Jeff Parks is the CEO of Stack Capital (TSX: STCK).

Stack Capital Group Inc. (TSX:STCK) is democratizing access into some of the world's most innovative and disruptive pre-IPO businesses - giving all investors the opportunity to participate; and providing shareholders with a valuable liquidity option.

Sectors that Stack Capital is focused on include SAAS, mobile, robotics, AI, travel/leisure, space, cybersecurity, crypto, and more.

In today's episode, we will discuss Jeff's innovative approach to providing liquidity to a traditionally illiquid industry, and democratizing access for growth-stage investors.

This is a great episode for any current and prospective investors looking to get into private equity & venture capital, and for early and late-stage founders looking to see how late-stage investors evaluate a new deal.

Episode timestamp:

0:52 What is Stack Capital
5:21 How to evaluate growth-stage deals
10:43 Taking a 'VC' public
12:11 Providing liquidity as a 'VC'
13:55 Who should founders put on their cap tables
16:59 Backing Varo Bank, SpaceX, and Bolt
23:45 What does the future for PE and VC look like
33:56 How is 2022 going to change everything (we recorded our episode in March 2022)
36:17 What should founders do to stay above the curve in the current market environment

Connect with Jeff:

- LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/parksjeff
- Profile: https://www.stackcapitalgroup.com/management-team

Connect with Stack Capital:

- Website: https://www.stackcapitalgroup.com/
- LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/company/stack-capital-group

Justin is the Co-Founder and CEO of Rize Money.

Rize is building AWS for financial services, offering fintech developers access to all the financial capabilities they need across both banking and brokerage verticals through a single API integration, and providing custodians a complete risk management platform so that they can work with fintechs at scale while maintaining regulatory compliance.

Justin is a dedicated entrepreneur – He Co-founded and worked at several startups in an operating capacity. He acted as an advisor to numerous other early-stage companies, including as an investor and board member.

We discussed transitioning from traditional finance to fin-tech, the 'walls' fin-tech founders have to break through, navigating through compliance in fin-tech, and how Justin and his team at Rize are here to help fin-tech founders build their apps 10 times easier.

0:00 Introduction
1:31 From hedge fund to building in fin-tech
5:32 Do founders from trad. finance build better startups?
6:47 What Rize can do for all fin-tech founders
13:53 Fin-tech infrastructures and why it matters
17:47 Key to success: make complicated things simple
27:59 Are Super-Apps the next big thing in fin-tech?
31:00 Does fin-tech founders need financial backgrounds?
35:41 Growing and scaling Rize in a year
37:34 Building a co-founder team in fin-tech
40:02 Dealing with fin-tech regulations
44:47 Is Fin-Tech becoming more saturated?

Connect with Justin:

- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/howelljustin
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/howelljustin

Connect with Rize:

- Website: https://rizefs.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/rizefs

Darshan Vaidya is the Co-Founder & CEO at Credora (Formerly known as XMargin).

Credora is the world's first distributed private credit oracle that can facilitate loans to trading firms at scale without needing to see their sensitive data. This delivers high yields to investors with unparalleled risk management and transparency.

We discussed Darshan's humble journey of coming from traditional finance to starting his own business in web3, the early days of crypto, and what innovating in the web3 space looks like.

Today, X-Margin has already facilitated over $400 million of uncollateralized loans and monitoring on lenders' behalf of around $3 billion of assets.

Today we discussed how is it like to start a web3 firm, how it it to navigate the market ups and downs with crypto market volatilities, and how is it like to stay true to your mission.

We discussed everything from building and innovating in web3, how X-Margin has facilitated hundreds of millions of dollars of credit transactions to date, and what web3 founders can build in the new world of web3.

We also discussed many topics that are relevant to today's fin-tech and web3 founders, such as how to find ideas worth innovating in web3, how to build a team fit for web3, and whether crypto firms should do ICOs or not.

2:09 What is web3 like in 2016 and 2018
10:00 Introduction to Credora (formerly X-Margin)
17:08 Building an infrastructure company in web3
20:12 Scaling a web3 company
32:51 Finding ideas worth innovating in web3
37:15 Building a team fit for web3
42:19 ICO vs. Not ICO, which one is better?

Connect with Darshan:

- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darshanvaidya

Connect with Credora:

- Website: https://credora.io/
- Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/credoraplatform

Danielle Strachman is the Co-Founder and General Partner of 1517 Fund.

Danielle has worked with young entrepreneurs for about a decade. In 2010, during the founding of the Thiel Fellowship, Danielle joined to lead the design and operations.

Danielle has worked with some of the most prestigious founders like Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum) and Ritesh Agarwal (OYO Rooms).

Previous to her work with Peter Thiel, Danielle founded and directed Innovations Academy in San Diego, a K-8 charter school serving 400 students, with a focus on student-led project-based learning and other alternative programs.

In today's episode, we talked about how Danielle built her fund from scratch, and we also discussed how to build a VC firm that is different from the others by putting a community-first approach.

We discussed a range of interesting topics below:

0:00 Introduction
0:42 Huge exclusive updates from 1517 fund
2:09 What the 1517 name stands for
3:54 How 1517 Fund invests
4:49 Having fun while investing
7:30 How to be comfortable writing the first check
11:00 Do younger founders build better startups?
13:33 Is dropping out of college worth it?
17:08 Do only wealthier students can afford to drop out?
20:52 Pursuing a community while building in VC
23:05 Solving 'let me know how I can be helpful' syndrome
32:37 Are founders and investors on the same team?
37:55 Unique journey in starting a VC fund
42:15 How VC firms raise capital to fund startups
47:56 What is a typical day like for a VC general partner

Connect with Danielle:

- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniellestrachman
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/DStrachman

Connect with 1517 Fund:

- Website: https://www.1517fund.com/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/1517fund

Caleb Avery is the Co-Founder and CEO of Tilled (https://tilled.com/).

Caleb started the idea of Tilled with his experience in the payments industry for nearly a decade. He was often asked to help software companies who were looking to monetize their payments.

Unable to find a solution that didn’t require his clients to compromise on either technology, user experience, or economics, he decided that he needed his own solution. That led him to build Tilled and create PayFac-as-a-Service.

In today’s episode, we will discuss how Caleb went from having the idea of Tilled, to building it, getting early traction, and raising subsequent seed and Series-A rounds from investors.

You will also learn what is it like to go from a team of 4 to 40 in less than a year, and what is it like to start a technology business.

Episode timestamp:

0:48 Why choose the route of a founder
38:25 What is building in public
44:37 Dealing adversity as a founder
50:00 Lessons from scaling Tilled as a startup

Connect with Caleb:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/caleb-avery/

Connect with Tilled:

https://www.linkedin.com/company/tilled/

https://tilled.com/