Our guest this week is Gershie Vann, Founder and CEO of Magma Capital Funds, a Chicago-based quantitative hedge fund firm. We talk through the long iterative climb involved in launching a business, finding alternative skillsets outside of finance when building his team during the first pandemic lockdown in 2020, what’s at the core of his entrepreneurial mindset, quieting the always-on mind of the founder, an innovative approach to raising capital for new hedge funds, along with a shallow dive into crypto and sovereign currencies…and being the elder statesman in a family of 7 kids!

LINKS:

Episode title inspired by ‘Bring the Noise’ by Public Enemy and Anthrax

Get in touch with Gershie Vann and check out Magma Capital Funds to learn more

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Sophie Guibaud is the Chief Growth Officer at OpenPayd and she’s spent the last 10 years designing and executing the go-to-market of banking-as-a-service (BaaS) and embedded finance propositions in Europe, building teams and operations from scratch, and integrating financial services into customers’ existing products to create new revenue streams. We talk through Sophie’s entrepreneurial journey to date, some real-world applications of embedded finance, the benefits of her extracurricular activities with podcasts and advisory boards feeding her creativity….and her past life as a competitive boxer!

LINKS:

Episode title inspired by ‘Vision’ by Travis Scott

Get in touch with Sophie Guibaud and check out OpenPayd to learn more

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Shane Monks O’Byrne, founder and CEO of Aikido Finance, joins the show this week to talk to Eoin Fitzgerald and Pete Townsend about the Aikido Finance mission of democratizing quant investing, how he went from a grad with a Computer Science degree to a fully empowered startup founder in less than two years, the similarities between a rules-based mind and the merits of quant investing, finding co-founders and building the A team, raising a $1mn seed round from angels and a US VC, and the parallels between investing and alpine climbing.

LINKS:

Episode title inspired by ‘My Parallel’ by Royce Da 5’9”

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Eoin Fitzgerald and Pete Townsend walk through Amazon’s new partnership with BNPL (buy-now-pay-later) player Affirm and what this means for the Amazon flywheel, and then answer the question ‘what’s a stablecoin?’ in the context of USD Coin and the Centre Consortium, before diving into the world of NFTs through Visa’s $150,000 purchase of a CryptoPunk NFT and the big opportunity for monetizing the metaverse.

MAIN STORIES COVERED:

Amazon-Affirm BNPL (buy-now-pay-later)

Affirm shares soar nearly 47% after Amazon partnership that lets consumers buy expensive things in installments (CNBC, 30-Aug-21)

Is Affirm's Amazon Deal Better Than Walmart? (Fintech Business Weekly/Jason Mikuda, 29-Aug-21)

How does Affirm make money? (Finty, 21-Jun-21)

USDC and Stablecoins

Centre Consortium announces new team to create 'global network of stablecoins' (the Block (via Coindesk), 30-Aug-21)

AID:Tech utilises Circle and USD Coin to provide fraud resistant disaster relief(Finextra, 30-Aug-21)

Visa is now supporting settlement of card transactions with USDC (Techcrunch, 29-Mar-21)

Visa gets into NFT space

Visa buys a CryptoPunk as it takes first steps into 'NFT commerce' (The Block, 23-Aug-21)

Nifty Corporates (Not Boring by Packy McCormick, 30-Aug-21)

LINKS:

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Eoin Fitzgerald and Pete Townsend unpack the shiny new $24bn valuation for Chime in the context of the American neobank landscape, Ron Shevlin’s concept of neobank-driven deposit displacement through the lens of Bank of America, Facebook’s relaunch of their crypto project, the potential impact of Amazon hiring a crypto lead, the LendingClub turnaround and a sampling of Lex Sokolin’s poetic fintech prose.

MAIN STORIES COVERED:

Chime’s Big Raise

Chime raises $750 million, earns big jump in valuation as another fintech moves closer to IPO (CNBC, 13-Aug-21)

Bank of America and Deposit Displacement

Bank Of America is losing its grip on millennials as fintechs reinvent the checking account (Ron Shevlin in Forbes, 16-Aug-21)

Facebook’s Wallet Relaunch

Will Facebook’s Relaunched Digital Wallet [Novi] Alter the Future of Payments? (The Financial Brand, 24-Aug-21)

Amazon’s Crypto Journey

Beyond the rumors: Amazon's likely direction in crypto (American Banker, 30-Jul-21)

Lending Club Turnaround

Buying a bank turned LendingClub around. Now the fintech industry is watching (Protocol, 16-Aug-21)

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

Creating, Transacting, and Storing Value in the Financial Metaverse of NFTs, DAOs, and DeFi (Lex Sokolin, Fintech Blueprint, 23-Aug-21)

Walmart is looking for a crypto product lead (The Block (via Arca) 15-Aug-21)

LINKS:

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Recorded during the Finsight Series virtual event that Pete Townsend moderated recently hosted by Navirum and Salesforce, this episode features an all-star cast with Rory Galvin from Navirum, Bryan Clagett from Moven, Cory Haberkorn from Salesforce and Niall Twomey from Fenergo. The main theme we covered is this: The demand for digital financial services goes far beyond the domain of neobanks - how do we become truly digital upstream of consumer banking, especially in institutional banking and wealth management?

GET IN TOUCH WITH SPEAKERS:

Rory Galvin, Founder and CEO of Navirum

Bryan Clagett, Chief Revenue Officer at Moven

Cory Haberkorn, Senior Manager and Industry Advisor, Wealth and Asset Management at Salesforce

Niall Twomey, CTO and Co-founder of Fenergo

LINKS:

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Brian Kenny is the CEO and Founder of MiniCorp. Brian left the Lego behind at an early age and started building through code. We go deep into how Brian thinks about leading MiniCorp and what makes MiniCorp unique, how his modus operandi has evolved during his career in tech, the critical task of truly knowing your first ten customers, analogies between startups and marathons, and the importance of balance and human kindness.

MiniCorp are based in Dublin and help companies create exceptional digital products and experiences. In short, MiniCorp are your ready-to-go product team. Through years of experience, MiniCorp have created world-class digital products together with their clients. Their digital experiences have touched millions of customers and allow MiniCorp to grow concepts into top startups.

LINKS:

Episode title inspired by Growing Up by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis

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Eoin Fitzgerald and Pete Townsend dive deep into the annual results from UK neobanks Starling and Monzo and what’s next for both, before getting into Square’s deal for BNPL (buy now, pay later) player Afterpay and how the integration will lead to a ‘fintech flywheel’. They then dive even deeper into their developing fintech flywheel thesis with a look into how Amazon and Shopify built their flywheels around a B2C to B2B bridge and ‘doing one thing well’, before tying it all back together with a look at Revolut’s travel plans.

MAIN STORIES COVERED:

Starling’s Results

Breaking down Starling’s 2020 financials (Sifted, 22-Jul-21)

Monzo’s Results

Monzo reports £114m annual loss and a second “going concern” warning (Sifted, 30-Jul-21)

Square’s big move into BNPL with Afterpay

Why Square is shelling out $29B to snag BNPL player Afterpay (TechCrunch, 2-Aug-21)

When Fintech Meets Marketplaces (a16z Fintech Newsletter, July 2021)

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

Revolut, Europe’s $33 billion fintech giant, launches a travel booking feature(CNBC, 20-Jul-21)

LINKS:

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Gerard Tannam, Strategic Brand-Builder at Islandbridge, tells us all about the use of storytelling as a framework in bridging the gap between buyers and sellers, businesses and their markets. In this episode, we weave through Ger’s own story that takes him from Ireland to Hong Kong and back again, then into the lessons learned from marketing and strategy direction for big brands before launching the Islandbridge business, how building bridges between businesses and customers drives growth for businesses of all sizes….and almost becoming a priest!

MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by PAT Fintech, the training partner that demystifies fintech and digital finance for financial services professionals.

HIGHLIGHTS:

On one of the earliest signs of what became Gerard’s modus operandi in building brands:

“As part of our event management business in Hong Kong in the ‘90’s, we also set up an art gallery. The common thread was that I became used to walking into an empty space and looking on both sides and asking the question, what do I need to do to fill this gap?”

“You're constantly being thrown into an environment where you're obliged to translate, to step into that space between and to determine how are we going to make this work?”

“Narrative and story are concerned with making sense of the world, of finding a language to describe the world. So when Alice goes down the rabbit hole into Wonderland, what Lewis Carroll is doing is he's describing another world. When we build brands, that's what we're doing.”

LINKS:

Episode title inspired by The Bridge by MC Shan

Get in touch with and to learn more about Gerard Tannam and Islandbridge.

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Eoin and Pete mine a motherlode of fintech hotspots this week starting with insights into Revolut’s latest $33bn valuation, Square’s quest for crossover between creators, crypto and small businesses, then we dive deep into the upcoming Robinhood IPO and our developing thesis on fintech flywheels.

MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by PAT Fintech, the training partner that demystifies fintech and digital finance for financial services professionals.

MAIN STORIES COVERED:

Revolut’s Big Raise

Revolut confirms a fresh $800M in funding at a $33bn valuation to supercharge its financial services superapp (TechCrunch, 15-Jul-21)

Revolut: required study for any student of disruptive innovation (Sifted, 21-Jul-21)

Revolut vs. Nubank: Insight from Rally Cap Venture’s Juan Gabriel (Twitter, 16-Jul-21, thanks Lex Sokolin)

Square’s Crossover

Square to Create New Bitcoin Platform for Financial Services (CoinDesk, 15-Jul-21)

Square to take on incumbents with business banking accounts (Finextra, 21-Jul-21)

Robinhood IPO

Robinhood IPO: Still A Bad Bet for Investors With Alarming Risk (David Trainer, Forbes, 20-Jul-21)

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O’Shaughnessy: David Velez from Nubank (Apple Podcasts)

$1 out of every $5 in venture funding went to fintech in Q2 2021 (Morning Brew, 8-Jul-21)

LINKS:

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Follow us on Twitter Podcast| Twitter Pete| Twitter Eoin

Get in touch at [email protected]