Gary Fowler and Jacques Fu: Building A FinTech Unicorn

In this Silicon Valley Tech & AI episode presented by GSD Venture Studios Gary Fowler interviews Jacques Fu. Guest: Jacques Fu, Co-founder of Stax Jacques is the co-founder of Stax, one of the Inc 500 fastest growing companies and the first startup to reach "Unicorn" status from the city of Orlando. He is the host of the "Taking Your Time" podcast and author of "Time Hacks". He co-founded Orlando Devs, the largest developer meetup in Orlando, and The Assistance Fund, the second largest charity in the city according to Guidestar. Jacques has a passion for building products that solve problems, bringing them to market, and scaling them. Jacques has co-founded several successful startups that have each gone on to create hundreds of jobs across the Greater Orlando region and beyond. As the founding Chief Technology Officer at Stax, his teams have built an integrated payments platform that processes $23B in payments annually for 22,000 businesses while scaling from 1 to 400 employees through organic growth and M&A. Stax has been recognized by Forbes, US News, Inc, Entrepreneur, and Money as a leading Fintech with offices in Orlando, Chicago, LA, and Ottawa while reaching No. 217 on the 2019 Inc. 5000 fastest growing companies and has raised over $300M in capital since inception to fuel growth. Stax is the 7th Unicorn in the state of Florida and the first from Orlando. As a community advocate, Jacques speaks at events hosted by UCF, Rollins, Orlando Economic Partnership, Downtown Orlando Partnership, Orlando Chamber of Commerce, BarCamp, Starter Studio Tech Accelerator, and various meetups. He invests in startups as an angel investor and is also an advisor for various startups and technology boards in the Orlando area. Jacques has expertise in product strategy and scaling out product teams and infrastructure for growth. He loves building products that people enjoy while making them more productive.