Shivam

[Shivam @Shivam2291]

@nikunj @Yoroomie @PistonPay @marketplacevc Trying to fit in....

[Nikunj Kothari @nikunj]

I have been obsessed with closed payment loops for a LONG time, and have been looking to find a company trying to solve a real problem.. excited to finally back Piston (piston dot com) ⛽️

USA alone spends hundreds of billions in fuel. Most of that spend comes through cards (credit, fuel, or sometime house cards). However, a lot of these cards are not even tied to a particular driver. They often get stolen, skimmed, or misused. The fleet owner then has to eat the fraud and then spend a long time reconciling what exactly happened. The gas station has to pay interchange fees to accept the card, but has no relationship with the fleets on the other side. And a lot of companies have come and gone trying to optimize this infrastructure rather than thinking about it from the very beginning.

You really can't fix this issue by JUST building a better fuel card. The card is the problem, and so Piston decided to get rid of it. It moves the payment over its own rails without networks or any intermediaries. Piston pays the station and then invoices the fleet. Every transaction is tied to a specific driver with the time, location, and fuel type attached, and soon it'll be integrated with the vehicle itself.

The founders faced this problem themselves. @vik_sekhon runs his own fleet of trucks, and his fleet lost real money to fuel fraud. @Shivam2291 used to recruit thousands of drivers before the two of them got together to help build Piston. The best signal for how effective Piston is for fleets is the moment they switch over to Piston, they see their fuel spend automatically go down. I have seen so many charts and customer quotes that show this directly.

Customer love shows in the metrics. Payment volume has grown 8x and merchant network has grown 40x while retention has stayed above 98%. Piston is now live across 2,000 stations and across 48 states. Fleets pay nothing for it today and they get fraud prevention, which is what a card-based system cannot offer. Gas stations get direct access to fleets to help build loyalty and offer adjacent products.

To increase their reach, Piston is now directly integrated with POS of the majority of gas stations in America. This allows them to turn on hundreds of gas stations at once, secure supply and hence fulfill their already burgeoning demand.

Thrilled to be leading their Series A and joining the board, along with existing investors @sparkcapital & @pearvc. Special thanks to @arpans who introduced me to this team last year!

[Shivam @Shivam2291]

It’s always puzzled me how much fintech innovation has gone into better receipt scanning.

Somewhere along the way, I think we stopped thinking from first principles and settled for being distribution layers on top of legacy infrastructure. That may be easier to scale, but it also limits what you can fix for your customers.

@vik_sekhon and I felt that pain firsthand. After months of working through the problems, we realized we needed to build a new payment network ourselves. So two years ago, we started Piston.

Building a payment network is hard, often unglamorous work. It takes longer, and it takes conviction and patience. But we didn’t take this on to deliver a slightly better version of what already exists.

I couldn’t ask for a better co-founder than @vik_sekhon , or a better team to do this with. They show up every day to build something we all believe should exist. I don’t take that for granted.

Thank you to @nikunj . and the team at FPV for backing us, and to @ShravanGReddy , @arpans and the teams at @pearvc and @sparkcapital for their continued partnership.

I’m proud of what we’ve built. There’s a lot more we want to do, back to work.

[PistonPay @PistonPay]

We've raised $15M in Series A funding to build a new payment network for modern commerce. Led by @FPVventures , with continued support from @sparkcapital and @pearvc .

We're rebuilding payment infrastructure that moves trillions every year, and we're just getting started.

[Shivam @Shivam2291]

@Yoroomie My largest suppliers and customers.

[Shivam @Shivam2291]

@nikunj Your infant sleeps till 7:30? Please share your secrets.

[Shivam @Shivam2291]

Few outside India realize how institutionalized corruption is.

Few within India realize just how deeply broken the system has become.

[Ved Antani @ved_a]

https://t.co/dhzBwdq5jc - report bribes demanded from you.

[Shivam @Shivam2291]

There is a special place in hell for companies that force you to call to cancel a subscription. @ZipRecruiter

[Shivam @Shivam2291]

@ShravanGReddy Let me know when you hit 4

[PistonPay @PistonPay]

20863 Stevens Creek Blvd, Cupertino.

In 1977, this was Apple’s first office. Today, it’s where Piston is rebuilding fuel payments from the ground up.

America’s fuel networks are broken, bleeding fleet margins to fraud. We’re here to fix it.
#Fintech #FuelPayments #PistonPay

[Michael Bloch @michaelxbloch]

https://t.co/Sbr574u8fu

[Shivam @Shivam2291]

@padigoodspeed I mean.. it’s a beautiful home. But 600K above asking??

[Shivam @Shivam2291]

@padigoodspeed You went 600K above asking in a San Jose home listed for 2.8M?

[Shivam @Shivam2291]

@ankurnagpal The Comet Browser from @perplexity_ai is a lot better.

[Shivam @Shivam2291]

@nikunj @toddsaunders Claude Code already has native Vercel + Supabase integrations. It’s basically already there. Stopped using Replit months ago.

[Shivam @Shivam2291]

@NotionCoach @NotionHQ Agent

[Shivam @Shivam2291]

@johndlloyd @maticrobots + 1 !

[Shivam @Shivam2291]

@pedroh96 How did the merger come together? How long were you building the relationship with CapitalOne before this felt like a good fit?

[Shivam @Shivam2291]

@nikunj I don’t know about it saving us time. Feels like the more possibilities it unlocks, the more I find myself tinkering at 2am 😂

The future is going to be WILD

[Shivam @Shivam2291]

@pbteja1998 @SiteGPT what model are you using? Opus4.5?

[Shivam @Shivam2291]

@pbteja1998 @openclaw What model are you using? Is it OPIS 4.5 or something else?