Victor Cardenas

He grew up in Caracas, Venezuela. Caracas Chronicles wrote that his teenage years were affected by the beginning of Venezuela’s hyperinflation.⁠[1][2]

Caracas Chronicles wrote that he built his first “fintech” at his school’s cantina, which hyperinflation had forced to sell food without cash.⁠[1]

The Fintech Leaders interview post states that he moved to the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry at 18 to attend Stanford University; CriptoNoticias likewise wrote that he migrated from Venezuela to the United States at 18.⁠[3][4]

His Product HuntProduct HuntProduct Hunt is a product-discovery and launch community founded by Ryan Hoover in 2013 and operated by Product Hunt, Inc. Makers present new products, while users vote, comment and review them and discover tools through categories, forums and AI search. AngelList announced its acquisition in 2016; as of November 2026, its official website lists Rajiv Ayyangar as CEO.Open the full entry profile carries the name Victor Daniel Cardenas and the bio “Slash. Stanford CS. Venezuelan.”; the page shows that the account joined on August 19, 2020.⁠[5]

Introducing its podcast episode, Caracas Chronicles wrote that he built his startup during the Covid lockdown, developing a prototype and then finding partners to carry the idea forward.⁠[1]

In a signed post of April 2026 he wrote: “I started Slash at 18, in the middle of the pandemic.” He recounts persuading his co-founder Kevin to take a break from school and come to live with him in Los Angeles, and calls Kevin the smartest engineer he knew.⁠[6]

Accounts of when Slash was founded and how old he was differ: Y Combinator’s company page and SiliconANGLE give 2020 as the founding year, while Slash’s press release of April 2026 gives 2021; Fintech Leaders states that he started Slash at 19. Y Combinator’s page lists the founders as Kevin Bai and Victor Cardenas.⁠[7][8][9][3]

On March 12, 2021, Caracas Chronicles published episode 4 of the Venezuela Diaspora Project podcast, with him as the guest. The article’s standfirst calls him “a 19-year-old Venezuelan who built a tech startup during the pandemic,” and its body describes him as a sophomore at Stanford University and the co-founder of an app that it refers to by its account name, “@tabtabapp,” and that CriptoNoticias in 2026 wrote as Tab Tab; the app let users split with friends the cost of subscriptions and other recurring payments such as rent and utilities. The episode covers how growing up in Caracas shaped his experience as an entrepreneur.⁠[1][4]

His Product Hunt page lists Slash as a product he made, dated April 2021, with the tagline “Shared cards to split subscriptions, spend with friends.”⁠[5]

TechCrunchTechCrunchTechCrunch is an American technology news outlet founded in 2005 by Michael Arrington and Keith Teare and headquartered in San Francisco; it mainly covers technology companies, startups, and venture capital, and hosts events such as TechCrunch Disrupt. Its ownership passed successively through AOL, Verizon, and Yahoo, and in 2025 Regent announced its acquisition.Open the full entry wrote in May 2023 that he and Kevin Bai had built Slash about two years earlier, letting users create shareable virtual cards to split recurring costs; the cards were debit-based, open to anyone aged 13 or older and required no credit history, and teenagers adopted them quickly. Finextra wrote that the product became popular among teenage dropshippers on Discord, who used it to run business ideas rather than to split expenses such as Netflix and Spotify.⁠[10][11]

CriptoNoticias wrote that Tab Tab, his first failure, grew out of theoretical data about shared subscriptions that nobody was willing to pay for, and that instead of discarding the technology of his first project he reused its card-issuing engine for a new purpose.⁠[4]

The timeline on Slash’s official website states that the first transaction on a Slash card took place in 2021 and that the company graduated from Y Combinator’s S21 batch the same year.⁠[12]

He did not finish his studies at Stanford University: TechCrunch wrote that he dropped out of Stanford University and Kevin Bai out of the University of WaterlooUniversity of WaterlooThe University of Waterloo is a university in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, that opened in 1957 with engineering as its first faculty. Co-operative education, alternating academic and work terms, has been a guiding value since its founding; in October 1957 its first engineering students began what the university describes as Canada’s first educational work term.Open the full entry, and Fintech Leaders states that he dropped out two years after arriving in the United States.⁠[10][3]

In his April 2026 post he recalled that after several pivots the team met Brenden Truong, later Slash’s head of customer success, who taught them about the sneaker resale business, where the company first found product-market fit; within a year it had reached $5 million in annual recurring revenue and raised a Series A.⁠[6]

The timeline on Slash’s website places the $19 million in seed and Series A funding led by NEA in 2022, the year in which the company also launched its mobile app and a reseller card and its Discord community passed 20,000 members.⁠[12]

