You know you’ve found true fintech OGs when your guests were almost roommates before “fintech” was even a buzzword. That’s exactly the case with today’s guests, Sheel Mohnot and Amit Kumar—two longtime friends and collaborators who’ve not only seen the fintech industry evolve over the last decade-plus, but have helped shape it.

In this episode, we dig into their early startup days—FeeFighters, CardSpring, and Twitter M&A tales—plus what it was like building before infrastructure existed, the bets they wish they’d made sooner, and why they believe fintech is still one of the most promising sectors to build in today.

We also get into:

• What Apple Pay did accomplish—and what it still hasn’t replaced
• Why a modern global Venmo still doesn’t exist
• What Sheel looks for in the next 10 years of fintech innovation
• And why Amit advises CS students to do their “master’s degree at Stripe”

Whether you’re a founder, investor, or just love hearing two friends go deep on the evolution of a category they’ve helped pioneer, this episode is packed with insights and reflections. 

🎙️ Welcome back to Season 3 of the Fintech OG series on This Week in Fintech!

To kick things off, we’re joined by two of the most influential voices shaping the future of financial infrastructure: David Marcus, CEO of Lightspark and former head of Libra at Facebook, and Dan Kimerling, founding partner at Deciens Capital and early pioneer in banking-as-a-service.

We cover everything from the rise—and regulatory fall—of stablecoins, to why Bitcoin might just be the TCP/IP of global money movement, to what it really takes to endure the emotional highs and lows of building in fintech.

And before we dive in, a big thank you to our sponsor Persona, the adaptable identity platform helping businesses fight fraud, meet compliance requirements, and build trust from the very first interaction.

Let’s get into it.

"It's going to be a great decade to be a banker. But probably a better decade to be a customer of a bank."

In today's episode, Ryan Zauk is joined by Junta Nakai, Global Vice President at Databricks. Junta leads the Financial Services, Cybersecurity, Sustainability, and Public Sector Go-To-Market (GTM) for one of the world's largest and most exciting startups at the beating heart of AI.

Databricks has become a household name in tech, with 60% of the F500 and well over 10,000 customers worldwide, plus a robust open source suite. They recently raised an unprecedented $10Bn Series J financing at a $62Bn valuation - The round was led by a who's who of investors including Thrive, a16z, DST, GIC, ICONIQ, and more.

But did you know that financial services is their largest business line? Databricks has become critical to some of the world’s largest financial institutions, insurance firms, and fintechs helping power their AI, cloud, machine learning, and big data initiatives. Some clients include Capital One, S&P, Mastercard, Coinbase, HSBC, Morgan Stanley, KPMG, and more.

Episode Timeline

• 3:04 - Junta's path to Goldman Sachs and how he gained the conviction to join Databricks
• 7:45 - What exactly Databricks does and how it helps global enterprises scale
• 12:45 - How Junta and his team think about GTM
• 16:20 - How Databricks works with the world's largest financial institutions
• 23:35 - Junta's role, how he tracks his team, and the importance of training his salesforce for a technical sale
• 29:05 - A few quotes from prior interviews that Junta extrapolates on, covering AI governance, security, deployment, and macro
• 32:30 - AI's potential effect on the global economic future. Trends in population decline and productivity gains and how they may affect the macro environment
• 39:27 - His passion project, Brooklyn Kura, a Brooklyn Sake brewery
• 42:23 - Rapid fire round including his must-try restaurants, his news diet, the value of your network, the startup that caught his eye, and more
  

Enjoy the show.

Junta Nakai is a Global Vice President at Databricks, leading the Financial Services, Cybersecurity, Sustainability, and Public Sector Go-To-Market (GTM). In this role, he is responsible for the global adoption of the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform across capital markets, banking, insurance, and federal, state, and local governments. Additionally, he oversees the GTM strategy for sustainability and cybersecurity solutions across all industry verticals. Before joining Databricks, Junta spent 14 years at Goldman Sachs, holding various leadership positions within the Equities Division. Junta has a B.A. in Economics & International Studies from Northwestern University.

Databricks is the Data and AI company. More than 10,000 organizations worldwide — including Block, Comcast, Condé Nast, Rivian, Shell and over 60% of the Fortune 500 — rely on the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform to take control of their data and put it to work with AI. Databricks is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices around the globe and was founded by the original creators of Lakehouse, Apache Spark™, Delta Lake and MLflow. To learn more, follow Databricks on X, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

Ryan Zauk is the Host of the This Month in Fintech Podcast and Bay Area lead for the broader This Week in Fintech platform. In his day job, Ryan is an investor at OMERS Ventures, the direct investing arm of one of the world’s largest pension plans with $130Bn+ in net assets. OMERS Ventures focuses primarily on Series A through C direct investments in Software, Fintech, and AI. Prior to OMERS, he worked in Morgan Stanley’s Tech Investment Banking team focused on M&A and capital markets across technology. He is based in the Bay Area. You can find him on Linkedin or Twitter.

