# Jareau Wadé

> Jareau Wadé is a payments entrepreneur, operator, and writer who has spent roughly 15 years building commerce and payments infrastructure. He co-founded Balanced (acquired by Stripe in 2015) and helped scale Finix as its Chief Growth Officer, and now leads product partnerships at Ramp. He writes Batch Processing, a widely-read newsletter dissecting the people, companies, and ideas driving fintech. A Tucson native and UPenn-trained electrical engineer who taught in Ghana before the Bay Area, he relocated to Atlanta and invests in and advises early-stage founders, with a focus on Black entrepreneurship.

- **Role:** Head of Product, Partnerships at Ramp
- **Organizations:** Ramp, Batch Processing, Collab Capital, Finix, Balanced, Pinterest, Tilt, Milo.com, Arcadia, Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST)
- **From:** Tucson, Arizona, USA
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** BSE, Electrical Engineering (also studied entrepreneurship), University of Pennsylvania
- **Known for:** Co-founded Balanced, an early payment facilitator and pioneer of the two-sided marketplace payments model in the US; acquired by Stripe in 2015, Helped build and scale Finix as Chief Growth Officer, Author of Batch Processing, a leading independent fintech newsletter praised by executives at FIS, Clearco and others

## Career timeline

- **post-college** — Teaching fellow / founding faculty at the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) in Accra, Ghana
- **2009-2010** — First employee and head of data acquisition at Milo.com (acquired by eBay in 2010)
- **2010-2015** — Co-founder and Director of Growth at Balanced, a payments API for online marketplaces; acquired by Stripe in 2015
- **circa 2016** — Led commerce and visual-search business development at Pinterest; also worked at Tilt (acquired by Airbnb)
- **2019-2024** — VP of Marketing & Growth, then Chief Growth Officer at Finix
- **2023** — Launched Batch Processing newsletter; consulted with climate-tech firm Arcadia on fintech strategy; EIR at Collab Capital
- **2024** — Joined Ramp to lead product partnerships

## Achievements

- Co-founded Balanced, an early payment facilitator and pioneer of the two-sided marketplace payments model in the US; acquired by Stripe in 2015
- Helped build and scale Finix as Chief Growth Officer
- Author of Batch Processing, a leading independent fintech newsletter praised by executives at FIS, Clearco and others
- First employee at Milo.com, managing roughly 60% of staff and designing core data-acquisition systems before its eBay acquisition
- Hired Richie Serna, later Finix CEO, as an engineer at Balanced
- Built emergency-personnel GPS tracking systems while studying electrical engineering at Penn

## Latest updates

- **2024-10** — Announced he had joined Ramp to lead the product partnerships team.
- **2024** — Made all Batch Processing posts free, keeping a $5/month patronage tier.

## Links

- Website: https://www.jareau.me/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jkwade/
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/jkwade
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jareauwade/

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/jareau-wade
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-06-03