The Fintech Leaders post states that when the Series A closed about 90% of Slash’s customers were sneaker resellers and about 70% of all spending on Slash was driven by Yeezy products.⁠[3]

TNW wrote that Kanye WestKanye WestKanye West, who has called himself Ye since 2018, is an American rapper, record producer and fashion designer. He first made his name producing for artists including JAY-Z and released his debut solo album, The College Dropout, in 2004. From 2022 his antisemitic remarks led Adidas to end their partnership and social platforms to suspend him; after releasing the song “Heil Hitler” in 2025 his Australian visa was cancelled, and following an apology letter in January 2026 he was barred from entering the United Kingdom that April.Open the full entry made antisemitic statements in late 2022 and that Adidas then ended its partnership with him. Fortune wrote that Slash’s revenue then fell by about 80% almost overnight, and quoted him: “We had raised $19 million and hired all these people, but the market that was the bedrock of our company evaporated.”⁠[13][14]

The Fintech Leaders post gives the scale of the fall differently: it says that revenue cratered 60% over the following months, while in the question-and-answer part of the same post he says that the episode made his business crater 70%.⁠[3]

In his April 2026 post he described the disappearance of the sneaker resale market as both the company’s toughest moment and the best thing that happened to Slash.⁠[6]

On February 8, 2023, the Thiel Foundation announced its next class of 20 Thiel Fellows, listing him twentieth, with San Francisco, CaliforniaCaliforniaCalifornia is a U.S. state on the Pacific coast; its capital is Sacramento and its largest city is Los Angeles. California was admitted to the Union on September 9, 1850, as the 31st state. Its population at the 2020 Census (April 1, 2020) was 39,538,223, the largest of any state.Open the full entry, as his hometown; the announcement describes his project in these terms: Slash lets entrepreneurs who are 13 or older open a business bank account without an LLC in less than 10 minutes. The announcement states that the Thiel FellowshipThiel FellowshipThe Thiel Fellowship is a two-year grant program started by investor Peter Thiel and run by the Thiel Foundation that funds young people who skip or stop out of college to build new things instead. The program has been criticized by figures in education for encouraging young people to leave college.Open the full entry, launched in 2011, encourages young people with big ideas to start companies instead of attending college.⁠[15]

The Fintech Leaders interview post of 2026 also states that he is a Thiel Fellow.⁠[3]

On May 4, 2023, TechCrunch covered Slash’s seed and Series A rounds, which together came to $19 million from investors including NEA, Menlo Ventures, Connect Ventures, Y Combinator, Soma Capital and Global Founders Capital, with angel investors including PlaidPlaidPlaid is a financial technology company co-founded by Zach Perret and William Hockey and headquartered in San Francisco. It provides infrastructure connecting financial accounts with applications, with products spanning account verification, payments, lending and fraud prevention, and develops AI models for financial transactions. A planned acquisition by Visa was terminated in 2021.Open the full entry founder William Hockey and Tinder co-founder Justin Mateen. The article gives Slash about 20,000 customers and 23 employees.⁠[10]

In the article he said: “Slash isn’t built for enterprise — it’s built for self-employed Gen Z entrepreneurs.” He added that Slash’s goal was to make its products robust enough to give people the confidence to start their own businesses, and that it would like to help young entrepreneurs file taxes, issue invoices and incorporate businesses in one place; the article states that with the money raised the company planned eventually to grow its engineering, design and customer success teams.⁠[10]

TechCrunch wrote in the same article that Slash was FDIC-insured through its partner bank, Piermont Bank, and offered a hybrid business and personal account that keeps personal and business funds apart, with two MastercardMastercardMastercard Incorporated is a technology company in the global payments industry whose principal operating subsidiary was formed in November 1966. It is headquartered in Purchase, New York.Open the full entry-branded debit cards; users under 18 had to have a legal guardian take part in setting up the account. NEA partner Rick Yang said in the article: “We are excited to support Slash’s mission to create a zero-friction banking experience for the hustle economy.”⁠[10]

Finextra quoted him as describing “a rapidly growing group of very young entrepreneurs that’s been completely overlooked.”⁠[11]

The Fintech Leaders post states that after the fall in revenue he rebuilt the company around business banking for specific industries: it added the wires, ACH and QuickBooks integration its customers needed and, in its 2023 rebuild, began issuing credit cards instead of debit cards and processing directly with VisaVisaVisa Inc. is one of the world’s leaders in digital payments, with roots going back to 1958, and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.Open the full entry; by his account the company’s annualized revenue was about $10 million in January 2024.⁠[3]

Fortune wrote in May 2025 that over the previous 18 months Slash had reworked its existing infrastructure to serve other sectors, going after performance marketing agencies, crypto firms and HVAC operators, and that it let performance marketing firms create a separate account within its banking system for each of their end customers.⁠[14]

