This Entrepreneur Is Helping Brands Build New Revenue Streams Off Their Marketing Strategy

Forbes

What if, instead of being an expense, your marketing tactics could open an entirely new revenue stream? That’s what Gökçe Güven is trying to unlock for her 28 clients, which include chocolatier Godiva and the International Air Transport Association. Inspired by moneymaking marketing programs like United Airlines’ MileagePlus, Kalder embeds cash-back and rewards programs directly into its clients’ websites. “If you look at giants, what they did great for the past decade is they built financial technology capabilities inside their marketing machines,” Güven says. Kalder charges 60 cents monthly (and a small processing fee) for each customer who links their credit card to its programs, plus a half-cent per dollar on every transaction made with that same card at one of 25,000 partnering merchants. Backed by $11 million in funding at a $35 million valuation, Kalder brought in $1.5 million in revenue this year.  Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1  Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:  https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript  Stay Connected Forbes newsletters: https://newsletters.editorial.forbes.com Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes More From Forbes:  http://forbes.com  Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.

Transcript

00:00I would say the net new American dream is being a founder.

00:04This is inspiring because as an immigrant you see a future you can build from the ground up.

00:15Gokce, thank you so much for joining me today. I'm super excited to talk about you and Calder

00:19and all that you're building. Before we get into all the details, give me a little 30-second

00:23rundown of who you are. Definitely. Well, thank you for having me. This is a dream for everyone

00:28and was for me too, so great to be here. 30 seconds about me is I'm founder and CEO of Calder.

00:39I was born and raised in Turkey and had a passion for marketing and rewards because I didn't myself

00:47have a bank account until 18. Coming to the U.S., I was very excited about the ideas of

00:58emerging rewards and marketing space. I was early in places like Robinhood and OpenSea

01:06and started working with brands early to help their loyalty tools. I wanted it really well

01:12and be scaled and that's how I started building Calder. Calder is a company that provides software

01:18for companies, correct? That you basically allow your clients to create customer loyalty programs,

01:24cashback programs for their customers. How exactly does the platform work? What are you providing to

01:28these clients that you have? That's a great question. Calder essentially is a white-labeled

01:34partner rewards platform. If you look at giants like Amex, United, and Starbucks, what they did

01:42great for the past decades is they built financial technology capabilities inside their marketing

01:49machines. It came to a place where they made more money selling rewards than their core businesses

01:57like flights or coffee. Seeing that, that was my first amazement about the space that every brand

02:03in the world should be able to sell rewards and build partner programs. Essentially, we started

02:10building the automated tools for building partner rewards like Amex rewards for any brand and do it

02:16without spending millions or decades in regulation and tech. In the process of what

02:23you're facilitating for companies, you'll allow them to create cashback or loyalty programs for

02:27their customers, which will bring them more customers along the way, but how do you make

02:31money throughout that? We essentially become that partner rewards hub for them and we

02:38charge in two ways. We charge per connected account. What it means is you can have

02:43millions of customers, but we know that maybe your customer might not be using that

02:48reward system. The moment they connect their card, we will charge for that. Then we have a flat

02:54rate of a commission percentage from every time we make a brand earn money. Let's say we are

03:00processing $5 revenue or 5 million revenue for you, we will take our commission while

03:05we're processing it. This is also very different from the players we see in the ecosystem

03:10because they charge per transaction and they start building relationships with your own partners.

03:16What we realized is brands want to have their direct relationships with their partners

03:21in their reward ecosystem and they don't want a middleman. We were very transparent

03:25about it. We are very flat and we are just a network and they really loved it.

03:29They really started converting to use Calder instead of the other providers. When one customer

03:35comes onto your platform, then how many other reward systems or rewards can their own

03:41customers get? You mentioned there's a network. How are you facilitating what

03:46that ecosystem looks like? How many other companies or brands can then the customers

03:51use their rewards for? To this date, Calder has 25,000 indexed merchants across our network and

03:59US, EU, and also across the world. We do have global coverage that we're increasing.

