Lex interviews Alisa Chinedu of Remita - a payment solution platform that helps individuals and businesses make and receive payments, pay bills, and manage their finances; making it key to supporting the Nigerian payments and fintech ecosystem. discussing the company's role in enhancing the Nigerian fintech ecosystem. Alisa delves into Remita's functionality, strategic corporate partnerships, and its integral position in commerce and e-commerce. The discussion then proceeds to analyze Nigeria's ...
Jun 02, 2023•41 min•Ep 115•Transcript available on Metacast Lex chats with Eric Barbier, CEO of Triple-A. Triple-A operates as a crypto payment gateway that allows businesses to accept crypto payments. In this discussion, Eric and Lex discuss the origins and growth of Triple-A, detailing its evolution and journey through the complex world of cryptocurrency payments. Eric delves into the intricacies of building a successful crypto payments infrastructure, from risk management and liquidity to the significance of robust banking relationships and compliance...
Jun 02, 2023•36 min•Ep 116•Transcript available on Metacast Lex chats with Anish Acharya - a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz. Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) is a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley, California, that backs bold entrepreneurs building the future through technology. Anish and Lex analyze the impact and adoption of disruptive platform shifts, before charting a journey through FinTech from innovative startups to high-profile acquisitions. Additionally, shedding light on Credit Karma's growth strategies and user behavior. Finishing off w...
May 19, 2023•45 min•Ep 114•Transcript available on Metacast Lex chats with Jacqueline Kennedy, Chief Operating Officer at Quicknode - a Web3 infrastructure platform, that helps developers and businesses build, launch, and scale blockchain-powered applications (dApps). In this episode, Jackie and Lex touch on understanding cloud infrastructure companies like DigitalOcean and AWS, understanding developer, client needs and commercial outcomes across different lines of the Web3 infrastructure business, and a deep dive into the confluence of computational and...
May 12, 2023•42 min•Ep 113•Transcript available on Metacast In this conversation, we chat with Alain Meier , the Head of Identity at Plaid. Plaid builds a data transfer network that powers fintech and digital finance products. Plaid's product, a technology platform, enables applications to connect with users’ bank accounts. Alain has spent the past decade problem-solving in all things digital identity. He was a founding member of the Stanford Bitcoin Group and went on to start identity verification company Cognito, which was acquired by Plaid. Topics: fi...
May 05, 2023•37 min•Ep 112•Transcript available on Metacast Lex chats with David Hoare, the CTO and co-founder of Codat - a universal API platform that connects small businesses to banks and other financial platforms. Together they discuss the value behind data aggregation, API integrations, SME enablement via APIs and the complexities involved in connecting large institutional businesses to API platforms. Additionally, Dave breaks down how the COVID-19 pandemic created an unexpected opportunity for Codat to help large banks deliver funds to smaller busi...
Apr 28, 2023•38 min•Ep 111•Transcript available on Metacast Lex chats with Antonio Juliano, founder and CEO of dYdX - a crypto derivatives trading platform that caters to professional traders outside the U.S. It averages roughly $2 billion in daily trading volume (Coinbase does about $5 billion). Antonio shares his experience working at Coinbase since 2015 when Bitcoin was dominant and Ethereum was new to the game. Together, they discuss how decentralized exchanges and automated market makers made it easier for individuals to provide liquidity and trade ...
Apr 21, 2023•46 min•Ep 110•Transcript available on Metacast Lex chats with Padman Perumal, CEO of Masttro. Masttro is a privately-held FinTech company that delivers a truly global wealth technology ecosystem to wealth owners and their trusted advisors. In this episode, they discuss the differences between wealth management, private banking, brokerage and banking, as well as the challenges of providing a consumer-grade digital experience for wealth management. Masttro serves ultra-high net worth clients to manage their complex investments by aggregating d...
Apr 14, 2023•43 min•Ep 109•Transcript available on Metacast Lex chats with Dave Balter about the complexities of building data products on the blockchain and the importance of understanding human relationships and reality when building startups. They also discuss Flipside Crypto – a platform that builds business intelligence via a suite of analytics tools that provide insights into user behaviors, developer activities, and financial health, to crypto organizations – and MetricsDAO – a community of Web3 data analysts who provide blockchain projects with o...
Apr 07, 2023•44 min•Ep 108•Transcript available on Metacast Lex chats with Christopher Goes, co-founder of Anoma and Cryptium Labs. Initially, they explore the current centralized monetary system, how it disconnects from physical changes, and the need for technology to evolve with the complexity of our financial systems. Following this, they deep dive into the differences between privacy-preserving and data-obscuring technology, and how privacy is important for citizens, governments, and communities. Ethereum, Cosmos, and Anoma have a shared vision, but ...
