Fintech Impact

In this 106th episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host welcomes Filipe Castro, co-founder and CIO of Utrust, to talk about Utrust’s growth strategy, how blockchain payment technology competes with credit cards and other existing forms of payment, the future of payment tech, and more.

Episode Highlights:

• 00:55: – Utrust is a platform that enables e-commerce merchants to accept various forms of cryptocurrency as payment.
• 01:24: – Filipe met his co-founders online in 2010 in cryptocurrency and blockchain forums.
• 03:30: – On the merchant’s side, they don’t have to worry about the accounting or conversion of cryptocurrency, because Utrust handles all of that automatically on the back end and the merchant simply receives their US Dollars or Euros or whichever currency they operate under.
• 04:28: – For the user, you select Utrust as your payment method, which takes you to the Utrust website and allows you to select and set up your crypto wallet with a QR code.
• 06:00: – Utrust currently has ten vendors using the platform because they had to select the optimal vendors to start the platform with in order to optimize the experience and collect the data needed to scale up effectively.
• 07:30: – Utrust has competitors, but most of the vendors that were interested in using Utrust approached them, not the other way around, partly because it’s free to integrate.
• 09:23: – Filipe believes Utrust is the best solution because it has the strongest community support and a seamless integration, which is crucial for a blockchain technology.
• 10:17: – Transaction fees are competitive with regular credit cards, at only 1%.
• 11:30: – Currency conversion happens almost instantaneously to protect both the merchant and the consumer, so the merchant gets the price they listed and the consumer isn’t overcharged due to fluctuating conversion.
• 13:04: – Utrust is compatible with any wallet that supports scanning a QR code.
• 14:38: – Having a diverse range of merchants on board with Utrust allows them to collect more accurate metrics to perfect the platform more quickly.
• 19:20: – For the user, there is almost immediate settlement of payment, and for the merchant you get a notification of incoming payment and the settlement depends on the cryptocurrency protocol.
• 22:37: – Filipe is paying attention to growing competition, but acknowledges that we are still in the building phase of this space where major players haven’t entered crypto yet.
• 27:30: – If Filipe could change anything, it would be for all the communities in blockchain to simply get along better and coexist better.
• 28:53: – The biggest challenge has been establishing a company culture and building a team as a startup.
• 29:45: – Filipe is excited by the way Utrust is changing the future of payments to empower consumers and merchants.

3 Key Points

1. Utrust gives online vendors more payment options to be more competitive.
2. Collecting metrics from a deliberately crafted pool of users will enable you to develop and scale your business more quickly.
3. The future of payments is a seamless digital experience.

Tweetable Quotes:

• “We always want to protect the merchant, just to make sure that whatever the quoted price that they put in their system, they’re going to get that minus 1%, always.” –Filipe Castro
• “We’re trying to get metrics to perfect the system. The best way to get different metrics is to integrate with different types of businesses that have different users, have different patterns of usage, sell different types of goods, have different frequencies.” –Filipe Castro

Resources Mentioned:

• Website – Jason Pereira’s Website
• Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook
• LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn
• FintechImpact.co – Website for Fintech Impact
• Utrust website
• Utrust Twitter
• Filipe Castro Twitter

Full Transcript

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Summary:

In this 105th episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host welcomes Doug Dahmer, CEO of Better Money Choices, to talk about democratizing financial planning, having a long-term view of planning, and more. 

Episode Highlights: 

● 00:32: – Better Money Choices is a financial platform that puts the power in the consumer’s hands. 

● 01:25: – Before Better Money Choices, Doug founded Retirement Navigator. 

● 02:22: – Better Money Choices allows consumers to gamify their choices to explore what their financial options are. 

● 04:50: – The biggest obstacle to financial planning is the initial data collection, so the Better Money Choices platform has a wizard that allows for that data collection in 7.5 minutes or less, and to identify the places that need further detail and clarity later. 

● 08:59: – Financial planning is a verb, not a noun. 

