From Payments to Purpose with Suneera Madhani

From frameworks to health crisis

00:00Bill Gallagher: Have you ever had a week when you're completely slammed, but somehow nothing actually moved? Is this one of those weeks? That's not really a time problem. It's a busyness habit problem. My new book, Busy Is Broken: Do Less, Scale More, is all about growing by doing less, not more. Read or listen to a sample chapter over at busyisbroken.com. That's busyisbroken.com. It's also on Amazon and other booksellers.

00:32Bill Gallagher: Hey, we're sharing a story of a female entrepreneur, unicorn entrepreneur, now at it again. Got something to share with all of us in general, founder to CEO, that path, in particular speaking to women and supporting them with all that journey. We'll get into her story and more in just a minute.

00:53Bill Gallagher: Hey, everybody. I'm Bill Gallagher, scaling coach and host of our super groovy Scaling Up Business podcast. Our show comes to you every week. Got stories from entrepreneurs, authors, gurus, experts in the world of scaling up, getting your thing together, surviving the journey even. So listen in.

01:13Bill Gallagher: Alright, listen. Let me welcome to the show Suneera Madhani. Suneera joins us from Florida where she's got a couple new things. We'll get into all that. But she built a billion-dollar fintech company. She went through many stages with investors and that kind of thing, turning down a major buyout offer in the middle of it, leading to something much, much bigger in the process. She's a young entrepreneur, serial entrepreneur. She founded this company, Stax Payments, that is the unicorn company. She's now building a new company, Worth AI. She's the founder of the CEO School. She's a first-generation immigrant, so she brings all of that vibe. She's mom, two kids, 10 and seven. So she's got a lot going on, and she'll tell you that it's not so easy. So welcome to the show, Suneera.

02:10Suneera Madhani: Bill, thank you for having me. As you were reading my bio, I was like, yeah. As soon as you said my kids, I'm like, yeah, that's the 'a lot' portion. Everything else is easy.

02:19Bill Gallagher: It is, really. You think about there are many challenges that we go through with making a payroll and managing your cash runway as you grow your business, all that kind of thing. And then there's when your kids are sick for nights in a row, right? And they're screaming at you, and you really like to punch them.

02:44Suneera Madhani: They're cute. I have two daughters, 10 and seven, and I know for a reason I'm a girl mom. And it's actually when I started to really scale up the company was when motherhood happened, because give a busy woman something to do, she will get it done more efficiently. And so I do think that that journey—I talk a lot about founder to CEO—really did happen after motherhood, because I didn't have a choice but to become more efficient and get myself out of being a bottleneck in everything in the business. So they're awesome. They're the loves of my life and occupy the most amount of time, and parenting is fun, and it's challenging, and it's really rewarding too. So I'm excited to talk to entrepreneurs out here, especially if there's female founders, mothers, even dads. Right? I mean, I think the world has definitely changed when it comes to business and just personal life. And so I think we're all looking to become more efficient as CEOs so that we can have freedom of time.

03:49Bill Gallagher: Well, our kids were growing up through the whole thing. Now they're grown. We celebrated my granddaughter's third birthday this weekend at our house. And then yesterday, I was at my son's house, and he's an AI scientist with Anthropic. And I see him on the couch, he looks just dead, like just dead. And he's working on all his projects, but the kid's been sick, and then his wife was sick. And I'm like, oh my god. Just that's a legit challenge of a job he's got plus the family and the—it's a lot.

04:28Bill Gallagher: Well, let's start off then, actually, kind of in this place. So you know a framework. You talk about do, delegate, delete. We talk about love and load in our world, and we probably all learned it from the Eisenhower matrix, decision matrix. And you knew about these things, and yet as you were building Stax, you got burned out, and you had a health crisis after the exit. So talk to us about, tell us about that, what that was like. And then if you would, talk to us about the difference between knowing something and actually using and applying it.