Mar 31, 2023•47 min•Ep 107•Transcript available on Metacast Lex chats with Arno Castillo, founder and CEO of CrunchDAO. CrunchDAO is a research team of data scientists and quants that leverage the power of collective intelligence and Web3 to produce and sell next-generation predictive financial insights. In the discussion, Lex and Arnaud touch on decentralized asset management, data science, building portfolios, and web3 organizations. Arnaud shares his background in finance, including his experience working at Lehman Brothers and Deutsche Bank, as well ...
Mar 24, 2023•39 min•Ep 106•Transcript available on Metacast Lex chats with Calvin Liu, the Chief Strategy Officer at EigenLayer, about his journey in investment banking, working for a financial regulations consulting firm, and transitioning to entrepreneurship. Calvin delves deep into the inner workings of EigenLayer, a restaking protocol for Ethereum, and the importance of focus, incentives, and integration in the crypto industry. Additionally, they discuss the early days of crypto lending protocol, Compound and working for Robert Leshner (Compound's fo...
Mar 17, 2023•46 min•Ep 105•Transcript available on Metacast Lex chats with Siddharth Batra, Co-founder at X1 Card, about his experience in technology and software development. X1 is a FinTech company that has created a smart credit card and has become one of the top 100 credit cards in the US with a waitlist of 600,000 people. Together, they discuss how Sid has articulated his consumer product building learnings from his experience as head of engineering at Twitter to revolutionise the traditional credit card into a B2C financial super app. Touching on X...
Mar 10, 2023•43 min•Ep 104•Transcript available on Metacast Lex interviews Hristo Borisov, CEO and co-founder of Payhawk, a leader in B2B payments and expense management. Together, they discuss the evolution of product development, from mobile apps to platforms that solve customer problems. Touching on the 2017 trend of chatbots and the practical uses of this technology today via ChatGPT. Additionally, Hristo expands on the company he founded in 2018 - Payhawk, a Fintech company that automates financial functions for businesses, highlighting the importan...
Mar 03, 2023•40 min•Ep 103•Transcript available on Metacast Lex interviews Kaito Cunningham, Co-founder and CEO of Utopia Labs, the modern system for managing contributor payments, expenses, and more for your DAO, supported by communities such as FWB, Sushiswap, and PleasrDao. Together, they touch on what a DAO really is and how the theoretical concept has evolved over time. The true benefits of transparency and verification have not been brought to fruition, and its Kaito's mission to do that with Utopia Labs, bringing true DAO tooling to the next gener...
Feb 24, 2023•39 min•Ep 102•Transcript available on Metacast Lex interviews Michele Tucci, the Managing Director in North and Latin America and Chief Strategy Officer of CredoLab, the largest developer of bank-grade digital credit risk scorecards based on mobile device data. Together, they touch on digital banking, digital credit, as well as the intersection between financial services, telecoms, and technology more. MENTIONED IN THE CONVERSATION Credolab's website: https://bit.ly/2XBhDgk Michele's Linkedin profile: https://bit.ly/3KfeHwU Topics: Fintech, ...
Feb 17, 2023•41 min•Ep 101•Transcript available on Metacast Lex Sokolin continues his Build It Series, focusing on the differences between B2C and B2B strategies, and on the implementations of some foundational marketing principles. He discusses branding and the two ways of doing it right. Then he dives into the various programs that can be implemented to generate demand, from content, to social media, to paid acquisition. Finally, he touches on the importance of CAC and LTV, in particular during a year like 2023. MENTIONED IN THE CONVERSATION Fintech Bl...
Feb 10, 2023•40 min•Ep 100•Transcript available on Metacast Lex interviews Dean Tribble, co-founder and CEO of Agoric. Agoric is a Proof-of-Stake chain utilizing secure JavaScript smart contracts to rapidly build and deploy DeFi, comprised of a team who are experts in smart contracts. Agoric was founded on open-source principles which look to build a public economy. Dean is considered a technical genius and a long-time developer around blockchain, smart contracts, as well as a number of other technology initiatives MENTIONED IN THE CONVERSATION Agoric's ...
Feb 03, 2023•45 min•Ep 99•Transcript available on Metacast Lex interviews Stephen Balavan, the CEO of Lambda Labs, a company that provides GPU servers, workstations and cloud services for training neural networks. Stephen talks about his background in computer science, economics, and deep learning, and how his interest in AI began with reading Neuromancer by William Gibson. He discusses the history of AI research, the concept of perceptron, and the breakthrough of deep learning in 2012-2014 that enabled machines to recognize and categorize images better...
Jan 27, 2023•42 min•Ep 98•Transcript available on Metacast Lex interviews Sean Bennett, the co-founder and CTO of Stronghold, a Fintech company. Sean started out as an independent software developer, building software for clients. This experience led him to entrepreneurship and he used his skills to tackle the problem of remittance. He created Coinex, a stable coin issuer on the Ripple network, which allowed people to send money cheaply and quickly. However, early regulatory challenges and user adoption issues meant that the project was not successful. ...
