Silvr: Building a new financial infrastructure for entrepreneurs with Google Cloud
About Silvr
Silvr is a leading financial provider for digital entrepreneurs in Europe. It builds a world where funding is easy to access, scalable, and equity-free. Silvr leverages digital businesses’ data to predict future revenues and offers funding within 24 hours.
Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.
Contact usSilvr uses Google Cloud to build a fast, effective, data-driven credit scoring system that calculates a client’s suitability, profitability, and affordability to provide them with a rapid response.
Google Cloud results
- Offering financing to 100 businesses in the first year
- Analyzing 123 different data points to make improved decisions
- Scaling to run 500 jobs per hour
Building a digital business from the ground up takes hard work, innovation, and investment. Any budding business owner knows that even the greatest idea requires the financial backing to turn that dream into a reality. Yet, entrepreneurs often struggle with the requirements of traditional options, such as bank loans, because they don’t have the necessary equity or credit history. For many fledgling companies, the only other option is equity fundraising, which can reduce their capital and, crucially, their control over their business.
Serial entrepreneur Greg Tappero has grappled with these challenges. He wanted to create an easier way to access funding. So, he teamed up with Nima Karimi, his former classmate at the HEC Business School, Paris, to create Silvr. As the Co-Founder and CTO, Greg Tappero knew he was going to have to ‘bootstrap’ the initial stages of the project, using a handful of engineers and off-the-shelf solutions for the challenges they faced. And, as a self-described Google ‘fanboy,’ he turned to Google Cloud to provide them. "Almost everywhere I've been, I've used Google Cloud," he explains. "So I wanted to use a platform I was comfortable with when I founded Silvr. For me, it was about staying on the winning side."
Scores clients’ financial ratings within 15 minutes
"Almost everywhere I've been, I've used Google Cloud. So I wanted to use a platform I was comfortable with when I founded Silvr. For me, it was about staying on the winning side."
—Greg Tappero, Co-founder and CTO, SilvrUsing data to drive financing decisions
Founded in 2020, Silvr is the first company in Europe to offer Revenue Based Financing (RBF). RBF doesn’t work as a traditional loan. It allows entrepreneurs to get fast access to financing for their businesses while keeping 100% of their capital and only making repayments in proportion to their turnover. They also don’t have to pay interest, as they would with a bank loan. Silvr has already used its RBF platform, built on Google Cloud, to help finance hundreds of companies. And it isn’t stopping there.
"We want the process to become more accessible," says Greg Tappero. "You don't need to go to see the venture capitalist, because we know that they only give money to the top 1%, they just want to bet on the next unicorn. And there are so many businesses that also can’t access traditional funding from banks. That's where Silvr comes in, offering RBF to businesses that need it."
When a company applies for credit with Silvr, they grant the company access to various data sources, such as the corporate bank account, Google Analytics, or an e-commerce platform. Silvr then uses its own scoring algorithm to decide whether to give the company credit. And this whole process is powered by Google Cloud solutions.
Building the Silvr tech stack
For its tech stack, Greg Tappero and his team used a modular monolith approach. This enabled Silvr to keep things simple in the early days of building the new platform, when lots of changes and fast-moving components were being introduced. Greg Tappero wanted everything to run in a one code repository, so Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) was chosen as the fundamental building block for the project. "In the beginning, we used a lot of Google Kubernetes Engine cron jobs," says Greg Tappero. "If you have something you want to run every day, you just have your cron job running."
GKE wasn't the only Google solution that helped the team create and run the Silvr platform. Greg Tappero says that his previous experience meant that he trusted Google Cloud to deliver the performance, reliability, and pricing that he needed to make his platform viable. "Google Cloud really understands the engineers and today's data stack, and offers the tools to help us with that, whether that's Vertex AI, BigQuery, or Cloud SQL," says Greg Tappero. "And they all communicate with one another, so you don’t need more certificates."
"It's like Google Cloud really understands the engineers and today's data stack, and you offer the actual tools to help us with that, whether that's Vertex AI, BigQuery, or Cloud SQL. And they all communicate with one another, so you don't need more certificates."
—Greg Tappero, Co-founder and CTO, SilvrUnderstanding customer data
Silvr uses data pipelines to interpret and understand its customers' data. The Silvr team used Cloud Composer to migrate its old scripts from its initial testing area over to Google Cloud. And, Silvr also uses Cloud Composer to author, schedule, and monitor pipelines. Once a customer connects its data sources, such as Google ads, Facebook ads, Shopify, PrestaShop or WooCommerce, the team can get to work.
The new system is API-based and uses tokens to fetch the data. The tokens give the team access to key business metrics they can take for a customer, such as visits, conversion rates, etc. The metrics are then put in Silvr's BigQuery data lake, which is run using Cloud Storage. The team then encrypts all the market data, using Cloud Key Management. "Everything eventually ends up in a data warehouse on BigQuery," Greg Tappero adds. "This allows us to query streaming data in real-time and get up-to-date information on our business processes. Our goal is to enable the whole company, from data analysts to product managers, to access data, and do their queries with a simple SQL."
Silvr can now scale its operation to meet its needs, running up to 500 jobs per hour, and analyzing 123 different data points to make decisions in just 15 minutes. That time includes fetching the data, looking at the history of said data, and then determining the final score.
Building trust as a fintech start-up
Silvr is in the business of raising funds for entrepreneurs, so it needs to be able to earn the trust of big financial institutions. Compliance is a big issue, and reputations matter, but Greg Tappero says that these institutions are put at ease when they learn that Silvr is working with Google Cloud. "Google Cloud is a great way to reassure everyone," he says. "It has all the tools required to conform and be compliant with all the rules."
Silvr's platform is tailored to adapt to different digital business models, from subscription to product sales. The company has already seen a huge amount of interest from investors, raising €130 million in a Series A round of funding. With the company looking to build on its first 100 clients, it wants to invest more in its scoring system. “We want to invest a lot in scoring, using machine learning and deep learning,” Greg Tappero concludes. "Right now, we are still at the infant stage, but we have big plans. And we know Google Cloud will be very supportive on this path."
"We want to invest a lot in scoring, using machine learning and deep learning. Right now, we are still at the infant stage, but we have big plans. And we know Google Cloud will be very supportive on this path."
—Greg Tappero, Co-founder and CTO, SilvrTell us your challenge. We're here to help.
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About Silvr
Silvr is a leading financial provider for digital entrepreneurs in Europe. It builds a world where funding is easy to access, scalable, and equity-free. Silvr leverages digital businesses’ data to predict future revenues and offers funding within 24 hours.