Kicking off the fall season of our First Monday series, we were back with a special meetup. We were stoked to have Kristo Käärmann (CEO & Co-Founder at Wise) and Tamás Kádár (CEO & Co-Founder at SEON) join us for an exciting founder fireside chat.

Though at different stages, Wise and SEON had many things in common—just to mention a few, both were deeply rooted in Budapest, where large parts of their products were built, and both expanded to the US from an Austin-based HQ. Also, they were partners, with SEON helping Wise fight against fraud.

Attendees didn’t miss the opportunity to learn first-hand insights from these outlier founders. They proved that global category-defining companies can be built from this region.

We dug into their founder journeys—from early product–market fit to scaling teams and culture—along with hard-won lessons on hiring and global expansion from the EU/CEE to the US. Guests heard unfiltered takes on the AI wave’s impact on venture and company building, and where they saw the next decade of tech in Europe, CEE and Hungary.

About Wise

Wise was founded in Estonia in 2011 by Kristo Käärmann and Taavet Hinrikus and grew into the global leader in transparent, low-cost international money movement. The company became a decacorn, moving over £10 billion every month for 16 million people and businesses. With a team of 5,000+ across 40 offices—including a strong engineering hub in Budapest—Wise became the first tech company co-listed in London and the US, proving that a European fintech could achieve true global scale.

About SEON

SEON, Hungary’s breakout startup, quickly became one of the fastest-growing fraud prevention companies in the world. Founded in 2017 by Tamás Kádár and Bence Jendruszak, SEON established itself as the command center for fraud prevention and AML compliance, helping thousands of companies worldwide stop fraud, reduce risk and protect revenue. Powered by 900+ real-time, first-party data signals, SEON enriched customer profiles, flagged suspicious behavior and streamlined compliance workflows. With integrated fraud and AML capabilities, SEON operated globally from Austin, London, Budapest and Singapore.

Project no. STARTUP-2024-RENDEZVENY-0043 was implemented with the support provided by the Ministry of Culture and Innovation of Hungary from the National Research, Development and Innovation Fund, financed under the 2022-1.1.2-STARTUP-2022-00001 funding scheme.

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