On May 20, 2025, Fortune covered Slash’s $41 million Series B at a $370 million valuation, led by Goodwater Capital; NEA had led the seed and Series A rounds, and its partner Rick Yang backed all three. The article gives Slash 35 employees and about $300 million a month processed on its cards, and says that he and Kevin Bai chose an industry-by-industry model over the all-industry approach of Mercury, Brex and Ramp.⁠[14]

In the article he said that more than 1% of all Facebook ads were bought with a Slash-issued card, and: “Then we can sneakily become one of the largest commercial credit card issuers in the country.” Fortune wrote that he credited part of Slash’s growth to its relationship with Column, which it describes as a chartered bank started by a Plaid co-founder and designed to work with technology firms; he said: “Of all the partner banks that we talked to, they’re the most thorough and they’re the ones that actually wanted to get to know our business the absolute best.” The article states that Slash planned to use the new funding to expand and take on new sectors, with him eyeing e-commerce, online travel and property managers as potential targets.⁠[14]

The timing and size of the round are given differently elsewhere: the timeline on Slash’s website places a $41.6 million Series B led by Goodwater Capital in 2024; ForbesForbesForbes is an American business media brand that began with Forbes magazine, founded by B.C. Forbes in 1917. It is known for rankings such as the Forbes 400, the World’s Billionaires list and 30 Under 30, and operates Forbes.com, ForbesLive events and licensed editions in 81 countries. Since 2014 a majority stake has been held by the Hong Kong investment group Integrated Whale Media; a 2021 plan to list on the New York Stock Exchange through a special purpose acquisition company was terminated in 2022. It is headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey.Open the full entry wrote that the company was valued at $370 million in a round in late 2024; and Slash’s press release of April 2026 states that the Series B was led by Goodwater Capital, NEA and Menlo Ventures.⁠[12][2][9]

The Forbes article presenting the 2026 30 Under 30 Finance list (published in Spanish by Forbes México on December 2, 2025) includes him and Kevin Bai, describing Slash as a digital bank for businesses that offers corporate credit cards, checking accounts and stablecoin payments, with about 2,500 clients and $6 billion in annualized transactions processed, up from $1.2 billion a year earlier.⁠[2]

On April 16, 2026, writing as chief executive, he announced that Slash had raised a $100 million Series C at a $1.4 billion valuation, bringing total funding to $160 million: Ribbit CapitalRibbit CapitalRibbit Capital is a venture-capital firm founded in 2012 by Meyer “Micky” Malka and headquartered in Palo Alto, California. It began with financial-technology investing and has expanded into AI, commerce and related infrastructure. Its investments include Coinbase, Robinhood and Nubank.Open the full entry led the round, Khosla VenturesKhosla VenturesKhosla Ventures (KV) is an American venture capital firm founded in 2004 by Vinod Khosla, the founding CEO of Sun Microsystems, and headquartered in Menlo Park, California. It made heavy early bets on clean technology, became OpenAI’s first venture capital investor in 2019, and its portfolio also includes companies such as DoorDash, Block (formerly Square), Impossible Foods, and Rocket Lab.Open the full entry and Goodwater Capital co-led it, and NEA and Y Combinator invested for the fourth time. Slash’s press release of the same day describes the company as based in San Francisco and founded by chief executive Victor Cardenas and chief technology officer Kevin Bai.⁠[6][9]

In the press release he said: “We went from $10 million to $250 million in annualized revenue in 24 months.” The release states that Slash passed $250 million in annualized revenue in 2025, that its stablecoin payments product exceeded $1 billion in annualized payment volume within nine months of launch, and that the platform powers more than $30 billion in annualized payment volume and serves more than 10,000 businesses; his own post gives more than 5,000 companies, as do SiliconANGLE and Fintech Leaders.⁠[9][6][8][3]

In the press release he also said: “This round lets us build the next layer of what Slash can do: more industries, more markets, more of the financial tools businesses actually need.” The release quotes three investors. Micky MalkaMicky MalkaMicky Malka (Meyer Malka in securities filings) is the founder and managing partner of the venture capital firm Ribbit Capital and earlier co-founded brokerage, banking and payments companies in Venezuela, Brazil and the United States; the Forbes Midas List has included him six times since 2021.Open the full entry, founder of Ribbit Capital, said: “The ratio of output to headcount is something we’re only starting to see from the best AI-native companies.” Jai Sajnani, a partner at Khosla Ventures, said that Slash “is building the financial operating system for a new class of business.” Eric Kim, co-founder and managing partner of Goodwater Capital, said that AI “is enabling a new generation of SMBs and solo entrepreneurs to operate at unprecedented scale.”⁠[9]

