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Lex Sokolin

Finance is being pulled apart by the forces of frontier technology. From AI, to blockchain and DeFi, mixed reality, chatbots, neobanks, and roboadvisors — the industry will never be the same. Here is the blueprint for navigating the shift.

The Fintech Blueprint

Lex interviews Shachar Bialick, the founder and CEO of Curve, a fintech mobile wallet. In this exciting episode, Shachar touches on: (1) his background as a serial entrepreneur and his experience in the Israeli military shaped his ability to solve problems and work in high-stress environments, which are key traits for a successful founder. (2) The initial idea behind Curve was to create a "wallet to rule them all" - a single interface that could consolidate and manage multiple payment cards and accounts, providing more value and convenience to customers. (3) Building Curve involved navigating complex challenges, such as convincing payment networks like Mastercard and Visa to change their rules to allow Curve's back-to-back wallet technology. This required a resilient, innovative, and persistence approach. (4) Shachar emphasizes the importance of building a company culture that fosters curiosity, adaptability, and a belief that "everything is possible" rather than focusing on perceived limitations. (5) Lastly, Shachar discusses the evolution of the fintech landscape, including the challenges faced by neobanks in creating true financial marketplaces, and the ongoing issues with the implementation of open banking standards.

 

MENTIONED IN THE CONVERSATION

 

Topics: Curve, ApplePay, Google Wallet, PayPal, Tink, neobank, fintech, wallets, payments, paytech, NFC, Open Banking

 

ABOUT THE FINTECH BLUEPRINT

 

🔥Subscribe to the Fintech Blueprint newsletter to stay at the forefront of Fintech and DeFi: https://bit.ly/3hyhlC2

 

🤝 Partner with Fintech Blueprint through sponsorships: https://bit.ly/3UZllsV

 

👉 Twitter: https://twitter.com/LexSokolin

 

TIMESTAMPS

 

1’02: From Military Service to Fintech Success: Shachar Bialick on Founding Curve and Redefining Payments

 

9’10: The Resilient Founder: Risk-Taking, Leadership, and the Cultural Mindset Behind Entrepreneurship

 

14’59: From Unbundling to Rebundling: Building Curve to Solve Financial Fragmentation

 

20’50: Revolutionizing Payments: Curve's Ambition to Unite Financial Ecosystems

 

24’26: Trailblazing Curve: Overcoming Challenges to Redefine Payments and Build a Global Fintech Ecosystem

 

30’23: Project Elah: How Curve Challenged Apple’s NFC Restrictions to Redefine Digital Wallets

 

34’50: Shaving the Lion: How Curve Built a Culture to Overcome Industry Challenges and Innovate

 

39’05: Challenging Apple Pay: Curve’s Strategy to Deliver Tangible Customer Benefits

 

42’01: The Evolution of Fintech Infrastructure: Challenges, Opportunities, and the Role of Open Banking

 

51’54: The channels used to connect with Shachar & learn more about Curve

Disclaimer here — this newsletter does not provide investment advice and represents solely the views and opinions of FINTECH BLUEPRINT LTD.

Contributors: Lex, Laurence, Matt, Farhad, Mike, Daniella

Want to discuss? Stop by our Discord and reach out here with questions.

Curve’s Big Bet Reinventing Payments and Wallets, with CEO Shachar Bialick

Lex interviews Arun Kumar, the CTO of Socure, an identity management and risk assessment company. In this exciting episode, Arun touches on: (1) his experience building large-scale, high-throughput, and low-latency systems at companies like Amazon and Citadel, and how he applies that expertise to the identity verification and fraud detection challenges at Socure. (2) Socure's rapid growth, serving over 2,700 customers including 9 of the top 10 U.S. banks and over 30 state agencies, processing hundreds of millions of transactions per month. (3) Socure's approach to building a real-time identity graph by aggregating signals from devices, phone numbers, IPs, and other data points to detect and prevent sophisticated fraud tactics like deepfakes and fraud GPTs. (4) The company's recent acquisition of Effectiv to simplify the integration process for customers and improve efficiency, as well as its use of Generative AI to automate various tasks. Lastly, (5) Socure's future plans to expand beyond account opening and login into transaction monitoring, as well as exploring opportunities in the growing embedded finance and digital identity spaces.

 

MENTIONED IN THE CONVERSATION

 

Topics: Socure, Effectiv, Citadel, Amazon, Identity management, digital identity, generative AI, deepfakes, fraud prevention, machine learning, identity verification

 

ABOUT THE FINTECH BLUEPRINT

 

🔥Subscribe to the Fintech Blueprint newsletter to stay at the forefront of Fintech and DeFi: https://bit.ly/3hyhlC2

 

🤝 Partner with Fintech Blueprint through sponsorships: https://bit.ly/3UZllsV

 

👉 Twitter: https://twitter.com/LexSokolin

 

TIMESTAMPS

 

1’02: Scaling Innovation: Exploring High-Performance Systems and Real-Time Technology

 

4’04: From Financial Data to Machine Learning: Scaling Systems and Solving Edge Cases

 

8’49: Bridging Big Tech and Quant Finance: Exploring Technology Overlaps and Ultra-Low Latency Systems

 

11’12: Protecting Digital Identity at Scale: The Journey to Socure and Solving Real-Time Fraud Challenges

 

15’50: Building the Network Effect: How Socure Became a Leader in Identity Verification and Fraud Prevention

 

21’00: Battling Modern Fraud: Deepfakes, Generative AI, and the Evolving Landscape of Digital Security

 

26’30: Revolutionizing Customer Success: Simplifying Integrations with No-Code Solutions and Real-Time Performance Insights

 

29’57: Scaling Customer Integration: Fixed Costs, POCs, and Generative AI-Driven Value Propositions

 

34’00: Driving Efficiency and Scale: Socure's Evolving Product Roadmap and Future Vision

 

36’14: Learning from Customization: Standardizing for Scalability and Long-Term Growth

 

38’58: Expanding Horizons: Growing Market Share and Addressable Markets in Digital Transactions

 

41’00: The channels used to connect with Arun & learn more about Socure

Disclaimer here — this newsletter does not provide investment advice and represents solely the views and opinions of FINTECH BLUEPRINT LTD.

Contributors: Lex, Laurence, Matt, Farhad, Mike, Daniella

Want to discuss? Stop by our Discord and reach out here with questions.

Protecting 2,700 Customers Across 100 Million Transactions, with Socure's CTO Arun Kumar

Lex interviews Jayendra Jog - co-founder of Sei Labs, about his professional journey and the innovative Sei protocol—a high-performance parallel blockchain. Jay shares insights from his time at Robinhood, emphasizing the importance of distribution over technology and the challenges of scaling a fintech company. He discusses the limitations of Ethereum's transaction processing and how Sei Labs aims to address these through parallelization. The conversation also covers the future of blockchain in finance, the need for regulatory clarity, and the potential of high-performance blockchains to support emerging industries like AI and decentralized science.

 

Notable discussion points:

 

Impact Over Paychecks – Jog’s career leap from SAP to Facebook, Pinterest, Robinhood, and Sei Labs was driven by impact, not salary. He thrived in small, high-talent teams where he could truly move the needle.

 

Robinhood’s Growing Pains – Early Robinhood was fast and scrappy, but as it scaled, bureaucracy slowed innovation. The shift from “missionary” to “mercenary” employees hurt culture and velocity.

 

Tech Doesn’t Win—Distribution Does – The best crypto projects don’t just have great tech; they win by getting users. Sei Labs focuses on real-world adoption, not just engineering breakthroughs.

 

Sei’s Parallelized EVM: A Game Changer – Ethereum is slow. Sei Labs fixes this by parallelizing transactions, enabling high-speed trading and complex on-chain applications. It’s Ethereum’s power with Solana’s speed.

