From Neobank to Infrastructure Provider: Sila’s Pivot to Serving B2B Fintech Builders

Three years. That’s how long it took to build and launch Simple, one of the first neobanks. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Shamir Karkal shared how this experience led to a crucial insight: the biggest opportunity in fintech wasn’t in building another consumer product – it was in solving the infrastructure problems that made building Simple so challenging in the first place.

The Infrastructure Challenge

“The biggest problem was not finding customers. The biggest problem was just building the technology and finding the bank partners, the vendors,” Shamir recalls of his Simple days. This challenge revealed a deeper truth about the fintech ecosystem: every new company was rebuilding the same basic infrastructure.

Recognizing the Pattern

After Simple’s acquisition by BBVA in 2014, Shamir gained deeper insight into the infrastructure problem. “Throughout all of this I’ve been trying to solve the same problem just in different ways, which is make it easier for innovators and builders to build and ship financial applications,” he explains. This realization eventually led to Sila’s creation in 2018.

The Platform Solution

Sila’s mission became clear: “to make it easy for everybody to innovate and program with money and financial networks.” The company developed a comprehensive API platform that provides essential building blocks for financial applications – from KYC and KYB to digital wallets and payment capabilities.

Scaling Through Infrastructure

The transition from building a consumer product to providing infrastructure required a different approach to growth. “We have close to 100 customers in total, more than 50 of whom are live,” Shamir shares, noting their “five X growth in total transactions this year… and we do anywhere from ten to 25% transaction growth month on month right now.”

The Edge Case Focus

A key differentiator in Sila’s approach is their attention to reliability. “Everything about payments, especially, it’s not about the 99 or 99.9% of payments that work fine. It’s all about that .1% that have a problem,” Shamir emphasizes. This focus on edge cases has been crucial for building trust with fintech builders.

The Long-Term Vision

Looking ahead, Sila sees continued opportunity in expanding their infrastructure capabilities. “I think three years from today, we’ll still be serving the same customers with the same products and continuing to grow and scale that,” Shamir explains. “I think what we will add is support for a lot more payment systems.”

Lessons for Founders

The pivot from neobank to infrastructure provider offers valuable lessons for founders considering similar transitions. Understanding the broader ecosystem is crucial – Shamir notes that while there are now “about 5000 fintech startups in the US,” the underlying infrastructure challenges remain consistent.

Success in infrastructure requires both technical excellence and strategic patience. As Shamir puts it, “Startups are not like an overnight success. It takes years, sometimes decades of building before you do become that overnight success and everybody hears of you. So it is 99% perseverance.”

For founders considering a pivot to infrastructure, Sila’s journey demonstrates how deep understanding of an industry’s challenges can reveal bigger opportunities than initially apparent. Sometimes the most valuable contribution isn’t building another product, but creating the tools that help others build better products faster.