Anh-Tho Chuong Degroote is the co-founder and CEO of Lago, a fintech that makes billing easy for product-led SaaS companies. Before Lago, she was VP of Growth at French unicorn Qonto.

👋🏼 How would you explain your job to someone outside tech?

I help companies calculate how much their customers owe them. In some cases, it's simple. In other ones, like your telephone bill or electricity bill, it gets more complex — this is where we jump in!

🧐 What's something about you or your job that would surprise us?

I grew up on a tropical island known for surfing, but I only started surfing a few years ago!

🏆 What has been the biggest highlight of your career so far?

Building Lago. I've always wanted to build my own company, and I joined different startups to learn the ropes first!

I actually met my co-founder at Qonto, the "Brex for Europe" fintech, where I was one of the first employees and VP of Growth.

I love working with my team at Lago, and I'm always humbled by how talented they are. They motivate me even more to make Lago a huge success!

🔍 What's a startup trend or space you're watching this year?‍

There's a lot of talk about "usage-based billing," i.e., every SaaS adopting pricing that would look like Snowflake, totally based on consumption.

I think it's more subtle than that. More companies will adopt "hybrid pricings": they will still have a subscription fee because they need their revenue to be predictable and recurring and will innovate by adding a "usage-related" dimension to pricing.

Product-led companies are pioneers in this trend, and Slack is a great example. They have a "fair billing policy" where you can invite your whole team, and they won't bill inactive users. This is awesome for bottom-up adoption. It's a bit tricky to implement, though, as it still requires a lot of engineering, and we're making this 100x simpler with Lago.

💼 What advice would you give someone starting out in your industry?

Just start, build, iterate, do things. Don't be afraid to look like a fool or a rookie.

When I joined my first startup, it was straight from McKinsey, the startup had 3 APIs, and I spent a lot of time on Youtube learning about APIs before my first day there. Despite my best effort, I think people saw I did not know a thing about APIs, but I think I ramped up quickly.

At Lago, I do new things every day, so I'm constantly a rookie with the opportunity to learn new things!

🗣 What's one thing you can keep talking about for hours?

Travels. Especially in Asia. I was supposed to move to Vietnam in early 2020, but Covid happened. It's still on the roadmap!

🎥 What's your favorite movie/TV show?

Totally old school but "Grey's Anatomy" is the best! There are at the 18th season. I grew up with that!

🍨 What's your go-to ice cream flavor?‍

Matcha with a topping of red beans. It's super hard to get in Europe, so each time I travel to Asia, I go straight to that!