Wharton FinTech Podcast

Christian Rolon (WG '19) is joined by Jason Brown, the co-founder and CEO of Tally Technologies. Tally is the first automated debt manager, helping consumers pay down high interest rate credit card debt. Tally was founded in 2015, and was launched on iOS in October 2017. Tally now manages hundreds of millions of dollars in credit card debt and has saved people millions of dollars in interest and late fees since its launch. Tally has raised $42m in total from investors including Kleiner Perkins, Shasta Ventures, and Cowboy Ventures. Jason is the co-founder and CEO of Tally Technologies. Tally is Jason's third startup. His second startup Gen110 was also co-founded with his Tally co-founder Jasper Platz and was invested in by Kleiner Perkins. Gen110 was acquired by Solar Universe in 2013. Jason also worked at Voyager Capital, a VC firm focusing on early-stage software firms. Jason has his MBA from Chicago Booth, where he ran the Venture Capital and Private Equity Club and concentrated in Finance and Entrepreneurship. Jason received his BA from Boston University, graduating summa cum laude.

In our latest podcast, Christian Rolon (WG ‘19) is joined by Nick Shalek, a general partner at Ribbit Capital. Ribbit Capital is a leading venture capital firm focused on early stage firms across fintech verticals such as lending, insurance, wealth management, and blockchain. Ribbit Capital has made a number of investments across the fintech space, including: Affirm, Brex, Coalition, Coinbase, Credit Karma, Funding Circle, Gusto, Nubank, Revolut, Robinhood, Upgrade, and Wealthfront. In this podcast, Nick speaks about his path to venture capital, Ribbit's investment approach, regulation affecting fintech, and his view on the current investing and valuation landscape. Nick is a General Partner at Ribbit Capital, investing and serving on the board of a number of Fintech firms. As a firm, Ribbit Capital has made investments in many of the Fintech space’s leading startups - such as Coinbase, Revolut, and Robinhood. Nick has been at Ribbit Capital since 2012. Prior to Ribbit, Nick worked in Yale’s Investments Office, which manages the Yale University endowment. Nick also has experience as an operator, across Verne Global, Facebook, and Aspire Public Schools. Nick has a BA from Yale University, as well as an MBA and an MA in Education from Stanford University.

In this podcast, Christian Rolon (MBA '19) interviews Garry Reeder, Vice President at the Center for Financial Services Innovation. This episode was recorded live at the Financial Inclusion Summit. Garry leads the Financial Solutions Lab at CFSI. In this podcast, Garry discusses CFSI's mission and investing activities, regulatory developments in fintech, and fintech and blockchain applications for the underbanked. Garry Reeder is the Vice President of Innovation and Policy at the Center for Financial Services Innovation. Garry also leads the Financial Solutions Lab at CFSI. The Financial Solutions Lab is a partnership between CFSI and J.P. Morgan Chase. The Financial Solutions Lab invests in entrepreneurs and startups that are working on improving the financial health of consumers around the world. Past startups that have gone through the program include: Dave, Digit, EarnUp, LendStreet, Nova, Scratch, and WiseBanyan. Prior to his current role at CFSI, Garry had an extensive background in the public and private sector. Within the private sector, Garry has a decade of asset management experience, spanning across Ziff Brothers Investments and Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Garry later went on to co-found Fenway Summer Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm investing in Fintech firms. Garry has also advised a number of financial service institutions around the regulatory landscape, first at BlackRock, where Garry led the Consumer Financial Services Advisory Practice, and then at Chain Bridge Partners, where Garry was a Managing Director. Garry also spent time in the public sector, specifically at the U.S. Treasury. At Treasury, Garry worked on the Auto Team, overseeing TARP's investments in the auto sector, and the General Motors IPO. Garry went on to serve as the Chief of Staff for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, helping to develop Project Catalyst. Garry has his BA from Yale, and his MBA from Columbia Business School. The Financial Inclusion Summit was organized by Rex Salisbury, the founder of Fintech Devs and PMs Meetup. The community has roughly 2,000 members, hosting monthly events highlighting many exciting Fintech firms in the Bay Area. Past Meetups have featured speakers from: a16z, Affirm, Branch, EarnIn, Plaid, SoFi, Wealthfront, and many others. Learn more at: https://www.fintechdevsandpms.com/.

