Rubix Unlocked

In Episode 9 of Rubix Unlocked, Sachin Doshi sits down with Milan Doshi, founder and CEO of Doshi Consulting Solutions - and, as the surname suggests, family.

Milan spent almost two decades in capital markets operations at firms including Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, ADP and Broadridge, becoming the person they trusted to run large-scale change. In 2012 he founded DCS, which guides brokerage, wealth and asset management firms through clearing conversions and back-office system changes, from picking the vendor to go-live.

They talk about why the best conversions feel like a smooth flight, why a client has to own the outcome however experienced its vendor is, and how the strongest leaders let their teams run things and step in when there's a roadblock to clear. Milan also shares how firms are using AI to give the front office more time with clients while keeping a person in the middle, where tokenisation can add value first, and the founder advice he still passes on.

The episode closes with the questions we ask every guest: the best hire they've made, the one question they always ask a senior candidate, and what they've changed their mind about in the last year.

Chapters

00:00 Welcome

00:35 What DCS does

01:51 From institutional career to founder

03:23 The early years and the first big win

04:21 What a smooth conversion looks like

05:52 Why firms want specialists

07:07 Gen AI and keeping a person in the middle

09:44 Tokenisation and where it adds value first

12:13 Making room for new talent

13:42 Building the team for a major conversion

14:33 Owning the outcome with your vendor

15:25 How the best leaders show up

17:05 Founder lessons from building DCS

19:23 The closing questions

23:35 Where to find Milan and DCS

Links

Milan Doshi on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dcsmilandoshi/

Doshi Consulting Solutions: https://doshisolutions.com/

Rubix Partners: https://www.rubixpartners.co.uk

About the show

Rubix Unlocked is a technology leadership podcast hosted by Sachin Doshi, founder of Rubix Partners, a retained executive search firm working with growth-stage and investor-backed businesses across FinTech and Digital Assets in the UK, EMEA and the US. Each episode sits down with the founders, operators and investors shaping financial services, with a focus on how they build and scale their teams.

If you enjoyed this episode, follow the show and share it with someone who's building a team.

Does the business model have the right to evolve? And does the management team have the mindset to drive that change? Scott Kauffman asks both before Motive Partners invests.

Scott is Founding Partner and Head of Investments at Motive Partners, which invests only in financial technology, from pre-seed to growth and buyout. He was a Managing Director in Goldman Sachs’ Financial Institutions Group and a Partner at Oak Hill Capital before joining Motive as a Founding Partner in 2018. He sits on both of its investment committees and seven of its portfolio boards.

His view is that AI is auditing the moats in financial technology, and showing which advantages can compound: proprietary data that improves over time, trusted client relationships, embedded distribution and mission-critical workflows.

On management, Scott explains why Motive embeds operators in its portfolio companies and what a board weighs when deciding whether a team can take the business to its next stage. The answer can be to add to the team: “strong leaders of the past can very clearly be strong leaders of the future, but need additional resources, additional capabilities.”

He also shares the question he asks every senior candidate, and what he has changed his mind about in the last year.

Chapters
00:00 Introduction
00:36 How the board conversation on management talent has changed
02:40 Why Motive puts operators inside the firm
05:44 AI and auditing the moat
07:14 How underwriting has changed: the right to evolve
09:37 What AI-native venture companies teach about mature businesses
11:42 Rebuilding how a business works
14:32 The diligence question that tests adaptability
15:45 How a board decides whether a team can go to the next stage
18:31 What he looks for in a senior leader now
21:22 What a leadership team should expect after Motive invests
23:44 How boards have changed since his Goldman Sachs years
27:00 The best hire he’s ever made
27:46 The one question he asks senior candidates
28:17 What he’s changed his mind on

Follow Scott on LinkedIn: [Scott’s LinkedIn URL]
Motive Partners: motivepartners.com

Rubix Unlocked is hosted by Sachin Doshi, founder of Rubix Partners, executive search for FinTech and digital assets leadership.

Even a mid-sized payments company can tie up a billion dollars a year in a single market, just so it can pay merchants on time. Eric Queathem thinks stablecoins are about to change that.

Eric spent nearly a decade on the Worldpay executive team, running strategy, partnerships and emerging businesses, after five years at McKinsey. He left to build Velocity, which gives multinational businesses access to stablecoin payments and treasury through a single API. This year Velocity raised a $48m Series A led by Dragonfly and FirstMark, with Visa, Circle, Ripple, Coinbase Ventures and QED among the backers.

Eric explains why the next big shift in payments is happening on the back end, in settlement systems that haven’t changed in 25 to 30 years. He breaks down why payments companies pre-position cash days in advance, what that does to growth, and why his team says “where there’s mystery, there’s margin” when they benchmark a CFO’s FX rates.

The second half is about building the team. Eric talks through the move from founder-led sales to a commercial team that is now scaling fast, how he hands over accounts he won personally, and why Velocity pays more for senior operators who have done it before. He also shares the question he asks every senior candidate, and why he has told several large strategics “you will break us”.

Chapters
00:00 Introduction
00:45 Velocity explained for a CFO
02:02 Pre-positioned cash and what changes for a PSP’s treasury team
04:06 FX pricing: “Where there’s mystery, there’s margin”
05:11 A customer’s day, before and after
06:42 API or no-code: how customers go live
08:08 Why Eric left the Worldpay exec team
12:13 Staying neutral with Visa, Circle and Ripple on the cap table
14:32 Saying no to strategics: “You will break us”
16:14 Who controls the settlement layer in five years
18:34 From founder-led sales to a commercial team
21:00 Handing over founder-won accounts
22:49 What Velocity wants to be known for as a place to work
24:45 Doing with 25 people what used to take 75
27:10 The best hire he’s ever made
28:07 The one question he asks senior candidates
30:07 What he’s changed his mind on: the US

Follow Eric on X: @queathem
Velocity: velocity.xyz

Rubix Unlocked is hosted by Sachin Doshi, founder of Rubix Partners, executive search for FinTech and digital assets leadership.

Germán Soto Sanchez is Chief Product Officer and Co-President of Digital Assets at Broadridge, which sits underneath a large share of the market's post-trade infrastructure. Tokenisation there is something that has to be built while clients keep functioning.

He joins Sachin Doshi after a busy few months: governance for Ondo's tokenised equities in July 2026, Kraken's xStocks in August, then the DLX tokenisation platform and a move into US wealth in September.

Much of the episode sits on what a tokenised share actually gives you. Ondo's holders received full voting rights. xStocks holders submit a preference that the shareholder of record can choose to ignore. Germán explains why the two differ, and what an investor has to do to establish which one they are holding.

On what has paid for itself, he puts a number on it. Around $380bn a day runs through Broadridge's distributed ledger repo solution, against a target approaching a trillion inside twelve months. Collateral is the thesis underneath, where roughly $150trn of assets are eligible globally and only about $30trn is working.

The last stretch is about people. What goes into the spec for someone sitting between settlement mechanics and blockchain architecture, whether that leader can be grown inside a firm, and why Germán hires the best athlete in the room.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction
00:46 Two full-time jobs, and how product ended up owning digital assets
02:42 Build once, use many
03:39 Why the FCA and Bank of England expect a long coexistence
05:24 Dedicated teams, embedded infrastructure
06:55 Extending the wealth platform into the US
09:09 Ondo, xStocks, and who holds the vote
12:46 Does a buyer know which one they bought?
14:19 Accountability for on-chain governance
15:36 Show me the money, applied to tokenisation
19:17 DLR at $380bn a day, and the collateral thesis
22:48 Which asset class moves slowest
26:24 Does that change who you need running it?
28:38 The spec: translating in both directions
30:11 Capital markets or shipped product
31:42 Grow the leader internally, or hire in
33:21 Best hire, best question, changed mind
37:36 Where to find Germán

A Convenient Illusion - James Barker, Founder, GTM Hive

James Barker has spent his career selling technology into banks and then running the teams that do it. He built and led commercial functions at Backbase and at Mambu, where he was instrumental in taking the European revenue line from 7 to 43 million in about two and a half years. He was Chief Commercial Officer at Bud and has held fractional and non-executive seats since. He now runs GTM Hive, advising and training the commercial teams at growth-stage FS-tech businesses selling six and seven figure deals into financial institutions.

James opens on the mistake he sees most often in hiring: companies hire for the persona they want to achieve rather than the one that can get them there. A Salesforce or an Oracle name on a CV means someone who ran part of a machine that was already built, and a ten-person vendor needs the person who built one. He sets out what a CRO's job actually is at ten people, at fifty, and beyond, and what he would want to see inside a business in two weeks before signing off the hire.

On sales cycles, his view is that almost every technology business quotes six to nine months and almost every one of them is wrong. He explains where the number comes from - opportunities created in the CRM, worked, disqualified when they stall, then recreated when the buyer returns ready to move, with the clock restarting at the recreation. Underneath that is a deeper problem: the whole industry measures its own sales process rather than the buyer's journey through business case, financial planning cycle, RFP and procurement governance.

The deal segment covers the biggest of his career, a little over $20m, and the divisional CTO who was fired the day he was due to sign. James makes the case for structuring deals to be impact-resistant, and explains why enterprise cycles run eighteen months for reasons no amount of persuasion can compress.

On telling a bad hire from a bad system, he argues that booked revenue is a lagging indicator and that mediocre sellers hide behind long cycles. He sets out the two things he tests that a conventional track-record interview misses: whether a seller has a three-dimensional read of the terrain, and whether they can actually elicit the information rather than recite the framework they were trained on.

The episode closes on frameworks, where he thinks implementation matters more than which acronym you pick, and on where AI belongs in a complex institutional sale. The closing round covers the best hire he ever made, who was poor at the one thing sellers are judged on, the question he always asks a senior candidate, and what he has changed his mind about in the last year.

CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction
00:53 What has to be true before you hire a commercial leader
02:12 The right CV for the wrong stage
03:23 Two weeks inside the business: what to look for
04:30 Why the six to nine month sales cycle is wrong
06:39 Where the clock should start
07:37 The $20m deal and the CTO fired on signing day
09:16 Why enterprise cycles really run eighteen months
10:48 When to keep going on a seven-figure pursuit
13:04 Hire or enable: a bad hire or a bad system
14:24 What a search process should test
17:04 The first ninety days
17:50 Frameworks, and why implementation matters more
19:47 Where AI earns its place in an institutional sale
23:32 Closing round
27:38 Where to find James

RESOURCES
James Barker on LinkedIn
GTM Hive

ABOUT THE GUEST
James Barker is the founder of GTM Hive, which advises and trains commercial teams at growth-stage FS-tech businesses. Previously Chief Commercial Officer at Bud, and commercial leadership roles at Mambu and Backbase. He hosts the Hivemind podcast.

The Translation Layer - Renée Berman, Industry Partner, Motive Partners

Renée Berman has spent her career inside the machinery of US capital markets and now works on moving it on-chain. She was COO for equity derivatives at Credit Suisse, ran Capital Market Strategy at Broadridge, and was a Managing Director in digital asset strategy at DTCC, which clears and settles almost every trade in America. She is now an Industry Partner at Motive Partners, working with the portfolio on digital asset strategy and with the VC arm on where to deploy.

Renée sets out the three routes the SEC has approved for tokenising an equity and why she thinks all three survive: the derivative model built by Robinhood, Kraken and Ondo for investors overseas who cannot easily get exposure to US stocks; native issuance through a digital transfer agent, advocated by Superstate and Securitize with Computershare now entering; and the entitlement model DTC is building, where the security moves into a control account and a token is minted into the participant's wallet.

On digital money, her read is that stablecoins have found genuine product-market fit in remittances and cross-border payments, and that the GENIUS Act rules being written now open the door to issuer-led stablecoins from large corporates paying suppliers overseas.

We also cover why collateral mobility is the use case institutions actually care about, where a firm starts when it cannot rip out fifty years of technology, and the risk frameworks that have to exist before a regulator or a risk committee signs anything off.

Renée is writing Motive Partners' white paper on blockchain and agentic AI. She sets out what that looks like applied to collateral: an optimisation tool instructing an agent, securities moving instantly by smart contract because the underlying assets are already tokenised, no human in the loop.

The second half covers her career from Bain and Bridgespan through Credit Suisse, Broadridge and DTCC, what each side of the TradFi and Web3 divide gets wrong about the other, what earns a yes from Motive, and a quickfire round that includes the best hire she ever made, who was not on the shortlist she was handed.

CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction
00:38 Tokenisation as rails. Crypto, stablecoins and tokenised RWAs, and where each stands
04:22 The three routes the SEC has approved for tokenising an equity
08:17 DTC's tokenisation service, the chains, and collateral mobility
10:35 Where an institution starts, and the risk frameworks behind it
13:42 Blockchain and agentic AI: the Motive Partners white paper
16:07 Career: Bain, Bridgespan, the foundations, Credit Suisse, Broadridge, DTCC
18:40 The seat between TradFi and Web3
20:14 What Motive looks for before backing a founder
21:02 Quickfire round
24:00 Where to find Renée

RESOURCES
Building the Digital Asset Securities Ecosystem - DTCC, Clearstream and Euroclear with BCG, introducing the Digital Asset Securities Control Principles: https://www.dtcc.com/-/media/DASCPWhitePaper.pdf
Risk Mitigation Framework - GBBC and Oliver Wyman: https://www.gbbc.io/news/risk-mitigation-framework
Renée Berman on LinkedIn

ABOUT THE GUEST
Renée Berman is an Industry Partner at Motive Partners. Previously Managing Director in digital asset strategy at DTCC, Capital Market Strategy at Broadridge, and COO for equity derivatives at Credit Suisse. Earlier at Bain, Goldman Sachs Foundation and JP Morgan.

For the latest Rubix Unlocked I sat down with Jean-Baptiste Graftieaux, who runs Coinbase's European business from Luxembourg. He ran EMEA compliance at PayPal, then in 2014 left to help build Bitstamp into Europe's first regulated crypto company.

MiCA's transition period ended this month, and any firm still operating in Europe without a licence now has to stop.

His take on regulation is one I'd push most founders on. He doesn't see a licence as a cost or a constraint. It's what lets you sell to institutional clients in the first place, and the firms that treated compliance as something imposed on them are getting caught out now. There are still 200-plus MiCA applications sitting in the queue across Europe. He doesn't think most of them get through, and expects real consolidation on the back of it.

On hiring, when JB brings people in now, on top of the usual experience he wants two things: people who genuinely follow the crypto market, and people already using AI in how they work day to day. He was clear that second one is increasingly what separates candidates.

Worth a listen if you're building out a digital assets leadership team this year.

Most people assume the Chief of Staff role belongs to someone from strategy or consulting. Rachel Ramsay came from People and HR — and it turned out to be exactly the right preparation.

In this episode of Rubix Unlocked, Sachin Doshi sits down with Rachel Ramsay, Chief of Staff at BCB Group, to unpack what the CoS role actually demands, how influence works without formal authority, and why the people lens belongs at the centre of every strategic decision — not the edge of it.

They also get into what BCB Group are building: a regulated payments infrastructure business that moved over $250 billion through their BLINC instant settlements network in 2025, serving 400+ clients across the UK, Europe, South Africa and beyond.

This episode covers: — The unconventional path from HR and People to Chief of Staff — Driving accountability without formal authority — Why OKRs fail — and what actually works instead — The talent profile BCB looks for at the intersection of TradFi and digital assets — What it signals when a business decides it needs a CoS — Scaling culture across multiple geographies simultaneously

This isn't a crypto story. It's a leadership and payments infrastructure story.

The Operator Behind the Operator — with Rachel Ramsay, Chief of Staff, BCB Group.

In this episode, Jürgen Blumberg, COO at Centrifuge and CIO at Anemoy, discusses his transition from traditional finance to DeFi, the potential of tokenization, and the convergence of DeFi and TradFi. He also shares insights on leadership, technology, and the challenges of being an early mover in the industry.

Takeaways

• Tokenization's potential to reshape finance
• The importance of hiring people who are better than oneself
• On-chain capital currently represents roughly 2% of traditional finance — which means the growth story is almost entirely still ahead
• The regulatory journey in tokenisation is moving from exploration to implementation — and the jurisdictions that move first will attract the assets.

Chapters

• 00:00 Transition from Traditional Finance to DeFi
• 07:09 Comparing ETF Landscape and Tokenization
• 18:14 On-Chain Index Fund vs. Traditional ETF
• 31:04 Building a Diverse Team
• 39:02 Leadership and Early Stage Challenges
• 44:14 Quick Fire Round