The Last Meeting: How Rapyd Turned a Coffee Shop Pitch into a $5M Lifeline

The Last Meeting: How Rapyd Turned a Coffee Shop Pitch into a $5M Lifeline

Three months of runway. One final investor meeting. And a company announcement already drafted to tell employees they were shutting down. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Arik Shtilman revealed how Rapyd’s fate hinged on an unconventional coffee shop pitch.

The Breaking Point

By 2017, despite having built substantial financial infrastructure, Rapyd (then Cash Dash) was running out of options. “I already announced to the employees that I’m shutting it down,” Arik recalls. The message was clear: “Send your resumes. I have money to pay for three more months.”

The Unorthodox Meeting

The final meeting wasn’t in a boardroom or VC office. “I went to meet basically a family office… in a coffee shop, not even an office,” Arik remembers. He was meeting with two people: the fund manager and “the actual money behind the scenes, which is the guy that doesn’t understand tech.”

The Simplification Breakthrough

Facing investors who weren’t tech-savvy, Arik needed a different approach. Looking across the street, he spotted inspiration: a currency exchange booth. “I told him, you see this? I want to take them out of business.” The simplicity worked. “The guy looks at the other guy, tells him, ‘give him $5 million,’ stands ups and walk out of the meeting.”

The Investment Returns

That $5 million coffee shop investment ended up being transformative. Today, Rapyd processes around $75 billion annually, operates in 106 countries, and serves 215,000 clients including tech giants like Google and Uber. The investors “made a billion and a half dollars from that $5 million investment,” Arik notes.

Lessons in Crisis Fundraising

The experience taught several key lessons about fundraising during crisis:

1. Simplify the Complex: “Every single meeting we had was, ‘oh, we build this infrastructure for moving money in and money out. And it’s like an international network.’ And investors don’t like to hear this bullshit,” Arik explains. The currency exchange example cut through the complexity.
2. Know Your Audience: Meeting a non-technical investor required a different approach. Visual examples and real-world analogies proved more effective than technical explanations.
3. Stay Mission-Focused: Even at the brink of shutdown, Arik maintained his vision. The pitch wasn’t just about survival—it was about disrupting an entire industry.

For founders facing their own funding crises, Rapyd’s story offers a crucial reminder: sometimes the best pitch isn’t about technology or metrics, but about helping investors see the opportunity hiding in plain sight.

The coffee shop meeting didn’t just save Rapyd—it set them on a path to create the “fintech-as-a-service” category. Sometimes the best opportunities come disguised as last chances.