Founder building the future of fintech

Ex-Stripe. YC W24. Building tools that help founders raise capital faster, cheaper, and with more confidence.

Fintech YC W24 Ex-Stripe 3x Founder
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$12Mraised for portfolio
$50M+processed payments
50+mentors helped
10+years in tech

Current focus

Flow Capital

AI-powered fundraising platform for startups. YC W24 batch.

Looking for

Angel investors for Seed round. Also open to advisor connections in fintech.

Based

San Francisco → Remote

Journey

2024 — Present

Flow Capital — Founder & CEO

YC W24. AI-powered fundraising platform that helps founders raise capital 3x faster. Built the entire product in 8 weeks, launched to 200+ waitlist, closed seed round from top-tier VCs.

YC W24FintechAI
2022 — 2024

Stripe — Staff Engineer

Led payments infrastructure team. Built systems processing $50M+ daily. Mentored 8 engineers, promoted to staff within 18 months. Shipped Connect API v2 and instant payouts feature.

$50M+ dailyInfrastructure8 reports
2020 — 2022

Ledger — Co-founder

Accounting automation tool for SMBs. Raised $2M seed, grew to 10K users, acquired by a public company. Learned the hard lessons of B2B sales and customer success.

$2M raised10K usersAcquired
2018 — 2020

Google — Software Engineer

Payments team. Built GPay integration for 50+ merchants. Promoted twice. Left to start my first company.

PaymentsGPayPromoted 2x

Companies built

Three companies across payments, accounting, and fundraising. Each one taught me something different about building products people actually pay for.

💸

Flow Capital

2024 — Present
📊

Ledger

2020 — 2022 (Acquired)
🔷

Stripe

2022 — 2024
G

Google

2018 — 2020

Impact metrics

Numbers I'm proud of. Not vanity metrics — these represent real value delivered to users, investors, and employers.

$12M

Raised for portfolio founders

Through Flow Capital, helped 15+ founders close their seed rounds. Average time to close: 6 weeks.

$50M+

Daily payments processed

Led the infrastructure team at Stripe that kept $50M flowing every single day without downtime.

10K

Users acquired

Grew Ledger from 0 to 10K paying SMB customers in 18 months before acquisition.

Press & recognition

When the work speaks, people listen. Here's where it's been featured.

"Flow Capital uses AI to match startups with the right investors"

January 2024

"W24 Demo Day Highlights: Flow Capital"

January 2024

Acquired — Building in Public: From Google to YC

December 2023

Advisors & investors

Smart people who've invested time, money, or both. Grateful for the guidance.

Sarah Chen

Investor @ Sequoia

Seed investor in Flow Capital. 15+ years in venture.

David Kim

Founder @ Stripe

Advisor. Helped me think through pricing and GTM strategy.

Michael Torres

GP @ YC

W24 batch partner. Always cuts through the noise.

What founders say

Real feedback from people I've worked with, advised, or invested in.

"Alex didn't just write a check — he helped us rethink our entire fundraising deck. The intro to Sequoia alone was worth 10x the investment."

Jessica WuFounder, Nexus AI — YC W24

"Working at Stripe, Alex was the kind of engineer who'd explain not just what to build, but why. He made the whole team better."

Sam RiveraEngineering Manager, Stripe

FAQ

Questions I get asked a lot. Saves us both time.

What are you working on now? +

Flow Capital — AI-powered fundraising for startups. YC W24. We're building the easiest way to raise a seed round.

Are you taking new investments? +

We're raising a seed round. If you're an angel or VC interested in fintech + AI, I'd love to chat. Email me.

Can you advise my startup? +

I mentor 2-3 founders at a time through YC's office hours. Not taking on more right now, but happy to point you to good resources.

How do I get into YC? +

Apply at ycombinator.com. My best advice: focus on a real problem you've personally experienced, and show traction, not just a idea.

Let's connect

Always happy to chat with founders, investors, or anyone building something ambitious.

Email

The fastest way to reach me. I reply within 24 hours.

hello@alexchen.com ↗

Also find me on:

Twitter/X ↗ · LinkedIn ↗ · AngelList ↗