The Fintech Blueprint

In this conversation, we have a special episode where Lex Sokolin - Chief Editor of The Fintech Blueprint - walks us through some strong mental models for how FinTech works, how financial services is evolving, how technology is spreading into and out of financial services, and also how we consumers, people are getting reprogrammed or used to different modes of engagement entirely. Additionally, Lex touches on how the interactions between some of the largest tech, finance, regulatory, and government players is leading to some really weird stuff. He will integrate some of the recent long takes that we've done on the FinTech Blueprint in the written newsletter and try to weave them together into a cohesive story, a story that's bigger than any particular look at the issues. Disclaimer here — this newsletter does not provide investment advice and represents solely the views and opinions of FINTECH BLUEPRINT LTD. Contributors: Lex, Laurence, Matt, Farhad, Mike, Daniella Want to discuss? Stop by our Discord and reach out here with questions.

In this conversation, we chat with Shamir Karkal, CEO and Co-Founder of Sila - a banking and payment platform for software teams building the next generation of financial products & services in regulated and unregulated industries. A true FinTech pioneer, Shamir played a crucial part in building the infrastructure that would pave the way for online banking. In 2009, he co-founded Simple, the first bank of its kind in the United States, and later headed the Open Platform at BBVA. Shamir was drawn to serve smaller companies, co-founding Sila in 2018 with the goal of empowering financial innovations. Shamir studied physics and computer science at Bangalore University and is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business. He lives with his family in Portland, Oregon, and enjoys jiu-jitsu, long-range target shooting, and studying history whenever possible. Disclaimer here — this newsletter does not provide investment advice and represents solely the views and opinions of FINTECH BLUEPRINT LTD. Contributors: Lex, Laurence, Matt, Farhad, Mike, Daniella Want to discuss? Stop by our Discord and reach out here with questions.

In this conversation, we chat with Gwendolyn Regina, Investment Director at BNB Chain. Her main responsibilities include streamlining processes around deal sourcing, investment strategy, portfolio management and growth. As a part of her role she invests in promising projects in the web3 and MetaFi space (GameFi, SocialFi, NFTs etc.), and leads the MVB incubation program, which she set up. Gwen was the head of venture capital partnerships at Meta and built its startup fast-track growth program. Before that, she was Entrepreneur-in-Residence at deep tech investment fund, Entrepreneur First, based in Paris. Prior to that, Gwen built and sold the tech media startup, SGEntrepreneurs to Tech in Asia. Gwen also spearheaded Mashable's expansion into Asia and as a professional host, she hosted a TV documentary on the Internet of Things for ChannelNewsAsia. Disclaimer here — this newsletter does not provide investment advice and represents solely the views and opinions of FINTECH BLUEPRINT LTD. Contributors: Lex, Laurence, Matt, Farhad, Mike, Daniella Want to discuss? Stop by our Discord and reach out here with questions.

In this conversation, we chat with Jeff Keltner, the SVP Business Development at AI-powered digital lending fintech, Upstart. Jeff joined Upstart in 2012 after spending 6 years at Google. He launched and built the Google Apps for Education business, growing market share from zero to almost 70% in its first four years. Jeff spearheaded marketing efforts for Google Apps in Global 2000 accounts and led sales, business development, and go-to-market strategy for the launch of Chrome devices in the education and enterprise sectors. Jeff spent several years in direct sales at IBM, always exceeding quota, and was a founding engineer and lead UI developer at SSB Technologies. Jeff holds a BS in Computer Systems Engineering from Stanford University. Disclaimer here — this newsletter does not provide investment advice and represents solely the views and opinions of FINTECH BLUEPRINT LTD. Contributors: Lex, Laurence, Matt, Farhad, Mike, Daniella Want to discuss? Stop by our Discord and reach out here with questions.

In this conversation, we chat with Soups Ranjan, the co-founder and CEO of Sardine.AI, a VC funded company with the mission to “confidently load money into a digital wallet”, where Sardine takes care of fraud and compliance issues related to money movement and instantly funds the money in the wallet. Prior to founding Sardine, Soups was head of crypto for Revolut and head of data & risk for Coinbase. He has held roles in cyber security and AI/Machine Learning at many Silicon Valley companies over the last 15 years. Soups also holds a PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Rice Univ where his thesis was on preventing application layer DDoS attacks. One of his lifelong passions is matching wits against fraudsters and he founded a popular risk community called RiskSalon that allowed many companies to learn from each other. Disclaimer here — this newsletter does not provide investment advice and represents solely the views and opinions of FINTECH BLUEPRINT LTD. Contributors: Lex, Laurence, Matt, Farhad, Mike, Daniella Want to discuss? Stop by our Discord and reach out here with questions.