04:05Our end customers, let's say you're an airline and you're an end user,

04:12would not see all those brands. It is the airline's job to invite partners or invite their own

04:19partners to curate that. That's also intentional because curation of a partner rewards really

04:25matter. You probably will not have a target in a SACs, FIFs program. That's why we also have this

04:36what we call B2B dating in the back end where we matchmake brands saying, I think these could be

04:41good for you and try to help them curate that. With these customers that you've brought on board,

04:47can you name some of them for me and how did you get your foot in the door to these major

04:51companies that have hundreds of millions of customers that you're now facilitating

04:55interactions with? Yeah, definitely. We focus on working with leading airlines, hospitality groups,

05:01retailers, emerging banks, and sports teams. We started with sports teams because a lot

05:08of sports teams were excited to earn revenue and reward their fans day to day. What we do

05:13is essentially if your brand has a lot of customers that are loyalty and want to earn

05:18your existing loyalty points, then you're probably fit for Calder. We provide the backend for them to

05:26add partners and customers to link their card. The first time what worked for us is to directly

05:33be able to go to a grocer or a sports team and say, look, you can earn millions from selling

05:40your rewards in the backend. Did you know that this is how Amex Rewards and United and players

05:45like Starbucks make money? And that was very exciting. And when you say that even from a

05:50LinkedIn code outbound, they reach out back to you. And that's actually how we got our first customers.

05:56And results have been promising. So we modeled this Partner Rewards program after a Portuguese

06:02sports team. And right now with Calder's model, only with 50,000 customers, they are making 4.5

06:09million every year. And customers are spending triple the more and engaging more because we

06:16started rewarding them beyond their app, right? Your customer doesn't spend your every day in

06:22your app. So you need to think about their journey and reward them. In this kind of space, you're

06:27talking about things like financial improvements and financial awards, some backend tech systems,

06:34but also marketing. Why do you consider yourself a marketing company when you have so many kind

06:38of different facets of the brand? Yeah, that's a great question. So we help marketers to not worry

06:45about fintech. In fact, I think that's like what's changed loyalty dynamics today. If you look at

06:52loyalty, every tool will try to sell you a discount generator or a software as a service. But what you

06:59see is the giants are not playing like that. They're setting up wallets, they're selling their

07:04rewards. So marketing is essentially a financial technology operation in the backend. And sadly,

07:09if you even talk with like billion dollar companies and holdings, they're scared of taking

07:14that regulatory and technological technological risk. And that's where we come in. We only serve

07:20to marketing teams. We only work with loyalty tools and loyalty directors. And we tell them,

07:24look, we are your fintech partner rewards program. And we are here to reward your customers and make

07:30you money that you never made before. And sadly, loyalty is notorious in the marketing world as

07:36being a cost generator rather than a revenue generator. And I think that's what we are changing

07:41for the first time. What were you doing before you launched Calder? And how did those experiences

07:47allow you to build a brand like this? Yeah, so I am a designer and engineer at the core. So sales

07:54growth came to me from just like survival mode and understanding within the ecosystem. And before

08:04this, I worked at Robinhood, which is like the consumer trading app and OpenSea, which is a

08:12digital collectibles marketplace. And I was a product designer in one and an early engineer

08:17in another. And there were two things happening. One, I fell in love with the idea of capturing a

08:24user's journey and essentially enhancing it. And two, that was my first time actually building

08:31in rewards like software, like looking at credit debit cards in my previous jobs and understanding

08:39that becoming a rewards girl and started like everyone does this, but starting like trading and

08:45exchanging your rewards across point systems and starting to see how I can build the reward exchange

08:51network. And then last pivotal moment for me is I started taking a chance at myself. So I started

08:57working with a brand to help set their membership and reward system and say, look, you need to be

09:03different and you need to start making money from your rewards and selling your memberships because

09:07you're not a clothing company anymore. And that worked well where they made three million in a

09:12week from that sales. And I was just an advisor. And that was the time I took a chance for

09:18myself, left my job bootstrap for six months and started building Calder. I want to ask too,

09:26you mentioned your experience working with Robinhood and in the NFT and Web3 space you've

09:31also had experience. How do you see those industries? There was obviously a huge boom in

09:37them for a while. Maybe there's been a plateau in the past couple of years. How do you see those

09:42industries impacting what Calder is doing today and the marketing and honestly fintech

09:48industries in general? Yeah, that's a great question. So what we're seeing is that neither

09:54brands or the customer would care about the technology. It is just a back end. So Calder

10:02actually has incorporated AI or every kind of board that now is hot in tech. But what we see

10:15is we need to solve problems and we need to be customer first. What our brands care about is

10:20that they're making money and they're also rewarding customers every day. And most importantly,

10:26creating what we call win-win-win situations. So that your brand is winning when you swipe your

10:34card at a partner store. Partner store is winning because they now acquired a new customer cheaply.

