Fintech Layer Cake

Fintech Layer Cake uncovers the secret recipes and practical insights from fintech leaders and experts. Host Reggie Young, chief of staff at Lithic, talks to the people building financial infrastructure from the inside.Shirley Zhang joined the startup Order as employee number seven, at 19, and built its people ops and recruiting functions from scratch. She later trained as an executive search recruiter, placing VP-level and above hires across a portfolio of venture firms, before joining Lithic, where she now leads recruiting and describes herself as a matchmaker as much as a screener.In this episode, Reggie and Shirley get into what to look for in your first handful of hires, why "ghosting" candidates is recruiting's most common unforced error, and why chasing the "purple squirrel," a candidate who checks every box, usually costs more than it's worth. They also cover how she balances hard data against gut feel, and how she went from actively avoiding a career in recruiting to building her whole identity around it.Chapters00:00 Building people ops from scratch at 1904:21 The three traits to anchor a first hire on08:32 The "purple squirrel" problem14:19 The biggest mistake in recruiting: bad candidate experience18:07 "Recruiting is a team sport"21:04 Assessing culture fit without just vibing26:24 Her "sixth sense," and when to trust it29:10 What makes someone a fit for a leadership hire32:26 "People buy people first"34:11 How she fell into recruiting after actively avoiding it39:43 Why she loves it nowFintech Layer Cake is powered by the Cartesian platform, Lithic. We provide financial infrastructure that enables teams to build better payments products for consumers and businesses. Nothing in this podcast should be construed as legal or financial advice. Subscribe for new episodes. If you enjoy the show, leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify to help more people in fintech find it.

Phil Goldfeder, CEO of the American FinTech Council and former Cross River exec who helped steer PPP lending, shares behind-the-scenes stories. He recounts how a $7B bank matched Chase in out-loans, how pragmatic policymaking gets done, and how a trade group turns 170 firms into workable positions. He also explains building regulator relationships, managing competing interests, and a six-to-eight month window for durable policy work.

Declan Callisto, product manager at Lithic building programmable card and ledger capabilities, and Sarvesh Baveja, Chief Risk Officer at Fundbox focused on SMB underwriting and loan-to-card programs, discuss launching a loan-to-card program in seven weeks. They cover instant virtual cards for SMB cash flow, backend credit ledgers, multi-level spend controls, required operational partners, and the shift from static to dynamic underwriting.

Davi Strazza, Chief Business Officer at Lightspark and former Adyen executive who helped scale $1.3T in payments, talks payments inertia, why enterprises cling to legacy rails, and how challengers find wedges. He explains what PIX taught about changing consumer behavior, Lightspark’s use of Bitcoin and stablecoins as invisible rails, and why scalable compliance is still underrated.

Laurel Loomis Rimon, former federal prosecutor and ex-CFPB enforcement deputy now co-chairing fintech and crypto at Jenner & Block. She recounts prosecuting early digital currency cases, explains how fintechs land on investigators’ radars, and discusses debanking, KYC/CIP tradeoffs, documentation pitfalls, and what shows regulators good faith.

Drew Edmond, Partner at Glenbrook Partners and former payments lead at Square and Etsy, brings 15+ years in payments ops. He breaks down why card‑not‑present changes everything. He explains global expansion needs country plans, why merchants underinvest in data and testing, how fraud quietly sinks approval rates, and why agentic commerce is still early.

Suhas Reddy, Head of Product at Pathward and Fannie Mae’s first product manager who led the Lighthouse digital shift. He recounts a decade-long build that became vital during the pandemic. Topics include modular “Legos” for fintech infrastructure, treating compliance as a design constraint, using rental payments to widen mortgage access, and Pathward’s products for inclusion in payments and lending.

What if every dormant account in your fintech is a ticking compliance clock — and you didn't know the timer started three years ago?Host Reggie Young sits down with Allen Osgood, CEO and co-founder of Eisen, the company modernising escheatment — the process by which dormant accounts and abandoned funds get transferred to state governments. It's an obscure corner of financial compliance that touches every bank, fintech, brokerage, and increasingly every crypto platform. More than one in seven Americans has money sitting in state hands because of it, with over $80 billion held by state governments at any given time.Allen and Reggie cover what escheatment actually is and why it matters, the wild story of a retiree who planned his retirement around an Amazon investment — only to find the state of Delaware had liquidated it. They dig into why crypto is about to smash headfirst into dormancy periods nobody planned for, why the 'deal with it later' mindset is a trap that hits three years faster than founders expect, and how proactive compliance can flip a cost centre into a retention engine.

What if the decision that kills your lending business is one you made six months ago — and you just don’t know it yet?Host Reggie Young sits down with Scott Bass, Managing Director at Ensemblex, the fintech lending and credit consultancy. Scott brings a rare combination of perspectives: he helped build Capital One’s data-driven credit operation before it was a household name and was one of the first two Americans hired to launch Monzo’s US business.Scott and Reggie cover what Capital One actually got right that most people miss, the lessons Monzo taught about building products that feel nothing like a bank, and the most predictable mistakes fintech founders make when building credit products. They dig into the six-month lag problem in lending, why being “light on the fin in fintech” is a slow-burning liability, and why Scott believes credit cards remain the most complex — and therefore most defensible — financial product a fintech can build. 

Colin Luce, Co-founder and CEO of Basis Theory, builds programmable token vaults to modernize payments. James Armstead, CTO, brings engineering and AI perspectives on tokenization and agentic payments. They unpack tokenization’s real role, why agentic commerce is early and often human-in-the-loop, technical choke points in payments infrastructure, and how tokens can carry intent and authorization.