Cindy Chin is an entrepreneur, venture strategist, solutions leader, and cultural ambassador of the arts and sciences. As CEO of CLC Advisors, LLC, she is an advisor and board member on startup teams, opportunity scout for strategic investment partners, a global thought leader, and speaker. She is also a NASA Datanaut, an open data innovation program to promote data science and diversity operating within the NASA CIO office. In 2018, she was named as one of Entrepreneur Magazine’s “50 Most Daring Entrepreneurs in 2018” along with SpaceX/Tesla’s Elon Musk, General Motors’ Mary Barra, IBM’s Ginni Rometty, actress Reese Witherspoon, Chance the Rapper, Chef Jose Andres, and Spotify’s Daniel Ek. She was part of the American delegations to the Global Entrepreneurship Summits in Silicon Valley hosted by President Obama & U.S. Vice President Joe Biden in Marrakech. She was a delegate at the first Our Ocean Summit and a presenter in the Women’s Pillar at the U.S.-China High-Level Consultation People-to-People Exchange in Beijing with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

In today's episode you will learn:

1. What was Cindy's journey, and how does the current pandemic, and economic downturn compares to her prior experiences?

2. How the world will look different post-COVID-19, and how the innovation becomes more interconnected?

3. What is NASA Datanaut, and what are they doing to push the innovation envelope?

4. How diversity and inclusion are even more important in the post-COVID world?

You can follow me on Twitter, Linkedin, or email me at [email protected]

This episode is dedicated to Epictetus and his framework on mental resilience. Epictetus grew up a slave in Rome and then became a Stoic philosopher. Both of these positions were incredibly precarious – slaves could be abused or killed by their owners, while Stoic philosophers were constantly falling foul of the imperial authorities (Epictetus himself was eventually exiled). Epictetus coped with this insecurity by constantly reminding himself what he could control and what he couldn't. We can control our thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes, but everything else is to some extent out of our control – other people's perceptions and behavior, the economy, the weather, the future, and the past.

You can follow me on Twitter, Linkedin, or email me at [email protected]

Parul Gujral is the Founder and CEO of Snowball Money within the decentralized finance (DeFi) space, building a high-interest investment account product. Snowball has so far raised $1.1 Mn from world-class investors like Richard Blum, Sam Zaid, Greg Kidd, Reese Jones, Kevin Lin, and Jeff McDonald to name a few. Parul believes, blockchain technology can substantially increase the scope and efficiency of peer-to-peer transactions, turning previously infeasible business models into viable ones. Empowered by blockchain technology, financial services can become more decentralized, innovative, interoperable, borderless, and transparent. The DeFi space has gained tremendous traction, going from $150 million in April 2018 to $1.2 billion in February 2020.

In today's episode you will learn:

1. What was Parul's journey prior to Snowball Money? What got him thinking about cryptocurrency, and eventually building his startup?

2. What is decentralized finance, and why we should care? And how is it better than the existing system or the centralized finance (CeFi?) system?

3. Is DeFi really the future of finance? And why would centralized authorities like the government and financial institutions give away their power now?

4. How do you measure success for an early-stage startup? And what are the challenges of building a culture and team?

Contact/Invest: https://republic.co/snowball-money

You can follow me on Twitter, Linkedin, or email me at [email protected].

I created this episode in hopes for you to think about things that are important for us to enhance our daily experience from its mundaneness.

This episode is inspired by the writings of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the author of the book Flow. We as a race are constantly looking to optimize our experience and happiness, but most of us are not utilizing our free time to do so. Instead, we focus on the mass consumption of media and other vices that I contest are making us dull beings. 

You can reach out to me on:

Instagram, Twitter, or Linkedin

Email: [email protected] 

Toshi Kameoka is the Head of Strategy at Airwallex US and Canada. Airwallex is a fintech unicorn founded in Melbourne, Australia (not the HQ as I mention in the opening remarks...yikes ) helping global businesses move funds cross-border in the fastest, cheapest, most transparent, and most predictable way possible. In short, they are looking to become the "AWS of global banking". The startup has recently raised $360Mn Series D with early 2020 at nearly $2Bn valuation. Its largest investor and major is Tencent and includes other marquee investors like Sequoia Capital, DST Global, Salesforce Ventures, and Mastercard. 

In today's episode you will learn:

1. Toshi's background and his journey up until Airwallex, and his non-linear path that in hindsight prepared him for his current role.

2. What is Airwallex? the status-quo it was looking to disrupt, and its current state.

3. The rapid pace of change and expansion, the challenges posed by the US regulation, the advantage of a b2b vs. b2c business, and how COVID-19 has impacted the startup ecosystem. 

4. What kind of team one needs to build to beat the expectations and meet the KPIs when growing from zero to one?

Items mentioned in today's show:

Startup to lookout: Middesk, a modern infrastructure to establish trust between every business. 

Contact: [email protected] or [email protected]

You can follow me on Twitter or the fastest way to get hold of me is to message me on Linkedin or email [email protected].

Here's a quick introduction to the MindGravity podcast. 

If you would like to get in touch with me, just ping me at [email protected] or via LinkedIn.

Hope you enjoy this journey with me!