10:39And lastly, the customer is winning because they just earned their award. So I think in fintech,

10:43like fintech and marketing, I want to say, is very much changing because marketers are now

10:51very much more analytical about their spend and ROI with customer acquisition raising. And we are

10:58seeing a shift where we need to see clear revenue opportunities from every marketing initiative.

11:04So what's next for the kind of combination of marketing and fintech space? What are you

11:10projecting in the future, knowing that maybe the technology has to catch up a little bit,

11:13but there is a lot of money being poured into these industries and a lot of innovation that

11:17is happening. What do you see as some projections for the future of this industry?

11:22I think in the next five to 10 years, every brand will become a fintech company in the back end.

11:26Like they have to, and they have the opportunity to. What this means is now that we have the

11:33opportunities to democratize access for building financial operations on their marketing teams,

11:38this is a net new revenue in these brands balance sheet. And every brand will capitalize on this.

11:44And we are seeing this. We have brands that have as low as thousand customers using their

11:49loyalty programs and as big as 70 million customers in our database. And the sheer

11:54difference is only because of accessibility. Essentially, selling rewards or exchanging

12:00commissions were a big liability before. But if you automate accounting and automate the

12:05commissions, then the question becomes, why not my marketing team building partner rewards programs?

12:11And the answer becomes, yeah, why not? Let's do it. And I do think this is going to be pivotal

12:18moment for the next five years because then people will start thinking, why don't I have

12:23my co-branded card? Why am I not upselling and cross-selling more marketing-related fintech

12:29operations? And this has been going for decades. It has just been secretly going for the big,

12:36giants that we shop at. And I just think every brand across the world should be able to do this.

12:42Yeah, that's super interesting. I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about the startup

12:46space in general. You grew up in Turkey. Now you've been in New York for a couple of years,

12:49correct? How is the business industry different in those spaces?

12:53Very different. I think if you look at US, I would say the net new American dream is,

13:03in especially California and New York, being a founder. And I think this is inspiring because

13:09as an immigrant, you see a future you can build, no matter who you are or where you're from.

13:16And I think I'm so glad I'm from Turkey because I was able to see opportunities and problems I

13:23want to solve and was able to be exposed to the stories from ground up. I never had to.

13:30There's the two startup founder funnels. Either you read stories and solve for someone,

13:36or you solve for yourself. I feel like I was always lucky to solve problems for myself

13:40so I can solve it faster. And that's what I'm grateful for. But I think US is still

13:49the center of the world for building your startup and making your dream come true for tech,

13:56especially fintech. Yeah. And you've raised around $11 million, correct? What has that journey

14:01looked like? And has that been different since you've been in the States? Or what has that

14:06kind of trajectory looked like for Calder? Yeah. So I was in Berkeley before, and I studied there.

14:12So I had a couple of years in US before I started my company. And the last year of Berkeley,

14:17I essentially started it. I would say that, of course, I was privileged to have the background

14:24degrees. And I think more than that, the network. The reason I saw that I want to be a founder in

14:31myself is because the moment I was in as a freshman in Berkeley, people started dropping

14:36at them building companies. And I'm like, no, I want to be one of them. And I think I have the

14:40great ideas. And that's kind of started pushing me to try. And there's so many stories that people

14:47don't know. I actually started a company and exited it and failed so many times before Calder.

14:53And those were kind of trials, right? And even in Calder, we are so happy with our lead investor

15:02and our partner there. He's the one who built United Mileage Plus today. And he built the

15:09back end for it. So we have the perfect people around the table now. But before this, there were

15:16times, again, I bootstrapped Calder for six months, started trying to get attraction and customers.

15:23And being in front of the right people. The only thing I would say is everything looks

15:30perfect from the outside. And I guess the founders out there, everything always looks perfect from

15:36the outside to everyone. It's not. It takes perseverance and just survive through it.

15:41And then it happens. What's been the biggest challenge that you've had to go through and

15:45make a huge pivot or a change to the company? I think the biggest change was that us essentially

15:51becoming like we were always like a fintech and reward exchange network for marketing teams to

15:57build their partner rewards, but moving essentially our infrastructure rails from like blockchain to

16:03traditional rails so we can serve banks and bigger brands in a more safe and scalable space.