In the final installment of our AI series, we explore one of the most unexpected yet explosive areas for AI innovation: accounting. Julie and Jillian sit down with Alex Hagerup, CEO and co-founder of Vic.ai, and Chris Sluty, co-founder of FloQast, to discuss how automation is reshaping the finance function—from ERP integrations and auditability to real-time data for CFOs.

We unpack why accounting is more complex than it seems, what makes it uniquely suited for AI, and how founders are building defensible products in a competitive space. You'll hear about the challenges of ERP integration, the shift from preparers to reviewers, and the growing importance of finance transformation roles. Whether you're thinking about AI's short-term wins or long-term potential, this episode offers a candid look into the future of finance operations—and why trust, nuance, and accuracy matter more than ever.

Thanks to Capchase for sponsoring this episode! Capchase is where contract financing meets digital payments. It lets your customers pay for software or hardware, monthly, quarterly, even extended net terms while you still get the full contract value upfront. Check it out at Capchase.com/thisweekinfintech and see how smarter payments can power your growth.

In today's episode, Ryan Zauk is joined by Christina Cacioppo, Co-Founder & CEO of Vanta.

Ryan and Christina recorded this episode live at Newcomer's Breaking the Bank Summit in San Francisco. The Summit was an invite-only, one-day summit for fintech founders, builders, and investors to explore the future of finance and technology.

Breaking the Bank was a phenomenal event, with speakers including Jackie Reses, Zach Perret, Eric Glyman, Matt Harris, Josh Reeves, William Hockey, Annie Lamont, and many more.

And if you're looking for more fintech events, check out Stablecon in NYC coming May 29th.

Now back to the episode...

Vanta has been a "center of the valley" company for years now, becoming one of the fastest companies to hit $100M ARR.

Christina is at the heart of this great success story and was a phenomenal guest. She shared a lot of insight (and laughs) talking through lessons scaling from $0 to $100M ARR as well as how Vanta helps companies turn compliance into a competitive advantage.

In this episode, Christina and Ryan discuss:

• 0:58 - What sparked her journey to technology and startups
• 4:03 - What exactly Vanta does, how it serves startups, and how they can quote a 526% ROI over 3 years for clients
• 10:13 - Why auditors, consultants, and lawyers can be friends instead of foe for Vanta
• 11:33 - Vanta's differentiation in a hot market
• 14:12 - Why shipping quickly is critical to staying relevant in software and the AI wave
• 16:43 - Vanta's in-house AI use and what her engineers love (and really don't love)
• 18:06 - Her top advice for founders facing hypergrowth and her views on Silicon Valley hyperscale lore
• 21:30 - The forever 'human' aspect of selling (and buying) software
• 22:38 - Hiring their first "Founder in Residence" and why it may be the new hottest job in the AI era
• 24:42 - Where differentiation will still exist in the AI era
• 26:45 - Raising from Sequoia and her advice to founders on how to vet your VCs (and why it's so critical to diligence them back) + the one thing founders really want from VCs at the early stage. It's simple, but not easy!
• 30:44 - A fun rapid fire round including the origin of the Vanta llama, favorites of her Ohio roots, their craziest marketing stunt attempt, her favorite books, a startup she's most excited about, and much more.

Enjoy the show.

--

Vanta is the leading trust management platform backed by Sequoia, Craft, YC and Crowdstrike Ventures. Over 10,000 companies, including Atlassian, Omni Hotels, Quora and ZoomInfo rely on Vanta to build, maintain and demonstrate their trust—all in a way that's real-time and transparent.

Christina Cacioppo is the Co-Founder & CEO of Vanta. Prior to founding Vanta, Christina led product management for Dropbox Paper and was a member of the investment team for Union Square Ventures. Christina received her B.A. in Economics and M.S. in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University.

Ryan Zauk is the Host of the This Month in Fintech Podcast and Bay Area lead for the broader This Week in Fintech platform. In his day job, Ryan is an investor at OMERS Ventures, the direct investing arm of one of the world’s largest pension plans with over $130Bn in net assets. Prior to OMERS, he worked in Morgan Stanley’s Tech Investment Banking team focused on M&A and capital markets. He is based in the Bay Area. You can find him on Linkedin or Twitter

Welcome back to our weekly fintech podcast!

This week, I had the chance to sit down with Sumant Shringari, the CEO and Co-Founder of Pontus, and Sandeep Sood, the Founder and CEO of Kunai.

Pontus was established in 2023 to automate the large, difficult, and often fragmented back-office operations critical to large enterprises – such as the Global 2,000 banks that they count as customers. It was interesting to hear Sumant's perspective from his time working with banks about the difficulty in automating regulated workflows and breaking down data silos. For all the hype around generative AI, the risk is real when it comes to financial services use cases, and it speaks to the necessity for strong partners that can provide dependable implementation.

