Andy Taylor - Stakk: The ten year overnight success.

Andy Taylor is Co-Founder of Stakk an embedded finance infrastructure solution. On 6 July 2026, ASX-listed Stakk Limited signed a definitive agreement to acquire US document intelligence firm ParaScript for US$63 million. I've interviewed Andy more than once over the past decade, way back when he was just starting to build Douugh out of Tank Stream Labs. Talking to him last week about the deal and the pivot to Stakk, three things stuck with me, perhaps even more than the acquisition itself.

Being early can almost be as challenging as being wrong.

When I interviewed Andy in 2018 he described an AI concierge for Douugh called Sophie, a digital assistant that would manage someone's entire financial life. His vision blew my mind so much so that I called him a visionary at the time. He was also about eight years too early. Large language models didn't exist. Open banking data was still screen-scraped. Customers weren't ready to hand a chatbot their financial life, let alone trust its advice. The idea was right. The infrastructure to build it wasn't there yet, and neither was the customer.

Douugh didn't get the chance to wait for the world to catch up. Capital dried up overnight in 2022 as Russia invaded Ukraine. Investors moods changed from grow at all costs to cut costs at all costs. Douugh relied on infrastructure and rails provided by other Fintechs. Unfortunately they didn't survive 2022. Overnight Douugh's business model came crashing down. "I probably still have nightmares about it," Andy told me.

Douugh had to pivot fast and become something else to survive: They repurposed what they had built with Douugh into an embedded fraud and identity platform, licensed to companies like Chime, Robinhood and T-Mobile rather than sold to consumers.

"It's a data game," Andy said of the pivot, and the ParaScript deal is the next evolution of Stakk. Three decades of document intelligence, clients including USPS and Deloitte, bolted onto a business now claiming 99.99 per cent decisioning accuracy for the fraud programs it runs.

If Douugh hadn't survived 2022 it would have just been another failed neobank to the armchair critics. Being early and being wrong look identical to people from the outside. But for those who've been around Fintech a long time, what often determines success is whether the business is still standing when the market catches up to the idea.

"The days of raising money on a vision are gone," Andy said. What's left is whether you built something that can pay its own way until the vision becomes obvious to everyone else too.

Visionary is a small part of the job.

Being a visionary used to be the main role of a founder. But it's not what got Andy through 2022 and turning the business around. What he talked about instead was grit: keeping a team believing in a plan when the plan has just been completely rewritten.

Shutting out the external noise and pressures and always showing strength for the team is probably the hardest trait for any founder. "You can never be seen to be showing that weakness," he told me.

It's at odds with most of the leadership advice doing the rounds in fintech, which tells founders to be open about their struggles and to lead with vulnerability. I don't disagree with Andy being vulnerable may be useful advice for founders when we are in "Peace Time" but the reality is Fintech is in "War Time" mode.

In times of challenge people need a leader to be strong. Andy's instincts have led to Stakk growing rapidly, expansion into the US and a $63m acquisition.

Maybe the pivot isn't product, but location?

Andy's advice to any young Australian founder listening is blunt: move. Go to a market that backs risk-taking and has real access to capital. It's confronting advice because Andy is a founding father of Australian fintech. He co-founded SocietyOne in 2011, the first peer to peer lender in Australia. He's forged a path for others to follow.

Fifteen years on, his advice to the next generation is to build somewhere else more supportive of innovation and startups. If the person who helped build the local industry is telling founders to leave, then maybe the pivot founders should consider in this market isn't embedded finance or AI - but Australia versus Singapore or Dubai or the USA.

Too often for founders what seems like the light at the end of the tunnel has been a train coming at them full speed. The acquisition is a rare moment to reflect and congratulate Andy and the team on a fantastic turnaround.

You can find out more https://stakk.tech/

Dexter Cousins is the founder of Tier One People, Australia's leading executive search firm for fintech. He has completed 200+ executive placements in Fintech and hosts Fintech Chatter, Australia's leading industry podcast with 370+ episodes and 30,000 monthly listens across 40 countries.