Domain Expertise as a Competitive Advantage: Plumery’s Approach to Building Trust in Banking
When Ben Goldin started running a BBS (Bulletin Board System) from his home in Lithuania as a teenager, he couldn’t have known it would be the first step in a 25-year journey through banking technology. But that early passion for technology, combined with decades of industry experience, would become a crucial competitive advantage in building Plumery.
In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Ben shared how deep domain expertise shaped Plumery’s approach to building trust in the highly regulated banking industry. His journey offers valuable lessons for founders entering complex, regulated markets.
The Early Foundation
“I started pretty early when I was around 15 years old,” Ben recalls. “I was always super passionate about everything tech.” This technical foundation, combined with an early exposure to banking’s shortcomings, set the stage for his career: “I experienced a very clunky, slow and unreliable interface of a traditional bank. And I said, gosh, if I would have a chance to change that sometime in the future, that would be awesome.”
Building Credibility Through Experience
Before founding Plumery, Ben spent years building his expertise in banking technology, culminating in his role as “first CTPO of Mambu, the leading cloud based core banking platform, working with around 300 or probably more customers today in around 60 plus countries around the world.”
This experience provided more than just technical knowledge – it offered deep insights into the industry’s challenges. “I witnessed how many organizations are still building the same thing again and again… and still do not manage to create a proper experience for their end customers.”
Leveraging Expertise in Fundraising
Domain expertise proved particularly valuable in fundraising. “Being someone who did things before, being someone who stayed in the domain for a while, it’s definitely much easier to raise capital,” Ben notes. This credibility helped Plumery secure $4.5 million in funding.
The key was not just having the expertise, but knowing how to leverage it: “It’s good to connect with some angel investor or some non leading VC who is super well connected and can introduce you with others and create a hype around the product that you are building.”
Building a Credible Team
Plumery’s commitment to expertise extends beyond its founder. As Ben shares, “We assembled a team of very experienced people, each of them in their own respectful areas, both in product and engineering.” This focus on collective expertise helps build trust with conservative banking clients.
Using Expertise to Shape Product Strategy
Domain knowledge directly influenced Plumery’s product approach. Understanding banking’s specific needs led to their “buy for feature parity and build for competitive edge” strategy, allowing banks to:
- Implement standard features quickly
- Innovate where it matters most
- Avoid common implementation pitfalls
Balancing Expertise with Innovation
Perhaps counterintuitively, deep industry experience taught Ben the importance of staying flexible. His advice to founders? “Don’t be too serious. Keep it simple and relaxed… We sometimes are too afraid of doing things we don’t feel confident about our own instinct and thoughts.”
This balance of expertise and openness to new approaches helped Plumery pioneer “the first headless digital engagement platform” in banking, introducing concepts from other industries while maintaining banking-specific expertise.
Lessons for Founders
For founders entering regulated industries, Plumery’s experience offers several key insights:
- Build Credibility Through Understanding Deep industry knowledge helps identify real problems and build trust with conservative buyers.
- Assemble Experienced Teams Collective expertise can be as important as founder credentials in regulated industries.
- Use Domain Knowledge Strategically Expertise should inform product decisions and go-to-market strategy, not limit innovation.
Looking Ahead
While domain expertise helped establish Plumery’s credibility, Ben’s vision extends beyond just applying existing knowledge: “My vision was always to change the way how people experience banking and do that for a meaningful number of people globally.”
For founders entering regulated industries, Plumery’s story demonstrates that domain expertise isn’t just about understanding how things have been done – it’s about having the credibility to show how things could be different. Sometimes, the most valuable aspect of industry experience is knowing exactly which rules need to be rewritten.