The Price Of Lost Freedom
With Eric Barbier, founder & CEO of Triple-A.
$38 million. That’s the price of lost freedom. In 2010, Eric sold TransferTo, the company he had founded just four years earlier. But the victory came with a bitter aftertaste. Perhaps it had all happened too quickly. Caught in an earn-out that tethered him, Eric—who had spent only a few years as an employee—suddenly found himself at the helm of a business unit within a sprawling multinational corporation. Three years went by. Each day, his entrepreneurial spirit clashed with corporate processes. But behind the scenes, an escape route was forming. Soon, he would have the chance to pick up where he had left off.
***
Eric is no stranger to exits. In 2006, he had already sold Mobile 365, a company he co-founded. The buyer was Sybase, which would later be acquired by SAP. The deal, $425 million.
Eric and his family were living in Singapore, having left Paris a few years earlier to grow Mobile 365’s presence in Asia—and to escape the long Parisian winters. But the idea of lounging on the beach with cocktails and passively investing from a deckchair never even crossed his mind.
That same year, he founded TransferTo. His vision was to enable migrants to send small amounts of money back home by recharging their family’s prepaid mobile phones. After two years, the business started gaining traction. But to scale, Eric needed to raise funds—a significant challenge at the time. The subprime crisis was looming, and the venture capital scene in Singapore was still in its infancy. Eric turned to the world of corporate VC, securing funding from Ingenico. The French company, a global leader in payment terminals and publicly listed, acquired a 20% stake in the business. “I know some people don’t like corporate VCs, but I think they’re a great way to raise funds. They’re less focused on valuation and can also serve as a potential exit. Fundraising isn’t all about Sequoia.”
“The mistake all these crypto guys make is acting like cowboys—‘Oh, crypto isn’t regulated, it’s different.’ I thought, no, we need to be cleaner than clean. Get licenses, operate within strict regulations.”
Ingenico was a hardware company, and at the time, it was looking to expand into service offerings. The investment made sense, and soon enough, the company wanted to go further. They decided to acquire TransferTo for $38 million. It was 2010—just four years after the company’s inception. An offer “you can’t refuse.” One that promised to fulfill his lifelong goal of financial independence. “When I was 15, I watched my father lose his job. At that moment, I vowed, ‘That will never happen to me.’”
This kind of exit is the stuff of dreams for most entrepreneurs. But unexpectedly, it turned out to be one of the hardest periods of his life. “I was a bit depressed for a year. I had achieved my goals, and on top of that, I had just sold the ‘baby’ I had built.”
The deal also came with a lengthy three-year earn-out. Eric went from being an entrepreneur to an employee of a large corporation—a tough transition. He took the opportunity to move to the United States to develop the business there. Gradually, he made peace with the sale, finding motivation in building the business in a new market. But it was never quite the same.
***
It’s 2014. The earn-out is coming to an end. By then, the reasons Ingenico had acquired TransferTo had evolved. “We were generating high revenues but with low margins. At the time, Ingenico was focused on growing its revenue. But by 2014, the trend had shifted—stock market analysts were more interested in margins.” So Ingenico decided to sell TransferTo, as it was lowering the group’s consolidated margin. However, for various reasons, the sale never really materialized. That’s when Eric received a call from one of his former investors: “Wait a minute, why don’t we buy it back?” Eric didn’t hesitate for a second and returned to his favorite playing field: entrepreneurship.
The deal was finalized, and soon, TransferTo’s operations were split into two distinct lines of business. The first was the original airtime product, an unregulated service. The second was a regulated money transfer product. Over time, these two businesses would separate entirely, giving rise to DT One and Thunes, respectively. This duality was far from simple. “We ended up with two businesses under one roof: one was profitable but slow-growing—the airtime segment—and the other had much greater potential. But we couldn’t find investors who liked both businesses.”
A few years later, following disagreements with the majority investor over the company’s direction, Eric decided to step away. He hired and trained a COO to take over, a move he felt entirely at peace with. “When I sold it the first time, I really struggled emotionally. But this time, I only owned 10% of the company. I had already, in many ways, distanced myself from the ‘baby.’”
This time, Eric didn’t immediately dive back into entrepreneurship. But that didn’t mean he planned to spend his days “in sweatpants playing PlayStation.” Instead, he began investing in various companies and offering his expertise as an advisor. He joined the boards of Sleek and AMEEX and became executive chairman at PayTop. It was enough to keep him busy, but it didn’t fully satisfy him. “Pretty quickly, you think, no, damn it—I want to take the wheel. Giving advice is fine, but I wanted to be the one executing.”
Four years after his last venture, a new chapter began: Triple-A.
***
This time, Eric turned his attention to crypto—a market he had started exploring while still at TransferTo, later known as Thunes. “On Friday evenings at work, the engineers usually played video games. But one day, I noticed they weren’t playing—they were mining. They explained Bitcoin and crypto to me, and I bought my first cryptocurrencies from one of my engineers.”
Initially, crypto was a punk movement, championing freedom and rejecting central authority, like central banks. From the outset, Eric took the opposite stance. “The mistake all these crypto guys make is acting like cowboys—‘Oh, crypto isn’t regulated, it’s different.’ I thought, no, we need to be cleaner than clean. Get licenses, operate within strict regulations. You’re first and foremost a payment institution, and then you use crypto rails to execute payments because it’s more efficient.”
It’s been four years since Triple-A was founded. The slogan: Pay and get paid globally, in local and digital currencies.The company enables businesses to send and receive payments in both fiat and digital currencies, anytime, anywhere, without directly handling them. Triple-A holds licenses in Singapore, France (for Europe), and the United States. The company has raised $15 million and is trusted by over 20,000+ businesses. This time, Eric is in no rush. “I’m aiming to take this as far as possible. I believe we’re in an enormous market. Stablecoin payments have the potential to disrupt a significant portion of cross-border payments.”
As I wrote this newsletter, I spent a lot of time thinking about the angle to take. Was there a particular moment in Eric’s story that offered a singular, standout lesson? In the end, I chose to share the entirety of his journey. To me, it’s a powerful reminder of the importance of having a purpose in life. Achieving a goal—an exit—isn’t an end in itself; it’s crucial to keep evolving. And finally, it underscores that life—and entrepreneurship in particular—is full of highs and lows, where persistence is the only thing that truly matters.
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