Miguel Armaza sits down with Sam Bobley, Co-Founder and CEO of Ocrolus, an infrastructure company that transforms documents into data analytics with incredible accuracy designed to help financial services companies make high quality decisions at unprecedented speed. Sam started building Ocrolus in his parent’s kitchen when he was only 22 and seven years later, the company employs nearly 1,000 people globally and has raised close to $50 million in equity from top VC funds, including Stage 2 Capit...
Jan 25, 2021•32 min
Miguel Armaza sits down with Samir Chaibi, investor at Insignia Ventures Partners, a Southeast Asian growth and venture investing fund with over $350 million in assets under management, where he specifically focuses in backing fintech startups. Prior to Insignia, Samir spent many years working around the world and got his MBA at our Wharton School. We discussed: - Samir’s background and his path to venture capital - Company history for Insignia Ventures Partners, their investment thesis, and a b...
Jan 22, 2021•22 min
Miguel Armaza sits down with Eyal Shinar, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Fundbox, a company focused on disrupting the $21 trillion B2B commerce market by launching the world’s first B2B payments and credit network. Since its inception in 2013, Fundbox has raised more than $300 million dollars from leading investors like Khosla Ventures, General Catalyst, Spark Growth Capital, and Jeff Bezos. We talked about - Company origins - Customer acquisition and distribution strategies - Entrepreneur...
Jan 20, 2021•31 min
What happens after you hit “buy” on that $300 order of Shopify stock (worth over $1,100 as of the day of the episode)? Fractional trading has become one of the hottest product features in Fintech, democratizing access to expensive shares (AMZN, BRK-A, CMG, etc.) to everyday investors. In addition, they allow more precise and comfortable investing and budgeting, as people can designate a notional dollar amount toward a purchase. But how exactly do you buy .3 of a share? Enter Apex Clearing, a PEA...
Jan 18, 2021•36 min
Miguel Armaza interviews Kathleen Utecht, Managing Partner at Core Innovation Capital, a venture capital firm, with offices in Los Angeles and San Francisco, investing in high-growth financial technology companies that can unlock upward mobility for everyday Americans. Kat holds a Bachelor’s Degree from Babson College and an MBA from The Wharton School. We talked about: - Kat’s journey, from family upbringing, schooling, all the way to how she ended up in VC - Why she continues to be excited abo...
Jan 17, 2021•37 min
Miguel Armaza sits down with Laura González-Estéfani, Founder and CEO of The Venture City, a global accelerator and venture capital fund of emerging ecosystems specialized in growth with the mission to help entrepreneurs from all over the world. Prior to Venture City, Laura spent many years at Facebook, eBay, Siemens, and Ogilvy Group. We talked about - Laura’s career in big tech - Her decision to leave Facebook and launch the Venture City - The challenges of building a fund and why she believes...
Jan 15, 2021•29 min
Miguel Armaza sits down with Dan Henry, CEO of Green Dot (NYSE: GDOT), a 20-year-old company focused on making modern banking and money movement accessible for everyone. Green Dot also recently launched Go2Bank a digital bank for Americans living paycheck to paycheck. Green Dot is far from being Dan’s first rodeo. In fact, this is the third publicly listed company he’s led in the last three decades. He previously served as CEO of Netspend, a leading provider of prepaid debit cards, and led the c...
Jan 13, 2021•32 min
What do you think of when you hear “stock trading”? For most of us in 2020, we thought of YOLO Calls, Tesla Bulls, Robinhood, Wall Street Bets, and Day Trading. Going back to earlier days, you might think of men in suits on the phone, scrambling to buy & sell stocks. The culture of the market needs to change. Enter Public.Com, the stock investing app with a social, community-based focus making stock trading approachable (and free) for everyday people. On today’s episode, Ryan Zauk sits down ...
Jan 11, 2021•36 min
Miguel Armaza sits down with Andrew Lerner, Managing Partner of IA Capital Group, a New York-based private investment firm and manager of the Inter-Atlantic funds, that’s dedicated to partnering with innovative entrepreneurs in venture and growth capital across InsurTech and FinTech. Andy has been at the company since 1995 and is responsible for the day-to-day activities of IA Capital, and is a member of its investment committee. He holds a Bachelors in Electrical Engineering and Computer Scienc...
Jan 08, 2021•27 min
Miguel Armaza sits down with Dave Unsworth and Kerri Golden from Information Venture Partners, a Canadian Venture Capital firm that primarily invests in early-stage North American B2B FinTech and enterprise software. We talk about: - Dave and Kerri’s transition from operators to investors - IVP’s relationship with the Royal Bank of Canada - Fundraising from institutional LPs - The duo’s strategy to invest in the next generation of leaders - The importance of engineering a culture early on - Inte...
