SUNEERA MADHANI

FOUNDER & CEO, FATTMERCHANT, ORLANDO

When Madhani pitched her idea of a subscription-based credit-card payment processing system to the company she worked for, her bosses laughed out loud. She quit that job, and in 2014 launched her own company with her brother, Sal Rehmetullah. Today, Orlando-based Fattmerchant — FATT stands for “fast, affordable transaction technology” — provides its flat-rate payment processing service to more than 6,000 businesses, saving them an estimated 40% on their credit-card processing costs. A 2009 graduate of University of Florida’s Warrington School of Business, Madhani grew the company out of the StarterStudio, a Central Florida tech incubator. Under her leadership, the merchant-friendly platform has attained triple-digit growth year after year, raised $20 million in venture capital and grown from three employees to more than 100. Her next goal is to grow Fattmerchant into a household name. It’s on its way, having ranked 217th on the 2019 Inc. 5000 list and landing on U.S. News & World Report’s list of the Best Credit Card Processing Companies of 2020. Madhani was recognized as one of the Most Influential Women in Payments in 2018 by PaymentsSource, an industry publication for financial service professionals, and was a finalist for Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year 2019 award in Florida.

“There’s no such thing as a billion-dollar idea — it’s only a billion-dollar execution. We can all have the greatest ideas, but if we can’t execute against it and actually create a viable business that brings in revenue, then it’s non-existent. Execution is key.”