I've Built This Before.
At Scale.
Ospina is Carlos Rico-Ospina's Manhattan-based consulting practice for revenue-stage founders and operators who need risk systems, data infrastructure, and revenue engines built and shipped.
I founded, built, and scaled a fintech platform from zero to $200M+ in revenue in three years — no funding, no playbook, entirely bootstrapped. I engineered the risk systems, payment infrastructure, and operating backbone from scratch. Now I bring that hard-won pattern recognition to 2-3 partners at a time who want execution, not advice.
The "Secret Weapon"
People keep calling me the "secret weapon." Not because I have a magic formula — because I look at a dataset and see what the business should do next. The pattern recognition is fast, and it's been right often enough that people remember.
I co-founded and scaled a fintech platform from $0 in 2021 to over $40M in 2022, then $136M in 2023, crossing $200M+ in cumulative revenue by early 2024. We operated in 150+ countries, across payment, risk, and compliance environments that rarely had clean answers. A lot of the time there was no vendor to call, no academic framework to rely on, and no existing playbook to copy. So I built from first principles: defensible assumptions, tight feedback loops, and systems designed to hold up under real pressure. A lot of what I chose then still shows up in how the category operates now.
The model eventually hit structural limits — providers leaving, business model challenges the industry imposed. That failure taught me more than the success did. I know what scales and what breaks. What looks like growth and what's actually just burning runway.
I'm not a consultant who hands you a deck and walks away. I'm an operator who builds the thing, ships it, and stays until it works. If you need someone who's done this before, end to end, that's the engagement.
What I Bring to the Table
Not services. Capabilities built through years of building and scaling real businesses.
Data Speaks. Most Can't Listen.
The data usually tells you what's about to break. Most teams just don't know how to read it. I built monitoring across a dozen processor relationships that surfaced concentration risk before a single termination could threaten the business. That kind of early signal detection helped protect a company that went on to generate $200M+ in cumulative revenue.
- Monitoring across 12+ processor relationships
- Concentration risk detection before single points of failure became existential
- Early warning systems that helped protect a business through $200M+ in cumulative revenue
Revenue Is Architecture
Revenue at scale is engineered. I built the payment infrastructure, risk controls, and operating systems behind $200M+ in cumulative fintech revenue. When pricing, routing, underwriting, and retention are designed as one system, growth compounds instead of leaking through the cracks.
Risk Is Mispriced Information
Risk is often just information other people haven't interpreted correctly yet. During the USDC de-peg, I modeled the reserve exposure in real time and saw value where the market saw panic. The edge came from disciplined analysis under pressure.
Production or It Didn't Happen
Insight is worthless if it never reaches production. I've built systems that process millions of transactions, risk engines that analyze 89M+ trades, and operating tools teams actually use. Speed and quality are not tradeoffs when the architecture is right.
How I Work
Diagnose
I dig into your data, operations, and business model. I find the gaps, the opportunities, and the leverage points others miss.
Build
I don't hand off specs to other teams. I build the systems myself—or work directly alongside your team to ship.
Deliver
Working systems that generate results. Not prototypes, not proofs of concept—production software that makes money.
Let's See What's Possible
I take on 2-3 engagements at a time to go deep on each. If you think there's untapped value in your business, let's talk.
Start a Conversation