Global Venmo for cross border payments
Blaze (YC S24) is global Venmo for cross border payments. It's a peer to peer payments app that uses USDC to make payments fast and cheap between any two people anywhere in the world. The founders scaled their last startup to $1M in ARR, studied mathematics and engineering at Duke, NYU, and Cornell, and have led teams at Spotify, Artsy, and Bitpanda. They're live in the US and Mexico, available for download on iOS and Android: https://blaze.money
Jobs at Blaze
Active Founders
Faiyam Rahman, Founder
Faiyam is a full-stack engineer with a bachelors in mathematics from Duke and a masters of engineering from Cornell Tech. He is now the cofounder and CEO of Blaze Payments. He is an avid traveler, most recently having completed a 6 month tour of India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bali and Portugal. He is also an avid practitioner of yoga and meditation, and he enjoys long walks, the spoken word, and celebrating the joy of being alive.
Luc Succès, Founder
Luc is a 2 time VC backed founder. His first startup, Often, launched a keyboard app that enabled you to text your friends with Drake lyrics. Upon launch, Often blew up to #1 on the App Store and got over 400k downloads. He scaled his second startup Seasons, a rental service for high end menswear to $1mm in ARR. Luc is a seasoned tech leader, having led teams at Artsy & Spotify. He is also an avid traveler, having lived and worked in over 50 countries worldwide.
Igor Zagnienski, Founder
Igor holds a bachelor's degree in marketing from the School of Economics and Law in Kielce. Prior to Blaze, he co-founded Space Individuals, a top-tier job site dedicated to the space industry. Adding to his diverse experience, he was a Senior Designer at Bitpanda, Austria's first billion dollar tech success.
Company Launches
TL;DR: Blaze is building a global Venmo for cross-border payments. For example, if you're a Californian nomad living in Mexico City, you can use Blaze to pay rent to your local landlord. Or if you're an expat living in Colombia, you can use Blaze to pay your teacher for Spanish classes. Check us out on iOS and Android!
A quick intro for you:
A little over a year ago, we found ourselves traveling all over the world. Luc was spending time between Mexico, Colombia, and other parts of South America, while Faiyam was nomad-ing around Asia. Everywhere we went, it was a pain to transact with our new friends from other countries. We found ourselves wanting a Venmo like experience that worked for our international lives.
So we decided to build it. Blaze is the payments app we wanted for our own lives, and if you have a lot of international contacts, perhaps it is for you too.
from left to right:
💻 Luc studied engineering at NYU before going on to start 2 VC-backed startups, one of which went to #1 on the app store and got him sued by Drake (true story). He’s also been a tech lead at Spotify and Artsy, and has lived and worked in over 50 countries worldwide.
🧘♂️ Faiyam studied mathematics at Duke, then engineering at Cornell before going on to build a $1M ARR business with Luc at his 2nd startup. He’s also an avid practitioner of yoga and meditation.
🧑🎨 Igor is a former lead designer at BitPanda, Austria’s first unicorn. Prior to that, he spent his time jumping out of planes and running Space Individuals, one of Europe’s leading platforms to find jobs in Space.
📱 App Preview
🙏 Asks
- Help us beta test! Download on iOS and Android. You can share feedback at founders@blaze.money.
- Share this post! If you know someone with an international lifestyle who would want to use Blaze, please share this post with them.
- Connect us with businesses in travel, hospitality, or other spaces that could use help with cross-border payments.
YC Sign Photo
Company Photo