● 10:20: – Better Money Choices is owned by the client and can be shared with any other financial advisor if the client wants a second opinion. 

● 13:12: – The platform is based on the idea of adult learning; it isn’t effective to tell an adult what to do, but if you give them the tools to learn, then they’ll come to you for help. 

● 20:24: – Doug is able to duplicate a client’s plan to play around with it and explore options without touching their actual plan, but then can send that new version of the plan back to the client for review. 

● 21:50: – It’s almost never as easy or simple as choosing one option or another. 

● 24:06: – Financial advisor decisions are best guesses at the time of the decision based on the information they have and the factors at play. 

● 26:17: – The majority of Doug’s time is spent reassuring high-income people that they can spend money and won’t run out of money, which sounds strange to the average person who typically overspends. 

● 27:40: – Doug pushes clients to decide if their current life is the best life they can live, if this is their goal, or if they can reallocate their money to get closer to goals. 

● 31:27: – If Doug could change one thing in the industry, it would be to democratize access to financial planning. 

● 32:06: – Doug’s biggest challenge has been the current state of the financial services industry and the lack of new thinking. 

● 35:06: – What excites Doug the most is that the need out there is so huge, and he wants to get out there as fast as he can. 

3 Key Points 

1. Financial planning isn’t a one-time action, but an ongoing process. 

2. Better Money Choices empowers clients to learn the process and help them make 

decisions or propose changes to a financial advisor themselves instead of relying entirely on someone else to tell them what to do. 

3. People should stop looking at financial choices as permanent or definitive when the best anyone can do is to make their best guess based on the information they have at the time. 

Tweetable Quotes: 

● “Close to 30 years of financial planning has taught me that it’s not the latte’s that are killing financial plans. What’s killing financial plans is that people aren’t getting what they want because they don’t know what they want.” –Doug Dahmer 

● “More of one thing usually means less of another. What choice do you want to make? Your life will be defined by those choices, but now for the first time in your life you have a tool that allows you to discover the outcome of those choices before you make them.” –Doug Dahmer 

Resources Mentioned: 

● Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook 

● LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn 

● FintechImpact.co – Website for Fintech Impact 

● Better Money Choices website – http://web.bettermoneychoices.com/index.html 

● Doug Dahmer Twitter – https://twitter.com/dougdahmer2 

Full Transcript

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Summary:

In this 104th episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host interviews Scott Hawksworth, Sales and Marketing Director at Soar Payments. Soar Payments is a company that focuses on providing payment solutions to higher risk businesses in the United States. Scott Hawksworth explains chargebacks, examples of high-risk businesses that banks tend to have trouble with, and the value that Soar Payments offers to its clients. 

Episode Highlights: 

● 00:33: – Scott Hawksworth defines Soar Payments. 

● 01:11: – Soar Pay was launched in 2015 in Houston, Texas. 

● 03:10: – What are examples of higher-risk industries from the standpoint of payment processing companies and banks? 

● 06:38: – Scott explains a chargeback and why the threshold is a small number. 

● 10:51: – How is Soar Payments solving this problem? 

● 12:11: – Soar Payments’ goal is to present merchants in places where they have the best chance of getting approved. 

● 14:22: – How do they implement the tech solution into their business? 

● 16:16: – How does their pricing to the end-user differ from other options? 

● 20:45: – Soar Payment is not a technology company. They’re a company that provides tech to users to fill a gap in the market. 

● 22:41: – What would Scott change in his business or his industry? 

● 23:48: – What has been the biggest challenge in his business? 

● 25:25: – Soar Payments has an underwriting process that every business goes through to get approved. 

● 26:11: – What is the most exciting thing Jamie Hale is working on? 

3 Key Points 

1. Soar Payments focuses on business in the high-risk space that needs payment solutions. 

2. High-risk companies from bank perspectives include: credit repair companies, document preparation, online marketing/SEO services, subscription services, the adult industry, E-Cig/vape/smoking accessories, nutraceuticals, moving companies, and transportation services. 

