Cambrian Fintech with Rex Salisbury

Propel, founded by Jimmy Chen, aims to improve America's safety net by making government benefits more accessible. They started with SNAPs, now offer a full money app. Propel serves over 5 million people in all 50 states. The podcast explores the challenges faced by low-income individuals and the company's evolution into a mobile banking and benefits info provider. It also discusses the impact of the platform's cash transfer program and partnerships with nonprofits.

Fintech pioneer Shamir Karkal, founder and CEO of Simple, talks about building the neobank model and pioneering banking as a service. He shares challenges in scaling, funding, and improving user engagement. Karkal discusses the birth of Sila, their aim to simplify financial application development, and the slow transformation of the financial services industry. The chapter also explores the future of fintech, the availability of capital, and the importance of timing for entrepreneurs.

Immad Akhund, Founder of Mercury, discusses the journey of building a business bank for startups, including the challenges and rewards. They talk about the recent failure of SVB, their primary competitor, which accelerated their business. The podcast covers topics such as integrating features like wire transfers and supporting immigrants, finding banking partners, launching a credit card program, building a vault, and targeting the middle class with innovative approaches.

On this episode, originally recorded in Mar 2022, we dive into the backstory of Chipper Cash, at the time, the most valuable startup in Africa recently valued at just over $2 billion. Chipper provides free and instant cross border money transfers, and has grown to serve over 4 million customers, doing 80,000 transactions.█ GuestsHam Serunjogi, Founder & CEO at Chipper Dan Kimerling, Founder & Managing Partner at Deciens (lead investor in Chipper's Seed & Series A)█ Timeline[Intros] - Ham & Dan[Raising] - How Dan & Ham Met[Crisis] - Responding when shut down in their largest market [Team Building] - How Chipper Built a world class legal and ops teams[Roadmap] - How Chipper prioritizes their product roadmap[Org Structure] - How Chipper built a matrixed org[The Future] - Chipper’s Long Term Vision[Advice] - Advice for prospective founders

Laura Spiekerman, Co-Founder of Alloy, shares her journey from microfinance to fintech founder. Alloy helps banks with identity decisioning. They discuss early struggles, closing big customers like Ally Bank, and global expansion. Insights on fintech founder advice and navigating entrepreneurship in turbulent times.

Shuo Wang, Founder of Deel, discusses the success and growth of Deel, an all-in-one HR platform for global teams. The interview covers their journey from friends at MIT to building Deel, their focus on compliance and international payments for remote workers, substantial revenue growth, emerging trends in remote work, and challenges and opportunities in global operations and international treasury.

Expert in preventing bank crises, John Cochrane, discusses the concept of Narrow Banking, fully reserved funds backed by safe assets. They explore the dangers of short-term debt in banking and the failures of the regulatory system. They also discuss transitioning to a new financial system and the challenges faced by Fintech solutions in the banking industry.

William Hockey, founder of Plaid and Column, discusses his new company Column and the importance of simplifying the supply chain of financial services. They explore the challenges faced by customers, the decision to purchase a bank, and how Column built its own technology from scratch. William also shares advice for prospective founders in the FinTech industry.

Ken Lin, Founder and CEO of Credit Karma, talks about the challenges of building the company during the Great Recession and the Covid pandemic.

Discover the incredible journey of Ramp, a company that achieved $100M in revenue in less than 3 years and is now valued at $8 billion. Explore how they transformed corporate expense software into something magical, and delve into the founder's transition from bankruptcy work to software development for price adjustments. Learn about their innovative B2B financial products, customer savings, fundraising insights, and the challenges faced in scaling a successful FinTech company.