"Amazing team members can be true game changers to a business"
Welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview with Nichole Montoya, the CEO and co-founder of Cheddar Up. In this illuminating discussion, Nichole takes us on a journey through the world of simplified group payments and financial management.
With a strong background in management consulting and a passion for finance innovation, Nichole found inspiration for Cheddar Up while seeking a better way to handle payments and paperwork as a working parent. This led her to create a robust platform that simplifies how groups collect payments and information.
Cheddar Up’s focus on flexibility and user-friendliness has made it a gamechanger for organizations of all sizes. By replacing traditional paper forms and checks with streamlined digital solutions, Cheddar Up is revolutionizing the way groups manage their finances.
Join us as we delve into Nichole’s insights on recent achievements, employee satisfaction, and the future of online business. Discover how Cheddar Up is transforming group payments under Nichole Montoya’s visionary leadership.
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Table of Contents
We are thrilled to have you join us today, welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview! Let’s start off with a little introduction. Tell our readers a bit about yourself and your company.
Nichole Montoya: Certainly. I’m the CEO and co-founder of Cheddar Up. Prior to Cheddar Up, I worked in management consulting at Accenture and KPMG. I had the idea for Cheddar Up when I was consulting for a fintech company – so I had finance innovation on the brain!
I also had two young daughters at the time and I found myself writing a lot of checks and filling out a lot of paper forms, and I thought there had to be a better way. The output of that frustration was Cheddar Up!
Cheddar Up is a robust platform focused on simplifying how groups collect payments and information. We’re laser focused on creating software that is both flexible and easy to use for groups and organizations of all sizes.
In the past year, what is the greatest business achievement you’d like to celebrate with your team? Please share the details of that success.
Nichole Montoya: Our business is growing a lot right now, so there are many things I could point to – like our team’s ability to react, expand, and adapt alongside our business growth.
But outside of that, what comes to mind for me is a large new feature set that is a gamechanger for our users – our new Sign Up forms. Cheddar Up is known for helping group organizers collect both payments and forms together. We have normal forms, we have waivers…and now we have Sign Ups.
The Sign Up form type is a complex feature set, that we’ve contemplated building for a while. It’s also a feature that many of our users were requesting and are excited about. The great news? Feedback from our users has been phenomenal, which is a key sign of success.
What advice do you wish you had received when you started your business journey and what do you intend on improving in the next quarter?
Nichole Montoya: Creating and growing Cheddar Up – like any business – has been a journey. The early days were the hardest.
Back then I would have benefited from the advice that every business and market is different and there is truly no “right way” to do things. Being in the tech space, the startup scene often entails a fair amount of groupthink. When we broke out of doing what was expected, we truly began to thrive.
As it relates to the next quarter, we are excited about a new ticketing feature that’s currently in progress to further enhance how our platform can be used for events.
Online business keeps on surging higher than ever, B2B, B2C, online shopping, virtual meetings, remote work, Zoom medical consultations, what are your expectations for the year to come and how are you capitalizing on the tidal wave?
Nichole Montoya: When it comes to online business, I expect more of the same. I do not foresee a change or reduction in this trend. Covid fast forwarded the trend of online payments for our business by magnitudes and we see no signs of that changing.
Once you move payments online – once you experience that efficiency and lift in funds collected – it’s difficult to revert back to outdated methods. For our business, that means ongoing innovation to make it even easier and more convenient for groups to collect payments and information online.
While we recently released Sign Ups, Cheddar Up has more large features in the works over the course of the next three quarters that will give our users even more ways to use our platform as well as more ways to put their collected funds to work.
Business is all about overcoming obstacles and creating opportunities for growth. What do you see as THE real challenge right now?
Nichole Montoya: In a business like ours, one thing that sets you apart, in addition to a brilliant product, is the ability to acquire new users. Today’s consumer is inundated with information, which means the traditional means of user acquisition and online advertising are less effective than in the past.
We’re fortunate in that we have a great deal of organic growth due to the built-in viral nature of our product (e.g., someone pays on Cheddar Up, loves the experience, and then takes it to their team or troop or club as a recommended platform).
That said, we’re also becoming quite savvy at leveraging that virality to fully maximize it, in addition to a myriad of other cost-effective user acquisition strategies that we’re constantly testing, measuring and refining.
In your experience, what tends to be the most underestimated part of running a company? Can you share an example?
Nichole Montoya: Two things come to mind. First, pure stamina. Oftentimes. entrepreneurs start a company without realizing just how long it may take to build and grow their vision. In some cases it can take decades with a lot of ups and downs along the way.
I sometimes joke that not knowing this is a good thing when starting out; but more often than not, it takes longer than you expect. The second is finding great talent. Amazing team members can be true game changers to a business.
They can be the difference between success and failure. Recognizing when you need to make a team change and/or knowing when is the right time to seek out additional talent – it’s never easy, but it’s critical.
What does “success” in 2023 mean to you? It could be on a personal or business level, please share your vision.
Nichole Montoya: Business growth is, of course, a focus for us every year. In addition to that, 2023 is a “year of building” for Cheddar Up. Even though our platform is already extremely robust, we set some pretty aggressive product goals for the year – having mapped out massive new features that we know our users will appreciate.
We have two new large feature sets still under way. Success for us in 2023 will be achieved upon their completion.
Jed Morley, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Nichole Montoya for taking the time to do this interview and share her knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Nichole Montoya or her company, you can do it through her – Linkedin Page
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