3. The bank threshold percentage for low-risk businesses is 1% or less, calculated based on the dollar amount that you’re having charged back. 

Tweetable Quotes: 

● “We offer merchant services to businesses of all kinds to help them get set up to accept payments, mostly for credit card processing. But we also offer ECheck and ACH options.” – Scott Hawksworth 

● “If you have a business and you are having lots and lots of chargebacks, that is a problem for the bank because they are having to give that money back and that doesn’t reflect well on your business itself.” – Scott Hawksworth 

● “The merchant comes to us and then we take a look at your business. We look at your documentation and all of that and we have these established relationships so we can pass you along to the best possible option.” – Scott Hawksworth 

Resources Mentioned: 

● Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook 

● LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn 

● FintechImpact.co – Website for Fintech Impact 

● Linkedin –Scott Hawksworth 

● Soarpay.com – Website for Soar Payments

Full Transcript

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Summary:

In this 103rd episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host welcomes Tea Nicola, Co-founder and CEO of Wealthbar, and Pawel Brzeminski, Founder and CEO of Snap Projections, to talk about what led to their companies’ partnership, fintech’s rise and the financial planning industry’s move towards technology, and more. 

Episode Highlights: 

● 00:46: – Wealthbar is one of Canada’s first robo-advisors. 

● 01:18: – Snap Projections is a financial planning platform for advisors. 

● 02:38: – Tea was interested in Snap Projections after using it herself for years as a solution to having to do calculations in Excel and then manually transfer data over into reports for clients. 

● 04:33: – Pawel was interested in the relationship because he wanted a partner to help grow and improve the platform. 

● 06:44: – Snap Projections has helped Wealthbar grow because it has been helpful to own software that allows advisors to work more efficiently and effectively service more clients. 

● 08:15: – Pawel believes Snap Projections has added a lot of value for advisors over the years, including estate planning. In the future he’d like to develop APIs. 

● 11:11: – Tea’s vision is for a platform that automates routine tasks but has a human safety net to help you understand your finances. 

● 13:09: – Tea envisions her advisors as salaried employees on the same level as her developers as opposed to the current model of advisors as sole proprietors of their business. 

● 17:33: – Pawel intends to reduce friction and heavy lifting for advisors by providing recommendations to advisors while acknowledging that no one algorithm can account for all scenarios. 

● 21:19: – Snap Projections has between 600-700 feature requests on their list right now. 

● 21:40: – Pawel wants to spend more time exploring issues around stress testing. 

● 22:03: – Algorithms are better at doing the heavy lifting but a human still needs to be involved to make sure the recommendations apply to a client’s reality. 

● 24:21: – If Tea could change one thing about the industry it would be that the average Canadian’s financial literacy level would go up tenfold. 

● 25:45: – If Pawel could change one thing it would be to change the backend of financial planning software to focus less on the individual and more on the household. 

● 28:26: – The biggest challenge Tea has faced in scaling Wealthbar to where it is today would, again, be the issue of financial literacy. 

● 29:33: – Pawel’s biggest challenge in scaling Snap Projections was lack of resources. 

● 32:40: – What most excites Tea is the way the industry is changing and moving towards more technology, including AI. 

● 35:33: – Pawel is most excited by helping people and seeing the impact he’s making. 

3 Key Points 

1. The ideal robo-advisor platform would automate routine tasks while allowing clients to 

speak to a human for deeper understanding and specific issues. 

2. Increasing the level of financial literacy among the population is crucial for the growth of 

fintech. 

3. Canadian tax code poses a challenge for advisors because of its focus on the individual 

rather than the household. 