Why motherhood forced efficiency

05:02Suneera Madhani: Oh, those are—I mean, I wish I had those answers. I mean, I think I would have been applying those things well earlier. I wish I did, but sometimes you just gotta go through it to learn it, even if you know the things. And I think that's really experience, right? I was a first-time founder, CEO. I started a company at the age of 26. I didn't know I could go build a million-dollar business, let alone a billion-dollar one. I was really smart. That's what I will say is that I'm a sharp thinker. I'm a problem solver. I am really passionate about the problem that I'm solving, and I'm like a 'will my way through' kind of gal. And I think those things are really awesome and that worked for me. And then at the same time, as the company was scaling and growing, the will and the hustle and that sheer manpower that it takes, like, that only takes you so far. Systems are what help you scale, and people are what help you scale. And so you kind of go through this evolution of building and falling on your face a bit, and then you're like, oh, this is broken. It's time to—we have to fix it. And so I think the natural entrepreneur progression, it did break so many times to that zero to that first million. I had to wear every hat. And, you know, I had six different email aliases from Sunny to Sadie to Seth, like, I had every name that you can think of, you know, while I was a two-person team. And then scaling up, right, from that million to 10 million was this next level of lift where everything felt like it was also breaking, but I didn't realize that it was supposed to. Right? That's one of the things that I wish I knew—that it's supposed to break, and you are supposed to implement new people, systems, processes in place. And then the next shift was kind of after that, you know, eight figures, 10 million to the 100 million journey. And it broke so many times along the way. But it doesn't get easier, but you do get better. And that's something that I learned as an entrepreneur is, like, I just didn't have the experience. And once I kind of learned it, I wouldn't make the same mistake twice, but many times I had to make that first mistake by myself, even though there was probably somebody else who had made that mistake, a mentor that probably shared that tip with me, a book that I read that had that piece of advice that I didn't take. So I think hindsight is 20/20, and those matrices and those lessons and the tools that we all have as entrepreneurs—sometimes you just gotta go through it, and that is part of the journey. And that's what's made me such an incredible entrepreneur is that you get to go through it, and I had to embrace it. And sure, I look back, and I could have saved

07:42Suneera Madhani: so much time or effort or pain and lawsuits and whatever else that comes. But I do feel like every one of those moments that I felt at my utter — this is in the suck — it's made me, there was a reason for it later that could have cost me a bigger mistake at this next growth stage. So I think that you just have to embrace the suck is what I would say, and you go through it. Even though there's a matrix that you can follow or apply, it doesn't have to work that way.

08:10Suneera Madhani: Well, what actually happened? Like —

08:15Bill Gallagher: You're going at — did the breakdown happen before? What did it actually look like in your life and with your family?