Jan 06, 2021•37 min
Miguel Armaza sits down with Noah Kerner, CEO of Acorns, a mobile savings and investment platform that has raised hundreds of millions of dollars from PayPal, Bain Capital Ventures, DST Global, NBC, Comcast, Greycroft as well as a long list of Hollywood celebrities including The Rock and Jennifer Lopez. Originally from New York City’s East Village, Noah is a 4-time entrepreneur who at one point DJ'ed for Jennifer Lopez, built a creative agency in his 20s, and is also a Co-Founder of the sharehol...
Jan 04, 2021•24 min
As 2020 comes to a close, we bring you a special episode featuring our hosts, Miguel Armaza and Ryan Zauk. You will finally get to hear from the hosts themselves as they share: - Some of the major trends they've seen after interviewing over 100 FinTech leaders. - Some funny anecdotes & growing pains. - The hyper-growth of Wharton FinTech. - Tips on turning a podcast into a rocketship. - And provide a sneak preview at what's ahead for 2021... Thank you to all of our listeners for your incredi...
Dec 30, 2020•36 min
"The most contrarian take I have is that there is value in working with consumers in debt." Here are a few stats for you: - The average US household as of November pays almost 9% of its income to debt - Total household debt reached $14.35 trillion this fall per the New York Fed - The average person in debt owes money to 4 different lenders The current process for debt collections -- a highly sensitive, case-by-case, and often life-defining financial situation -- has not evolved much in the last ...
Dec 28, 2020•33 min
Miguel Armaza sits down with Rohit Arora, CEO and Co-Founder of Biz2Credit, a New York based company that offers financing, research, and educational resources to small businesses. Rohit and his brother founded Biz2Credit in 2008 and in the last 13 yrs the firm has arranged $2B in funding and registered over 200,000 clients. They have also raised over $60M in equity and $300M in debt from investors including Westbridge Capital and Nexus Venture Partners. We discussed - Rohit’s journey scaling Bi...
Dec 23, 2020•33 min
On today’s episode, Ryan Zauk sits down with Kathryn Van Nuys, Head of Business Development for AWS FinTech. Kathryn was just named one of the Top 50 Women in FinTech by NYC FinTech Women, highlighted as one of the top network builders in the industry. Most of us know AWS as the cloud storage and computing behemoth, generating over $35B in revenue and the lion’s share of Amazon’s profits. However, AWS is much more than just cloud. It’s a tailored, industry-by-industry solution that is becoming c...
Dec 21, 2020•25 min
In this episode, my guest is Santiago Suarez, Co-Founder & CEO of Addi, the leading POS financing platform in Latin America, backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Foundation, Monashees, Quona, and Village Global. Prior to returning to his native Colombia to launch Addi, Santiago started his career in finance in New York City at JP Morgan, and later moved to Silicon valley for a leadership role at Lending Club. We talk about: - Santiago’s entrepreneurial fintech journey and fundraising experience - ...
Dec 20, 2020•42 min
Miguel Armaza sits down with Jan Bellens, Global Head of EY’s Banking & Capital Markets Group. In his role, Jan counsels banks in defining their strategies and supports their implementation with investments, acquisitions, and ambitious organic growth initiatives around the world. He has been supporting banks for the last two decades and has worked with clients in over 20 countries. We talk about: - Jan’s professional journey and what led him to his current role where he oversees 45k people -...
Dec 18, 2020•27 min
In today’s episode, Ryan Zauk sits down with Griffith Norville, Managing Director at Hamilton Lane. Over the last decade, the scope of private investments has exploded across products, asset classes, and geographies. LPs, often equipped with just a small investment team, are facing greater difficulty sorting through droves of funds, managers, trends, and data. Hamilton Lane and its cutting-edge product, Cobalt LP, are tackling this problem head-on. Griff is the Head of Cobalt LP, a software solu...
Dec 16, 2020•33 min
In today’s episode, Anchit Gupta (WG’21) is joined by Neeraj Khandelwal, Co-Founder of CoinDCX. Started in 2018, CoinDCX is India’s largest and safest cryptocurrency exchange and liquidity aggregator. CoinDCX offers users single-point access to a diverse suite of crypto-based financial products and services. Neeraj spearheads the technical development of all CoinDCX products. Prior to his role at CoinDCX, he served as Vice President of Engineering at Holachef and Chief Technology Officer at Door...
Dec 13, 2020•28 min
In this episode, my guest is Henrique Dubugras, Co-Founder & Co-CEO of Brex, a financial operating system for startups and growing companies, with services including a charge card, cash management, and controls in a single account. Originally from Brazil, Henrique built a payments company when he was only sixteen and in just three years grew it to process over $1.5 billion in processed transactions. Shortly thereafter, he co-founded Brex along with Pedro Franceschi. In this interview, we tal...
Dec 11, 2020•18 min
Miguel Armaza sits down with Allison Barr Allen, Co-founder and COO of Fast, an online login and checkout platform on a mission to make buying online faster, safer and easier. The company is backed by Stripe, Index Ventures, Susa Ventures, Global Founders Capital, and Brian Sugar. Prior to Fast, Allison held senior product roles at Uber, where her team launched and scaled Uber’s payments, risk, and compliance products globally. Before that she was a strategy consultant at PwC. Allison is also a ...
Dec 09, 2020•35 min
Miguel Armaza interviews Frank Rotman, Founding Partner of QED Investors, a Venture Capital fund that invests in early-stage, disruptive financial services companies around the world. Frank focuses on financial services and financial technology companies that are credit-oriented or have data analytics foundations at their core and his portfolio includes some of the fintech rockstars of our generation, including LendUp, Credit Karma, Avant, SoFi, and many more. We talk about: - Frank’s experience...
Dec 07, 2020•40 min
On today’s episode, Ryan Zauk is joined by Jess Liberi, Head of Product for eMoney, a Fidelity-owned company. eMoney is a company most people aren’t familiar with, but many have been affected by. eMoney is a software company that empowers financial advisors with the tools to create robust financial plans, set savings, investing, and spending goals, conduct cash flow analysis, and much more. eMoney is used by over 70,000 financial professionals across a wide variety of practices in the US, reachi...
Dec 04, 2020•33 min
Building Unicorns and Redefining Online Banking - Renaud Laplanche, Upgrade CEO/Co-Founder I sat down with Renaud Laplanche, co-founder and CEO of Upgrade, a neobank that offers affordable and responsible credit to mainstream consumers. Since inception in 2017, Upgrade has surpassed $100 million in revenue run rate and a billion-dollar valuation. The company is backed by some of the best VCs in the industry and has raised over $200M dollars in debt and equity, including Mouro Capital, Ribbit Cap...
Dec 02, 2020•30 min
Miguel Armaza sits down with Anish Acharya, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (A16Z), where he invests primarily in financial services and adjacent technologies. Prior to joining A16Z, Anish held multiple leadership roles at Credit Karma and before that he founded two different startups – SocialDeck (acquired by Google) and Snowball (acquired by Credit Karma). In this episode, we talk about his transition from operator investor; The evolution of his investing approach; Why all of his best c...
Nov 30, 2020•30 min
Miguel Armaza sits down with Hernan Fernandez, Founder and Co-Managing Partner at Angel Ventures, one of the oldest and most active Venture Capital funds in Latin America investing in early-stage to early-growth companies with business models tailored for the Latin American market. We talked about Hernan’s career, what drove him to leave the corporate world and launch one of the first VC’s in the region, his take on the entrepreneurial market in Latin America, and some of the trends and opportun...
Nov 29, 2020•38 min
Miguel Armaza sits down with Eric Satz, Founder and CEO of AltoIRA, a company on a mission to help individuals in the US access and execute investments in alternative assets using their retirement savings. We cover: - Eric’s journey from investment banker, to coffee shop owner, to venture capitalist, to AltoIRA founder. - What influenced him to pursue entrepreneurship throughout most of his life. - Why he thinks this is now a great time to invest in private companies. - The advantages of launchi...
Nov 25, 2020•39 min
In this episode, Miguel Armaza sits down with Jo Ann Barefoot, CEO & Founder of the Alliance for Innovative Regulation and host of the podcast Barefoot Innovation. Jo Ann is a famous advocate of “regulation innovation,” and is one of the most active and visible fintech leaders working to improve and modernize financial regulation around the world. She is also a Senior Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Center for Business & Government and in the past was Deputy Comptroller of the Curre...
Nov 24, 2020•33 min
Ryan Zauk sits down with Evgenia Plotnikova, Partner and Investor at Dawn Capital in the wake of Dawn's $400M raise in September. Dawn Capital is one of the premier venture firms in Europe and is focused on B2B Software and FinTech, investing mostly in Series A and B rounds for high-growth companies across Europe. Evgenia is a seasoned investor in both venture and private equity. Prior to Dawn, she was a VC at Atomico, where she spearheaded the firm's entry into France and worked with a number o...
Nov 23, 2020•32 min
In this episode, Miguel Armaza sits down with Matt Oppenheimer, Co-Founder and CEO of Remitly, a Seattle-based mobile payments platform enabling consumers to send and receive payments around the world that aims to provide the full suite of financial services to immigrants and migrants. The inspiration behind Remitly came when Matt was working in Kenya in 2010 and saw how difficult it was to send and receive money overseas. He began working on the problem immediately and has since grown the busin...
Nov 22, 2020•36 min
