🎤 Full Interview: Brian Grech, Co-founder @ Corgi Labs
"There’s an epidemic of false declines. Every business selling online is leaving revenue on the table—and most don’t even know it."
Founder Story & Vision
Who they are & what they’re building
Brian Grech is the Co-founder of Corgi Labs, a payments intelligence startup on a mission to unblock revenue hidden in false declines. With leadership experience at JP Morgan, PayPal, and Bank of America, Brian has spent decades deep inside the payments ecosystem. At Corgi Labs, he’s building AI-powered models that help merchants recover lost revenue, reduce churn, and fight fraud with precision.
Why now & what’s the big bet
Fraud prevention models built for Silicon Valley giants don’t work for small and mid-sized merchants worldwide. False declines silently cost sellers 2–15% of their revenue, often without them realizing it. The market is shifting toward bespoke, AI-driven fraud prevention that adapts to each merchant’s unique data.
Brian’s big bet: the next wave of payments optimization will be AI tailored per merchant, not one-size-fits-all.
🧩 Real-World Use Cases
How it works in the wild
E-commerce merchants see 3–8% revenue lifts overnight by reducing false declines, with no extra marketing spend.
Subscription businesses plagued by failed renewals and payment disputes watch churn fall and retention rise once Corgi’s models go live.
Global SMBs finally get precision fraud protection built for their scale, instead of inheriting rules designed for Uber or DoorDash.
Corgi Labs’ step-by-step approach to unblock revenue: analyzing payments, detecting issues, reducing false declines, blocking fraud, and unlocking growth.
What you’ll learn:
How Brian navigated the leap from PayPal’s billion-dollar lending products to an early-stage AI startup.
A framework for building precision AI models tailored to specific customers.
The real tactics behind recovering lost revenue without extra sales or marketing spend.
Lessons on fundraising in today’s scarce capital markets and why teams need less VC than they think.
How Corgi Labs is solving the epidemic of false declines throttling online commerce.
Some Takeaways:
Build products that feel like Pixie Dust—so good merchants never leave.
Stop overestimating VC needs: with SaaS + AI, 5 people can do the work of 25.
The real growth lever in payments isn’t acquiring more customers—it’s recovering the ones you already have.
Tailor models to merchant data—generic fraud rules are revenue killers.
Founders should obsess less over “raising” and more on unlocking survival revenue.
Brian Grech’s playbook for founders and executives: five lessons on building sticky products, leveraging AI, tailoring models, and prioritizing survival revenue.
In this episode, we cover:
00:00 – Introduction & Brian’s background
05:45 – Lessons from PayPal Working Capital (building a $1B product)
15:30 – Why false declines are the silent killer of online sales
27:40 – Founding story of Corgi Labs & early insight
33:40 – Raising capital in a tough fundraising climate
39:00 – Bootstrapping lessons & why most founders overestimate VC needs
47:50 – New sales tools, fractional teams & lean startup execution
59:35 – Subscription businesses & recurring payments case study
1:06:00 – Why merchants with atypical models lose the most
1:15:50 – The future of fraud, risk & security in payments
1:18:00 – Closing thoughts & where to find Brian
For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email david@thehomabase.ai
Referenced in the Episode:
Find Case Studies of all other episodes here.