It's worth taking a look through Pontus' outcomes library as well. Fintech founders will recognize a lot of the solutions here, such as Automated Account Reconciliation, Predictive Budget Forecasting, and Enterprise Risk Assessment. All of these functions today either require massive internal teams or significant vendor integration. Pontus' goal is to replace the need for both.

You can find both companies here:

• https://www.pontus.so/
• https://kunaico.com/

KYB might not be the buzziest acronym in fintech—but maybe it should be. In this episode, we’re joined by Will Lawrence, CEO of Greenlite, and Kurt Ruppel, CTO and Co-founder of Middesk, two leaders rethinking how financial institutions identify and monitor business customers. We cover the evolution from manual checks to AI-powered automation, the difference between KYC and KYB, and why ongoing monitoring is the next big frontier. Plus, Will and Kurt share how they’re navigating risk, regulation, and real-world AI implementation—from OCC audits to sanctions alerts—and where they see the biggest opportunities for innovation in compliance and fraud prevention.

And thanks to our sponsors, Newline by Fifth Third and Wolf & Company!

Backed by a leading financial institution, Newline empowers enterprise companies to effortlessly launch and scale payment, card and deposit products directly with Fifth Third Bank. And if you're looking for a partner who really gets fintech, Wolf & Company is a national accounting & advisory firm with over 100 years of experience working with financial institutions and decades scaling tech companies from startup to IPO.

Welcome back to our weekly fintech podcast!

This week, I had the chance to sit down with Peter Hazlehurst, Co-Founder and CEO of Synctera, and Matt MacDonald Financial Technology Service Leader & IT Assurance Senior Manager at Wolf & Company.

The conversation was wide-ranging, starting with Wolf & Synctera's partnership to build a compliant bank-fintech partnership model that Synctera has scaled for their customers. We spent a lot of time talking about compliance and regulation not as a restraint, but as a strategy, and as a driver of growth. In light of the last couple years, in which the BaaS model has come under stress, we also spent some time talking about the future of the bank-fintech partnership model, and what changes Matt and Peter wish that startup founders would make.

Any fintech builders and founders will find the conversation interesting – I easily could have gone over the hour!

Before getting into it, here is a little more background on Wolf & Co. and Synctera themselves.

Wolf & Company P.C. is a national CPA and business consulting firm with a regional feel offering clients a wide range of services custom-tailored to suit their industry's unique needs. Since 1911, Wolf has provided clients with industry-leading assurance, tax, risk management, business consulting, and WolfPAC Integrated Risk Management services. They pride themselves on delivering customized solutions with deep involvement by their team of dedicated professionals and leaders.

Synctera’s platform gives companies of all sizes the technology infrastructure, sponsor bank connection, and compliance framework they need to launch FinTech or embedded banking products. With a single set of powerful APIs, companies are able to quickly launch and scale products such as debit cards, bank accounts, charge cards, lines of credit, and money movement. Whether you are a FinTech company or an established business wanting to embed banking into your existing product set, Synctera can help you bring your vision to life.

In this episode, we sit down with Lukas Haffer, CEO and Co-founder of Casca, and Ryan Hildebrand, Chief Innovation Officer at Bankwell, to explore how AI is transforming small business lending—starting with SBA loans. They discuss the challenges of building on top of legacy banking systems, the stress-test of the COVID-19 PPP era, and how a human-in-the-loop approach is key to deploying AI responsibly in financial services.

You’ll hear how their partnership evolved from a small pilot into a full-stack platform that slashes loan processing times from 90 days to 3. We also dive into fraud prevention, the reality of deploying AI agents in banking, and why trust—not hype—is the foundation of true innovation.

Thanks to Fundbox⁠ for sponsoring this week's episode. With over a decade of experience, ⁠Fundbox⁠ delivers customizable credit solutions including invoice financing, lines of credit, term loans, payroll protection, and more.

We hosted an insightful live conversation and podcast at New York Fintech Week, hosted by This Week in Fintech and PingPong.​Key Topics:

• ​Real-Time Payment Rails: Exploring the latest innovations in real-time payments and how they’re reshaping cross-border transactions.
• Cross-Border Money Movement: Analyzing the challenges and opportunities in facilitating smooth cross-border B2B payments.

​Speakers:

• ​Nik Milanovic: Founder of This Week in Fintech
• ​David Messenger: CEO, Global Businesses at PingPong

​About PingPong:​PingPong was founded in New York in 2015 to solve the immense challenge of scaling enterprise businesses globally. Fast-forward to today, and PingPong has become one of the world’s leading global cross-border payments platforms, processing more than $250 billion USD. Our API-first cross-border payments solution integrates with enterprises to send, manage, and receive money faster on a global scale.​PingPong currently has 37 offices in 15 countries and over 1,000 employees. Our international presence helps businesses solve complex payment needs in every major economy across all time zones.