08:22Suneera Madhani: Yeah. I mean, it was hard. Right? Just entrepreneurship is hard. Scaling a company to $160 million in revenue, a SaaS company, fastest growing fintech, raising venture capital — I didn't go to CEO school. And so I didn't have the playbooks. I didn't come from this big network of people. I hadn't done it before. It was first time building something like this. And I just had to put one foot in front of the other, and I was focused. And that's what made us really successful. I had an amazing team, and that's what made us really successful and an incredible product. And we were sharp, and so we were constantly solving problems. And we made it through because of longevity. It wasn't an overnight success. It took ten years taking the company from zero to $100 million in revenue. And so it wasn't this overnight journey that I think most successful people — I bet you interview other CEOs are going to tell you the same thing — it was like, I just didn't quit at year three. I didn't quit at year five. And then I will say that my journey in the first round — and then I built multiple businesses thereafter — but the first journey, that ten-year journey, I was also — I mean, I kind of gave up my twenties, my twenties and early thirties. I was at this — I was able to take risks in a certain way. And then as I mentioned, I became a mother in 2016. So it was a couple years after the business was — my first baby was my company, and then Mila was born. And so I think that things had to shift in my time. But I also didn't have a lot of examples. This is pre-COVID, and so I didn't have a lot of examples on what does it look like to balance — and there really is no such thing as balance — but what does work-life integration look like with a growing family and all the roles that I play? You mentioned immigrant daughter. I'm pretty active — my mom lives across the street. My house is like Everybody Loves Raymond, but it's Everybody Loves Basil. And my mother-in-law, my mom, my brother — I work with my brother as well. We're co-founders in the company. Family is everywhere, and I love it. It's who we are, and it's who I am. But there's a lot that goes with — it's not just the business that's important in life, and that was something that I was also taught as daughter of entrepreneurs as well. And so I think that that was a big shift that I had to — I was struggling. I wasn't okay after motherhood. I was exhausted all the time. I didn't take maternity leave because I didn't have — I was at the top. And so there were things that I look back at, and I just wish I had more mentors and female mentors or women that had scaled that I could see, because you can't really be what you can't see. And I saw my male counterparts, and I had incredible male mentors. And they were — not saying that they weren't great dads — but their lives did not look anything near mine in scaling and building. And so it was hard and challenging, and I'm able to share and I can talk about that now. But I also — it was — I was trying to build something meaningful. So I was just constantly burnt out. It was either — I feel like all I've done is work 24/7, because I also have the — I had the mom load, and then I had the work load. So from the moment that I would wake up until the moment that my eyes would go to sleep, I wouldn't get a minute of rest. And that was kind of the reality of it. Now, I was able to — because I was a first-time founder, it's not like I had the means to have all of the support. My husband's also an entrepreneur, and so he's building as well. So we had this really awesome partnership, and my parents helped out. And we had as much — it takes a village — support that I could to ask for help. But it was challenging in building a company while being a young mom. And I went through it, and so we're here now. And I was able to put in better systems and better tools and better support around me, but I was burnt out. And so — and I can clearly — I look back at it, and I was — you're mentioning kind of the health crisis. So post — right at the — right before we're about to exit, I hadn't gone to the doctor in years because when am I going to make time to go see a doctor? I'm pretty young. I'm healthy. It's not like — being sick wasn't an option ever, because you don't get a sick day as the leader and with all the fires that you put out. And I had to actually — you might appreciate this — I went to the doctor because we were going through an exit process. We're going through like an IV, like a prep, like process, sale process. And I had to go get my labs done because of key man life insurance. So the only reason I actually went to the doctor to go get my checkups and blood work and everything was actually because of work, because they had to measure my health and to ensure that the right insurances were on my name. And so I realized at that visit that I mean, I was 31, 32, and my health was of a 57-year-old man. And I had high cholesterol, high cortisol. My hormones were just completely imbalanced. I was just like, what am I doing? And it was a really big — it was the first time that I got — and I'm an overachiever. And that was my first report card that I failed at. And so it was a hard check, and I was like, wait, I am going to get through this process, but something's got to change. And so post-exit, I stayed on for about a year, and then it was time to go and focus on myself and focus on my health. And I'm proud to say that I'm very healthy and prioritize. And I wish I could have prioritized health earlier. No one was telling me that I couldn't prioritize my health and take care of myself. I think it was just — it was hard going through it, and it just wasn't — everything else was a priority but myself. And so those are some of my hard lessons that I hope if anyone's listening and kind of relates to this or feels this, there is — it's not worth it. Right? Your health is the number one thing that you have, and so focus and make sure that you are prioritizing that. And the business will also —

Discovering her health matched a 57-year-old man's

15:06Suneera Madhani: be amazing because I'm pretty sure it still would have been incredible even if I had taken out the time to do that for myself.

15:13Bill Gallagher: You know, it's funny, unconscious thing you just did and said right there. You said if anyone's listening that's having this issue, I promise you lots of people listening are having this issue.

15:25Suneera Madhani: Yeah. I have a podcast called CEO School, and so I have a weekly show. It's been running for six years now. And so I have a tendency even when I'm on a show to be like, hey, if you're listening to this and you feel it, there's probably a reason you're getting the message today.

15:42Bill Gallagher: You know, when for a little while, we had three companies, and we had the two kids at the house. And there were times where they were all falling apart. But I think about it. So I'm 61 years old today, and I'm like, I weigh less. I'm in better shape than I was in some of those years. Right now, I have to manage cholesterol and things like that, blood pressure and stuff like that today. I have aging kinds of issues. My hair is going. I can't see as clearly in this angle. But lots of stuff like that to do, but there is value and benefit in dealing and managing with it. And, look, there's also the example to set for your kids. Right? Like, when as I started to deal with it when we had the companies like that, I'm like, oh, like, just having a gym membership that I blow off isn't sufficient. I've gotta do something, and that's when I started running triathlons, and that got my kids doing it. But then they see dad dealing with his health and stepping up and that kind of thing. So, you know, the lessons that we're teaching, sometimes it's not really clear. But later, they learn. You know, both my kids have been entrepreneurial now, and they're grown, and they're doing their thing. And we didn't intentionally teach them that. So why don't you step back then maybe? Because I know your parents were immigrant. And so talk about what their life was like and what you saw growing up and what you think the lessons were you picked. So tell us about your parents and their business and what you learned from that.

