Before Retool was Retool, it was a group of Oxford students trying their hand out at starting up. They wrote an app called Cashew, which was basically

Retool’s org chart: small but mighty

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2021-10-20 17:30:10

Before Retool was Retool, it was a group of Oxford students trying their hand out at starting up. They wrote an app called Cashew, which was basically Venmo for the UK. In 2016, fintech was starting to become hot in the UK, with Monzo and Revolut just getting started.

Retool’s founder, David Hsu, and a couple of his friends figured that cash transfers should be a lot easier than what legacy banking apps offered, and built a mobile payments app that allowed Oxford students to pay each other, and also their favorite restaurants and pubs in the city.The app was actually a success.

When interviewed by Oxford’s student newspaper, David was exuberant. At one point 6 out of 10 students in Oxford were using the app.

“Exponential growth is hard to reason about — if we maintain our 20% week-on-week growth, we’ll be at 800k users in 6 months! That’d be pretty incredible.”

On the back of the blistering pace of growth, Cashew got into YCombinator. If they expected the YC partners to be impressed by their work, however, they were going to be sorely disappointed.

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