Tweetable Quotes: 

● “I’ve always had this vision in my mind of a busy mom walking into her house with a bunch of groceries and getting a push notification from Wealthbar... and she can react to it with one button and at the same time have access to an advisor if things aren’t clear enough.” –Tea Nicola 

● “It’s all about making planning pleasant and easy to use. We don’t have to use all the complex tools with lots of inputs. It’s all about making sure that information that we’re using to make decisions is right in front of us.” –Pawel Brzeminski 

● “FInancial planning and investment management is a slow and boring process. If it’s exciting, you’re doing it wrong.” –Tea Nicola 

Resources Mentioned: 

● Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook 

● LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn 

● FintechImpact.co – Website for Fintech Impact 

● Wealthbar Website – https://www.wealthbar.com/ 

● Snap Projections Website – https://snapprojections.com/ 

● Tea Nicola Twitter: https://twitter.com/teanicola?lang=en 

● Pawel Brzeminski Twitter: https://twitter.com/pawelwb?lang=en 

Full Transcript

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In this 102nd episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host welcomes Yaron Ben-Zvi, founder of Haven Life, to talk about how he ended up in the life insurance industry, the problems he found once he got there, and how Haven Life aims to fix those problems.

Episode Highlights:

• 00:36: – Haven Life is a service that rethinks how people purchase life insurance policies using better tech.
• 01:24: – Yaron started Haven Life because he was shocked at how outdated the process was when he went to purchase his first life policy after the birth of his first child.
• 04:25: – Every step of purchasing life insurance had tons of friction that Yaron believed could be alleviated using technology, from understanding the product to applying to underwriting and the customer decision.
• 05:25: – Jason notes that Yaron includes policy examples in the application process to remove the intimidation factor.
• 06:54: – The best insights while developing the Haven Life website came from in-person conversations with users, not A/B testing.
• 07:18: – People mainly wanted to see what kinds of policies other people were buying and how much they were paying.
• 10:20: – Haven Life is backed and wholly owned by MassMutual. Each Haven Term policy is issued by their parent company. 
• 11:00: – When a customer submits an application, the Haven Life software reviews application and third party data in real-time to determine eligibility immediately.
• 11:57: – Yaron started the company as an online, intermediary insurance broker, but quickly decided he wanted to partner with an underwriter, and that’s what led to MassMutual.
• 13:58: – Haven Life is built for a younger, previously unapproached customer for life insurance.
• 14:53: – The hardest part of underwriting is gathering medical information from doctors.
• 16:42: – Haven Life removes the communications barrier of the customer not knowing the status of their policy.
• 18:43: – Everything on Haven Life is managed online. You can access your policy information and manage it in a customer portal online.
• 20:27: – If Yaron could change one thing about the life insurance industry, it would be to create a better way to get products into the hands of underserved customers.
• 21:09: – The customers who need life insurance most are often the ones for whom it would cost the most and for whom it would be most difficult to afford.
• 21:50: – Yaron’s biggest challenge has been the specific complexities of the industry since he entered it as an outsider.
• 23:08: – What excites Yaron the most is that he truly believes he is making a difference in people’s lives and that he still has so much work to do to make the product better.

3 Key Points

1. Haven Life is trying to remove the traditional friction and pain points in buying a life insurance policy.
2. Partnering with MassMutual allowed Yaron to rethink the entire life cycle of an insurance policy to be digital from the ground up.
3. The life insurance industry is not set up to make the product accessible to underserved populations.

Tweetable Quotes:

• “It’s a tough thing to wrap your head around. We’re talking to them about the two things we’re wired to want to talk about least—your mortality and your finances.” –Yaron Ben-Zvi
• “How do we redesign the life insurance process, how do we think about the underwriting process in a way that is completely digital from the ground up? It kind of let us rethink the entire life cycle of the process in a way that you couldn’t if you were just an outside intermediary.” –Yaron Ben-Zvi

Resources Mentioned:

• Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook
• LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn
• FintechImpact.co – Website for Fintech Impact
• Haven Life website – www.havenlife.com 
• Haven Life Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/havenlifeinsurance/
• Haven Life Twitter – https://twitter.com/HavenLifeInsure
• Yaron Ben-Zvi’s LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/yaron-ben-zvi-16676
• Yaron’s blog – https://medium.com/@yaronbz

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Summary:

In this 101st episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host welcomes Phillip Barrar, founder of the Mylo savings and investment app, to talk about banking differences in Canada versus the EU, banking regulations, and more. 