Learning business from immigrant parents' gas stations

17:21Suneera Madhani: Yeah. I have the most wonderful parents. My father actually passed away in 2020, so we miss him dearly. But they were the example of hard work and taking risk and failure not being an option. They both immigrated from Karachi, Pakistan individually, and they met in Chicago. I was born in Chicago. I grew up in Dallas. I moved to Florida. So I've lived a lot of places also because of my entrepreneurial parents, because entrepreneurship was not because it was sexy. That was the only way to the American dream. Like, that's truly what it was, and they own small businesses. So they bought their first business when I was two years old. We moved to Texas for a gas station. This was like Texas oil and gas, and it was pretty cliche. But my dad's cousins were buying. They had bought like a gas station, and he learned the business from a peer, like, cousin and a family member and a friend. And that's how opportunities were created. And it took a village to support that. But I remember I feel like I look back at my childhood, and I was getting my business degree. I was getting an MBA the entire time I was growing up and lessons in, you know, not just hard work, but showing up on time and, you know, if you say you're gonna do something, you do it and the value of your word and integrity. And I was running payroll at 15. I was stocking shelves when I was like eight years old. So, like, everything in between, we were always part of the business. And when I say we, my brother and I. And he's two years younger. He was born in Texas. But we went to 10 different schools in twelve years. So we had multitude of different businesses. It started with that one gas station, and then it multiplied into a mini little empire of small businesses. So we had franchise food stores and there was always like three or four at a time. And then they would exit, and then it would be like the next opportunity. So I got to see a lot of building. And my parents were also very present, which I'm really grateful for. Like, we had dinner every night, the value of family, team over self. Like, I love that you talked about your son just being on the couch. You just celebrated your granddaughter's third birthday. That sounds like my home on a Sunday. Like, that sounds like what's happening in my life, and I think that those are the biggest blessings. And so we were also taught that we're working hard, but it's to have the time with our family and to support, like, to take care of each other and, like, life is fun, and we traveled a lot. And so I just grew up with really awesome parents and values, and they forced my brother and I to be best friends and everything we had to do together. And when I had the idea of Stax, it was originally called Fattmerchant. And I called, like, Sal was there. Yeah. That was the name of the first company, and it evolved. Again, I was 26 when I started the first business. And it wasn't even a question that my cofounder was gonna be my brother. And so we built that company together ground up. Post exit, I was like, okay. Now it's time. I'm gonna take a couple years off. You need to go play a shit ton of golf. Like, go do your thing. I'm gonna go do my thing, and I'm gonna go into mom mode. I have this awesome podcast, CEO School. I've got a huge community for female founders. I'm gonna go support that. And Sal's like so hungry and so ambitious and just like the most annoying, incredible brother ever too. And he's like, Michael Jordan needs to go win championships. Like, we gotta go do it again. And I'm like, oh my god. And there's not even an option for me to say no in the next phase because we're just a team, and we're an incredible team. And so he's my cofounder and a really great business partner, and we are of the same value system. So we grew up in the same house, same value systems, same DNA, and we are completely different in our skill set to what we do. So it works really well. But that's a little bit about a little glimpse into our upbringing, and I try. Like, the number one thing that I do try is to emulate that in my house. I think my parents did an incredible job. Like, we're clearly really successful at such a young age and still do a lot for, like, it wasn't just about success. It's about community and giving back and philanthropy and all of this stuff. So every night, we have dinner with the girls, and I bring them into the business. And I remember my dad would ask us, he would share the hardships too and like what, how we would solve the problem. And so we were just always part of the dialogue. Sometimes

22:15Suneera Madhani: That can also have negative effects as well. So there's probably things that maybe I don't need to still work as hard, and that's probably ingrained in me from my parents. But I'm happy with how I turned out, and I'm trying to raise my kids in a similar mindset.

22:32Bill Gallagher: You know, it's interesting. You highlight, you say, oh, that kind of a stereotype. Right? Your immigrant parents have some gas stations. Right? And it is. Right? There is something there. And yet, so I've mentioned to you just before we started the show, and some people have heard me talk before, I've coached a few dozen, done some work with a few dozen companies in Pakistan. Actually, over in Pakistan, not in the US, and in Lahore and in Karachi also. And there are differences and dynamics worth noting that we don't think of here. And I know our audience is more North American, and we have some Canada and Australia and the UK and things like that. But so there's a dominant Anglo culture at work here. But there's some things that are really worth thinking about. So one of the things there is multigenerational households. So most of the people that I worked with there had family compounds, and there were either levels or houses adjoining in the same thing where generations of the family lived, and not that many people lived outside of the thing. So they do that. And then they're like, oh, yeah. Well, all my siblings are on the board of this company. We all have different roles. Or we have a different group of companies. Like, here's a whole group of companies, and I have this one and that one, and he's running the textile business, and I've got the hatchery and the like, they're all doing all these different things. And so they live together and they have to work together. And you think about, like, I've had a couple brothers work with me in past companies. And that was good for a time, but then at some point, I had to choose them on as things change and that kind of thing. We're not so good. Like, many of us in the United States, we can barely make it through a holiday dinner together or two a year with our family, and then we're like, go back to your house. Like, I can't. You know, having to live and work with the people, it forces maybe better behavior.