Jan 20, 2023•40 min•Ep 97•Transcript available on Metacast In this podcast, Lex interviews William (Bill) Capuzzi, CEO of APEX, a Fintech company transforming financial services. Bill talks about his journey from studying environmental science to working in the financial industry, first at the banking and trading divisions of DLJ, then at Pershing where he learned the "bowels" of the industry, and then at Convergex where he learned about the importance of disrupting the trading technology. He then talks about buying Apex from Peak6 and his understanding...
Jan 13, 2023•41 min•Ep 96•Transcript available on Metacast In this conversation, our Editor-in-chief Lex Sokolin walks through how 2023 is the year for executing on raw fundamentals, which means understanding how to design a Fintech or DeFi business model and understanding the shape of demand. Companies must focus on customer centricity and use a Lean Startup methodology to validate ideas and assumptions. This is done by testing products and services with prospects, using digital landing pages, and buying Google Ads to drive people to those landing page...
Jan 06, 2023•52 min•Ep 95•Transcript available on Metacast In this conversation, we chat with Jesse Proudman, the VP of Crypto Investing at Betterment, who was also the co-founder and CEO of Makara. Proudman shares his journey of building a web-design business, which eventually morphed into a cloud computing service and was later acquired by IBM. He then explains his interest in blockchain and the business he built to manage crypto portfolios, which led to the creation of the private cloud product. He discusses the challenges of the public internet vers...
Dec 23, 2022•44 min•Ep 94•Transcript available on Metacast In this conversation, we chat with Jarred Ward, CEO and co-founder of Twisp. Ward has been tasked with building nearly every part of the modern financial ecosystem, from a greenfield core banking stack, direct integrations with Visa and the card networks for card issuing, and later, building a banking-as-a-service API on top of BBVA’s global core. Ledgers are the detailed records of transactions and money movement for every fintech, yet they are continuously reinvented for every product. The pro...
Dec 16, 2022•48 min•Ep 93•Transcript available on Metacast In this conversation, we chat with Will Beeson, who currently works at Standard Chartered Ventures. Previously, Will was the Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer at digital bank BELLA, as well as, a Principal at Rebank, a fintech advisory firm. Will’s banking entrepreneurship streak doesn’t end there, he co-founded Allica, a digital bank for businesses in the UK. We discuss the evolution of the banking-as-a-service sector, and in particular the challenges of infrastructure providers when their fin...
Dec 09, 2022•38 min•Ep 92•Transcript available on Metacast In this conversation, we chat with David Shuttleworth, the managing director of token engineering at Binance. Prior to this, David was a Senior DeFi Economist at ConsenSys, where he focused on mechanism design, tokenomics, and protocol design. David’s experience is extensive and includes leading the development of the Medical Advanced Analytics team at GlaxoSmithKline and was a data scientist at various stage startups in FinTech and predictive analytics. David also conducted research in behavior...
Dec 02, 2022•40 min•Ep 91•Transcript available on Metacast In this conversation, we chat with Adam Nash, the co-founder & CEO of Daffy – a new fintech platform focused on charitable giving. Adam has served as an executive, angel investor, and advisor to some of the most successful technology companies to come out of Silicon Valley. He is currently on the Board of Directors for Acorns, the country’s fastest-growing financial wellness system, and Shift Technologies (Ticker: SFT). Adam has previously served as President & CEO of Wealthfront. He has held ex...
Nov 25, 2022•43 min•Ep 90•Transcript available on Metacast Timestamp 1’24”: From the US Secret Service to fraud control at Visa - what kickstarted this journey? 3’58”: Transitioning from the public to the private sector and building an electronic crimes task force 6’15”: The goals of payment network VISA relative to the e-commerce in which it participated 9’15”: Dispelling the myths around risk in e-commerce and how these narratives evolved into crypto 14’15”: The definition of a security engineer and how hackathons are used to counter vulnerabilities 1...
Nov 18, 2022•41 min•Ep 89•Transcript available on Metacast In this conversation, we chat with David Beiner, Co-Founder and CEO of Hume – a web3 entertainment company pioneering music in the metaverse. David’s background is in media strategy working with companies like Comcast/NBC and MGM. In 2017 he went down the Ethereum rabbit hole and never looked back. Hume’s community-building approach blends music, digital identity, and storytelling to develop virtual artists, or metastars. Hume goes beyond just the music and production of their virtual artist lik...
Nov 11, 2022•42 min•Ep 88•Transcript available on Metacast In this conversation, we chat with David McFarland, co-founder and CEO of Coterie Insurance – a US- based insurance entity focused on making risk transfer efficient for the small commercial P&C insurance space. Coterie uses industry-leading tech, deep insurance expertise, and product innovation to embed insurance into their partners’ existing products and workflows, leveraging data from multiple sources to turn small commercial accounts from an unprofitable obligation to a profitable opportunity...
Nov 04, 2022•37 min•Ep 87•Transcript available on Metacast 