Episode Highlights: 

● 00:33: – Mylo is an app that rounds up your purchases and invests the change to help you work towards your savings goals. 

● 03:18: – Phillip started Mylo after he was already teaching his friends and family savings techniques. 

● 04:24: – Canada has an under-banked population and aren’t saving or investing. 

● 04:40: – 53% of Canadians have under $1,000 in their bank account. 

● 04:54: – For Phillip, it’s about inclusion; how do you make products more accessible and affordable and remove friction points? 

● 09:06: – The roundup process in Mylo helps people go from saving nothing to saving their first $1,000 in a year. 

● 09:15: – Users can also set up recurring deposits in addition to the roundup. 

● 09:47: – Users typically save between $10-30 in roundups over the course of a week. 

● 10:16: – Mylo is not investment focused, it’s life goal-focused for users. 

● 10:46: – Each goal you set up in Mylo has its own risk profile and allows you to invest differently depending upon the goal time frame and your preferences. 

● 12:29: – Mylo isn’t monetized off of robo-investor fees, but from $1-3/month subscription fees. 

● 13:24: – Mylo also offers cash back offers with partner brands. 

● 16:01: – Phillip is expanding Mylo into the EU. 

● 16:50: – Banks regularly change their websites and APIs to break connections with third party aggregator apps. 

● 18:09: – Companies in most English-speaking countries are afraid to expand to the EU because it’s multilingual and multi-domicile, but for Mylo, which was founded in the bilingual Montreal, it felt natural. 

● 22:55: – Mylo partners with Canada Helps and allows you to connect a goal to a charity and directly give to them through the platform. 

● 23:28: – Mylo recently launched a beta version of Mylo Advisor, which allows you to ask a one-off question to a financial planner. 

● 24:58: – Most Mylo users are high-income users for the age group. 

● 28:45: – If Phillip could change one thing in the industry it would be to push people on the regulatory side to be more open to change more quickly in order to remove friction. 

● 30:10: – The biggest challenge has been that the bar to get funding is so much higher in fintech than in other industries due to the money needed to navigate regulatory bodies. 

● 31:59: – What most excites Phillip are the messages he gets from users. 

3 Key Points 

1. Canada is an underbanked population that does not save or invest its money. 

2. Mylo is focused on helping users achieve their financial goals. 

3. Banking security comes from regulation not from the size of the bank. 

Tweetable Quotes: 

● “We need to be able to start putting together the right practices in place. It’s something everyone wants to do. It’s more financial literacy through doing versus more financial literacy through learning or education.” –Phillip Barrar 

Resources Mentioned: 

● Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook 

● LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn 

● FintechImpact.co – Website for Fintech Impact 

● https://mylo.ai/

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Summary:

In this 100th episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host welcomes Michael Kitces of the Nerd’s Eye View blog, XYPN, and AdvicePay, to talk about product iteration, specialization within the field of financial planning and more. 

Episode Highlights: 

● 01:40: – Michael ended up in financial services by accident after majoring in Psychology and minoring in Theatre in undergrad. 

● 02:55: – Michael had a job selling life insurance policies, and he hated it and was bad at it, but luckily ended up finding mentorship from the one certified financial planner in the company. 

● 06:25: – Michael sees the evolution of the fintech space as having several small epochs. 

● 08:35: – Developers tried making a holy grail all-in-one software which resulted in every area of the program being mediocre. 

● 09:02: – The rise of APIs have turned the industry upside down, allowing financial planners to create their own perfect all-in-one solution. 

● 12:55: – Small companies that specialize can evolve so much faster than any enterprise software ever could. 

● 16:22: – Michael observes that most fintech software companies in the US are homegrown, with developers trying to solve problems, rather than big venture-funded startups. 