Working with her brother as cofounder

24:35Suneera Madhani: I don't know. Like, I can't pinpoint what the secret sauce is. I think it's just what you grow up around and see emulated around you that becomes part of your norm. Yeah. It becomes part of your norm. And so, and I think it's really beautiful. I think that it's actually, if it's done right, it can be so powerful. And what you said, like, the group of companies, like, we run a family office. Like, we have an entire investment arm. We have a real estate arm. We have our tech fintech companies. Like, we have these multi-levels. Like, we are building, is like, the level at which we're growing is really fast and really incredible and building crazy amount of wealth and doing it on our terms, and it's powerful. And we're dividing and conquering. And, of course, there's hardships. I don't want to make it sound like, oh, it's all roses and we don't, like, he's, there's, we're siblings. Like, we fight all the time. And because we're siblings, we can make up really quickly as well. And so I think it's that level of understanding, trust and respect is really important. Respecting each other in the lanes that we've decided. There is that level of respect that we have. And so for me, for our companies, like, even in this, even at Worth, like, I am, you know, my title is Chief Evangelist. My job is to evangelize the brand. I'm behind our, you know, where our go-to-market, how, you know, how we're showing up for our customers, marketing, brand, pitch investors. Like, I'm here front-facing in different capacities. He is focused. He's also front-facing, and he's CEO of the company. But I respect his decisions in his lanes, and he respects mine in my lanes. Like, he's not fighting with me on, like, we got a PR release going next week. Like, that's all me. I gotta do the thing. It's my job. It's part of my thing. I'm going to put my stamp of approval on it. I'm going to share it with him as CEO. He's going to give me his suggestions. But at the end of the day, he's going to respect my opinion about my expertise or what my lane is. And I think that that is how it's worked well. And it's really tough to do, but if you can be okay with putting your ego aside and saying, like, yep, this is what you're signing up for, this is what I am, it can be really powerful.

26:50Bill Gallagher: So you now work with female CEOs and early stage CEOs. What is it that you would tell your old self, as I'm sure you're telling them? Like, what do you think? What are the regrets, the lessons, the do-overs that you have to share now with this hard-won experience that you have turned into your advice and lessons to talk about what you have to say about your past and the things you did?

27:10Suneera Madhani: Yeah. I don't think that there's a lot of women. I think there's like 27 women who've, like, in the US that have scaled, like, founded and sold a billion-dollar company. And so I've definitely worn every hat and gone through every challenge and from raising venture capital to scaling brands to teams to all of it. And then I continue to build business. And so I do feel like the first round of it, there were a lot of lessons that I was learning. And then in this last five years, seven years of post-it, I've put together a lot of my playbooks of what I have found for scale, but that is also with my fem lens on it as well. So it's like, I kind of learned the playbook from this, these are my mentors, and this is how I've learned it, but this is how we can apply it. And I do believe that a huge part of the success of our company is because we were female-led, and we were different. And we were super differentiated in how we had our culture and growing our companies and our people. And if there's something special, and when I leaned into the qualities that made me an incredible CEO, I was like, that's what also made our company so successful. And I have probably mentored now over 6,000 women through CEO School, which is a platform, and it's a certification for female founders to go through just to go from founder to CEO. And the biggest challenge that I find with female entrepreneurs is, one, it's our own mindset and just stepping into that role to say we are worthy of that role, that the scale can exist on our terms as well. And I want to encourage women to build bigger businesses. And so you said the word early stage. A lot of them aren't early stage, but they're stuck at a level of scale, whether they're stuck at the 7-figure mark, they're barely tapping that, you know, at $5 million of revenue. Like, whatever the threshold is, they feel capped, and you can uncap it. I mean, you're a business coach through process, through different levels of scale. And so I've created as many playbooks as I can, and I'm an educator at heart. And I didn't realize this until I had the podcast, and I just love sharing knowledge. And I was able to put that together, and I think it's a modern-day MBA for female founders. And it's actual playbooks of scale. It's actual things that she can apply in her business today. And it's from a lens of another woman.

