Interview with Billfront’s Gregor Dimitriou

Greg Dimitriou is one the Co-founders and Managing Directors of our venture BillFront. Bringing with him 13 years of experience as a Tech & Media Investment Banker at JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank in New York, London and Hong Kong, Greg is responsible for a wide range of things at BillFront, including Finance, Risk Management, an important pillar for the venture, Legal, Regulatory, and looking after the relationships with existing and potential investors.

Today, we will interview Greg on the ideas behind BillFront, the BillFront solution, and the development of his job since the foundation of the business.

FinLeap.com: What was the idea behind the creation of BillFront?

Greg: The way digital advertising is being bought and sold has been changing constantly. Millions of ad dollars are being traded through automated platforms daily. However, the payment cycles remain long i.e. publishers of web content and internet games, digital ad agencies, and all kinds of ad networks often have to wait 30 sometimes even up to 120 days to receive the money for their services. Most often that is long time after they have had to pay in order to generate those revenues themselves, i.e. salaries, rent, their own suppliers of internet traffic etc. That creates a working capital problem that we are solving for our clients.

FinLeap.com: How does BillFront’s business model work?

Greg: It’s very easy and convenient for our customers. After we have agreed an amount of credit that we are willing to extend, i.e. a “credit limit”, our customers can request instant liquidity through our technology platform against their unpaid invoices up to that credit limit. It takes only up to 2 minutes and is much easier than any other service currently in the market.

FinLeap.com: Could you describe a typical business solution BillFront will provide?

Greg: Our customers are fast-growing advertising networks with high technological IP around a) specific parts of the advertising value chain, b) certain ad formats, or c) particular geographical expertise, which allows their advertiser clients to target customers and find the right users at the right place and time. One of our customers works with large car companies who place desktop and mobile ads through our customer’s’ platform, but those large corporates tend to pay late. Our customer has to pay for the advertising traffic before he receives the funds from his advertiser client. We help him bridge that cash flow gap.

FinLeap.com: How has your job changed from the beginning until now?

Greg: When we started BillFront, most of our time was spent on convincing clients, employees and investors about our business proposition. Nowadays, more of my time is spent on implementing and optimizing processes, building a great team around us, and nurturing our client relationships. That last part is actually quite similar to my old Investment Banking job.

FinLeap.com: What is the most interesting part of the job?

Greg: No day is the same as the previous one. Strategically, we are positioned at the nexus between Fintech, Adtech, and Big Data. Operating at that intersection requires us to be on top of developments across industries but it also makes my job so much more interesting.