By Riley Kaminer
As an immigrant, finding scrappy solutions to everyday problems – especially financial ones – was just par for the course for Manuel J. Godoy. For instance, when Godoy left his native Venezuela to study at Caltech, he told Refresh Miami that he was able to “hack” his way into getting a student loan by getting a family friend who was already established in the US to co-sign it.
So when he met a man named Gilberto, the janitor responsible for his college dorm, Godoy immediately felt a certain connection. “He was the sweetest guy,” recalled Godoy. “He migrated from Mexico and was working really hard to send money home.”
Getting to know Gilberto opened Godoy’s eyes up to the financial hoops US immigrants must go to just to send money back home. Eventually, Godoy began to understand this struggle firsthand when his family started to send money back to Venezuela as well.
But it wasn’t until Godoy started to learn about remittances during his MBA program that he felt inspired to make a tangible impact in this area. “15% of the salaries of Latinos in the US is being spent on remittances.” Meanwhile, Godoy noticed that traditional remittance offerings had poor user experiences and were very expensive.
A year ago, alongside co-founder and fellow MBA colleague Bernardo Garcia, Godoy launched Félix, a Miami startup on a mission to improve the process of sending money abroad. Félix enables users to send money right through WhatsApp.
Initially, Félix raised a $2.5 million pre-seed to bring this vision to life. Today, Félix announced that they have raised an extension round that brings their total funds raised to $7.8 million. The round was led by Switch Ventures with additional participating investors including H20 Capital, MELI Capital, Wollef VC, Contour. A smattering of high-profile angels also took part in the round such as Cotopaxi founder Davis Smith, VC veteran Mike Levinthal, and Miami-based entrepreneur Roger Teran.
“Our initial goal was to achieve product-market fit,” Godoy said. And achieve it they have: the company is growing an average of 30% month-over-month, has sent tens of millions of dollars to Mexico alone, and has thousands of users. These users are active across the US, with major hotspots in California, Texas, and Illinois – and they can currently send money to Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras. Nicaragua and El Salvador are coming soon.
With this funding in tow, Godoy and team are focused on one thing: scaling. How will they do so? First and foremost, by continuing to win by offering a better product and experience than others. In the early days of Félix, Godoy would go out into immigrant communities and speak to consumers directly. This provided major learnings that became the pillars of Félix, such as trust and making digital products accessible to everyday users.
“Customer support is embedded into the platform,” asserted Godoy. “We have an American Express Platinum-level service available for these users who have been underserved for decades.” The AI-powered nature of Félix’s WhatsApp chatbot enables this customer service to happen at scale.
“We’re really growing fast,” Godoy said, noting that Félix now has a team of 19 people. “We’re super excited to materialize the vision of helping Latinos in the US support their families.”
READ MORE IN REFRESH MIAMI:
- Novo secures $125M to provide small businesses with working capital
- In wake of SVB and First Republic collapse, CapStack collects $6M to build inter-bank marketplace
- MAJORITY expands migrant-focused fintech offerings, with an additional $9.75M in tow
- Miami is becoming a hub for cross-border payments – here’s how
- Meet the FIU grad who’s making remittances cheaper and quicker by using crypto