In this conversation, we chat with Carlos Domingo, is a senior executive, entrepreneur, investor, and currently the CEO and Co-Founder of Securitize, Inc. Carlos has 25+ years of experience in innovation and digital transformation. Before becoming the CEO of Securitize, Carlos co-founded and launched SPiCE VC, a fully tokenized VC fund. In order to ensure global compliance for SPiCE VC, Carlos and his team created the security token issuance and lifecycle management platform that would later become Securitize, Inc. Additionally, Carlos was CEO of Research & Development for Telefonica (one of the largest telecom companies in the world), as well as CEO of New Business and Innovation for Telefonica Digital. Carlos holds a PhD in computer science, speaks English, Spanish and Japanese, and is based in Miami. Disclaimer here — this newsletter does not provide investment advice and represents solely the views and opinions of FINTECH BLUEPRINT LTD. Contributors: Lex, Laurence, Matt, Farhad, Mike, Daniella Want to discuss? Stop by our Discord and reach out here with questions.

In this conversation, we chat with Justin Drake, Researcher at the Ethereum Foundation. He is also front and center of the biggest upcoming change to happen in Ethereum’s short history by transitioning from proof of work to proof of stake, commonly known as The Merge. A major engineering feat for what is the most active Blockchain in Crypto Justin lives in Cambridge, UK where he studied mathematics. He founded the Cambridge Bitcoin Meetup group in 2013, and in 2014 left his job as a programmer and FPGA engineer to study the blockchain space. In 2015 he operated a Bitcoin ATM and started a company providing a web interface for OpenBazaar. He is now a researcher for the Ethereum Foundation focusing on sharding. Disclaimer here — this newsletter does not provide investment advice and represents solely the views and opinions of FINTECH BLUEPRINT LTD. Contributors: Lex, Laurence, Matt, Farhad, Mike, Daniella Want to discuss? Stop by our Discord and reach out here with questions.

In this conversation, we chat with Jason Wilk, Co-Founder and CEO of Dave (NASDAQ:DAVE), a US challenger bank that has prevented $1 billion in overdraft fees, and has reached 10 million clients in just four years. Founded in 2017, Dave went public in January 2022 via SPAC that had a market cap of close to $4 billion. As a private company, Dave raised almost $200 million and attracted top investors and personalities like Mark Cuban, Norwest Venture Partners, Financial Solutions Lab, and even Diplo. But entrepreneurship runs in Jason’s blood, as he is a 4X founder, as well as, an active angel investor in MetroMile, Eatsa, Air Media, SnapChat and more. He formerly was co-founder and CEO of AllScreen.TV, a technology platform that enabled large media outlets to syndicate their digital content to over 500 publishers. Clients included Vice, Time, CondeNast, AOL, Yahoo and many more and investors included Mark Cuban, Jonathan Kraft, Skip Paul and Y-Combinator. Disclaimer here — this newsletter does not provide investment advice and represents solely the views and opinions of FINTECH BLUEPRINT LTD. Contributors: Lex, Laurence, Matt, Farhad, Mike, Daniella Want to discuss? Stop by our Discord and reach out here with questions.

In this conversation, we chat with Kareem Saleh, CEO of Fairplay — FairPlay is the first Fairness-as-a-Service™ solution for financial institutions and a fascinating company.– Kareem has been working on financial inclusion and underwriting hard-to-score borrowers his entire career. At ZestFinance (now Zest.ai) he served as Executive Vice President where he led the go-to-market strategy for the company’s AI-powered b2b SaaS underwriting platform and negotiated software licensing, partnership, financing and other commercial deals with Fortune 500 firms, credit bureaus and financial infrastructure providers. Prior to Zest.ai, he served as an Executive at SoftCard, a mobile payments startup founded by AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon that was acquired by Google. Additionally, Kareem has served in several senior roles in the Obama Administration, he helped manage the team that negotiated the Paris Climate Agreement, and oversaw $3B in annual investments into development-friendly projects in emerging markets. Kareem is a Forbes contributor and a frequent speaker on the application of artificial intelligence to financial services, including consumer loan underwriting, loan servicing, model risk management and fair lending analysis. He is a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center and an honors graduate of the University of Chicago, and is fluent in French and Arabic. Disclaimer here — this newsletter does not provide investment advice and represents solely the views and opinions of FINTECH BLUEPRINT LTD. Contributors: Lex, Laurence, Matt, Farhad, Mike, Daniella Want to discuss? Stop by our Discord and reach out here with questions.

In this conversation, we chat with Mark Aubrey – CEO of Catheon Gaming. Prior to this, Mark was Managing Director and Head of Asia Pacific (“APAC”) at Activision Blizzard, the leading gaming developer and publisher of entertainment software renowned for creating some of the industry’s most critically acclaimed games, including Call of Duty and World of Warcraft. Mark has over 19 years of experience in the entertainment and gaming industry in the APAC region. Prior to Activision Blizzard, Mark worked a long stint at Warner Bros. Entertainment as the Group Marketing Director, driving synergies and commercial opportunities across groups (Home Entertainment, Theatrical, Television, HBO, Games, Consumer Products and Digital Distribution). Mark graduated with a Bachelor of Business and Marketing from the University of Newcastle. Disclaimer here — this newsletter does not provide investment advice and represents solely the views and opinions of FINTECH BLUEPRINT LTD. Contributors: Lex, Laurence, Matt, Farhad, Mike, Daniella Want to discuss? Stop by our Discord and reach out here with questions.