Building Flex, the AI Private Bank with CEO Zaid Rahman
The Peel with Turner Novak
Turner Novak
4.6 • 11 Ratings
🗓️ 4 December 2025
⏱️ 152 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Zaid Rahman is the Co-founder and CEO of Flex.
Flex is the AI native private bank for high net worth middle market business owners, headlined by it’s 60-day interest free credit card for businesses.
Flex just announced their $60 million Series B, as well as their new consumer product, Flex Elite, which pits it head-to-head against Amex for the consumer spending of some of the wealthiest people in America. It's products now spans from when a business owner first generates revenue, all the way to when they spend that cash personally.
This conversation goes inside how the company scaled from zero to a $70 million revenue run rate in two years, and everything Zaid learned along the way.
Thank you to Eric Bahn at Hustle Fund, Jeff Morris Jr. at Chapter One, Andrew Ziperski at General Catalyst, and Jared Thomas and Ewan Steel at Flex for helping brainstorming topics for the conversation.
Timestamps:
(1:44) Raising $60m to fix business finance
(3:23) Flex Elite: Personal + Business banking
(4:48) Jumbo shrimps: powering 40% of US payroll
(9:16) The forgotten mid market business
(14:01) “Flex fuels ambition”
(16:08) How to serve entrepreneurs in middle America
(22:58) Flex’s 5-pillar product suite
(27:12) Starting Flex to help construction companies
(31:51) Using AI to lend to mid-market customers
(40:22) Power of multi-product in fintech
(43:53) Zero to $3B in volume in 18 months
(44:43) Raising a bear market Series A in 2023
(51:00) How referrals landed their first big customers
(55:07) Flex’s playbook for 85% organic growth
(1:01:15) Dissecting various accents
(1:04:22) Building a quiet luxury brand
(1:09:33) Importance of customer happiness
(1:12:43) Why CEO’s should be the top sales person
(1:13:58) Building lots of in-house software
(1:24:33) PMF is like operating a popular restaurant
(1:30:49) How to raise a debt facility
(1:34:48) Recruiting is so crucial for startups
(1:39:00) Why VC’s hate lending businesses
(1:45:14) Underserved vs Underbanked in fintech
(1:48:02) Why business owners want personal + business banking
(1:54:49) Acquiring Maza, leaning in to M&A
(2:02:53) Most fintech companies look the same
(2:08:35) Founder group therapy with Eric at Hustle Fund
(2:11:50) The Thiel Fellowship’s 10% unicorn hit rate
(2:15:52) Lesson from the ruler of Dubai
(2:19:24) Building Flex’s risk underwriting engine
(2:26:58) Flex’s AI opportunity
Referenced
Try Flex: https://www.flex.one
Careers at Flex: https://jobs.lever.co/Flex/
Basel III https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basel_III
Linguistic TikTok account: https://www.tiktok.com/@zaydupree
Lazy luxury: most worn shoes on private jets: https://www.wsj.com/style/fashion/lazy-luxury-sneakers-are-these-the-most-worn-shoes-on-private-jets-7801be30
Follow Zaid
Twitter: https://x.com/zaidrmn
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zaidrahman
Follow Turner
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak
Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: https://www.thespl.it/
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Peel. I'm your host, Turner Novak, founder of Banana Capital. |
| 0:07.0 | Today's guest is Zayn-Ramond, co-founder and CEO of Flex, the AI-native private bank for high |
| 0:11.8 | net worth middle market business owners, headlined by 60-day interest-free credit card for businesses. |
| 0:17.7 | Flex is fresh off a $60 million fundraise and just announced their new consumer |
| 0:21.5 | product, Flex Elite, which pits it head to head against Amex for the consumer spending of some of the wealthiest people in America. |
| 0:28.2 | Flex is the private bank Silicon Valley forgot to build, going after customers that Flex thinks it can be the category leader for. |
| 0:34.9 | This two and a half hour conversation goes about as deep as you can |
| 0:37.8 | get on everything Zaid has learned building the AI private bank for business owners. We talk about |
| 0:42.9 | why no one has built it before and how AI recently unlocked this opportunity to serve customers |
| 0:47.7 | that power 40% of all U.S. payroll. We also unpack why VCs traditionally hate investing in lending |
| 0:53.7 | businesses, how AI |
| 0:55.0 | makes private credit a sexy asset class, how Zad and Flex survived the post-ZERP FinTech |
| 1:00.1 | Winter and raised a series A in 2023, the power of being both easy to onboard and multi-product |
| 1:05.8 | as a fintech company, and flexes go-to-market playbook that acquires 85% of all new customers through organic channels |
| 1:12.3 | like word of mouth and referrals. |
| 1:14.1 | A quick thank you to Eric Bond at Hustle Fund, JMJ at Chapter 1, Andrew Zeperski at General Catalyst, |
| 1:19.4 | and Jared Thomas and Yuan Steel at Flex for helping brainstorm topics for Zaid. |
| 1:23.6 | A reminder, I published two episodes of The Peel every week. |
| 1:26.6 | Check out the back catalog of over 100 episodes exploring the world's greatest startup stories, like last weeks with 8Sleep co-founder and CEO, Mateo Francescetti. Now, let's talk to Zaid. Zaid, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. I'm excited. You announced something, I think, today, the day this comes out, you have announced something. |
| 1:44.5 | What did you guys just announce? |
| 1:45.9 | Yeah, Noah. |
| 1:46.8 | Very excited to announce today that we just closed our $60 million series B, |
... |
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