In this podcast, Jacob Decter (Wharton MBA ’19) speaks with Jennifer Fitzgerald, CEO and Co-founder of Policygenius. Policygenius is an online insurance marketplace that aims to streamline and simplify insurance buying for consumers, offering a wide array of insurance products including life insurance, disability insurance, renters insurance, and pet insurance. Beyond its product offering, Policygenius also offers practical financial and insurance advice and information in a digestible way for the average consumer. Policygenius is backed by investors including Norwest Venture Partners, Revolution Ventures, Susa Ventures, and AXA Venture Partners. In this podcast, Jacob and Jennifer explore the founding of Policygenius, the evolving insurance customer, some of the operations and operational challenges of running a start up in the insurance industry and the future of Policygenius and insurance distribution. Jennifer was named one of Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People in Business for 2018 and is one of only four women founders in Fintech to raise over $50 million in funding. Before starting Policygenius in 2014, she and her co-founder, Francois de Lame, were management consultants at McKinsey & Company. Jennifer has shared insights in major publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and more. Early in her career, she was a Peace Corps volunteer and used to do standup comedy. Jennifer is a graduate of Columbia Law School and Florida State University.

In this podcast, Justin Karfo (WG ’19) chats with Tayo Oviosu, Founder and CEO of Paga. Founded in 2009, Paga is a Nigerian mobile payments company that allows users to send money, pay bills and receive payments easily from any mobile phone. Today Paga is the largest fintech company in Nigeria, with over 8.5 million users, 15,000 agents across Nigeria and 200+ employees. During this podcast, Justin and Tayo discuss the African and Nigerian fintech ecosystems and highlight the challenges associated with building an organization such as Paga. Tayo also shares his entrepreneurial wisdom and journey so far. This podcast was recorded at the Africa Fintech Summit in Washington DC. Tayo has over sixteen years of experience in a variety of technical and business roles in high−tech and Private Equity. Most recently, he was Vice President at Travant Capital Partners where he was responsible for executing the firm's investment strategy in West Africa. Prior to joining Travant, Tayo was a Manager, Corporate Development, at Cisco Systems in San Jose California. In that role, he was responsible for strategy, acquisitions, and private equity investments in four technology sectors − Virtual Computing, Application Networking, Security, and Network Management. Tayo also helped lead Cisco's investment expansion in Africa. At Cisco, Tayo led numerous acquisition and private equity investment opportunities, including the $130m acquisition of Reactivity, and investments in Aquantia (10G Base−T, Series A), and Guardium (Database Security, recently sold to IBM). Tayo was also responsible for the private sale of 22% of Cisco's South African operations to a consortium of investors in 2007. Prior to Cisco, Tayo was a Senior Consultant at Deloitte Consulting in the CRM and Technology practice. At Deloitte he worked on cases in five industries − high tech, telecom, pharmacy retail, government, and healthcare. He was primarily responsible for leading technical implementation teams. Tayo also had stints at start-ups Biomorphic VLSI as a Semiconductor Chip Design Engineer, and Event411 as a Software Engineer. Outside of work, Tayo is passionate about encouraging entrepreneurship across various sectors. He believes entrepreneurship is a major driver of sustainable change and growth across the continent. This passion has led Tayo to work with entrepreneurs to develop their ideas as an Angel investor and adviser. He is currently an investor and adviser in Yswara, Africa's home-grown luxury brand; ReelFruit, a Nigerian fruit processing agribusiness; and ChopUp, a mobile gaming start−up. Tayo also takes time to volunteer at the Bake for Change charity organization, working with young kids who have been displaced from their homes. Alongside Paga's numerous achievements, Tayo has been nominated for the West African Entrepreneur of the Year at the 2013 All African Business Leaders Awards. He is also an Ambassador for Junior Achievement − working with one of the largest non-profit youth groups, to inspire and prepare young people to succeed in a global economy. Tayo earned his Bachelors of Science degree in Electrical Engineering, cum laude, from the University of Southern California. He also has a Masters in Business Administration from the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University.

Justin Karfo (WG ’19) chats with Eghosa Omoigui, the founder and Managing General Partner of EchoVC Partners, a seed and early-stage venture capital firm. Based in Silicon Valley, EchoVC has invested millions of dollars in promising innovative African ventures. In this podcast, Eghosa discusses his firm's investment philosophy, the key themes in the African startup ecosystem and his firm’s key strategic partnership with TPG Growth. This podcast was recorded at the Africa Fintech Summit in Washington D.C. Eghosa Omoigui is the founder and Managing General Partner of EchoVC Partners. Before this, Eghosa was with Intel for nearly 10 years and his last role was as Intel Capital Director, Strategic Investments, Consumer Internet & Semantic Technologies, where he acted as a senior investment professional focused on platform-agnostic consumer web services and digital media-based investment opportunities. Omoigui also drove ICap's investment focus on next generation semantic technologies, smart data and the realtime web. Eghosa was personally responsible for (developing supporting theses for and) sourcing investment opportunities in various companies including AdMob, Jaiku, Powerset, Facebook, LinkedIn, Teracent and Pandora. Prior to this role, Omoigui was Chief of Staff to the President of Intel Capital (the largest global tech corporate VC), and, before that, Chief of Staff for Intel’s Treasury organization, helping oversee an $18B cash platform. Omoigui attended UPenn Law School and Olin Graduate School of Business at Babson College.

Fei Ye (WG ’19) chats with Abby Chao, Co-Founder and COO of CollegeBacker. CollegeBacker helps parents open a tax-advantaged 529 College Savings Plan in minutes, and then invite family and friends to contribute. With CollegeBacker Gifts, anyone can kickstart a child’s college fund. During this podcast, Fei and Abby deep dive into the college savings sector and highlight the current challenges associated with saving for college. They also discuss the transition to entrepreneurship from professional services.

Wharton Alternative Investments Initiative and the Penn Blockchain Club hosted a fireside chat with Michael Sonnenshein, Managing Director at Grayscale Investments. With $3bn AUM, Grayscale Investments is the sponsor of the Bitcoin Investment Trust, the Ethereum Classic Investment Trust, and the Zcash Investment Trust. Sarah Hammer, Senior Director of the Wharton Alternative Investments Initiative, speaks with Michael about the basics of blockchain, the growth of cryptocurrencies, and the dynamics of and changing regulatory environment for digital investing. Michael Sonnenshein joined Grayscale Investments in January 2014. As Managing Director, he is responsible for overseeing the daily operations and growth of the Grayscale business, spanning sales, operations, product development, and investor relations. With $2+ Billion in assets under management, Michael is responsible for maintaining many of the firms’ key client relationships including family offices, hedge funds, and other institutions as well as forming strategic partnerships and evaluating service providers. Prior to joining Grayscale, Michael was a financial advisor at JP Morgan Securities, covering HNW individuals and institutions. He also worked in a similar capacity at Barclays Wealth, providing coverage to middle‐market hedge funds and institutions. Mr. Sonnenshein earned his Bachelors of Business Administration from the Goizueta Business School at Emory University and an MBA from the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University. He holds his Series 7 and 66 licenses.

Vivek Chauhan (Wharton MBA ’19) chats with Joel Frisch, Head of Americas at Prodigy Finance. Prodigy Finance is a peer-to-peer platform offering loans to international post graduate students using an innovative credit model. In this engaging podcast, Joel talks about his own trajectory from banking into fintech, Prodigy’s unique approach to credit modeling, impact investing, and opportunities and challenges in the P2P space. Educated in Philadelphia and London, Joel had a successful career on Wall Street and co-founded a software startup in the employee management industry prior to joining Prodigy Finance. As the first US-based employee at Prodigy Finance, Joel has helped build both the team and the market while balancing the complexities of a fast scaling company in a highly regulated space across the UK & US.

Caroline Kremer (WG '19) speaks with Colleen Briggs, Executive Director of Community Innovation at JP Morgan Chase & Co, about JP Morgan's approach to incubating and growing new financial technology companies. In this podcast, Colleen discusses the business opportunities for fintech companies focused on serving the underbanked, as well as her work with the Financial Solutions Lab and the Catalyst Fund. Colleen is responsible for helping establish and execute JP Morgan Chase & Co's global philanthropic strategies on financial health and community development, including two signature initiatives – the Financial Solutions Lab and PRO Neighborhoods competition. The Lab is a $30 million, five-year initiative that convenes leading experts in technology and design to improve consumer financial health for underserved populations. PRO Neighborhoods is a five-year, $125 million program that works to increase the availability and accessibility of vital economic opportunities in distressed neighborhoods. Colleen also manages numerous programs across both topics designed to surface new approaches to community challenges, as well as explore global cross-cutting themes across the Foundation’s work, such as women’s empowerment, peer learning, evaluation, and attracting additional investment in JP Morgan's projects. Colleen is a member of the Asset Funders Network Steering Committee and the Innovations for Poverty Action Policy Advisory Group. She earned an MBA from the Yale School of Management and a B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.