● 18:00: – Scaling your product to enterprise solutions means pivoting to a lot of enterprise features and iterations instead of iterating on your core product for end users. 

● 19:45: – Because enterprise companies evolve more slowly, when they approach smaller companies for solutions they’re often asking them to move backwards to match where their advisors are in their mindsets. 

● 22:20: – Michael believes that financial planning software has the most room for disruption of any software category. 

● 25:30: – It is still useful to know old, antiquated programming languages because companies that have evolved slowly and are still written in old code need people who understand that architecture in order to modernize it. 

● 27:45: – Michael sees a lot of companies trying to solve culture and training problems with technology instead of addressing the real issues. 

● 29:20: – Companies trying to pivot to financial planning advice without certified financial planners means the employees are selling the plan as a product rather than providing advice as added value. 

● 31:10: – In order to reduce liability that comes up with offering advice, companies centralize their planning departments and put excessive compliance procedures in place. 

● 33:24: – A lot of specialized programs are cropping up to streamline processes for things like planning for your money management in the event that you are cognitively impaired with dementia, for parents and children managing student loans, etc. 

● 37:50: – If Michael could make one change to the industry it would be to decrease the requirements to be called a financial advisor. 

● 39:00: – The biggest challenge Michael has faced is figuring out how to get out of his own way. 

● 40:53: – What excites Michael and gets him out of bed in the morning is, surprisingly, checking his email. 

3 Key Points 

1. The development of APIs has allowed for much faster iteration and development. 

2. You can’t solve company culture problems with tech. 

3. The fintech space has so much room for disruption and specialization. 

Tweetable Quotes: 

● “You’re still going to get out-expertised, out-devved, out-scaled, out-manned, because the independent companies have been able to get so large. I think it’s a thing that could not have happened until the internet showed up and API connectivity became possible.” – Michael Kitces 

Resources Mentioned: 

● Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook 

● LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn 

● FintechImpact.co – Website for Fintech Impact 

● https://www.kitces.com/ 

● https://www.kitces.com/blog/category/21-financial-advisor-success-podcast/ 

● https://www.xyplanningnetwork.com/ 

● https://advicepay.com/ 

● https://twitter.com/MichaelKitces 

● https://www.pinnacleadvisory.com/ 

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Summary:

In this 99th episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host welcomes John Waldron, founder of Learnedly, to talk about how financial services firms handle ongoing education. 

Episode Highlights: 

● 00:30: – John explains Learnedly as Lynda.com/LinkedIn Learning but for Canadian financial services professionals. 

● 01:37: – John founded Learnedly because he found that it’s empowering to learn new ways to help your clients, and he wanted to make that learning accessible. 

● 02:55: – There was a demand in the industry for video-based content that was accessible on mobile. 

● 05:00: – A lot of Learnedly is inspired by and based in part on Lynda.com, which has now even sent Learnedly business. 

● 06:51: – With things changing in the industry and with technology so quickly, a platform that can be updated and referenced in real-time became more and more necessary. 

● 08:42: – With short-form courses like this, you can make a commitment to lifelong learning with only 30 minutes a week. 

● 09:25: – People are most motivated to learn and retain the information the best when they are in a position of needing to know something, and then put that knowledge to use shortly thereafter. 

● 11:00: – We take for granted how incredible a resource YouTube is, providing all this education for free, but you have to wade through a lot of low-quality content and Learnedly is a curated, high-quality platform. 

● 11:30: – Learnedly costs only $20 per month, in alignment with John’s belief that education is a right, not a privilege, and should be priced accordingly. 

● 12:15: – John shares how he was introduced to the financial services world by taking a Securities course in order to learn how to be responsible with his own money. 

● 17:00: – Some of Learnedly’s courses are approved for Continuing Education credits, and users can expect a true mobile experience with video that can stream on desktop, tablet, or phone, and can be downloaded for offline viewing. 

● 19:03: – Everything on Learnedly is researched and written beforehand, and video content takes ten times the effort of merely writing when you have to prepare, film, and edit the videos. 

● 20:55: – Learnedly has received positive feedback thus far and they plan to grow exponentially over the next six months. 

● 23:09: – In addition to supporting your current work needs, Learnedly can be used to grow your skills and help you advance in your career. 

● 28:10: – An advantage to Learnedly is that because their content is so modular, in 1-2 minute videos, if something changes in the industry, they only have to edit and replace small clips rather than entire courses. 

● 29:13: – If John could change one thing in the industry, it would be the level of complacency. 

● 31:50: – AI and automation are real things that will impact the industry in the future. 

● 33:35: – The advisors who believe that automation will eliminate their jobs are usually the advisors who don’t often deal with people face-to-face and those who treat their jobs in a highly transactional way that could easily be replaced by a computer. 

● 36:53: – The biggest challenge has been that Learnedly is a subscription service, so getting the content ready for launch and continuing to build the library was a big lift. 

● 39:18: – John is most excited about filling the need for education among the financial services industry. 

3 Key Points 

1. Learnedly supports an attitude of lifelong learning. 

2. Learnedly disrupts the traditional model of very expensive, outdated certification courses. 

3. The future is not a choice between human labor and automation, but will inevitably be a hybrid. 

Tweetable Quotes: 

● “People learn more and they retain more when they need to know something. When they’re in that moment where they need to know, that’s when they are motivated to learn and when their retention is the greatest.” –John Waldron 

● “One of the other big challenges is that regulations do change, taxes change, new tax incentives, credits, and other things change, but the industry textbooks don’t change nearly as often.” –John Waldron 

Resources Mentioned: 

● Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook 

● LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn 

● FintechImpact.co – Website for Fintech Impact 

● https://www.learnedly.com/ 

● https://www.miraclemorning.com/

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Summary:

In this 98th episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host welcomes Toan Huynh, from the VC firm Information Venture Partners, to talk about automation, what an “early stage” company means to IVP, and how to explain venture capital to a five-year-old. 

Episode Highlights: 

● 00:42: – Information Venture Partners is a venture fund that focuses on enterprise SaaS in the financial services market. 

● 01:02: – Research confirms that the spend by financial services SaaS companies will triple every year of the millennium. 

● 01:20: – They are an early stage investor that works to help scale a company. 

● 04:52: – The company Toan worked for became partners with Salesforce early in its life. 

● 08:33: – IVP is interested in piping and helping banks and other companies digitize their back end and digitize the user experience and employee experience. 

● 09:28: – Online SaaS platforms are more flexible than downloadable software; it turns a fixed cost into a variable cost. 

● 13:14: – When talking to entrepreneurs, Toan reminds them that they are solving a problem in a way of doing things that a company has been entrenched in for many years, so you can’t just march in and say stop what you’re doing. 

● 13:35: – The sales cycle in these scenarios isn’t quick as a result. 

● 14:50: – Automation isn’t scary, it’s necessary. 

● 15:38: – True automation isn’t here yet. 

● 17:02: – YayPay is a company in their portfolio that automates accounts receivable to free up CFOs to manage financial planning and strategy instead of collections. 

● 18:37: – Another company in their portfolio is Procurify, which provides insights on expense management. 

● 20:05: – Knowtions Research uses natural language processing and AI to improve health insurance for people with preexisting conditions or terminal illness, and how to use the same systems to help insurance companies combat fraud and abuse. 

● 21:10: – Start your business where you can test your model and troubleshoot. 

● 22:45: – To Toan, funding eligibility for IVP means being a fintech company aiming to solve a problem in the financial services or healthcare space. 

● 23:37: – Companies they fund are “early stage” companies, which means different things to different funders and depends upon whether your clients are individuals or enterprise. 

● 25:47: – If Toan could change one thing about her industry, it would be to improve gender parity. 

● 27:50: – Try not to make the excuse of a pipeline issue for not hiring diversely; instead, take a risk on somebody. 

● 28:17: – Toan advocates for bringing back the apprenticeship model. 

● 28:52: – Entrepreneurs should take a long view of their partnerships; money is only half the equation, and the other half is growing a team. 

● 31:05: – One of IVP’s biggest challenges has been marketing. 

● 32:40: – Toan explains venture capital to her five year old as “growing baby companies.” 

3 Key Points 

1. Companies that IVP funds are ones that are working to solve a problem in the financial 

services or healthcare industries, mainly by digitizing and automating processes that improve user experience. 

2. Automation isn’t a threat, it’s necessary for the industry to stay competitive. 

3. Citing a pipeline issue is no excuse for lack of diversity in hiring. 

Tweetable Quotes: 

● “Automation is a necessity for us to compete globally.” –Toan Huynh 

● “Founders become funders... We need to be consciously investing in non-traditional founders and diverse founders so we can spread the pool of potential wealth accumulation a little bit better. And that’ll create better opportunities for everybody.” –Toan Huynh 

Resources Mentioned: 

● Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook 

● LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn 

● FintechImpact.co – Website for Fintech Impact 

● https://www.informationvp.com/ 

● https://www.linkedin.com/in/toanhuynh 

● https://www.yaypay.com/ 

● https://www.procurify.com/ 

● https://www.knowtions.com/ 

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Summary:

In this 97th episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host welcomes Jason Early, Chief Revenue Officer of the cloud-based business valuation platform BizEquity. 

Episode Highlights: 

● 00:43: – BizEquity is a cloud-based business valuation platform. 

● 01:25: – Jason Early comes from a financial services background. 

● 02:52: – A lot of business owners fixate on a number they think their company is worth and then are shocked when it isn’t as valuable as they thought, so BizEquity provides transparency to the valuation process for business owners. 

● 03:45: – BizEquity uses a simple seven-step process to input your financial data and watch the valuation number dynamically change throughout, then gives you a 20 page valuation report that benchmarks them against industry peers. 

● 07:05: – Traditional valuation assessments are only a snapshot in time, but using BizEquity means your advisor can come back to you later and provide updates as the market changes and as your business changes. 

● 08:17: – 78% of business owners plan to fund their retirement almost entirely on the value of their business, without knowing what the value of their business actually is. 

● 09:41: – $13.2 trillion dollars of business owner wealth is set to transition over the next ten years. 

● 11:32: – More and more accountants are coming onto the BizEquity platform and it is a growing vertical for the company. 

● 12:22: – The biggest pushback for the company is that their platform does not spit out certified results, because they have no way of verifying that the numbers that business owners are putting into the platform are accurate to begin with. 

● 13:22: – BizEquity doesn’t intend to replace certified valuations, but is there to supplement them as a low-cost alternative for business owners to know the approximate value of their business at any point in time without having to go through the arduous process of a certified valuation. 

● 14:20: – In Jason Early’s view, it is crucial now more than ever for financial advisors to provide a comprehensive view, aided by technology. 

● 15:43: – One of BizEquity’s biggest challenges has been that they have created this market, so there is no one to look to, and education has to be a big component of their product. 

● 17:30: – Jason Early is most excited about the potential BizEquity has in the future, as they have only scratched the surface with their 5,000 subscribers. 

3 Key Points 

1. Most business owners don’t know the value of their business, yet it’s crucial information 

to have for future planning. 

2. Traditional valuation takes a long time, is complex, very costly, and only gives you 

information about a snapshot in time, whereas BizEquity can provide dynamic results. 

3. BizEquity hopes to supplement traditional, certified valuation; 

Tweetable Quotes: 

● “Only 2% of businesses value themselves in a given year, and so none of them have an understanding.” –Jason Early 

● “What we believe is that business owners deserve to know their value at any point in time and shouldn’t have to go through a process to get a certified valuation any time they want to know the value of their business.” –Jason Early 

Resources Mentioned: 

● Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook 

● LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn 

● FintechImpact.co – Website for Fintech Impact 

● https://www.bizequity.com/ – Website for BizEquity

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