In today's episode, Ryan Zauk sits down with Jodan Ledford, CEO of Smart USA. Smart is a retirement tech provider and one of the largest global recordkeepers with strategic investors J.P. Morgan, Legal & General, Barclays, the Link Group, and Natixis, today launched in the US. Smart’s enters the US with over 70,000 retirement plans already on its platform -- on par with the US’ second-largest recordkeeper. It is entering the US market in response to the SECURE act. Smart’s recordkeeping and ...
Mar 19, 2021•28 min
Miguel Armaza is joined by the one and only, Marcelo Claure, CEO of SoftBank Group International, and all-around fascinating business leader and entrepreneur. Born and raised in La Paz, Bolivia, Marcelo immigrated to the US for college and later founded Brightstar, a company he built into a global category leader and also became the largest Hispanic-owned business in US history. Most recently, Marcelo, alongside Softbank Chairman & CEO Masayoshi Son, oversees the strategic direction of Softb...
Mar 17, 2021•36 min
Miguel Armaza is joined by the very interesting Gretchen Howard, Chief Operating Officer at Robinhood, one of the most defining fintech companies of 2021, best known for aiming to democratize investing for everyone and popularizing commission-free trades. Founded in 2013 by Vlad Tenev and Baiju Bhat, Robinhood has grown to one of my most recognizable household fintech brands over the last few months with more than 13 million clients. However, the company’s journey has not always been easy and wi...
Mar 15, 2021•32 min
Miguel Armaza is joined by Richard Sarkis, serial entrepreneur, Executive Chair, and Co-Founder of Reonomy, a commercial real estate data and analytics platform. Since inception in 2013, the company has raised over $130 million in equity from leading industry investors like Georgian Partners, Softbank, Citi Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, Fintech Collective, and many more... Rich is also a proud graduate of our very own Wharton School In this episode, we discuss: - His journey as a repeat entre...
Mar 14, 2021•29 min
Former podcast host, Daniel McAuley, is joined by former podcast guest, Andy Rachleff — Co-Founder & CEO of Wealthfront, the only company that integrates banking and investing to automate your savings. We discuss: - Andy’s storied and career as both an investor and entrepreneur - His experience coming out of retirement to found Wealthfront - The ride of day trading app such as Robinhood - Whether payment for order flow is good for retail investors - The current crypto bull run - Market bubbl...
Mar 12, 2021•32 min
In today's episode, Ryan Zauk sits down with Eric Shoykhet, Founder & CEO of Atom Finance. Atom Finance is the fastest-growing investment research & portfolio management platform, backed by the likes of Greycroft, General Catalyst, and FlatIron’s Zach Weinberg. Think of it as the "Bloomberg Terminal" for the retail investor and prosumer. Their DAU has grown over 300% since the pandemic. While working on Wall Street, Eric identified the massive information gap between enterprise platforms...
Mar 10, 2021•29 min
Happy International Women's Day! In today's episode, Ryan Zauk sits down with Chi Chi Wu, Attorney at The National Consumer Law Center. Since 1969, the nonprofit National Consumer Law Center has used its expertise in consumer law and energy policy to work for consumer justice and economic security for low-income and other disadvantaged people in the U.S. Chi Chi is a Harvard Law Grad who fights for consumer protections in Massachusetts, Washington DC, and around the country, with a focus on cred...
Mar 08, 2021•31 min
In today's episode of the Wharton Fintech Podcast, Anchit Gupta (WG'21) is joined by Lindsay Holden, Co-Founder & CEO of Long Game. Long Game is a gamified personal finance app for Millenials that encourages saving through fun rewards and cash prizes. Before starting Long Game, Lindsay Holden co-founded the Applicant Auction, the primary auction for Top Level domain names, which held over $500M in auctions before being acquired. Before that, she helped launch Formation 8, a venture capital f...
Mar 07, 2021•18 min
Miguel Armaza is joined by two great guests, Brooks Gibbins and Gareth Jones - Managing Partners and Co-Founders of Fintech Collective, a global early-stage venture capital firm focused on technology startups with the potential to reimagine financial services. We discuss: - Their entrepreneurial background and why they eventually decided to switch from operators to investors - Challenges of launching a Fintech focused fund in 2012 - Their decision to invest beyond the US and why they are excited...
Mar 05, 2021•37 min
“If Robinhood exists to democratize markets, Commonstock exists to democratize information.” Ryan Zauk sits down with Commonstock Founder & CEO David Mcdonough to learn how Commonstock is creating a community that amplifies insights from top investors, backed by the performance and portfolio of their linked brokerage accounts. Community members can link their existing brokerage accounts and share their real-time portfolio, performance, and trades (by percent only - $ amount is never shared),...
