Derek Webster, the Founder and CEO of CardFlight is our special guest this week on episode 96 of the Leaders in Payments podcast. Derek was born and raised in California, moved to Washington D.C. and attended Georgetown University. He was an intern and then a product manager at eTrade before going to business school at Stanford. He currently lives in New York City where he founded CardFlight in 2013.CardFlight powers a product called SwipeSimple that is used by 80,000 small businesses in the United States. Their hardware and software products are distributed by over 80 different partners including merchant acquirers and ISOs. They are tech and customer-first focused and are partnership led.  During the pandemic CardFlight launched the weekly CardFlight Small Business Report – it become the source of truth for how small businesses were faring during the pandemic for both investors and small businesses themselves.  On a personal note, he loves sailing and still races competitively and more recently has taken up kite surfing.