SiliconANGLE wrote that Slash’s customers include Bland Inc., Entry Inc., Triumph Labs Inc., Drink Nectar Inc. and Hike Outdoor LLC.⁠[8]

Slash’s press release of that day also presents Twin, its new AI-powered financial agent, which it says acts as an “AI Chief of Staff,” able to make direct card or bank payments, generate invoices and spin up new cards on a company’s Slash account. In his post he wrote: “By the end of the year, Slash will run your financial back office for you.”⁠[9][8][6]

TNW wrote that BloombergBloomberg L.P.Bloomberg L.P. is a global financial technology, data and media company founded by Michael Bloomberg in 1981. It began by providing terminal services that deliver data, analytics and news to financial professionals, and launched Bloomberg News in 1990. Michael Bloomberg has pledged the vast majority of the company’s profits to his philanthropic organization, Bloomberg Philanthropies.Open the full entry had covered the round and that the new valuation was nearly four times that of the Series B.⁠[13]

The podcast Startupable released an interview with him on April 19, 2026, under the title “The 25-year-old Venezuelan coming for US banks with AI | Victor Cardenas, Slash,” running 40 minutes. The episode description gives Slash $250 million in revenue and 65 people, says that it is profitable, that 2% of all Facebook ad spending runs through Slash, and that more than 5,000 businesses spend almost $10 billion a year on its corporate cards.⁠[16]

CriptoNoticias wrote in an article of April 24, 2026 that he had set out his business lessons on Emmanuel Rincón’s podcast “Locals”; the caption of the article’s photograph calls him a Venezuelan entrepreneur who, after leaving his studies at Stanford, turned a failed project into a financial platform valued at more than a billion dollars.⁠[4]

In June 2026, Fintech Leaders, hosted by Miguel Armaza, released a 52-minute interview with him and an accompanying post whose title says that Slash grew from $10 million to $300 million in revenue in a little over two years; the post states that, by his account, Slash’s annualized revenue rose from about $10 million in January 2024 to about $300 million.⁠[3]

The post states that Slash then had a team of roughly 70 people, of whom only two had left to join another company, and a single product manager; he says that Slash does not write its own roadmap and that its customers do. He tracks three metrics: card spend, interest-bearing assets under management and stablecoin payment volume. He says that Slash does not plan to seek its own bank charter in the next three to five years.⁠[3]

In the interview he said: “If you have very low opex, that gives you the right to be more aggressive in the rates you provide your customers.” The post states that more than 1% of all MetaMetaMeta (Meta Platforms, Inc.) is a publicly listed American technology company, renamed from Facebook in 2021, that operates social communication, digital advertising, virtual reality, smart glasses and artificial intelligence businesses.Open the full entry advertising spend flows through Slash cards, and in the Q&A he said that the share was by then higher than that; he also said: “The biggest way we’ve gone all in on AI is on internal tooling.”⁠[3]

On Venezuela, he said that the country has the potential to be the energy hub of the Americas and “I couldn’t be more bullish on Venezuela,” and encouraged American investors to explore investment opportunities there; the post states that he was not yet committing Slash to the Venezuelan opportunity.⁠[3]

As of November 2026, the “Meet our executive team” section of Slash’s website lists him as chief executive, alongside chief technology officer Kevin Bai, chief revenue officer Shaan Patel, and general counsel and chief compliance officer Mohit Gourisaria. The page quotes him: “At Slash, we’re building a new category of business banking that recognizes the fundamental differences between industries.”⁠[12]

The same page states that Slash is a financial technology company and not an FDIC-insured bank, with banking services provided by Column N.A.; it gives more than $30 billion in yearly payment volume, more than $160 million raised and more than 6,000 customers.⁠[12]

Speaking of Venezuela in the Fintech Leaders interview of June 2026, he said: “My family’s actually still there, so I’ve probably been back once or twice a year, every single year since I’ve left.” The post states that he was in Caracas the week before the interview for his brother’s graduation.⁠[3]

In the same interview he said that he hopes one day to find a way to go back and “contribute to my country in a meaningful way.”⁠[3]

The Fintech Leaders post states that he reads almost exclusively biographies and that his three most recent picks were on Napoleon, Alexander HamiltonAlexander HamiltonAlexander Hamilton (1755 or 1757–1804) was an American statesman, lawyer, and the first Secretary of the Treasury. He took part in founding the Bank of New York, co-wrote The Federalist Papers with James Madison and John Jay, and promoted policies on public credit, a national bank, and the development of manufacturing. In 1804, he died after being wounded in a duel with Aaron Burr.Open the full entry and Juan Vicente Gómez.⁠[3]

Slash: Official website: https://www.slash.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[17]

Thiel Fellowship: Official website: https://thielfellowship.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[18]