Aiga Senftleben

Co-Founder, Billie GmbH

I am what I like to call an ‘Accidental Founder’. One evening in 2016, my Co-Founders, Matthias Knecht, Christian Grobe, and I sat around the table in my living room and discussed some ideas for potential fintech businesses. We talked about pain points in the B2B payments ecosystem—and Billie was born. 5 years after founding, Billie is now the leading provider of Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) for B2B e-commerce, and continuously working on new ideas to improve B2B purchasing.

As a licensed attorney, I am responsible for Legal and Compliance as well as the People department at Billie. Corporate Culture, Diversity, and Equality are topics especially close to my heart.

Previously, I led the legal departments of fintech startup Zencap / Funding Circle as General Counsel. My career started at a major law firm before I ventured into payments and e-commerce at PayPal and eBay. Fintech remains very exciting to me because you work closely with a product that has very interesting legal challenges. Also, I love being an entrepreneur. During my time at PayPal, I quickly realized that I prefer working in a smaller, more dynamic company with more responsibility for its strategy and general management.

My focus topics include start-up regulation and more specifically financial regulation. I also advocate overdue changes for Germany and Europe as a financial location and digitization gap, as well as female leadership and equal rights in companies.