Around The Coin

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Nigel Walsh, the Managing Director for Insurance at Google Cloud, responsible for leading the firm's approach to Insurance, leveraging the best in market capability from Google's Cloud proposition, addressing mission critical Insurance challenges, from claims and underwriting to leveraging the company's AI and ML know-how - driving better business outcomes. Nigel also works with the broader Alphabet companies to bring their experience and insights to partner with the existing insurance customers. Prior to this, Nigel was a Partner in Deloitte Digital where he led on a number of areas for the firm including Global Future of Insurance and InsurTech. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend interviews Matthew Beecher, CEO of Neocova. Matt is an entrepreneur, business-builder, and investor with a 30-year track record of success in both public and private markets. From founding and driving growth and scale in fintech and financial services to leading companies that have realized returns of $1 billion.  Prior to Neocova, Beecher served as CEO of Austin-based fintech, Vault. Before Vault, Beecher was co-founder and President of Redstar Ventures, a venture capital firm that pioneered the venture studio model by taking business ideas from conception through early-stages of funding.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Tegan Kline speaks with Doug Petkanics, the Founder and CEO at Livepeer, where he focuses on protocol research and software development. Livepeer is building an open-source video infrastructure platform, which leverages decentralization to drive down costs and meet the needs of developers building video streaming applications at scale. Prior to Livepeer, Doug was the founder and VP of Engineering at Hyperpublic (acquired by Groupon) and Wildcard.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Denelle Dixon, the CEO and Executive Director of the Stellar Development Foundation, a non-profit organization using blockchain to unlock the world’s economic potential by making money more fluid, markets more open, and people more empowered. Before joining Stellar, Dixon served as COO of Mozilla, one of the most successful mission-driven open-source organizations. During her tenure at Mozilla, she led the organization’s business, revenue and policy teams including the ongoing fight for net neutrality and the global effort to ensure that people can control their personal data. She also pushed Mozilla to understand how to partner with commercial entities while staying true to its core mission of openness, innovation, and opportunity on the web. A lawyer by trade, Denelle previously served as a general counsel and legal advisor in private equity and technology.Throughout her career, Denelle has been a vocal advocate for net neutrality, encryption, the disclosure of vulnerabilities by governments, and greater user choice and control.Born and raised in Gilroy, California, Dixon holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from University of California, Davis and a Juris Doctor from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. She currently sits on boards for Wyre, a leading infrastructure provider in crypto, Airtm, a blockchain and bank-connected digital wallet and peer-to-peer exchange platform, and Interstellar, a fintech company revolutionizing international payments.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend interviews Kevin Hart, the Founder & CEO of Green Check Verified, a compliance technology, and services company enabling banks and credit unions to safely, efficiently, and profitably offer banking services to cannabis-related businesses. Kevin brings four decades of enterprise software experience as part of his founding vision for Green Check. He has worked in the C-Suite for a variety of software companies with global clients and partners, and he has led two companies to successful exits with publicly traded companies, as well as another to an IPO. With decades of experience at the helm of venture-backed companies, Kevin has brought together an unmatched team to help him lead Green Check to its leading position in the cannabis financial services market.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend sits down with Matt Midson, the CEO for North America at CPQi. Matt has over 28 years of senior IT leadership experience, consulting, business development, and leading diverse teams in the Americas, Europe, and Asia within Financial Services. Matt has demonstrated he can manage all aspects of technology and business in Global Banking, Commercial Banking, Global Capital Markets, and Asset Management sectors of large global banks. He is known as a transformational leader and has led CPQi’s USA entity with strength and innovation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend interviews Amanda Jacobson, Chief of Staff for Oyster Financial, a digital financial platform for small- and medium-sized businesses. Oyster Financial is co-headquartered in Mexico City and San Francisco. Prior to joining Oyster’s executive management team, she invested in a portfolio of nine fintech startups for Fiinlab, the innovation lab of Gentera, focused on generating sustainable solutions for financial inclusion. She also led the Latin American expansion of Village Capital, supporting 50 ventures and investing in eight startups.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend sits down with Adam Jackson, Founder & CEO of Braintrust. Adam believes that the way we work is broken. In fact, it’s been broken for a long time now, which is why he founded Braintrust, the world’s first user-controlled talent platform-- one that aligns incentives, removes expensive middlemen and gives value and control back to Talent and Organizations. Braintrust’s unique business model allows talent to retain 100% of their market rate and enables organizations to spin up flexible teams and make their budgets go 2-3x further by cutting out the middlemen.Adam is a serial technology entrepreneur and investor and has spent his career creating and deploying capital into software systems that make complex tasks simple and intuitive. He has founded 4 VC-backed companies and an asset management company over the last 16 years.In August 2017 he co-founded Cambrian Asset Management, a blockchain asset management company.  In 2012, he also co-founded and served as CEO of Doctor On Demand, a healthcare service that provides Video Visits with board-certified physicians and psychologists. Doctor On Demand delivers services through employers, health systems, health plans, and directly to consumers and has raised $165M in VC.His previous business, DriverSide was founded in 2007 and was acquired by Advance Auto Parts in September of 2011. Adam's first venture-backed business, MarketSquare, founded in 2004, was the first online local shopping destinations on the Internet. It was acquired by Intuit in September of 2006.Jackson is an angel investor in 100+ companies/projects, including Eco, Collective, Ethereum, Bolt, Placer, Aktana, Skale Labs, Protocol Labs, JCTurbo, Apero Health, Rapportive, MyTime, Automatic, Womply, Superhuman and Zenefits.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In our new episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Bobby Lee, CEO of Ballet. Bobby is among the leading and most recognizable figures in the cryptocurrency space. His startup, Ballet, provides a more user-friendly physical wallet for storing cryptocurrency. He is the co-founder of BTCC, the longest-running Bitcoin exchange and leading financial platform worldwide. Before founding BTCC, Lee was vice president of the technology of Walmart. Previously, Lee was a software engineer at Yahoo!, where he led the development of the earliest online communities.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In our latest episode, Mike Townsend sits down with Amrit Santhirasenan, Founder & CEO of Hyperexponential. Amrit is fast becoming an influential figure in the world of fintech. He's founder and CEO of hyperexponential (hx), a cutting-edge fintech startup that's transforming the world of insurance. Amrit is actively engaged in tackling the broader challenges faced in the finance industry by looking to develop better pricing solutions in an increasingly data-driven and technological world. The idea for hx was borne out of Amrit's frustration with the software available to actuaries in the task of modelling, analysis and making difficult judgements with little data. hx developed innovative software to solve these problems which are having a profound effect on the financial industry. Due to its growing success, the startup is currently closing its Series A funding round.Amrit is also a proud father and the host of the Startup Dads podcast. A show navigating the highs and lows of running a business whilst also raising children, along with expert guests from the startup world.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices