doing the best seed or the best angel round or the best a round. I think you really need to think it through. I mean some people are like over focusing sometimes on valuations and like this round, I think you really need to plan it through. And I mean fundraising, I mean you’re raising funds to invest your money to achieve certain goals. Sometimes I have the feeling that not everybody has that mindset and maybe I also didn’t always have that mindset myself. So I think that’s a key learning.
Geert Van Kerckhoven
Secondly, it’s the same as enterprise sales build relationship. Early on I’ve learned that investors that are helpful when they are not on your cap table will still be very helpful when they’re on your cap table and vice versa. So really qualify early on because there are people you will be working with in the good times and the bad times. And again there I see a lot of founders sometimes or early stage founders reaching out to people and then say, hey, give me your money. Doesn’t really work like that I think. And thirdly, and that’s something that I thought was eye opening, is like two years ago I joined angel fund as a small angel investor and suddenly I was involved in ics, investment committees, etcetera. And suddenly I started seeing how investment memos are written, how VC’s think about deal flow.
Geert Van Kerckhoven
And it’s really helped me for myself and opera as well to see how does it work on the other side. And I know that’s often advice that VC’s give founders like hey, how do we think about returns, how do we need to present you? But I think sometimes try to get some insights into how they write memos, what memos. They would write about you and reverse engineer your pitch in your USP like that. And I feel you can have much more meaningful conversations. So that was like, my three takeaways.
Brett
Final question for you. Let’s zoom out three to five years into the future. What’s the big picture vision look like here?
Geert Van Kerckhoven
Well, I can tell you my whole roadmap of how I would like to want it, but in three years, probably it will turn out a bit differently. So I will not do that. You know, what I always say to my teams is that I don’t know if it’s similar in the US, I can’t really recall. But in Europe, if you step out of an airport, if you walk through the gate, you see always adverts of banks. I don’t really know why they do it, but like always, the regional banks, they advertise their products there. And what I always say is, like every airport in Europe, I want to arrive, I want to see an ad from a bank, and I want to know they’re using oper today. When you arrive in Basel airport and in Zurich airport, that’s already the case.
Geert Van Kerckhoven
Soon, when you arrive in Vienna, you’ll also see our software being displayed. But for me, I want to be able to fly to Madrid. I want to be able to fly to Reykjavik, London. Everywhere we arrive, I want to see a logo of a bank and know that it’s using our software. Why? Not? For my ego. Not because I like airports or not because I like flying. Because. But then I’ll know we’re truly making impact across Europe with our technology. And that’s the visualization that I have in five years is that wherever I fly with my family, I want to know that I see a logo within the five, first five minutes of arriving that is using our technology.
Brett
Whenever I’m in Europe, I’m going to start sending photos of banks and I’m going to text you and be like, this one? You guys have this one yet?
Geert Van Kerckhoven
I love it. True story. I do this and I send it to my reps. Like, have we talked to them? How is the conversation with them going?
Brett
That’s awesome. I love it. All right, well, let’s wrap up here. But this has just been an awesome conversation. I’ve really enjoyed it. I know our audience of founders, they’re going to really enjoy it, too. Before we do wrap up, though, if any founders want to follow along with your journey as you build and execute, where should we send them?
Geert Van Kerckhoven
Yeah, just send me a message on LinkedIn. So I hope in the show notes, you’ll add my name because I’m not going to pronounce it again or go to operacreds.com and there go through the contact form and we’re not a hundred million people company, so you’ll probably reach me quite quickly and I’m happy to chat.
Brett
I’m very excited to see what our AI transcription service comes back with how it tries to spell your name.
Geert Van Kerckhoven
Yes, I don’t want to know.
Brett
Amazing. Well, thank you again, especially, I know it’s late your time. Just really appreciate it and really enjoyed it.
Geert Van Kerckhoven
Appreciate it to have fun. Thanks a lot, Brett.
Brett
This episode of Category Visionaries is brought to you by Front Lines Media, Silicon Valley’s leading podcast production studio. If you’re a B2B Founder looking for help launching and growing your own podcast, visit frontlines.io podcast. And for the latest episode, search for Category Visionaries on your podcast platform of choice. Thanks for listening, and we’ll catch you on the next episode.
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