 

MENTIONED IN THE CONVERSATION

 

Topics: fintech, blockchain, Sei Labs, Sei protocol, Ethereum Virtual Machine, EVM, Robinhood, decentralized applications, DeFi protocols, DePIN

 

ABOUT THE FINTECH BLUEPRINT

 

🔥Subscribe to the Fintech Blueprint newsletter to stay at the forefront of Fintech and DeFi: https://bit.ly/3hyhlC2

 

🤝 Partner with Fintech Blueprint through sponsorships: https://bit.ly/3UZllsV

 

👉 Twitter: https://twitter.com/LexSokolin

 

TIMESTAMPS

 

1’29: From Silicon Valley Roots to Startup Hustle: Jayendra Jog’s Journey Through Tech’s Elite Ranks

 

7’53: Scaling Robinhood: From Scrappy Startup to Corporate Bureaucracy

 

12’56: Why Robinhood Won: Distribution Over Technology in Fintech and Crypto

 

17’38: Sei and the Parallelized EVM: Scaling Blockchain for High-Performance Trading

 

25’18: Parallelization in Blockchain: Unlocking Scalability Without Breaking the System

 

28’03: Building Sei: Solving the Blockchain Adoption Puzzle for Finance and Developers

 

33’50: The Blockchain Race: Competing for Killer Apps and Market Dominance

 

38’02: The Next Wave: Sei’s Vision for AI, DePIN, and High-Performance Blockchain Applications

 

41’34: The channels used to connect with Jay & learn more about Sei

Disclaimer here — this newsletter does not provide investment advice and represents solely the views and opinions of FINTECH BLUEPRINT LTD.

Contributors: Lex, Laurence, Matt, Farhad, Mike, Daniella

Want to discuss? Stop by our Discord and reach out here with questions.

How Sei is Breaking Ethereum's Limits with Co-Founder Jayendra Jog

Lex interviews Andrew Jamison - CEO and Co-founder of Extend - a financial infrastructure platform that helps banks innovate financial product development with capabilities while working with their existing systems, starting with virtual cards. Andrew shares his journey into fintech, detailing his experiences at American Express and the evolution of virtual cards. He discusses the challenges and opportunities in the virtual card space, the founding of Extend, and its innovative approach to simplifying spend management. The episode highlights Extend's rapid growth, unique market position, and the future of financial management, emphasizing real-time transactions and integrated solutions for businesses.

 

Notable discussion points:

 

Virtual Cards = Smarter Spend ManagementVirtual credit cards revolutionize payments by enabling real-time reconciliation, reducing fraud, and improving financial control—especially for SaaS, digital ads, and legal expenses.

 

Extend’s Edge: Partnering with Banks, Not Disrupting ThemUnlike Brex and Ramp, Extend powers virtual cards on existing bank-issued cards, making adoption seamless for businesses while strengthening bank relationships.

 

B2B Payments Go EmbeddedThe future of finance is embedding payments directly into platforms like SAP Concur - letting CFOs manage expenses within the tools they already use.

 

From Enterprise-Only to Instant AccessVirtual cards once took months to implement. Extend’s API-first approach makes them deployable in minutes, bridging the gap between legacy banking and modern finance.

 

MENTIONED IN THE CONVERSATION

 

Topics: Extend, American Express, AMEX, SAP, fintech, credit cards, spend management, virtual cards, B2B, API, banking infrastructure, embedded payments

 

ABOUT THE FINTECH BLUEPRINT

 

🔥Subscribe to the Fintech Blueprint newsletter to stay at the forefront of Fintech and DeFi: https://bit.ly/3hyhlC2

 

🤝 Partner with Fintech Blueprint through sponsorships: https://bit.ly/3UZllsV

 

👉 Twitter: https://twitter.com/LexSokolin

 

TIMESTAMPS

 

1’10: From Green Screens to the Cloud: How Early Tech Shaped Andrew Jamison’s Approach to Business and Automation

 

5’12: Scaling Amex: Expanding Beyond Travel to B2B Payments and Virtual Cards

 

10’27: Virtual Cards in Travel: Solving Payments but Struggling with Scale

 

15’19: Virtual Cards and On-Demand Growth: How APIs Unlocked a New Payments Model

 

19’17: From Amex to Extend: Reinventing Virtual Cards for Everyday Business

 

26’00: Scaling Smart Payments: How Extend is Reshaping B2B Credit Cards

 

29’33: Rethinking Spend Management: How Extend Partners with Banks Instead of Replacing Them

 

31’47: Built for CFOs: How Extend Streamlines Payments and Expense Management

 

35’08: The Future of Finance: How Embedded Payments and APIs Are Reshaping the CFO’s Role

 

40’34: The channels used to connect with Andrew & learn more about Extend

Disclaimer here — this newsletter does not provide investment advice and represents solely the views and opinions of FINTECH BLUEPRINT LTD.

