Building a fintech startup solo

I'm Anas — solo founder building RentPerk, a UK fintech that turns rent payments into rewards and credit-building for renters. Think: you pay rent, you earn points, your credit score goes up automatically. Nobody has built this in the UK yet and I've spent the last several months figuring out why — and whether I can fix it.

I wanted to start a thread because the last few months have been genuinely wild and I suspect a lot of founders here are navigating similar things. A few of the more interesting corners I've ended up in:

The regulated sector problem. Building in fintech means you can't just ship. Before a single tenant pays a penny of rent through RentPerk, I needed to appoint an MLRO, draft an AML policy, register with the ICO, negotiate an EMI partnership, and get legal sign-off on Terms of Service and a Privacy Policy. I did all of it as a solo non-technical founder. Happy to share what I learned — and what I'd do differently.

The EMI rabbit hole. Getting FCA-regulated payment infrastructure as a pre-revenue startup is genuinely hard. I've been through the commercial proposals from Equals Money (Railsr), Modulr, and Mangopay. The pricing structures are opaque, the setup fees are significant, and nobody talks openly about what the negotiation actually looks like. If you're building anything in payments, I have thoughts.

Raising without a deck first. I built the whole company — legal framework, financial model, AML documents, pitch deck, demo app — before approaching a single investor. Deliberately. I wanted to walk in with a company, not a concept. Currently in early conversations with Firestartr and working the BTR landlord pipeline. Pre-seed target is £150k.

What I'd love to hear from you:

• If you've raised pre-seed in the UK — what actually got investors to take the first meeting? A deck? Traction? A warm intro? Something else entirely?

• If you've built in a regulated space (fintech, healthtech, legaltech) — how did you handle the compliance overhead as an early team? Did you hire a compliance person early or outsource it?

• If you're pre-product and solo — what's the one thing you wish someone had told you before you started?

• And if you've negotiated with an EMI provider — I would genuinely love to compare notes.

Just a founder who's neck-deep in the build and wants to connect with people doing the same.

What are you building right now?