16:11And I think that also is in a way a pivot where in our first six months, we were just iterating and

16:19we were like two people. And I think the biggest thing you realize is that and especially for a

16:26design and engineering background, it's not only about design and engineering. It's really much

16:31about like being thrown things and then figuring out on the way. And that's what that's like hurdle

16:37and excitement every day. Yeah, that's the life of a CEO. Exactly. What are some of the things that

16:42you're excited about for the future? Are there any other big changes coming with Calder or some other

16:45big growth opportunities that you're excited about? Yeah, so we recently announced our again

16:51like 7 million seed and 11 million raised to the state. So for us, this was a pivotal moment to

16:58signal that we are scaling Calder. So the new year, you guys will be seeing very big players

17:05we have signed that I'm so excited about, like one of the biggest banks in US, like

17:13grocers, teams that you guys like everyone is passionate about. And I used to be a like a pro

17:18soccer player. So I'm personally excited about those. So this this is essentially signaling that

17:24Calder is not going to stop until every brand like team in the world has a partner award with us

17:29and that we will be global. Yeah. So we actually have big releases coming in Spain, France and

17:35Turkey to players like Amazon of Turkey. And and basically we want to increase our global coverage

17:42because this is really tied back to our mission where we want to democratize access to fintech

17:47tools for marketing teams. Were you were a pro soccer player? Yes. Where did you play? I was like

17:52I played in Beşiktaş like when I was like 13, like in high school. Okay. And women's like women's

17:59soccer teams are not common back then. So we were the first like kind of professional soccer team

18:07then like became a partner to us too. I like paid my way in. Yeah. When you were that young,

18:12did you expect to be a soccer player your whole life? Did you always want to be a founder? Like

18:16what was your vision when you were in those spaces? I think it's always like the discipline

18:22about like doing something really well and wanting it. Like I think and also seeing like kind of

18:28opportunities. For example, I did Equestream before too. So sports was always core to my

18:34life and I always liked to compete, but I moved to soccer because soccer was a taboo in Turkey and

18:42nobody was willing to start a team. So I was like, look like I want to start it and I will be one of

18:47the first professionals in it. And I basically recruited a lot of my high school friends

18:51to like start it. And then I started a nonprofit around it. So I would even say soccer is one of

18:57the reasons I tasted and understand what it is to be a founder because I had to do like the zero to

19:04one work of building a nonprofit around it. And that scaled very well. Like we got a UNDP grant

19:10at the time. We like scaled across three countries. So that was like, when I did that in high school,

19:14I knew like there and then I only want to build things from scratch and want to solve problems

19:20I want to see in the world. But I didn't name it. Like I want to be a startup founder at the time.

19:25What's your biggest piece of advice for other, maybe like 13 year olds that have a big idea

19:28out there and want to be a builder in the future? I think go for it. Like, and especially in the

19:34time where we have wide accessibility, like we are just one LinkedIn DM away from someone or

19:41one like MVP away from building your product. We have never been at a place where like building

19:48your dreams to be alive has been like this accessible and democratized. And sometimes I

19:54look at my child and then I say, I'm like young, but like, I wish I had that when I was five, I

19:59would have built a lot of things. So I would say like the biggest kind of understanding I had when

20:06I started this like nonprofit is people are actually very willing to help you and are excited.

20:13So I reached out to this person who became my co-founder at the time, and she already had a

20:19soccer nonprofit saying, I have these camps idea. Can you do it with me? And I remember walking to

20:24her office on a rainy day and I just had to walk because there was no other ways to get to.

20:30And since then we worked together. She was at the time 35, I was 15. I thought there's no way she

20:35would give me a chance. So this is all like a kind of a long way to say, do it and chase it. And people

20:41are actually very open to help you. Yeah. And having been a young founder and a young just builder in

20:46so many of these different spaces now speaking about like the 30 under 30 crowd, what does being

20:52young and in business mean to you? What is being in the 30 under 30 community look like in your eyes?

20:57I think the reason it is special is we like used to look up to people that are stern and

21:05fit certain demographics and categories. And I think Forbes 30 under 30 is always the leading

21:10indicator of people. What are the future leaders look like? So I'm proud to be representing one of

21:16them because I truly believe we are not like, like the age of leaders that are stern and top

21:23down and are just managers have changed. And I like to lead from within do things myself,

21:31be with the team design engineer and sell day to day, which is still ideal. Like I everyday design,

21:36I like review the PRs and like I'm in more sales call than on a tech spaces with most of our

21:42customers. And I think that's the future of leadership and yeah, being a part of Forbes 30

21:47under 30 is really being part of that, the change and that's happening. Yeah. Well, thank you so

21:52much for joining me today. This was so great to hear more about you and your many, many lives

21:55that you've lived to this point. Thank you for having me. I feel very special to be here and

22:01yes, excited for what's more to come. Me too.

Category

Transcript

Recommended