Contributors: Lex, Laurence, Matt, Farhad, Mike, Daniella

Want to discuss? Stop by our Discord and reach out here with questions.

The Virtual Card Revolution Powering $7 Billion in Transactions, with Extend CEO Andrew Jamison

Lex interviews Sam Williams - founder of Arweave. This episode delves into the innovative aspects of Arweave, a protocol designed for permanent data storage and computation within the Web3 ecosystem. The discussion covers a range of topics, from the economic models underpinning Arweave to its potential applications in decentralized finance (DeFi) and beyond.

 

Notable discussion points:

 

The Founding of Arweave and its Mission – Sam Williams’ interest in distributed computing and concerns about authoritarianism led him to create Arweave in 2017. Inspired by the Snowden leaks, he saw the need for a blockchain-based permanent storage solution to protect journalism, historical records, and digital assets from censorship.

 

Decentralized vs. Distributed Storage – Williams explained how Arweave differs from alternatives like IPFS and Filecoin. Unlike traditional storage, which requires ongoing payments, Arweave uses a one-time payment model. This storage endowment leverages declining storage costs to ensure long-term data persistence without relying on centralized infrastructure.

 

Arweave’s Expansion into Decentralized Compute – Arweave has evolved beyond storage to develop decentralized computing through "Arweave IO." This enables parallelized smart contract execution, making it possible to run AI models, financial automation, and decentralized apps on-chain—aligning with Web3’s shift toward autonomous, intelligent systems.

MENTIONED IN THE CONVERSATION

 

Topics: Arweave, permanent data storage, Web3, decentralized systems, distributed systems, blockchain, economic models, IPFS, Filecoin, decentralized computing, decentralized finance, compute

 

ABOUT THE FINTECH BLUEPRINT

 

🔥Subscribe to the Fintech Blueprint newsletter to stay at the forefront of Fintech and DeFi: https://bit.ly/3hyhlC2

 

🤝 Partner with Fintech Blueprint through sponsorships: https://bit.ly/3UZllsV

 

👉 Twitter: https://twitter.com/LexSokolin

 

TIMESTAMPS

 

1’06: From Distributed Computing to Decentralized Truth Preservation: A Journey into Web3

 

4’31: Decentralization vs. Distribution: Defining the Future of Web3 Infrastructure

 

9’41: Building a Decentralized Archive: Arweave’s Journey from Vision to Adoption

 

16’28: Web3 Storage Economics: Arweave vs. IPFS and the NFT Data Dilemma

 

22’42: Arweave’s Endowment Model: A Blockchain-Native Approach to Permanent Storage

 

27’13: Arweave’s Next Chapter: From Permanent Storage to Decentralized Supercomputing

 

31’36: Decentralized AI and Agent Finance: Expanding Arweave’s Computational Power

 

36’26: Decentralized AI and Blockchain: Overcoming Computation and Consensus Challenges

 

41’34: The Future of Decentralized Intelligence: Trustless Finance and Digital Immortality

 

44’59: The channels used to connect with Sam & learn more about Arweave

Disclaimer here — this newsletter does not provide investment advice and represents solely the views and opinions of FINTECH BLUEPRINT LTD.

Contributors: Lex, Laurence, Matt, Farhad, Mike, Daniella

Want to discuss? Stop by our Discord and reach out here with questions.

Building a Trustless Supercomputer for Web3 and AI, with Arweave's Founder Sam Williams

Lex interviews Scott Woody, CEO and founder of Metronome, a usage-based billing platform. Scott shares his journey from academia to entrepreneurship, detailing his experiences at UC Berkeley, D.E. Shaw, and Stanford, where he studied biophysics. His tenure at Dropbox, where he tackled billing system challenges, inspired the creation of Metronome. The discussion highlights Metronome's real-time billing data capabilities, which aim to improve business efficiency and customer experience. Scott also explores the broader implications of AI in fintech, emphasizing the shift towards usage-based business models and the importance of real-time data.

 

Notable discussion points:

 

Metronome emerged from firsthand frustrations at Dropbox, where Scott Woody experienced how rigid billing systems slowed growth, confused customers, and blocked real-time insights. He built Metronome as a flexible, real-time billing engine that merges usage data with pricing logic—powering the monetization infrastructure for top AI companies today.

 

Real-time billing isn’t just about invoices—it's a strategic revenue lever. For AI and SaaS businesses alike, Metronome enables teams to run dynamic experiments, optimize GPU allocation, and make last-minute decisions to hit quarterly targets—turning billing into a core growth engine.

 

The rise of AI is accelerating a shift to usage-based models. As AI becomes specialized labor across verticals (from loan collection to customer service), companies are rapidly replatforming, and entire industries may flip from seat-based to outcome-based pricing within quarters—Metronome is positioned as the "payment processor" for this AI economy.

 

MENTIONED IN THE CONVERSATION

 

Topics: Metronome, Dropbox, Datadog, OpenAI, AI, AGI, machine learning, pricing models, financial services, business optimization, operational frameworks, analytics, financial modeling

 

ABOUT THE FINTECH BLUEPRINT

 

🔥Subscribe to the Fintech Blueprint newsletter to stay at the forefront of Fintech and DeFi: https://bit.ly/3hyhlC2

 

🤝 Partner with Fintech Blueprint through sponsorships: https://bit.ly/3UZllsV

 

👉 Twitter: https://twitter.com/LexSokolin

 

TIMESTAMPS

 

1’05: Talent Spotting and Swag Strategy: How Scott Woody Recruited the Brightest Minds at Berkeley

 

7’27: From Biophysics to Startups: How Stanford and Protein Folding Led Scott into Tech

 

9’28: Lessons from Dropbox: Why Talent Density Beats Perks in Building Scalable Tech Teams

 

14’09: Solving the Billing Bottleneck: How Metronome Powers Real-Time Monetization for Modern Tech

 

19’45: Real-Time Revenue Intelligence: How Metronome Helps Teams Optimize Pricing, Experiments, and GPU Allocation

 

24’55: Optimizing AI Economics: Metronome’s Real-Time Matching of Model Usage, Customer Spend, and GPU Allocation

 

29’03: The Rise of Usage-Based AI: Why Real-Time Monetization Is Reshaping Business Models Across Tech

 

34’25: Specialized AI as Labor: Why Purpose-Built Agents Are Shaping the Future of Work and Software Integration

 

40’46: The Tipping Point for AI Adoption: Why Clear ROI and Competitive Pressure Are Rewriting Entire Industries

 

48’39: The channels used to connect with Scott & learn more about Metronome

Disclaimer here — this newsletter does not provide investment advice and represents solely the views and opinions of FINTECH BLUEPRINT LTD.

Contributors: Lex, Laurence, Matt, Farhad, Mike, Daniella

Want to discuss? Stop by our Discord and reach out here with questions.

How Metronome is Building the Revenue Engine for AI, with CEO Scott Woody

Lex interviews David Snider - founder and CEO of Harness Wealth. David shares his extensive fintech journey, including his pivotal role at Compass, a real estate technology firm. He discusses the challenges of aligning agents with new technology and the evolution of Compass's business model to empower agents with better tools and incentives. Transitioning to Harness Wealth, David explains his vision to enhance tax advisory services through a modern platform, addressing complex financial needs. The episode underscores the importance of innovation and human expertise in fintech and real estate.

 

Notable discussion points:

 

Empowering Advisors in Complex Industries: David Snider has built platforms that enhance human advisors rather than replace them—first in real estate with Compass - a technology-powered real estate brokerage, now in tax with Harness Wealth. In industries with high complexity and large transaction sizes, like wealth management and real estate, human expertise remains essential. His approach emphasizes that technology should enable, not displace, trusted advisors.

 

Compass Pivoted to Power Top Agents: Compass began with a plan to disrupt real estate agents but pivoted to support top performers with better tech and economics. This shift—paired with smart execution—enabled rapid growth and market leadership by focusing on high-value agents and transactions, rather than cutting them out of the process.

 

Harness Wealth Modernizes Complex Tax Advisory: Harness Wealth applies a Compass-like model to tax, serving clients with equity comp, crypto, and private investments by connecting them to top advisors through a modern, tech-enabled experience. The platform improves both advisor workflows and client usability, targeting a large, underserved market that DIY tools can’t effectively serve.

 

MENTIONED IN THE CONVERSATION

 

Topics: Fintech, Harness Wealth, Compass, AI, RealEstate, Platform-As-A-Service, Advisory, Data, Tax, WealthTech, TaxTech, CryptoTax, PersonalFinance, FinancialAdvisors

 

ABOUT THE FINTECH BLUEPRINT

 

🔥Subscribe to the Fintech Blueprint newsletter to stay at the forefront of Fintech and DeFi: https://bit.ly/3hyhlC2

 

🤝 Partner with Fintech Blueprint through sponsorships: https://bit.ly/3UZllsV

 

👉 Twitter: https://twitter.com/LexSokolin

 

TIMESTAMPS

 

1’06: From Bain to Compass: David Snider on Navigating Finance, Real Estate, and the Rise of Advisor-Enabled Tech

 

5’42: Evolving Real Estate Through Tech: Market Levers, Rollups, and Building Compass's Super Agent Model

 

13’20: Digital vs. Human: Why Tech Wins in Some Industries—and Advisors Thrive in Others

 

17’16: Scaling Compass: How Tech, Economics, and a New Go-to-Market Strategy Fuelled Rapid Agent Growth

 

22’20: Overcoming Resistance: The Grind Behind Compass’s Data Integration and Agent Tech Adoption

 

26’13: From Compass to Harness: Building a Tech-Driven Platform to Simplify Complex Tax and Financial Advice

 

31’05: Serving the Underserved: How Harness Wealth Empowers Advisors and Clients Navigating Complex Tax Needs

 

34’16: Building Smarter Tax Tech: Harness’s Curated Approach to Streamlined Data, Insights, and Advisor Collaboration

 

36’02: Scaling with Purpose: Harnessing Data, Advisor Value, and a Massive Market Opportunity in Tax

 

37’46: The channels used to connect with David & learn more about Harness Wealth

Disclaimer here — this newsletter does not provide investment advice and represents solely the views and opinions of FINTECH BLUEPRINT LTD.

Contributors: Lex, Laurence, Matt, Farhad, Mike, Daniella

Want to discuss? Stop by our Discord and reach out here with questions.

Reinventing Traditional Services through Modern Platforms, with David Snider CEO of Harness Wealth

Lex interviews Josh Reeves, co-founder of Gusto, a company specializing in payroll, HR, and benefits solutions for small businesses. Josh shares his journey from academia to entrepreneurship, highlighting the challenges and strategies involved in building Gusto. The discussion covers the evolution of technology from Web 2.0, the importance of understanding customer needs, and maintaining strong unit economics. Josh emphasizes Gusto's mission to simplify payroll and HR tasks for small businesses, aiming to improve their survival rates and overall efficiency. The episode underscores the significance of product quality and customer satisfaction in navigating industry competition.

 

Notable discussion points:

 

1. Solving Payroll as a Massive, Underserved SMB Pain Point: Reeves highlighted how in 2011, 40% of small businesses were fined annually due to manual payroll errors. Gusto addressed this pain using cloud and mobile tech, making payroll fast, accurate, and accessible—especially for non-experts.

 

2. Product Sequencing and the Power of a Payroll-Centric Ecosystem: Starting with payroll, Gusto built a sticky, horizontal product with strong retention. From there, they expanded into benefits, time tracking, and more—adding products based on customer pull and reinforcing their ecosystem.

 

3. Organizational Evolution: From Founder-Led to Functional and Matrixed: Gusto grew from 3 co-founders to 2,600+ employees by evolving from a hands-on team to a matrix structure. Reeves emphasized hiring leaders suited to each stage and giving small, focused teams autonomy to drive new product development.

 

MENTIONED IN THE CONVERSATION

 

Topics: Fintech, Gusto, Payroll, HR, Zazzle, SMB, CAC, Customer, Scaling, Growth, Web2.0

 

ABOUT THE FINTECH BLUEPRINT

 

🔥Subscribe to the Fintech Blueprint newsletter to stay at the forefront of Fintech and DeFi: https://bit.ly/3hyhlC2

 

🤝 Partner with Fintech Blueprint through sponsorships: https://bit.ly/3UZllsV

 

👉 Twitter: https://twitter.com/LexSokolin

 

TIMESTAMPS

 

1’13: From PhD Dropouts to Payroll Pioneers: Joshua Reeves on Building Gusto and Solving Real Problems with Technology

 

4’21: The Web2 Reawakening: Democratizing Creation and Commerce Through the Internet

 

8’14: From Pen and Paper to the Cloud: Tackling Payroll Pain and Modernizing SMB Operations

 

11’15: Is Gusto a Fintech?: Ignoring Labels, Solving Problems, and Building for Small Business from Day One

 

16’07: Cracking the SMB Code: Building Scalable Products with Strong Unit Economics and Organic Growth

 

19’39: The Fundamentals of Scaling: Navigating CAC, LTV, and Retention in Subscription Businesses

 

22’49: Building Beyond Payroll: How Customer Demand and Smart Sequencing Shaped a Scalable Product Organization

 

27’16: Scaling with Intention: Evolving Leadership, Structure, and Talent from 10 to 2,600 People

 

33’00: Structuring for Scale: Balancing Autonomy, Focus, and Flexibility in a Multi-Product Organization

 

36’22: From Traction to Tenure: Scaling Impact, Navigating Competition, and Building for the Next Decade

 

41’12: The channels used to connect with Joshua & learn more about Gusto

Disclaimer here — this newsletter does not provide investment advice and represents solely the views and opinions of FINTECH BLUEPRINT LTD.

Contributors: Lex, Laurence, Matt, Farhad, Mike, Daniella

Want to discuss? Stop by our Discord and reach out here with questions.

The $500MM Startup Making Payroll Painless, with Gusto Co-Founder Joshua Reeves

Hi Fintech Futurists,

Welcome to our podcast series!

SoFi is going public with a SPAC deal worth over $8 billion. A few things we touch on in detail: (1) this is still largely a lender, (2) there is a gem of an embedded finance play called Galileo that SoFi owns, and (3) the multiple is a little over 10x T12 revenues, which is not crazy expensive, but not cheap.

Speaking of Galileo and finance APIs, we transition to Plaid, and how it is is not going to be one of the networks in Visa’s network of networks. Who wins and who loses in the equation? And last, we cover the Bakkt SPAC of over $2 billion and our view on its future.

For the annotated transcript and additional premium analysis, subscribe HERE.
Excerpt
Lex Sokolin:
If I could hop in to caricature it even a little bit more, as you're saying, 10 years ago, 12 years ago, whenever it was, SoFi is starting to do this arbitrage. They're arbitraging the government's decisions to non-discriminate for student loans, and it's a 400 basis point arbitrage, and they're getting all of the wealthier, better credit students from business schools and law schools to come to them. And if you're running a lending business, all you're doing really is printing money now because you're taking fees upfront and you've got credit risk way, way, way in the back. So on a revenue basis, you look pretty fantastic. So because you look fantastic, you might pick up $500 million or a billion from your friends at SoftBank and all of the other FinTech VCs which are trying to build gigantic consumer brands and are doing it on consumer growth and revenue growth and not really are super worried about credit risk.

Now you fast forward 10 years and the world is in many ways on fire, everybody's bankrupt, money's being printed every which way, and it so happens that your largest investor SoftBank itself is losing 12 billion bucks, printing $10 billion options contracts on tech companies and all sorts of shenanigans. And you start getting calls. You start getting calls from a variety of billionaires, from people that are managing hedge funds and creating these SPAC structures, to the Facebook billionaires like Chamath who are printing SPAC structures, to FinTech billionaires, or near deca-millionaires like The Bancorp's Betsy Cohen. So you start getting these calls saying, "Wow, you have some nice economics, let's go public." I think this is the first fancy one, right? The first fancy FinTech that is going this route. Is that fair to say?

 

Disclaimer here — this newsletter does not provide investment advice and represents solely the views and opinions of FINTECH BLUEPRINT LTD.

Contributors: Lex, Laurence, Matt, Farhad, Mike, Daniella

Want to discuss? Stop by our Discord and reach out here with questions.

Who wins and loses in the Plaid/Visa divorce, and the $10 Billion in new Fintech SPACs (Bakkt and SoFi)

Hi Fintech Futurists,

There’s an enormous gap between the financial needs of humanity and what the financial sector is able to deliver there. This gap is being filled by tech-savvy solutions and embedded finance plays which are putting into question the role of a bank in this new ecosystem.

Simon’s recent analysis suggests that Embedded Finance is merely a decade out from offering a new, very large addressable market opportunity worth over $7 trillion, which is twice the combined value of the world’s top 30 banks today.

For the annotated transcript and additional premium analysis, subscribe HERE.

Hope you enjoy, and do not hesitate to reach out here!
Excerpt
Simon Torrance:
So let's take an example here. Standard Chartered is quite a good example, based out of Singapore, but a big bank in Southeast Asia and Africa. And this example is quite good because their core business, like all banks, is suffering. And so they created a separate...

Lex Sokolin:
Sorry to interrupt. But I just want to highlight that their core business, the core business of Standard Chartered, is they're in the business of suffering. To be suffering, is their core operating activity.

Simon Torrance:
Yes, exactly. Exactly. Quite cleverly, very cleverly, what they've said is that we've got the core business, which is all about suffering, as you say, and we need to optimize that, but we've got to do something to get out of this rut we're in. So they created a separate unit called SC Ventures to try and invent the future and fast track that future and to do it away from all the old metrics and culture and everything in the core business, because you cannot do breakthrough innovation within the core.

And that business is proving pretty dynamic now. It's spinning off a lot of ventures, working with entrepreneurs to do so, and one of the ventures is something called Nexus, which is a bank-as-a-service proposition. And this is publicly available information. They've essentially created their own FinTech business in this space in embedded finance and put a lot of investment into it.

Disclaimer here — this newsletter does not provide investment advice and represents solely the views and opinions of FINTECH BLUEPRINT LTD.

Contributors: Lex, Laurence, Matt, Farhad, Mike, Daniella

Want to discuss? Stop by our Discord and reach out here with questions.

Embedded Finance as a $7 trillion market opportunity for banks in the business of suffering, with Simon Torrance

In this conversation, we chat with Sergey Nazarov. Sergey Nazarov is Co-founder of Chainlink, the leading decentralized oracle network used by global enterprises & projects at the forefront of the blockchain space.

Chainlink is the industry standard oracle network for powering hybrid smart contracts. Chainlink Decentralized Oracle Networks provide developers with the largest collection of high-quality data sources and secure off-chain computations to expand the capabilities of smart contracts on any blockchain. Managed by a global, decentralized community, Chainlink currently secures billions of dollars in value for smart contracts across decentralized finance (DeFi), insurance, gaming, and other major industries.

More specifically, we touch on what it means to build in DeFi, what Oracles are like, what smart contracts are and what they enable, how all of this works and where the protocol is going, and so much more!Disclaimer here — this newsletter does not provide investment advice and
represents solely the views and opinions of FINTECH BLUEPRINT LTD.

Contributors: Lex, Laurence, Matt, Farhad, Mike, Daniella

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Chainlink Co-Founder Sergey Nazarov on building the global decentralized oracle network powering DeFi and Web3

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