29:40Suneera Madhani: Not just from a case study on a company and not just from somebody who doesn't understand her life and her goals and what is important to her. So yeah, that's part of the work that I get to do, and I love to support founders in that way.

29:57Bill Gallagher: What do you suppose is the most embarrassing or biggest mistake that you made with the first business?

30:07Suneera Madhani: The most embarrassing or the biggest mistake?

30:10Bill Gallagher: I don't think I can tell you the most embarrassing, but that takes a little…

The mistakes that led to bigger outcomes

30:16Suneera Madhani: I mean, I feel I don't know necessarily if I have… There's so many moments of embarrassment for sure that I can. Yeah. Like, I mean, just building teams and culture and Zoom and navigating through COVID. Like, we had an in-person office. Like, lots of moments of that. But I would say I don't necessarily think of anything truly… I don't think that there was a mistake that I made. Every mistake or every turn that might have been hard actually led to the next outcome. So I don't know if I had chosen a different path, what my path would have been like. So I ended up doing really well, and so what are some of the mistakes? Like, they're pretty… Maybe I didn't bet on myself sooner. The doubt that I had on myself was sooner. Allowing myself permission. Being able to… I think I was… The chip on my shoulder to prove, as a minority woman sitting here with the scale and the level of growth, it's not easy to challenge authority. Right? It's not easy to challenge authority to say, no, I know what I'm doing and I'm going to do it this way. Okay? So I had a board and I had investors, and I felt like I was constantly being told what I needed to do versus what I already knew I needed to do. And so I had to constantly go around convincing and strategically navigating outcomes in that way. And maybe I look back at that and I'm like, no, like, I should have had the confidence, which I had to build that level of confidence, and it came at a later stage where I was willing to challenge in the ways that I needed to earlier on. But also, it wasn't met with the same level of respect. And I can share all my scars on my back and the amount that I have had every sort of… Just, it was hard. Like, it's not the same. And I will tell you that, because I also had two male co-founders, and it wasn't the same for me as it was for them in every room. So there's this level of doubt and that level of trying to prove myself at every stage is exhausting to also add to the conversation that, like, no, I am smart enough. I know what I'm doing. I built this company, and this is what I'm going to do as CEO. And I wish that was different. So maybe I would have given myself a little bit more, a little pushy in that lens.

32:40Bill Gallagher: I think men and women doubt themselves and feel impostor, maybe even to an equal degree. The thing… Because I hear women say, well, we doubt ourselves when we… We question, and we… But I just think men sometimes are like, they'll just do it anyway because they can do it.

33:02Suneera Madhani: Because you can get away with it, and I can't. So you have to also understand that it's easy for you to do that because people can respect when you fail. If I fail and make a mistake, I'm out. So I'm already being doubted, and that is the honest truth, and that's the difference. So you're allowed to fail. I'm not allowed to fail. And so that level…

33:24Bill Gallagher: Giving yourself permission to fail, not quit, not walk away, not be outed, not pushed out. Like, I think that's a really useful thing for us all to do. And I want to come back to this point because I do think that there is this unfair advantage here.

33:41Suneera Madhani: It's not about giving myself permission. Even if I gave myself permission, I would have been the first one out if it was my name on the line. I don't get that level of the same, "Okay, fine. Like, she failed once. Like, that's okay." That's not happening. And so I had to constantly fight for my seat once I had investors and I had a board. Whether people think it or not, it's just not the same rules that apply to you that they apply to me. And so I do want to call that out that it's not angry women, and it's not… It's just like, yes, would I have loved to have that confidence? But also, I look at what she did. I'm so proud of how she navigated… That my younger self through it all. Right? And I didn't let their doubts and insecurities… And yeah, I may have cried a lot in the bathroom by myself, but I got myself back out there and fought through it or got myself the outcome that I needed. But it shouldn't be that way. And that's why I do feel like I'm such an advocate for women in business, because it's just not the same. And capital isn't the same, and the level of respect just isn't the same. And we have women who are building businesses. We build more efficient businesses. We build more capital-efficient businesses. We have the higher return for our investors. Yet less than 2% of capital, even today, in 2025, is still going to female-founded companies. And so there is a gap, and it's not the same for you or me.