Mar 03, 2021•31 min
Miguel Armaza is joined by the fascinating Milind Mehere, serial entrepreneur, and Founder/CEO of YieldStreet, a digital wealth management platform that aims to transform the investing landscape by enabling individual investors to invest in classes such as Real Estate, Marine Finance, Art Finance, Legal Finance, and Commercial loans. The company has raised over $180M in equity and debt from top VCs including Edison Partners, Greycroft, and Raine Ventures. They discuss: - His successful entrepren...
Mar 01, 2021•34 min
Aquiline’s Vincenzo La Ruffa - Driving Value Creation in Financial Services Miguel Armaza sits down with Vincenzo La Ruffa, President of Aquiline Capital Partners and head of their financial technology group. Aquiline was founded in 2005 and is a private investment firm based focused on businesses across the financial services sector with almost $6B in assets under management. Vincenzo is also a proud alum of our amazing Wharton and Penn school. We talked about - Vincenzo’s career path - Fintech...
Feb 28, 2021•26 min
In our latest episode of the Wharton Fintech podcast, Anchit Gupta (WG'21) is joined by Phil Edmundson, CEO & Founder of Corvus Insurance. Founded in 2017, Corvus is a leading provider of smart commercial insurance products powered by AI-driven risk data. Corvus finished 2020 at a $100M annual premium run rate, capping off a year that was marked by meteoric growth for the company. In addition to Corvus, Phil is also the Managing Partner of Edmus Ventures where he invests in InsurTech compani...
Feb 26, 2021•33 min
Worlds collide today as the two gold-standards of fintech content come together on the Wharton Fintech Podcast. Ryan Zauk sits down with Simon Taylor, Co-Founder and Head of Ventures at 11:FS, a challenger consultancy and emerging fintech empire. They help the world’s top founders build financial services products, conduct highly customized market research, bring PMs behind the scenes of various fintech applications, and of course have their own media arm. In today’s episode, Simon and Ryan dive...
Feb 24, 2021•37 min
Miguel Armaza is joined by Michael Seibel and Dalton Caldwell, Managing Directors and Group Partners at Y Combinator (YC). YC is one of the most successful startup accelerators and venture capital funds, and since March 2005 has helped over 5,000 startup founders build and launch companies like Stripe, AirBnB, DoorDash, Dropbox, Reddit, and the list goes on and on… This was a fascinating conversation and Michael and Dalton talked about lessons learned from their years of experience with YC, what...
Feb 22, 2021•39 min
Miguel Armaza sits down with Manuel Silva, General Partner at Mouro Capital, a venture capital fund with $400m assets under management, looking to back the most innovative fintech innovators and startups across North America, Latin America, and Europe. We talked about: - Manuel’s career path and what led him to venture capital - History of Mouro Capital and why they recently decided to spin out of Santander Bank - Mouro’s investment strategy - Investing in global fintech – regions and markets wh...
Feb 21, 2021•26 min
Miguel Armaza sits down with Dan Rosen, Partner and Founder of Commerce Ventures, a sector-focused VC fund, investing in infrastructure and enablers for the Commerce Continuum Dan is also an alum of our very own, Wharton School. We talked about - Dan’s background and why he decided to build Commerce Ventures - The evolution of the fintech industry over the last 20 years - Commerce Ventures investment process - Their approach to building sector theses - The importance of talent, diversity, and me...
Feb 19, 2021•34 min
Ryan Zauk sits down with one of the crypto world's most popular figures, Mike Dudas. Mike navigated a long career spanning Disney, Google, Venmo, and Circle before founding The Block, one of the world's premier research and news sources for all things crypto and blockchain. Mike recently stepped back into a Chairman role at The Block, moving to Paxos as their VP of Stable Coin Business Development. The Block: https://www.theblockcrypto.com/ On today's episode, Mike and Ryan discuss: - The Venmo ...
Feb 17, 2021•35 min
Miguel Armaza sits down with the talented and energetic Alexa von Tobel, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Inspired Capital, a $200M early-stage venture capital firm based in New York City, focused on backing founders with transformative ideas, brilliant teams, and relentless determination. The firm was founded by Alexa and Penny Pritzker, former U.S. Secretary of Commerce. Prior to Inspired Capital, Alexa founded LearnVest with the goal of helping people make progress on their money and later ...
Feb 15, 2021•35 min
This episode comes from the LendIt Fintech Latam 2020 conference. It features Miguel Armaza’s conversation with Pierpaolo Barbieri, Founder & CEO of Ualá, one of the fastest-growing fintechs in Latin America. We discuss: - Digitization of cash and the incredible progress of mobile wallets in Latin America. - The role of the regulator and why some governments are starting to embrace the fintech industry. - Fueling e-Commerce – how fintech companies are bringing millions of new users to transa...
