Hiroki Takeuchi

Takeuchi traces his path to GoCardless to his first week at Oxford, where a student entrepreneurship meetup introduced him to startups. A 2007 summer internship with Automattic gave him early experience with customer interviews, coding, and startup life. He says experiences like these can prove useful much later.

Takeuchi and co-founder Matt spent time debating business ideas before leaving their consulting jobs without a settled plan. They started Groupay to help groups collect money, but struggled to find customers, including when they cold-called UK football managers from San Francisco. He says the idea was too theoretical and urges founders to build something they or people close to them would use.

Takeuchi says he expected progress to be linear, but GoCardless moved forward through slow, zigzagging decisions. The team often agonized over small choices because time and resources were limited. He learned to act, accept mistakes, and adjust, since building momentum matters more than getting every early decision right.

Takeuchi describes the emotional swings of starting a company, from scraping together money for basic furnishings to facing more than 60 investor rejections. After raising less than a quarter of their target at first, GoCardless later secured $600,000 from Accel and $400,000 from Passion Capital, closing a $1.5 million round. He credits co-founders and supporters for helping him endure the ongoing challenges.