Fintech Architect Na’ama Moran Devises a More Masterful Model for E-Commerce

Na’ama Moran has revolutionized e-commerce by creating technology to improve people’s lives. In only a few years, Moran’s focus, fearlessness, and ferocity have helped her beat the odds and launch several successful businesses. Her peers recognize her efforts, as well. At the 13th annual Stevie Awards for Women in Business, Moran won a Gold Stevie in the Female Entrepreneur of the Year category.

To succeed in a hostile climate where nine out of 10 startups fail, Moran combines an uncanny knack for piloting fledgling companies through the startup phase with unique financial technology (fintech) expertise. Still, after founding and leading three prosperous businesses, Moran has her sights set even higher.

Sourcery: Moran’s Magic

Throughout her career, Moran has sought to harness technology to improve people’s lives. After landing in the Bay Area and supplementing her experience as hedge fund analyst with computer science courses at Stanford University, she co-founded Zappedy; An innovative service that enabled local merchants to bridge the online-offline gap and show local merchants what kind of ROI their were getting for their online marketing spend. Zappedy drew the eye of Groupon, which acquired the startup in 2011.

Moreover, Zappedy sparked something inside of Moran. By working with some of its early clients, Moran realized she could tap into her background in economics, supply chain financing, and buyer-supplier relationships to dramatically simplify a business’s financial logistics. She co-founded Sourcery to automate the Accounts Payable and Receivable process for a variety of industries, and in doing so Moran embarked on a journey that would test her as both a leader and a visionary.

Moran used a mere $50,000 of her own funds, to launch Sourcery in 2012. A year later, she convinced investors of Sourcery’s prospects and secured $1.5 million in venture capital. Of course, Silicon Valley startups blow through millions in VC cash without shipping a single product, so Moran made every dollar count. She did so by focusing on running an extremely tight lean startup-like set of experiments.

To outside observers, aggressively pushing concepts to failure sounds anywhere from counterintuitive to insane, but it’s the secret to Moran’s (and Sourcery’s) success. (A lot of yoga didn’t hurt, either.) After seeing her new startup struggle to gain market traction, Moran risked swinging a sledgehammer at Sourcery’s business model.

“I had to get my entire team into this ground floor mode,” she says. “We were essentially running a bunch of tests based on several hypotheses. I plunged everyone into this hypothesis-driven software product development and business development environment. We divided into small groups and ran experiments, getting them to fail as fast as possible, or succeed at all costs. It was a challenging time, but the ultimate result was going from a business that wasn’t growing to two businesses.”

This insightful and fateful decision helped Sourcery avoid the same fate as startups that collapse by refusing to consider market demand.

She re-energized Sourcery by adopting the agile software development philosophy and applying it to startup creation. By rapidly defining and testing hypotheses, Moran and her team could validate concepts without further investment in product development and more staff. However, unlocking Sourcery’s potential required its staff to buy into Moran’s strategy, which presented another obstacle.

“The biggest challenge was really motivating the team and getting them onboard after having already bought into a different vision,” Moran explains. “Motivating them to let go and plunge into uncertain space was very tough.”

Moran’s team trusted her, though, and as Sourcery reinvented itself, she found additional opportunities.

Restaurant Cheetah: Raising An Apex Predator

Before fintech, before coding, and before hedge funds, Na’ama Moran knew food. Growing up on a turkey farm might not have taught Moran about the logistical hurdles restaurants and the hospitality industry face, but it helped her appreciate the importance of one of humanity’s most basic needs. Over the course of growing Sourcery, Moran identified an underserved market that could benefit from her specific skill set: the foodservice and hospitality industry. She launched Restaurant Cheetah as an ancillary startup alongside Sourcery.

Restaurant Cheetah helps foodservice logistics enter the smartphone era. A user-friendly app greets chefs and buyers in charge of keeping restaurant pantries stocked; the Restaurant Cheetah service finds the best prices on foods and coordinates delivery. Still, Restaurant Cheetah wouldn’t have its teeth without Moran’s vast knowledge of supply chains, accounts payable, cash flow planning, etc., especially with regard to the foodservice and hospitality industry. Sourcery and Restaurant Cheetah are fintech and e-commerce solutions (respectively) at their finest: easy to use and exceptionally effective.

Big names have noticed. Moran’s client list includes Airbnb, Dropbox, Snap Kitchen, Huckberry and others. By recognizing market demand and pairing it with her knowledge, she turned Sourcery and Restaurant Cheetah into a multi-million dollar tandem.

Future Vision

Counting Zappedy, Sourcery, and Restaurant Cheetah as successes, Moran is preparing for the next challenge. She’s ready to scale her startup philosophy beyond one or two companies at a time and nurture multiple concepts into thriving businesses. From forming a team to securing investors, Moran prides herself on evolving companies swiftly and intelligently.

“Building a business from an idea to a running, validated concept, that’s my expertise as an entrepreneur,” she says. “High-level development, fundraising, recruiting key personnel—I build companies from 0 to 50. That’s what I’m really good at.”