Layers of conviction

Originally written: November 11, 2025

This is the original note I sent to friends and family. I wrote it on my flight home to New York City after spending four days in San Francisco interviewing with the Natural team.

The timeline

Monday Nov 3 | Mumbai

I am eating breakfast at the Taj in Mumbai, India. I pull out my phone and scroll through my Twitter bookmarks, as I often do during breakfast. My first bookmark is a memo on agentic payments from some startup called Natural.

I read said memo — the one this startup uses to raise a $9.8m seed. I am impressed by it. It is cohesive, but what stands out most is the writing of the author. Someone that good with words usually has many other traits I like.

I email Kahlil, the author of said paper. I tell him I work at Method and previously worked at another lesser-known startup named Stir. I tell him I like what he is working on and would like to chat, though I am not actively looking for new opportunities. He emails me back. Surprising to me, he references some of my past work at Stir that is no longer public and calls it ‘iconic’.

Tuesday Nov 4 | Mumbai

I chat with Kahlil at 1:30am local time. We talk about my time at Stir, payments, and how he is thinking about building Natural. I reference one of his company values which is wanting to be the best. We bond over this athlete mentality. So few people seem to be explicit about it in the technology field. Kahlil wants me to meet Walt (Co-founder) tomorrow.

Wednesday Nov 5 | Bangkok

I get bored of Mumbai so I book a same-day flight to Bangkok. I land around 11:00pm and chat with Walt at 1:00am local time. We talk about his side of Natural’s founding story. Then talk about what I am working on at Method. This leads to an ad-hoc portfolio review. I pull up messy Figma files and walk him through some things I am working on. He asks me meaningful questions with little context on Method, which impresses me. Walt wants me to meet Eric (Co-founder, CTO) in the next few hours.

I chat with Eric at 4:30am local time. We talk about what engineering excellence looks like to him: the type of engineering culture he wants to build. He rambles, but passionate rambling. I ask him oddly specific questions about things I have seen go wrong within engineering organizations. He fields the questions well.

Immediately following my call with Eric, I get an email from Walt. He asks me when I can come to San Francisco for a four day work trial. I tell him I still have six days of my trip left in Asia. I also have a messy November, so the earliest I can get out to San Francisco is the first week of December.

I think about it a little more, then email him back: ‘I can cut my trip short right now and get on the next flight out from Bangkok to San Francisco.’ Before he sends an email back, I get an email from Hyatt: ‘Walt has booked a room under your name...’

I get on the next flight to San Francisco.

What stood out to me

If you know me, you know I care about the small things. Natural cares about the small things in ways that make me challenge my perception of what that means in a company setting:

On my first call with Kahlil, he mentions he is looking for new office space. He has toured 14 offices, number 15 tomorrow. I ask him why so many. He says he does not like the lighting in any. The lighting. I tell him I work in a WeWork. He says great work can not come out of WeWorks. How can you feel inspired, he asks.

I fly from Bangkok to San Francisco, a 16 hour journey. I land in San Francisco at 9am and am supposed to head to the office for the on-site. I am exhausted and feel disgusting. I go to drop my bags off at the hotel. Check-in is not until 4pm. It is 10am. Turns out someone called beforehand to arrange a 10am check-in time for me.

I am walking to the office. I get a text from an unknown number. It is Mason from Equinox. He says Natural has created a 3 day pass for me at any of their locations. I go all 3 days.

I walk into the office. I am shown to my desk. There are 4 unboxed items: a Macbook M4 Pro, keyboard, trackpad, and mouse. Charger is already plugged in and through the wire hole. Two monitors — both Studio Displays – lined up perfectly.

I open my new temporary work email. I see 108 unread emails. Turns out that any email that gets sent out is bcc’d to everyone internally. I see investor conversations, potential new hires.

I come in the next day. I see a new face — [TBA]. She did her work trial last week. She got an offer. Has yet to sign or give her 2 weeks. But she is at the office working on ledgering. She is there with us that night until 11pm.

The team

Kahlil is CEO and Co-founder. He is a product and design guy. He started a YC company that did transaction splitting for couples and sold it. He is an athlete. Kahlil has exceptional taste. He is 28 but has been in fintech for a while.

Eric is CTO and Co-founder. Him and Kahlil are childhood friends. He co-founded that YC company with Kahlil. He is an engineer’s engineer; he has strong opinions on what engineering excellence looks like. He also likes basketball.

Walt is a Co-founder. He and Kahlil met at Berkeley. Walt graduated Berkeley at 19 and went on to work at Nextdoor. He was there for six years as a staff engineer. He is also an athlete, skiing at a national level. Walt is easy-going and thoughtful.

Gabby is Head of Marketing. She and Kahlil were neighbors in Los Angeles. She was Head of Social at Alo and Rhode. Never worked in tech, knows little about financial technology, so far. But 30 minutes with her in person told me she gets it.

Kendall is a founding engineer. Him and Eric met as undergrads. Kendall founded a YC company before joining Natural and worked at another small startup. He cares a lot about family and food, like me. He is also incredibly inquisitive, both at work and outside.

[TBA] is an engineer. She and Walt worked together at Nextdoor for 6 years. [TBA] is one of the best engineers Walt knows. We did not chat much, but I really like her energy. Seems fun to work with.

Momentum

Besides team, nothing matters to me more than momentum. Natural has a lot of it. Similar to Ramp, they count every day with intentionality. Today is Day 91. The next twelve months will determine whether this company is something or nothing.

One of the days during the work trial, Kahlil gets a call. It’s from [REDACTED – T1 INVESTOR]. A few minutes into the call he puts it on speaker. All of us are listening. Partner at [REDACTED] talks about wanting to invest in the next round.

A few minutes later, bcc’d on an email with [REDACTED - ANOTHER T1 INVESTOR]. They express wanting to meet in person and get in on the next round.

Natural is not formally raising. The seed was a few weeks ago, closed in 3 days. There is no fundraise deck — just that memo.

My bet

If you know me, you know I often talk about wanting to be a founder someday. Few people ever ask why. The lure is not because of status. It is because I get to steer the ship the way I want. If we are wrong, I am wrong.

Working at Natural is the closest I can get to being a founder without being a founder. There is nothing but a strong thesis on how things should be in the world. I believe in that thesis.

If being a founder means you get a 10 on the decision making scale, I will be at a 9. That has never been the case for me at any company. At Stir, I was early but lacked the know-how. At Method, I was early and accumulated the know-how. At Natural, I will be early and come in with the know-how.

I believe in this team. This is the most talent dense team I have met in a very long time. Everyone at Natural knows each other from past lives. They are able to speed-run through decisions that most teams get caught up on. I have been around them for four days and am willing to bet (as I am) they will outwork anyone. There are risks, but I do not believe execution risk is the biggest one.

This is the team I want to be on at this point in my career. And this is the company I will do my life’s work at.

If you are interested in working at Natural or just want to chat and learn more, reach out: devan@natural.co.