Around The Coin

In this episode, Mike Townsend interviews Trent Sorbe, President and Founder of Central Payments & Co-Founder of Falls Fintech. He is an architect of Central Payments’ Open*CP Fintech API Marketplace. With more than 28 years of debit, credit, and prepaid payments experience, Trent is responsible for products garnering nine Paybefore Awards, three of which garnered Best in Class or Category. He is also the inventor on 14 patents related to consumer financial services. Trent previously held senior positions at three nationwide payment card issuers and the FDIC. In 2016, Trent was named to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Community Bank Advisory Council and chaired the agency’s Cards, Payments, and Deposit Markets Committee. He hosts the Fintech Brews & News podcast and sits on the Board of Directors for the Central Bank of Kansas City. Central Payments provides payment technology and solutions through its Open*CP Fintech API Marketplace, one of the only true bank-as-a-service payments platforms and the technology responsible for Central Payments’ rise to the fastest growing prepaid card issuer since 2015.* Along with its fintech accelerator program, Falls Fintech, Central Payments produces a podcast called Fintech Brews & News where you can find unique perspectives on how to bridge the gap between banking, startups and the entire fintech industry. In 2019, Central Payments created Falls Fintech, a custom, 12-week program designed to accelerate market readiness for early-stage financial technology startups. Falls Fintech is the only fintech accelerator in the U.S. brought to you by a market-leading, full-scale, digital payments bank that concludes with a bank partnership and access to the payments ecosystem through Central Payments and its Open*CP Fintech API Marketplace.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Vivek Krishnamurthy, Principal at Commerce Ventures, an early stage FinTech, InsurTech & RetailTech focused fund based in San Francisco. The Fund's investments include Marqeta, Bill.com, MX, Socure, Forter, and +90 others. At Commerce Ventures, Vivek primarily focuses on vertical FinTech applications, core financial services enablement technologies and insurance data & infrastructure platforms. Prior to CV, he was a member of the investment banking team at Financial Technology Partners where he worked on private placement and M&A transactions for growth and late-stage FinTechs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend sits down with Matt Spoke, the Founder and CEO of Moves, a social finance product for independent 'gig' workers across the U.S. Matt founded the company on a belief that the gig economy isn't working for its workers and by building a product that solves their systemic financial challenges, millions of independent gig workers can come together to improve and own the future of the gig economy. Founded in August 2020, Moves has rapidly grown to become one of the leading financial products for gig workers in the U.S with members across all 50 states with over 15 supported gig platforms. As CEO of Moves, Matt spearheads the mission of the company and inspires a team of 35 world-class designers, engineers, product managers and growth marketers to build a better gig economy for its workers.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend sits down with Ryan Cantor, Chief Product Officer at Thryv. He leads the Thryv product and engineering teams and is responsible for the vision and execution of platform improvements and enhancements in alignment with corporate strategy.Ryan joined Thryv after working with N2 Publishing leading their product effectiveness and scaling improvement efforts. Prior to his tenure at N2 Publishing, Ryan served as Vice President/GM at hibu, where he led the explosive growth of a new community-focused product to over $50M ARR in under 18 months.Before joining hibu, Ryan worked as a general manager for Apple, where he assisted with the launch of the first iPhone and iPad. He has also held leadership positions at AOL and Target.Ryan received his Bachelor of Arts from the State University of New York and his MBA from Clarkson University.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Spartak Buniatyan, Founder & CEO of PayEngine where he oversees the business and development operations. Spartak has been in the technology development field for over 20 years with heavy emphasis on developing technologies for large-scale vertical software-as-a-service enterprises with a particular focus on payments infrastructures.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Ran Goldi, CEO of First Digital, where he has been creating blockchain-related products and services since 2017, focusing on payment acceptance for stablecoins and CBDCs. Prior to establishing First, Goldi co-founded and managed an algorithmic trading company, acted as VP in a company he took public in the London Stock Exchange, and acted as the head of IT investments for a private equity fund.First Digital enables merchants to succeed in expanding globally and growing revenue through an innovative, global digital payments platform. From Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC), stablecoins, Diem, and more we are the first platform to provide reliable and interoperable payment means and trading rails for the evolving cross-border ecommerce market. For more information, please visit: https://www.firstdag.com/Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend interviews G. Scott Paterson, Co-Founder & Executive Chairman of FutureVault. Mr. Paterson, 57, is a prolific entrepreneur, financier and investor focused on technology and media. He is also the Chairman of QYOU Media (TSXV:QYOU), and Lead Director of Giftagram. Mr. Paterson began his career as a financial advisor in 1985 becoming the head of Dominion Securities Pitfield’s President’s Club (the top producer of all advisors in their first three years in the business). Mr. Paterson was later recruited to Yorkton Securities where he built the company, initially as Executive VP then as Chair & CEO, into Canada's leading technology, biotechnology and media investment bank and grew revenue from $15 in his first year to $244 million five years later.Mr. Paterson was the second investor in Lionsgate Entertainment (NYSE:LGF.A) when the company was founded in 1997. He served as a Board member for 21 years. Mr. Paterson co-founded JumpTV in 2005, and as Chairman & CEO orchestrated the company's 2006 $71 million IPO led by Morgan Stanley. NeuLion (renamed from JumpTV) was sold to Endeavour Group (NYSE:EDR) in 2018 for $325 million. In 2014, Mr. Paterson co-founded and serves as Board Chair of Los Angeles-based QYOU Media Inc. (TSXV:QYOU), whose principal asset is Mumbai-based The Q India media brand. Mr. Paterson is also Lead Director of Giftagram Inc., a rapidly growing e-commerce mobile gifting app and technology based corporate gifting platform. In 2015, Mr Paterson co-founded FutureVault Inc., a Fintech leader in the evolving digital Personal Life Management and Business Enterprise Management spaces, where he serves as Executive Chair of the Board. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend sits down with Nader Al-Naji, creator of DeSo. His interest in crypto began in 2012 when he mined approximately 23 Bitcoins on free campus electricity while studying computer science at Princeton. After that, Al-Naji worked in high-frequency trading at D. E. Shaw and as an engineer on Google Search prior to raising $133 million for Basis, his previous company, which was building a decentralized dollar. After Basis, Al-Naji set his sights on decentralizing social media. He created BitClout, a high-profile social app. BitClout was an early prototype that allowed Nader to test and iterate on the DeSo blockchain before launching it publicly. BitClout showed that you can build truly mainstream social apps on blockchain tech.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Carl Memnon, the COO, and Co-Founder of Grain. Previously, Carl worked at Goldman Sachs, KCG Holdings, and, most recently, as Associate General Counsel at Virtu Financial, a global market-making and execution services firm. Carl's practice focused on Securities, Corporate Finance, and Commercial Transactions in Capital Markets, Technology, and M&A. Carl is passionate about new innovations in fintech that provide inclusivity. In his spare time, he likes to go on runs and take trips to the park with his wife and two kids. He also binge-watches sci-fi shows. Carl earned his B.S. in Government with a concentration in Law and Society at Cornell University and his J.D. with a concentration in Corporate Finance and Securities at New York Law School.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend interviews Chris McCann, General Partner at Race Capital, entrepreneur, and community builder. Prior, Chris founded and led the community program at Greylock Partners, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm with $3.5 billion under management which led investments in Facebook, LinkedIn, Dropbox, and Coinbase, among others. Chris has an angel portfolio of over twenty investments within the fintech and blockchain verticals including Binance, Solana, Serum, among others.Before he joined the firm, he was the co-founder and CEO of StartupDigest – of the earliest technology-focused publications – which he grew from zero to over one million subscribers before being acquired by Techstars. He was an early advisor for the Thiel Fellowship & StartX at Stanford University. He also writes a newsletter covering the fintech & tech sectors and reaches 15,000 entrepreneurs, engineers, and investors on a weekly basis.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices