The Fintech Blueprint

Lex interviews Kaito Cunningham, Co-founder and CEO of Utopia Labs, the modern system for managing contributor payments, expenses, and more for your DAO, supported by communities such as FWB, Sushiswap, and PleasrDao. Together, they touch on what a DAO really is and how the theoretical concept has evolved over time. The true benefits of transparency and verification have not been brought to fruition, and its Kaito's mission to do that with Utopia Labs, bringing true DAO tooling to the next generation of online labour. Lex and Kaito talk about the philosophy behind governance, voting, and community capitalism, as well as, how Utopia Labs have nurtured the journey of fundraising and leveraging the best value from their investors. MENTIONED IN THE CONVERSATION Utopia Labs' website: https://bit.ly/3lYVfdHKaito's Linkedin profile: https://bit.ly/3ItjhFo Topics: Web3, Defi, blockchain, DAO, decentralized autonomous organizations, voting, governance Companies: Utopia Labs, Lido.fi, Metropolis, MakerDAO ABOUT THE FINTECH BLUEPRINT 🔥Subscribe to the Fintech Blueprint newsletter to stay at the forefront of Fintech and DeFi: https://bit.ly/3hyhlC2 🤝 Partner with Fintech Blueprint through sponsorships: https://bit.ly/3UZllsV 👉 Twitter: https://twitter.com/LexSokolin  TIMESTAMPS 1’18”: Kaito’s founder journey - entering the Web3 space and his learnings from failed startups and content creation on social media 6’07”: Finding Utopia Labs’ CTO on LinkedIn & how an interest in Web3 evolved to a focus in DAOs 9’38”: An intro to DAOs - What they are? How they differ? What they are for? and some compelling examples 17’19”: The concept of Liquid Labor in the context of DAOs & characterizing the last six months of governance structure evolution 26’51”: The future of governance - Breaking down the idea of voting driven by identity and the individual human and democracy rather than by financial holding 29’47”: Utopia Labs - The evolution of its purpose, Kaito’s journey to date, and who the main clients are that are utilizing Utopia Labs’ tools? 34’43”: The process of fundraising and financing the company to date & building relationships with investors 38’42”: Channels to use to connect with Kaito & learn more about Utopia Labs 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, DaniellaWant to discuss? Stop by our Discord and reach out here with questions.

Lex interviews Michele Tucci, the Managing Director in North and Latin America and Chief Strategy Officer of CredoLab, the largest developer of bank-grade digital credit risk scorecards based on mobile device data. Together, they touch on digital banking, digital credit, as well as the intersection between financial services, telecoms, and technology more.   MENTIONED IN THE CONVERSATION Credolab's website: https://bit.ly/2XBhDgkMichele's Linkedin profile: https://bit.ly/3KfeHwU Topics: Fintech, payments, alternative data, AI, artificial intelligence, behavioural modelling, credit risk, fraud, GDPR Companies: Credolab, Capital One, Mastercard, Intesa Sanpaolo Bank, Trans Union ABOUT THE FINTECH BLUEPRINT 🔥Subscribe to the Fintech Blueprint newsletter to stay at the forefront of Fintech and DeFi: https://bit.ly/3hyhlC2 🤝 Partner with Fintech Blueprint through sponsorships: https://bit.ly/3UZllsV 👉 Twitter: https://twitter.com/LexSokolin  TIMESTAMPS 1’32”: Michele’s foundational experiences & the core proponent to his entrepreneurship 2’43”: The behavioural influences between credit cards in America vs Europe & the data landscape in the early 2000s 8’51”: The role of Mastercard in Michele’s journey & how issuers thought about the role of payment rails on the customer journey 16’19”: How data spoke to the human nuances around financial behaviour 20’48”: The evolution of how different players created financial networks in different geographies 24’09”: Credolab - the core problem it solves for & where it is today 32’50”: How Credolab uses pattern-recognition to develop user personas to inevitably inform risk profiles 36’53”: The development of extracting insights from digital footprints of users & how this results in sophisticated AI algorithms that banks compete for 39’54”: Channels to use to connect with Michele & learn more about Credolab 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, DaniellaWant to discuss? Stop by our Discord and reach out here with questions.

Lex Sokolin continues his Build It Series, focusing on the differences between B2C and B2B strategies, and on the implementations of some foundational marketing principles. He discusses branding and the two ways of doing it right. Then he dives into the various programs that can be implemented to generate demand, from content, to social media, to paid acquisition. Finally, he touches on the importance of CAC and LTV, in particular during a year like 2023. MENTIONED IN THE CONVERSATION Fintech Blueprint's Website: https://bit.ly/3IcO9eqFintech Blueprint's Archive: https://bit.ly/3XlSGiX Topics: marketing, strategy, economics, fintech Companies: Betterment, Mint, FutureAdvisor, LendingClub, Coinbase, Softbank ABOUT THE FINTECH BLUEPRINT 🔥Subscribe to the Fintech Blueprint newsletter to stay at the forefront of Fintech and DeFi: https://bit.ly/3hyhlC2 🤝 Partner with Fintech Blueprint through sponsorships: https://bit.ly/3UZllsV 👉 Twitter: https://twitter.com/LexSokolin  TIMESTAMPS 2’04”: Recap of first edition - looking at markets and figuring out the shape of demand 3’12”: Why B2C Fintechs are one of the brightest signals of the transformation of the distribution of financial products 10’03”: Brand - why Brand matters in Fintech more so than ever before 20’04”: Marketing Programs - Building brands vs. quantitative marketing funnels 28’04”: Cost of Customer Acquisition and Lifetime Value - Blitzscaling vs organic growth 27’45”: Automation of the CFO stack vs Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) 37’50”: Conclusion - closing remarks & overview 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, DaniellaWant to discuss? Stop by our Discord and reach out here with questions.

Lex interviews Dean Tribble, co-founder and CEO of Agoric. Agoric is a Proof-of-Stake chain utilizing secure JavaScript smart contracts to rapidly build and deploy DeFi, comprised of a team who are experts in smart contracts. Agoric was founded on open-source principles which look to build a public economy. Dean is considered a technical genius and a long-time developer around blockchain, smart contracts, as well as a number of other technology initiatives MENTIONED IN THE CONVERSATION Agoric's website: https://bit.ly/3DGKuTwCEO's Linkedin profile: https://bit.ly/3judFCd Topics: DeFi, artificial intelligence, blockchain, web3, smart contract, javascript, dapps Companies: Agoric, Xanadu, ARPANET, Ethereum, Cosmos, Agorics, Inter.trade ABOUT THE FINTECH BLUEPRINT 🔥Subscribe to the Fintech Blueprint newsletter to stay at the forefront of Fintech and DeFi: https://bit.ly/3hyhlC2 🤝 Partner with Fintech Blueprint through sponsorships: https://bit.ly/3UZllsV 👉 Twitter: https://twitter.com/LexSokolin  TIMESTAMPS 1’28”: Dean’s professional DNA - his motivations, profound experiences, and the journey 3’49”: Early distributed systems - what they are, their evolution, and how they inspired the foundations for the internet/Web that we know today 8’10”: Witnessing the evolution of the internet and how the vision, futurism, and ideals warped over time 16’12”: The relationship between the legal symptoms of society trying to figure out what to do vs what’s actually going on 19’34”: Early forms of smart contracts, designing large scale e-commerce infrastructure, and distributed systems 24’07”: Addressing the idea of building an abstraction/pattern/framework embedded in software and layers in neural networks/AI models 28’07”: Agoric: What it is, what it does, and where it is positioned relative to other Web3 ecosystems   34’02”: The Cosmos ecosystem, what it means to be “multichain”, and the protocol Agoric are in the process of building 38’14”: What composable DeFi means and what the hardened DeFi primitives are that Agoric is providing 43’30”: Channels to use to connect with Dean & learn more about Agoric 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, DaniellaWant to discuss? Stop by our Discord and reach out here with questions.

Stephen Balaban, CEO of Lambda Labs and expert in AI infrastructure, dives deep into the evolution of AI technologies. He shares how reading 'Neuromancer' ignited his passion for AI and discusses the history of facial recognition and neural networks. The conversation highlights the breakthroughs in deep learning from 2012-2014, particularly in image recognition, and how these advancements have revolutionized creative industries. Balaban also touches on the influence of sci-fi on public perception and the future fusion of emerging technologies with everyday life.

Lex interviews Sean Bennett, the co-founder and CTO of Stronghold, a Fintech company. Sean started out as an independent software developer, building software for clients. This experience led him to entrepreneurship and he used his skills to tackle the problem of remittance. He created Coinex, a stable coin issuer on the Ripple network, which allowed people to send money cheaply and quickly. However, early regulatory challenges and user adoption issues meant that the project was not successful. Sean eventually left the project and moved on to his next venture, Stella, a fork of Ripple. Setting the foundations for eventually starting his own company, Stronghold – a DeFi-enabled financial services company for institutional clients. MENTIONED IN THE CONVERSATION Stronghold's website: https://bit.ly/3iRB8NkCEO's Linkedin profile: https://bit.ly/3D4sJNr Topics: fintech, DeFi, remittance, payments, ACH, blockchain, stablecoins, e-commerce Companies: Coinex, Ripple, Stellar Network, IBM, Stronghold ABOUT THE FINTECH BLUEPRINT 🔥Subscribe to the Fintech Blueprint newsletter to stay at the forefront of Fintech and DeFi: https://bit.ly/3hyhlC2 🤝 Partner with Fintech Blueprint through sponsorships: https://bit.ly/3UZllsV 👉 Twitter: https://twitter.com/LexSokolin  TIMESTAMPS 1’52”: Sean’s early experiences building software and the path to entrepreneurship 8’56”: How a remittance-based family use-case led to a career building stablecoins 11’33”: The on and off-ramp mechanics involved in early-stage stablecoins & the reality-check of being to early to market 16’01”: Partnering with IBM to build their blockchain network & ideating a US Dollar settlement stablecoin integration using the Stellar Network 24’03”: Stronghold - the journey to its inception, its vision, and its unique positioning to the customer vs blockchain enablement 30’23”: The global nature of Stronghold’s merchant footprint & the data used to understand merchant risk and the associated rates thereof 33’58”: Stronghold’s preferred blockchain and protocols & the returns generated by the relative assets class 38’24”: Stronghold’s current focus given the state of the market & the trends informing its strategy going forward 39’44”: Channels to use to connect with Sean & learn more about Stronghold 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, DaniellaWant to discuss? Stop by our Discord and reach out here with questions.

 In this podcast, Lex interviews William (Bill) Capuzzi, CEO of APEX, a Fintech company transforming financial services. Bill talks about his journey from studying environmental science to working in the financial industry, first at the banking and trading divisions of DLJ, then at Pershing where he learned the "bowels" of the industry, and then at Convergex where he learned about the importance of disrupting the trading technology. He then talks about buying Apex from Peak6 and his understanding of what it means to custody, clear, and settle a trade. He explains that a custodian holds the assets of the end investor and provides the clearing of transactions through a central counterparty like DTCC. He also discusses the decentralized finance world and the lack of a central counterparty in the cryptocurrency world. MENTIONED IN THE CONVERSATION APEX Fintech Solutions website: https://bit.ly/3H0LgwECEO's Linkedin profile: https://bit.ly/3IIMD4k Topics: fintech, custody, clearing, settlement, trading, investment, crypto Companies: Apex, Pershing, DLJ, PEAK6, Convergex, SoFi, Stash, TD Ameritrade, Schwab, Betterment ABOUT THE FINTECH BLUEPRINT 🔥Subscribe to the Fintech Blueprint newsletter to stay at the forefront of Fintech and DeFi: https://bit.ly/3hyhlC2 🤝 Partner with Fintech Blueprint through sponsorships: https://bit.ly/3UZllsV 👉 Twitter: https://twitter.com/LexSokolin  TIMESTAMPS 1’50”: A breakdown of Bill’s foundational experiences   13’37”: Definitional breakdowns of custody, clearing, and settlement 19’19”: Unbundling custody solutions from broker-dealers and retail distribution, and the regulatory implications 27’04: The dynamic between digital wealth management platforms and either robo-advisors or traditional advisors using robo platforms that plug into their custody 31’07”: Joining Apex in 2010 - the customer profiles, tech stack, opportunities, and vision to where Apex is today 33’31”: Hyper efficiency - offering zero commission and fractional shares in 2015/16 36’52”: The current winning formula for B2C tech-enabled financial companies that Apex supports 40’27”: Channels to use to connect with Bill & learn more about Apex Fintech Solutions 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, DaniellaWant to discuss? Stop by our Discord and reach out here with questions.

In this conversation, our Editor-in-chief Lex Sokolin walks through how 2023 is the year for executing on raw fundamentals, which means understanding how to design a Fintech or DeFi business model and understanding the shape of demand. Companies must focus on customer centricity and use a Lean Startup methodology to validate ideas and assumptions. This is done by testing products and services with prospects, using digital landing pages, and buying Google Ads to drive people to those landing pages. MENTIONED IN THE CONVERSATIONThe Fintech Blueprint: https://www.fintechblueprint.com/ Lex Sokolin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexeysokolin/ and https://twitter.com/LexSokolin Topics: start-ups, fintech, DeFi, innovation, disruption, tokenomics, cryptocurrency, blockchain, DAO, Web3, roboadvisorCompanies: Google, Greensky, Facebook, Robinhood, Youtube, DriveWealth, Betterment, Coinbase, MetaMask, Cross River Bank, MoonPayABOUT THE FINTECH BLUEPRINT🔥Subscribe to the Fintech Blueprint newsletter to stay at the forefront of Fintech and DeFi: https://bit.ly/3hyhlC2🤝 Partner with Fintech Blueprint through sponsorships: https://bit.ly/3UZllsV👉 Twitter: https://twitter.com/LexSokolin TIMESTAMPS0’31”: Introduction - What the last 3 years brought to the Fintech space2’45”: How to approach 2023 from a mental model perspective7’03”: The approach to designing a Fintech or DeFi business model in 202316’27”: The Lean Start-up Methodology & how it optimises product market fit22’48”: Methods to seeking economically sufficient demand: traditional banking vs neobanking models27’45”: Automation of the CFO stack vs Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs)30’48”: Risk appetite: Betterment vs Coinbase vs MetaMask - their similarities and vastly dissimilar approaches to win consumers36’11”: Economic models attached to opportunities44’32”: Platform businesses providing an intermediating layer with repeatable demand46’29”: The nature of economic flows: Money in motion vs money at rest50’49”: Conclusion - closing remarks 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, DaniellaWant to discuss? Stop by our Discord and reach out here with questions.

In this conversation, we chat with Jesse Proudman, the VP of Crypto Investing at Betterment, who was also the co-founder and CEO of Makara. Proudman shares his journey of building a web-design business, which eventually morphed into a cloud computing service and was later acquired by IBM. He then explains his interest in blockchain and the business he built to manage crypto portfolios, which led to the creation of the private cloud product. He discusses the challenges of the public internet versus private internet, public cloud versus private cloud, and public blockchain versus private blockchain, and how the industry has evolved since the ICO collapse of 2018. MENTIONED IN THE CONVERSATION Betterment website: https://bit.ly/3WlCM8BCEO's Linkedin profile: https://bit.ly/3Ww8mQG Topics: fintech, roboadvisors, crypto, investment, blockchain, cloud, cloud-as-a-service, digital assets Companies: Betterment, IBM, IBM Ventures, IBM Cloud, Strix Leviathan, Makara, Plaid, Gemini ABOUT THE FINTECH BLUEPRINT 🔥Subscribe to the Fintech Blueprint newsletter to stay at the forefront of Fintech and DeFi: https://bit.ly/3hyhlC2 🤝 Partner with Fintech Blueprint through sponsorships: https://bit.ly/3UZllsV 👉 Twitter: https://twitter.com/LexSokolin TIMESTAMPS 1’28”: The entrepreneurial journey and the influences that led Jesse to becoming a founder 3’04”: Connecting the dots between designing websites for the local dentist to running cloud-as-a-service and getting acquired by IBM 7’41”: Public technology vs private technology and whether they solve for a similar answer 10’36”: Building an accelerator for IBM Ventures and how this drove the inspiration behind Strix Leviathan (a quantitative crypto hedge fund) 16’16”: Building a quantitative crypto hedge fund in the first crypto bear market and the investment strategies needed for it to work 20’32”: The trigger(s) that led to founding Makara (a cryptocurrency robo-advisor startup) 24’58”: The acquisition of Makara by Betterment, the combined offering as a result, and the psychographics of who this offering is for 30’26”: Custodial vs non-custodial holding of crypto assets, and the regulatory mine field of providing investment advice in the United States 33’53”: Betterment’s approach to modelling the full user journey/financial picture combining the traditional asset allocation with a crypto asset allocation 39’38”: The strategic vectors within the digital asset advisory business and what the future looks like for this industry 43’07”: Channels to use to connect with Jesse & learn more about Betterment 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, DaniellaWant to discuss? Stop by our Discord and reach out here with questions.

In this conversation, we chat with Jarred Ward, CEO and co-founder of Twisp. Ward has been tasked with building nearly every part of the modern financial ecosystem, from a greenfield core banking stack, direct integrations with Visa and the card networks for card issuing, and later, building a banking-as-a-service API on top of BBVA’s global core.Ledgers are the detailed records of transactions and money movement for every fintech, yet they are continuously reinvented for every product. The process of building and operating mission-critical ledgers to track and reconcile payments and money movement is complex.Twisp’s vision is to provide the operational and scaling guarantees of DynamoDB, the correctness guarantees of a relational database, with the ledger and accounting primitives you need to build modern financial products at any scaleTHANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS This episode was sponsored by Twisp. We are committed to highlighting partnerships transparently, and only work with organizations that we find compelling from an editorial perspective. MENTIONED IN THE CONVERSATIONTwisp website: http://bit.ly/3BEWBzbCEO's Linkedin profile: http://bit.ly/3HAHgng  Topics: fintech, blockchain, ledgers, finance, financial infrastructure, cloud, accounting, banking-as-a-service, baas, apiCompanies: Simple, BBVA, Twisp, PacifiCorp, Stripe, Marqeta, MySQL ABOUT THE FINTECH BLUEPRINT🔥Subscribe to the Fintech Blueprint newsletter to stay at the forefront of Fintech and DeFi: https://bit.ly/3hyhlC2🤝 Partner with Fintech Blueprint through sponsorships: https://bit.ly/3UZllsV👉 Twitter: https://twitter.com/LexSokolin TIMESTAMPS1’29”: The foundational experiences in Jarred’s education and career3’39”: Identifying the ways in which computers and automation were helping people in finance solve their problems7’35”: Jarred’s experience working at B2C consumer neobank Simple and its approach to success in a highly competitive space12’58”: The approach of the financial stack in a US-based traditional bank vs. neobank like Simple16’47”: The acquisition of Simple by BBVA and their approach to remaining competitive and relevant22’29”: The evolution of banking: Is old infrastructure with a modern API-based real-time infrastructure on top the answer?25’32”: Twisp – financial ledger infrastructure: Founding the company and its core propositions to date33’08”: The fundamentals of a core ledger and how abstraction supports assets of differing types38’39”: The ways that modern stacks are able to get around the natural limitations of technologies like MySQL and Postgres43’52”: Financial workflows: Their evolution, customer adoption preferences, and the ability to package them into on-demand financial infrastructure46’50”: Channels to use to connect with Jarred & learn more about Twisp 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, DaniellaWant to discuss? Stop by our Discord and reach out here with questions.