Founders Everywhere: Oban MacTavish
Oban MacTavish is the co-founder and CEO of Spade, a fintech offering real-time merchant intelligence for the card ecosystem.
Welcome to Founders Everywhere, where we highlight the incredible people behind the companies we’ve backed at Everywhere Ventures, a global pre-seed fund supported by a community of 500 founders and operators.
Most of us swipe, tap, or insert our credit and debit cards every day without a second thought - whether it’s grabbing coffee, getting groceries, or shopping online. But behind every transaction is a complex flow of data that banks rely on to process payments, detect fraud, and offer those sweet rewards programs we all love. Unfortunately, the quality of this data is often messy and outdated, making it difficult for banks to understand who is making a purchase or where and how money is being spent. This lack of clarity can hinder fraud detection and the personalization of customer experiences. With the widespread use of cards, it’s important to have efficient systems in place to handle the vast amount of transaction data generated, ensuring that both consumers and banks can benefit from secure and insightful financial interactions. Spade is a fintech company that enhances the quality and clarity of transaction data. In less than 50ms, Spade’s API enriches any card transaction with a detailed merchant profile built from real data sources to provide precise merchant identities, categories, and geolocation details. This data helps banks and fintechs quickly verify transactions, reduce fraud, and offer more tailored services to customers, ultimately improving the efficiency and security of card use.
Co-founder and CEO Oban MacTavish studied finance and founded his first company right out of college. He spent time as a startup consultant afterward, before founding Spade in 2022. He teamed up with his co-founders, CTO Cooper Hart, a high school friend and the first engineer at his previous company, and Tess Bloch, Head of Operations. The three co-founders have vast experience in the fintech space and are bringing their expertise to Spade’s mission to power the future of finance with superior financial data.
What inspired the creation of Spade?
I founded Spade after my first company in vertical SaaS. My experience there, especially during COVID-19, taught me a lot about being a founder. Later while consulting for Fintech companies both small and unicorn status, I noticed they all had a recurring issue with poor transactional data, particularly in the card universe, which led to the creation of Spade.
What's Spade’s North Star?
We’ve all seen on our banking app or online form the summary of charges that often just look like a jumbled string of text, and you can’t quite make out what that purchase was for. It’s shocking to think that because of the data infrastructure created in the 1960s that we still rely on today, that same bit of info is all the banks know too! This in turn creates problems for everyone else downstream from the banks. Our North Star is to tackle this massive issue by improving the underlying data infrastructure of payment systems. The goal is to replace antiquated data transmission methods and create immense value by modernizing transaction data. More simply put, I never want a bank or consumer to see that confusing string of text ever again.
How does Spade inspire “customer love”?
Our product enhances data infrastructure in three main areas: authorization (reducing fraud and false declines), attribution (accurate rewards attribution), and analytics (providing insightful customer experiences). These capabilities help financial institutions improve customer outcomes and personalize services.
What sets Spade apart?
Unlike competitors who rely on models like entity recognition, we are backed by real data covering 99.9% of card-accepting businesses in the U.S. Our approach is deterministic and operates in real-time, offering unmatched accuracy and speed.
What’s on the horizon for Spade?
We plan to explore new data types and partnerships that can enhance our offerings. We're particularly interested in collaborating with entities that can provide valuable insights for banks to make better-informed decisions. We have exciting announcements coming soon regarding new customers and partnerships.
Any favorite books?
I really liked A Man for All Markets by Edward O. Thorp and found it incredibly fascinating. Thorp essentially "beat blackjack" by inventing card counting. He then applied his mathematical genius to the world of investing and the stock market. The book is not only an engaging read but also serves as an inspiring example of a life lived in pursuit of diverse and complex challenges.
Fun fact:
I love to cook!
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