Episode 8 | Asif Ramji

The Atlanta Story

The Atlanta Story podcast features meaningful stories of Atlanta’s builders, creators, and entrepreneurs. In this episode Jon Birdsong sits down with Asif Ramji, of Paymetric and Chief Growth Officer at FIS.

Asif took over a struggling Paymetric in 2009. At the time, the business was losing $2m a year. Fast forward 8 years later, with the financial backing of Francisco Partners, Asif sold the business to Vantiv for $550M. Through 3 other acquisitions, Asif now holds the title of Chief Growth Officer for FIS with a divisional budget of $1B. In addition to building businesses, Asif stays civically focused by holding board positions on the Atlanta Ballet and Alliance Theater. After listening to today's podcast, we’re confident you’ll be inspired to find a niche, lead a team, and build something substantial.

The Atlanta Story is put together by the folks at Atlanta Ventures -- and we can’t wait to share some of the personalities behind the brand. Atlanta Ventures invests in entrepreneurs through community, content, and capital -- most notably through our Studio with companies like Greenzie and Intown Golf Club. We believe the best entrepreneurs learn from other great artists in different fields.

In this episode, we discuss…

1. How is Asif and his team navigating the Covid-19 environment? (2:30)
2. Asif shares about trends surfacing because of this new season of Covid-19 work from home environment? (3:44)
3. Asif shares his pre-Paymetrics entrepreneurial journey. (6:56)
4. Asif talks about the shift of Paymetric to SaaS. (11:05)
5. Why did Asif choose the Paymetric route over the traditional entrepreneur route? (12:25)
6. What types of things was Asif doing culturally at Paymetric to fuel growth. (14:18)
7. How did the Francisco Partners deal come to fruition? (16:55)
8. Asif talks about the customer make up. (22:55)
9. What’s some advice for an entrepreneur who wants to turn around a business today? (25:00)
10. What happened after the deal went through? Celebrate!!! (28:51)
11. Asif shared some operational guidelines that Francisco Partners brought with them. (31:06)
12. Asif walks us through the Vantiv acquisition and transitioning to the larger team today. (33:15)
13. Asif shares about the $150M investment fund geared towards startups. (35:14)
14. Asif shares about his civic and community investments. (37:02)
15. Asif looks ahead at the next 10 years. (39:24)
16. Why Atlanta and what has Atlanta done for Asif? (40:45)

How you can get involved:

Visit atlantaventures.com/studio if you’re interested in learning more about Atlanta Ventures and the Studio.

Where you can find us:

Website: www.atlstory.com

Twitter: @theatlantastory

Instagram: @theatlantastory

YouTube: Here

Subscribe to the newsletter here.