Around the Coin

In this episode, Mike Townsend interviews Fred Thiel, Chairman and CEO of Marathon Digital Holdings. Prior to serving as Marathon’s chief executive officer, Thiel co-founded and served as chairman of Sprocket, a blockchain and cryptocurrency technology and financial services company whose mission is to reduce the risk and friction of cryptocurrency trading across marketplaces, regions, and exchanges by establishing a federation of exchanges that together create a single aggregated global trading marketplace with large scale liquidity, rapid execution, minimal counter-party risk, and price transparency. Prior to that, Thiel served as chairman and chief executive officer of Local Corporation, an $80 million Nasdaq-listed leader in online local search and digital media, mobile search monetization, and programmatic retargeting markets with over 240 million unique annual visitors. During his career while holding the title of CEO across multiple companies, Thiel successfully created in excess of $750 million in shareholder value, efficiently raised more than $150 million through both public (IPO and secondary offerings) and private capital sources, led multiple successful corporate transformations resulting in highly accretive exits, built high output agile product development organizations, and established corporate innovation groups resulting in the creation of new product businesses that generated significant new revenues in their first year.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with David McDonough, the founder and CEO of CommonStock, a social investment platform designed to amplify the knowledge of the best investors, thereby improving the world’s overall financial health. He became interested in investing after graduating during the 2008 financial crisis when he started an investment club. David fell in love with investing and realized its power when it is social, accessible, and fun. A self-taught coder and web designer, David joined Google as an engineer. While at Google, he started coding a side project to discuss trades, share knowledge, and invest with friends, the groundwork for CommonStock. When the site exploded in popularity, he left Google to build CommonStock full time.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Jonathan Silver, who is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Engage People. Jonathan is responsible for managing all facets of the business. He leads the long-term corporate strategy, marketing, and sales at one of the fastest-growing technology companies in Canada, according to Profit Magazine.Jonathan has a proven executive management track record and over 20 years of experience driving growth in the loyalty and technology industry. Prior to Engage People, Jonathan held numerous senior positions in the loyalty sector and was Chairman and Co-owner of MyAxs and CEO and Co-founder of Access (formerly LRG Rewards). His passion is the customer space where he focuses on developing innovative solutions that drive tangible results.Jonathan is a member of the leadership team and board of directors at Engage People. He earned an MBA from the Ivey Business School at the University of Western Ontario.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend interviews Peter Zhou, who is the co-founder and CEO of Rutter, a Universal API for eCommerce platforms, marketplaces, accounting systems, and payment processors. Rutter has raised $30M from investors like a16z, the CEO of Plaid, BasisSet Ventures, Haystack, Comma Capital, and more. Peter met his co-founder Eric at Yale University and they went through Y Combinator in 2019 for a separate idea.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Sergey Jakimov who is a founding partner of LongeVC, a crypto-friendly venture capital firm backing visionary biotech. Sergey is a serial entrepreneur, having co-founded 3 deep-tech ventures and raised more than $25 million in venture funding. He has advised several other startups in the therapeutics space on fundraising, IP protection, and clinical trial strategies. He is also a Visiting Lecturer to several universities on venture capital and intellectual property rights and co-authored a master’s program in Technology Law for the Riga Graduate School of Law. Since 2018, Sergey has led SaaS startup Longenesis, a cutting-edge company that uses blockchain to unlock the hidden value of biomedical data to accelerate novel drug treatment & discovery. Sergey holds a BSc in International Affairs from Rīga Stradiņš University and an MScs in Political Science and Government and Law and Finance from Central European University and Riga Graduate School of Law, respectively. He was named as a Forbes Latvia 30 Under 30 in technology and healthcare in 2020.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend interviews Kirill Gertman, who is the Co-Founder and CEO of Conduit. Conduit is building an API that connects businesses with decentralized finance products. Prior to starting Conduit, Kirill led Product at Eco and at BRD, before it was acquired by Coinbase. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Sean Moss-Pultz the co-founder and CEO of Bitmark - a startup working to extend traditional property rights to the digital age by creating tools that give individuals control over their own digital assets and data. His passion is developing technologies that empower humans.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks to Benedetto Biondi the CEO of Folks Finance -one of the most exciting and relevant DeFi projects on Algorand. He is an Engineer and Blockchain Project Manager with 3 years of experience at the Italian software house Blockchain Italia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Kenton Prescott, who is the Co-founder & CEO of Sense, a decentralized permissionless  fixed income protocol, where teams can build and develop new yield primitives for DeFi, such as fixed income assets and yield curves. Kenton comes from MakerDAO where he was a part of its integration team and graduated from the University of Florida in Aerospace Engineering.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mike Cagney is the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Figure, where he leads corporate strategy and development. Mike brings decades of experience in the financial industry to his leadership of the company, previously serving as CEO, chairman and co-founder of SoFi, a leading marketplace lender providing student loan refinancing, mortgages, and personal loans, as well as a range of wealth management services.He is also co-founder and managing member of Cabezon Investment Group, a global macro hedge fund, in addition to serving as a non-executive chairman of ReFlow. Before Cabezon, Mike founded was CEO and then vice chairman and chief architect of Finaplex, a leader in wealth management software that was sold to Broadridge (NYSE: BR). Prior to Finaplex, Mike was Senior Vice President and head trader for the proprietary trading and financial products group at Wells Fargo Bank. Mike holds an M.S. management degree from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he was a Sloan Fellow. He also holds an M.S. in Applied Economics and a B.A. in Economics from UC Santa Cruz.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices