Around the Coin

In this episode, Mike Townsend interviews Bruce Pon the Founder of Ocean Protocol, a blockchain startup focused on bringing data and AI together since 2013. Previously, Bruce co-founded Avantalion, a consulting firm that helped to build 20 banks around the globe for companies such as Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, Mitsubishi & Jaguar LandRover. He has an Advanced Executive Certificate from MIT Sloan, a B.Sc in Engineering from the University of Saskatchewan, and has given guest lectures at Oxford, MIT Media Lab, Columbia University, and the European School of Management & Technology. In addition to being in the 2020 full-length documentary Cryptopia, Bruce was featured in Oxford University and Saïd Business School’s online Blockchain course as a guest expert and in ARTE’s The Digital Future. He’s given invited talks at World Economic Forum, MOBI Connect, CNBC, KuppingerCole, and more.Go to Blinkist.com/ATCOIN to start your 7-day free trial and get 25% off of a Blinkist Premium membership.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend chats with Adam Dell, CEO of Domain Money. Adam is a serial entrepreneur, most recently a partner at Goldman Sachs where he served as Head of Product at Marcus by Goldman Sachs. There he built foundational products like Marcus Invest, Marcus Checking, and the market-leading mobile application Marcus Insights. Prior to Goldman, Adam founded four companies, including Clarity Money, acquired by Goldman Sachs (GS); MessageOne, acquired by Dell (DELL), Buzzsaw, acquired by Autodesk (ADSK) and Civitas Learning, acquired by Francisco Partners. Adam served as an adjunct professor at both the Business School at Columbia University and the University of Texas School of Law. He holds a B.A. in Political Economy from Tulane University and a law degree from the University of Texas School of Law.Go to Blinkist.com/ATCOIN to start your 7-day free trial and get 25% off of a Blinkist Premium membership.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend chats with Nick Baum who is a Co-founder and the CEO at Tremendous. He started Tremendous in 2010, turning it from a small gift card company into a service used by millions around the world. He's responsible for the overall direction of the company.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend chats with Domagoj Rozic, CEO of Minka, an open network that enables organizations to move money in real time. He is a technologist that had the chance to participate in the internet, the mobile, and the bitcoin revolution over the last 20 years. Dom co-founded his first startup at the age of 20 and worked on then more than 50 IT projects in 10 countries around the globe. Built the Latam presence for the first Croatian Unicorn, Infobip, and founded Minka in 2018. He is a Bitcoin enthusiast and hacker.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Caleb Avery, CEO & Founder of Tilled. With experience in the payments industry for over a decade, Caleb Avery was often asked to help software companies who were looking to monetize their payments. Unable to find a solution that didn’t require his clients to compromise on either technology, user experience, or economics, he decided that he needed his own solution.That led him to build Tilled and create PayFac-as-a-Service.Caleb first started working in the payments industry while in college, co-founding a credit card processing independent sales organization, or ISO, with a few of his friends. Beginning with very traditional credit card processing customers including restaurants, salons, liquor stores, and other brick-and-mortar businesses, Merchant Services Done Right later expanded into processing services for e-commerce businesses, and software companies and now operates in 22+ states across the country.Over the years, he also consulted for larger software companies processing anywhere from $100 million to over a billion in annual payments volume. These clients needed a payments expert to help them negotiate agreements, develop new pricing models, and maximize their revenue from credit card processing.It was while working with these businesses that Caleb had a realization: software companies wanting to optimize their integrated payment processing solution were looking for two key things. One is an instant digital sign-up experience for their customers. And two, to maximize the revenue they could earn.Tilled’s revolutionary PayFac-as-a-Service platform allows software companies to enjoy all of the benefits of becoming a PayFac without any of the upfront investment or ongoing overheads, all while capturing the lion’s share of the economics.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend chats with Matt Medved, the co-founder, CEO and EIC of nft now, the premier web3 digital media platform for NFT coverage and curation. Under his leadership, nft now has become the most trusted source in NFT media and made history as the first-ever digital media publication to curate a major auction house sale with Christie’s.Prior to nft now, Medved founded Billboard Dance and scaled the vertical into the leading dance/electronic music publication in North America. He subsequently ran SPIN magazine as Editor-in-Chief, where he directed the iconic music and culture title's 2019 rebrand, and served as the SVP of Content at lifestyle publisher Modern Luxury.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend interviews James West, the CEO of Globe, a cryptocurrency derivatives exchange. James is a technologist, digital assets pioneer, and former trader and investor. He led the quantitative team at a hedge fund for four years, growing it from a small family fund to $300m assets under management with incredible risk-adjusted returns. He earned his Ph.D. just across from DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis, and his research has now generated nearly 1,000 citations. He studied algebraic geometry at Cambridge University under 2018 Fields Medallist Birkar.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend chats with Merit Valdsalu, CEO and Co-Founder of Single.Earth, building a nature-backed economy to save the world. She’s an early employee at the unicorn company Pipedrive, a passionate environmentalist, and an avid equal rights supporter.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Rand Hindi, CEO at Zama, a startup building homomorphic encryption solutions for web2 and web3 applications. Rand Hindi is an entrepreneur and investor. Prior to Zama, Rand was the CEO of Snips, an AI company acquired by Sonos. He is an investor in over 50 startups, ranging from blockchain to semiconductors to psychedelics. He holds a degree in computer science and a PhD in bioinformatics from UCL in London. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend interviews Sean Bennett, co-founder of Stronghold, a leading financial infrastructure company that provides fast, secure, and accessible financial services through a simple API. Stronghold, recently named as Forbes Fintech 50 company, works with businesses like IBM and Lyft to make payments quicker and easier while maintaining regulatory compliance and interoperability between payment systems. Sean is a renowned technology expert in the digital currency space, having designed and executed some of the first distributed cross-border transactions of sovereign currencies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices