Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller.

Being an effective venture capital investor in fintech requires staying on top of consumer trends. Understanding the evolving nature of the end customer can make the difference when it comes to outsized returns (a little luck never hurts, either).

Yann Ranchere, partner at Anthemis, has been in the game awhile and is paying particular interest to Generation Z and the investment opportunities that are arising out of serving this demographic.

Yann joins us on the podcast to discuss why he likes investing in boring companies and where he finds these opportunities. We discuss Yann’s current investments and the Anthemis Portfolio and where he's looking to invest over the next few years.

Yann Ranchere is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast.

I’d like to thank our sponsor MX for supporting Tearsheet’s work. MX is the leading data platform for banks, credit unions and fintechs, enabling its clients and partners to easily collect, enhance, analyze, present and act on financial data.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller.

Stephanie Schultz is the vp and head of emerging strategic partnerships at American Express. In that position, she designs plans and executes partnerships focused around emerging payments and new commerce experiences. Stephanie joins us on the podcast to discuss the role the Digital Labs team plays at American Express. We drill down to explore the digital payment and emerging technology trends she’s seeing that are influencing consumer behaviors.

Lastly, we chat about what American Express is doing with bots and how the company sees the future of human/machine interaction.

Stephanie Schultz is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast.

I’d like to thank our sponsor MX for supporting Tearsheet’s work. MX is the leading data platform for banks, credit unions and fintechs, enabling its clients and partners to easily collect, enhance, analyze, present and act on financial data.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller.

Rina Papler has been working in brand strategy for over 20 years. That means she’s worked with many of today’s top financial brands with market positioning, messaging, and their product portfolios. As a partner at MBLM, she was instrumental in creating her firm’s research on brand intimacy — the emotional science that measures the bonds we form with the brands we use and love. She’s applied this research to the financial industry in an effort to rank the companies and characteristics that make for today’s strongest brands.

Rina joins us on the podcast to discuss what makes up brand intimacy and how emotional people feel around financial services. We look at her rankings and the attributes of today’s strongest financial brands. Lastly, she provides advice to companies to make themselves into more intimate brands.

Rina Papler is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast.

I’d like to thank our sponsor MX for supporting Tearsheet’s work. MX is the leading data platform for banks, credit unions and fintechs, enabling its clients and partners to easily collect, enhance, analyze, present and act on financial data.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller.

There are a handful of firms gunning to become leaders in the challenger bank space. There are the usual suspects, like Revolut and N26. But there are others firms that are growing their userbases and assets. One of those companies is CARD. It has 600,000 accounts and $3 billion in customer deposits to date. With some new growth initiatives, CARD is on track to surpass 1.5 million new accounts in 2019.

CARD’s kind of an unbank bank — meaning, the product focus is on branded debit cards, including logos from popular sports teams, athletes, and music groups.

CARD CEO Tim Coltrell joins us to talk about how he’s doubling his account base year over year and what he’s doing to evolve into a competitive challenger bank brand. We discuss Card’s product pipeline and how the company acquires new customers.

Tim Coltrell is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast.

I’d like to thank our sponsor MX for supporting Tearsheet’s work. MX is the leading data platform for banks, credit unions and fintechs, enabling its clients and partners to easily collect, enhance, analyze, present and act on financial data.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller.

Beyond the crazy things happening with digital currencies and crypto, there are companies building real businesses in digital assets. Grayscale is a digital asset manager for investors to get access this new asset class. Directly buying cryptocurrencies is complicated, so Grayscale has created single asset and diversified trusts that investors of all types can buy in their brokerage accounts or through a financial advisor.

If it sounds old school, it kind of is. Much of the Grayscale team hails from Wall Street and the firm has taken cues from established asset managers. Managing director Michael Sonnenshein joins me on the podcast to discuss the firm’s #DropGold campaign which aims to position investing in bitcoin as the modern version of investing in gold. We talk about who’s investing in digital assets and why.

Michael Sonnenshein is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller.

We don’t spend a lot of airtime on the podcast talking about what happens behind payments and ecommerce transactions, particularly when it comes to ID verification. It’s technical and more than anything, an enabling technology. But from time to time, we invite on companies that are doing something novel in a way that changes the way the game is played.

Today’s guest is Payfone’s Roger Desai. The company’s raised over $100 million and has corporate investors like Amex, Verizon, TransUnion, MassMutual and Synchrony on the cap table. That’s because Payfone helps make ecommerce - where merchants connect with buyers — as trusted as making a phone call. In a way, Payfone is creating a new form of credit score — what CEO Rodger Desai calls the Trust Score — which is intended to cover almost every adult in the US.

Payfone’s Rodger Desai is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast.

I’d like to thank our sponsor MX for supporting Tearsheet’s work. MX is the leading data platform for banks, credit unions and fintechs, enabling its clients and partners to easily collect, enhance, analyze, present and act on financial data.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller.

As favorite apps like Uber and Doordash incorporate new financial services, the spotlight is being increasingly shone on the companies powering the trend towards finance everywhere. Banking as a Service firms are turning every company into a bank. Synapse is one of the companies leading this charge. The company has found a way to power open banking so that any developer can use a few lines of its code to offer deposit accounts, issue cards, or offer loans.

Synapse’s CEO Sankaet Pathak joins me on the podcast to discuss what he sees as fintech’s biggest challenges in launching new products. I ask about his prioritization of new products — what does he decide to build and when? Not many financial services firms publish their product roadmaps publicly. Synapse has and we discuss that decision, too.

Synapse’s Sankaet Pathak is my guest on the Tearsheet Podcast.

I’d like to thank our sponsor MX for supporting Tearsheet’s work. MX is the leading data platform for banks, credit unions and fintechs, enabling its clients and partners to easily collect, enhance, analyze, present and act on financial data.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller.

Why is it that so many big transformational projects at large financial companies fail to move the needle? My guest today is Gary Hoberman. In his previous role as the CIO at MetLife, he led large digital initiatives across silos and geographies. As the founder and CEO of Unqork, Gary has a bold vision for building financial apps of the future: no-coding required. His platform enables the people in an organization who understand the business best to develop software without any programming. His customer pipeline of some of the largest banks and insurers in the world continues to grow and he’s just off a financing round lead by Goldman Sachs.

Gary joins me to discuss the obstacles in large scale financial software development and how a no-code platform like Unqork enables what he calls the DIY Enterprise. He also shares how he’s scaling with people, new clients and products.

Gary Hoberman is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast.

In the wake of last episode's eulogy for JPMC's Finn, your hosts explore exit strategies for the top challenger banks. Who buys these companies and do they get bought at technology premiums? Josh and Zack are both skeptical that they have a clear exit strategies. They discuss IPOs, and getting bought by large banks, telecoms, and payment companies.

Next up, Zack spoke about TransferWise's launch of a debit card for US customers. This product -- telegraphed for a long time -- moves TransferWise a step closer to being a banking alternative. Zack referenced Tearsheet research that showed financial professionals do recognize the money transfer firm as a competitor in consumer banking.

If TransferWise is a sleeper challenger, who else is, too? Josh suggests that telecoms -- following on the heels of T-Mobile's banking launch -- can turn into banking options given their size and the amount of data they have on their customers. Zack thinks PayPal/Venmo and Square Cash look like formidable competitors in the long term. Josh also mentioned Ant as a global competitor with tech and ambition. Zack thinks investing firms, like Robinhood and Stash, have sticky userbases and can further leg into banking services.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller.

For venture investors, it’s really hard picking winners consistently over time. Kelly Ford, a partner at Edison Partners, has been studying the attributes of successful startups in her work on Edison’s Growth Index. For more than 30 years, the venture firm has been helping CEOs and their teams grow and scale successful companies. The Growth Index, which studies the firm’s portfolio of growth-stage technology companies, finds that fast growers—or companies with 30 percent or more annual growth—share seven key characteristics associated with their growth.

Edison’s Kelly Ford joins us to talk about the key takeaways from this year’s Growth Index which saw a couple of new things added to the report. She discusses how Edison uses the research as part of a broader initiative called Edison Edge, which is a program designed to help portfolio companies scale smartly and efficiently. We also chat about Edison’s portfolio and where it’s looking to make further fintech investments.

Kelly Ford is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast.