"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.

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