Feb 14, 2021•29 min
Welcome to a very special Valentine’s Day episode of the Wharton FinTech Podcast! Today, Ryan Zauk sits down with the always-entertaining NYT Bestseller and Oprah collaborator, Neale Godfrey, to discuss Love and Money. Neale and Ryan dive into: 3:20 - The disasters that can arise from delaying that money conversation until marriage 7:30 - Strategies and tips for having the conversation 9:30 - How to split your finances in single and dual-income couples without building resentment 18:00 - A lot a...
Feb 12, 2021•33 min
Miguel Armaza sits down with the fascinating Ben Narasin, Venture Partner at New Enterprise Associates (NEA), a global venture capital firm focused on helping entrepreneurs build transformational businesses across multiple stages, sectors, and geographies. Founded in 1977, NEA has received nearly $24 billion in cumulative committed capital since day one. Ben is not only a prolific investor but also a celebrated founder who launched fashionmall.com in 1993 and took the company public six years la...
Feb 10, 2021•38 min
On today’s episode, WFT covers one of the two certainties of life…and no, we’re not talking about taxes. Ryan Zauk is joined by Dan Garrett, Founder & CEO of Farewill, the UK fintech radically changing the way we deal with death (from the financial side, of course). You might be asking, what does death have to do with fintech? Well, 1 Trillion Pounds of assets will be transferred intergenerationally in the next decade in the UK alone. And wills are the primary method of transfer. Farewill is...
Feb 08, 2021•31 min
In today's episode, Ryan Zauk sits down with Erin (Welter) Lyons, W'01, Head of US Investment Grade Credit at CreditSights. Creditsights is one of the top credit research firms in the world serving the world’s top institutions, family offices, and more while producing over 300 research reports a month. Erin and Ryan discuss: - Her journey from Wharton, to Wall Street's top institutions, to landing at CreditSights - What she saw during the COVID crisis, especially March 15 - April 15, how her tea...
Feb 07, 2021•29 min
In today’s episode, co-hosts Ryan Zauk and Miguel Armaza sit down with tech’s most beloved politician, Mayor Francis Suarez of Miami. For those not familiar, in 2020 numerous prominent VCs and founders began a great migration to Miami. On Twitter, Founders Fund's Delian Asparouhov tweeted "What if we moved Silicon Valley to Miami?" Mayor Suarez then tweeted 4 now famous words - "How Can I Help?" And the rest is history. Ryan, Miguel, and Mayor Suarez discuss the past, present, and future of Miam...
Feb 05, 2021•14 min
Miguel Armaza sits down with Brian Requarth, a seasoned entrepreneur who in 2009 launched the Brazilian real estate marketplace, Viva Real, successfully grew the business over the following decade, and sold it in 2020 for over half a billion dollars. His recently-published book Viva the Entrepreneur is a fascinating modern guide designed to inspire and inform current and aspiring Latin American entrepreneurs. However, the book is just as applicable to founders from Silicon Valley to rest of the ...
Feb 03, 2021•40 min
Miguel Armaza sits down with James Paris, CEO of Avant, one of the pioneer in online lending dedicated to providing banking solutions for the US middle. Since 2012, Avant has served over 1.5 million customers with over $6.5 billion in loans and 400,000 credit cards. The company has also raised over $600 million of equity capital from General Atlantic, JP Morgan, Peter Thiel, Ribbit Capital, DFJ, Tiger Global, QED, August Capital, and many more! We talked about: - James’ background as a tradition...
Feb 01, 2021•38 min
Miguel Armaza sits down with Ben Savage and Adriana Saman, from Clocktower Technology Ventures, a fintech-focused venture capital fund that’s also the technology investing affiliate of Clocktower Group, a global macro investment firm. Ben is a fintech entrepreneur turned investor with an MBA from Stanford University and Adriana got her Bachelors from our very own University of Pennsylvania. We discussed: - Their backgrounds and what led them to Venture Capital - Clocktower’s investment strategy ...
Jan 31, 2021•43 min
Ryan Zauk sits down with NYU Stern's Dr. Sabrina Howell to discuss her most recent paper titled 'Which lenders had the highest minority share among their PPP loans?' Though the answer may not surprise you, the data, methodology, reasoning, and implications might. In the wake of the PPP, there was a lot of scrutiny into who was getting (and not getting) access to crucial government aid. Gatekept by financial institutions, from Wells Fargo to fintechs, small businesses were at the mercy of institu...
Jan 29, 2021•35 min
Miguel Armaza sits down with Jackie Reses, former Head of Square Capital, current Chairman of the Economic Development Council of the Federal Reserve of San Francisco, board member of Affirm and Wish (Context Logic), and all-around business and fintech leader. Some of her past roles also include Chief Development Officer at Yahoo and Board member of Alibaba. She’s also a proud alum of our very own Wharton School. We talked about - Jackie’s upbringing and professional background - Why she describ...
Jan 27, 2021•39 min