35:11Bill Gallagher: Being a straight white male from North America, lots of things are easier for me. And I'm really, really like… I don't think we, in my category, are totally clear about that because a lot of times we don't go places where we're out. I remember, like, actually a really, really interesting moment for me in the Lahore Airport on my way to Karachi. And, as it happens, I'm there and I'm the only white guy that I can see anywhere around me in this particular thing waiting for my flight. And everybody has like a stern tough guy expression on, and mostly the women are looking away. Like, the men all look very tough. And I suddenly feel… I'm uncomfortable. I'm like, oh, I'm nervous. Am I safe? Am I friendly? Like, who… I feel like I'm… I'm maybe not okay. So anyway, so I'm feeling like that. And then I'm like, okay, I'm going to just focus on my phone and not think about all that. I'm going to, like, go down in my device. Right? So I looked down, and then I realized I got no battery. So I'm like, okay, have to charge this thing. So I get my charger out, and then I go to look for a plug, and I look over and there's this post and there's outlets on it. And there's like 30-plus phones all plugged into that. So I'm looking for where I can get mine in and get a little juice for my device. And I look up and a guy laughs at me because he's doing like the same thing. And then somebody else smiles. And then in a minute, we're all smiling. And I get… Like, in that moment, there's not like white guy, American guy, Pakistani guy. There's just human beings trying to get through the day and trying to deal with whatever and get to the next city that they're flying to. And it was such a humanizing moment to remember.

Why women can't fail the same way men do

37:14Bill Gallagher: Right? There are definitely things that change, and I'm very clear about that in a way that not everyone who hasn't traveled as much has. But then there's also our common humanity. And every time I have to go speak to a group of women or a group of early stage or whatever it is, I just remember that these are people who have issues with their family and their spouses and their kids and their funding, and we're also like each other in many ways too.

37:46Suneera Madhani: That is absolutely what makes humanity so special, and that's what makes doing business so special and life so special, is because we all — if we can do it based on our value systems, and that's what got me through it all, was being really — you know, our core values, not only as a company, as a family, like what we stood for. That's what helped us navigate through all the challenges. And once you kind of — yes, I had to prove myself, and then you have to work on the things, pull off the onions and guards come down. But there is that level of — it's — I just wanted to point out, I wasn't trying to share — I just wanted to share when you were going back into the confidence thing, you were uncomfortable. Right? You were uncomfortable because you felt different. And it took a moment. It took that humanizing moment. And so sometimes we get judged before we even come in through the door. So when I'm giving my — when you're giving your first pitch or you're giving that first meeting, and I see that in women so often. And it's not even just for women. Any sort of minority — we're just looking for that for us. Right? We're looking for the same in us. So I don't know, if somebody relates to this, you can find me online and I can continue to — we can continue the conversation.

39:03Bill Gallagher: I gave a talk a week ago, week and a half, two weeks ago somewhere in Las Vegas. I had a conference. I was expecting about 300 people in the room, and I'm excited about it. I have an hour and fifteen minutes with them. And my wife's like, "So are you nervous?" And I'm like, "No." She's like, "You're mental." I'm like, "No, I'm 61. I've done this a jillion times. I belong here." She's like, "Yeah, that's not a normal way of thinking. You're gonna walk in front of 300 people." I'm like, "I'm gonna walk in front of 300 people. I'm not nervous at all. They want me to win. They want me to do a good job, so they're pulling for me to win. They aren't like — I belong here." But that's not how I was at 30. Right? That isn't how I — that's how I am today, but that isn't how I was at a different point in my life. And when you don't realize that you belong, when you don't realize that everything that you have has prepared you for this moment, that you probably have what it takes, you're gonna be okay, people dumber than you have survived things tougher than this before — it's a really useful thing to remind yourself.

40:16Suneera Madhani: Yeah, I think it kind of goes back to tying into the first question that you asked, and it's just experience. Right? The more you do it, the confidence comes from repetition. Right? So the confidence comes from repetition, and that was the first time I was navigating and building a business. Then the next one got easier, and the next one's getting — you know, I'm not saying business is still easy. There's nothing that phases me in the same way. I've seen the stuff. I've gone through the challenges. I can show up and do it confidently. And confidence comes from — it's the inside, but it's also habit and doing it again. And you probably — you said you've gotten up — you've done this so many times. And so I think that that's what's exciting about entrepreneurship is that it took the ten years, but it was a journey going from that early stage founder to the next level founder, and I'm so grateful for that journey, and I'm still building and learning and growing. And experience is what continues to shape me into a better human and entrepreneur.

41:14Bill Gallagher: Let's pull in one more meaty thing before we run out of time in our conversation. But along the way, you got offers to buy out. You had to fund in different ways. Talk to us about getting a buyout offer, funding yourself — let's get real with the numbers and things like that. I think people appreciate—

41:33Suneera Madhani: Yeah. I had a buyout offer post my Series A — and Series A, we say Series A now, not in the terms of the level of funding. I think we had raised like $8 million for our A round at that time. And we had a buyout offer for $17 million is what I remember the offer to be. And the board was really excited, and they're like, "Oh, we should do it. They just put money in on half the price." It was like a quick — and I owned — and, you know, still a huge chunk because I had raised two rounds of capital, seed and A, and so we were still 60 plus percent as founders amongst our three founders. It was the first time that liquidity was real. We had a lot of pressure and a lot of like, "Hey, this is the right decision. You need to take the strategic deal." So I went — started to go through the process, and I started to get to know the buyers on the other side, and just every little flag that started to go off. And it was again going back to the human thing, going back to the values thing. I knew that what we were building was to the moon. And it wasn't because of sheer, like, dumb — like, oh, I'm this huge visionary. We had customers. We had traction. Right? It was calculated. There was a — we were growing $1 in, $3 out. We were winning. So I could see the next wind to this, and we just raised capital. All my investors were excited. We were able to get investors not because they were like, "Oh, she's got a great vision." It was traction of the business.

Turning down a $17 million buyout for $220 million later

43:05Bill Gallagher: It's a really important thing to know. When you've got momentum, people wanna work with you. They wanna fund you. That's the only way, was it was because of the metrics of the business.

43:13Suneera Madhani: That's why we just closed our round. And I'm like, "Wait. You felt conviction into the business just three months ago. We just invested in the business to go do this. And now we're ready to take this first buyout from a competitor because they're trying to take us out because we're clearly eating their lunch." And I don't wanna go. I don't wanna do this. And so I was able to forcefully — not like I blew the deal, and it was — but I still controlled majority, and we still controlled the board votes. We still controlled the shareholder votes. Otherwise, I would have been — but I forcefully — we said we weren't gonna do the deal. And so I did not sign. And, I mean, our next — I mean, in less than three years, the first turn of private equity, we did our Series — well, we did the B, but then after the — the C is when we sold to private equity, the majority recap, and it was north of $220 million.

44:22Suneera Madhani: was that recapitalization. So those investors that were willing to take that quick liquidity, yeah, at 18 times their money, by the way. Yep, 18 times their money. And we're all friends, and they actually, we do a ton of business together, and they're all investors into all my next ventures. And the story is, I said no. And that was, at the same time that I'm sharing, like, it was so hard, I still was pretty, I had the conviction in what we were building. And I think that's really important for a founder and CEO to have is, I knew the business. I knew where it was going, and we made the turn. And then eighteen months after the Series C, we did the D, which was another minority recap, and that was at north of the $1.1 billion number. And so we did the things, and they're all pretty happy now.

45:16Bill Gallagher: It's really, there's a website on screen if you're watching us. Is, Worth AI for credit. Right?

45:32Suneera Madhani: Worth AI. We're an underwriting fintech platform.

45:39Bill Gallagher: Awesome. Lots of value or things to solve to improve in that category. Thanks again everyone for watching, for listening. Thanks again to my production team, Wanda and Anna, for getting our show ready, our guests queued up every week. And thanks again to my friend and mentor Verne Harnish who created the whole Scaling Up framework that we use at the core of our work. And if you want more about our programs, if you wanna do our Q20 assessment, go to scalingcoach.com and do that for free. And suneeramadhani.com is her website. Anyway, thanks again for everyone for watching, for listening. We'll talk to you again next time. Keep scaling.

46:31Bill Gallagher: Thanks for listening today. One last thing. If anything in this episode hit home, my book digs into it further. Busy Is Broken: Do Less, Scale More. It's all about how to stop drowning in work and build a business and a team that scales without you. Available right now with content samples at busyisbroken.com. Go grab it. Be less busy.