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Filip Victor
Getting back to research. Ex-CEO\fndr @MetaMap
Filip Victor is the Founder of MetaMap, a data company established in 2017 with the mission to help everyone access any available service from any provider in the world.34 His LinkedIn username is getfilip.5
Key Facts about Filip Victor::
- Education: He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in Mathematical Biology and Theoretical Physics.3
- Entrepreneurial Journey: Victor founded MetaMap after experiencing exclusion from basic financial services as an immigrant in the U.S., leading him to shift his focus from mapping science data to mapping people data.3
- Accomplishments at MetaMap: He led MetaMap to achieve significant milestones, including developing a leading global product, expanding operations to over 55 countries, growing the team to over 300 employees, and gaining over 500 enterprise customers.3
- Funding: Victor has raised over $100 million for MetaMap from various investors.3 The total raised is reported to be $83.5M.2
- Acquisition: In June 2024, Incode acquired MetaMap.12 As part of the transaction, Filip Victor is leaving the company to pursue other interests.1
- Views on Entrepreneurship: He was motivated to embark on his entrepreneurship journey to work on his own goals and objectives. He also notes that the Mexican market was ripe for disruption due to high inequality and a high willingness to try new things.6
- Other Experiences: Prior to MetaMap, Filip Victor had research experience at Harvard Medical School and interned at Apax Partners.5
Highlights
I’m excited to finally talk about this publicly: my company — MetaMap — merged with Incode, and as a result I’m leaving to pursue a new chapter in my work and research.
Why we sold, and why now Up until this point I had been stubbornly opposed to the idea of selling companies. I considered it a failure on the part of the entrepreneur. I’ve always considered companies to be never-ending projects that compound not only their economic power but also their social impact. In that sense, I’ve always thought of it as a great way to live a life — a company challenges you to mature as a person while you challenge the company to accomplish ever more ambitious objectives. The idea of selling a company whose work you love seemed pointless and reactive. Needless to say, I changed my mind on the matter for a few reasons.
First, the economic conditions worsened significantly. In the preceding two years we experienced increasingly choppy waters, as did the entire fintech industry by extension. Emerging markets have nascent fintech markets so the resulting waves had been especially intense there, affecting many of our customers. Consolidation of our industry was the obvious consequence, and we kept our eyes peeled on the daily announcements, as any M&A had potentially large consequences for our market and our place in it.
Second, we needed a lot more money to hope to achieve the mission I outlined. The specific identity research that was at the core of my motivation to start MetaMap was also clarifying. KYC was simple enough, but the idea driving me personally from the very beginning was to build a prediction engine capable of financially scoring any thin file person in the world — a far greater challenge. The many countries we operated in all require years of lobbying efforts on the topic of privacy and data custody, in order to build the type of infrastructure this effort requires. Navigating this maze simply requires a much bigger balance sheet than what we had access to at the time
During this period I didn’t seriously consider an acquisition, despite receiving serious interest from handful of parties. It slowly dawned on me that the idea to combine forces with another team can be exciting. After meeting many companies we decided incode was the best choice. I absolutely loved working at MetaMap, with many people I admire and consider friends. Thank you all for joining me on this mission. I hope your experience was as enriching as it was for me.
What’s next As for me, I continue being extremely excited about the identity research, especially as it pertains to self-sovereignty, automated credit underwriting and scoring, and vectorizing the plethora of other non-financial human qualities into useful predictions. The idea of indexing people by their attributes for purposes of better people-search is something that goes far beyond KYC and even credit, and I intend to always stay involved in this monumental effort.
We’re building out an engineering team in Mexico City and looking for our first Engineering Manager to own Product Engineering. This role will report to our VP of Engineering but will work directly with me.
If you’re interested in learning more (or know someone who may be) apply through our website here or reach out to [email protected]. Looking forward to meeting you!
https://lnkd.in/dQtAkmcn https://lnkd.in/dsUZt43r
