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/3DGKuTw

CEO'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

Software contracts and composability unlocking economic growth, with Agoric CEO Dean Tribble

Lex interviews Stephen Balavan, the CEO of Lambda Labs, a company that provides GPU servers, workstations and cloud services for training neural networks. Stephen talks about his background in computer science, economics, and deep learning, and how his interest in AI began with reading Neuromancer by William Gibson. He discusses the history of AI research, the concept of perceptron, and the breakthrough of deep learning in 2012-2014 that enabled machines to recognize and categorize images better than humans. Stephen also talks about working for Perceptio - which started as an API for face recognition, and and later was acquired by Apple.

 

MENTIONED IN THE CONVERSATION

 

Lambda's website: https://bit.ly/3j6nOVI

CEO's Linkedin profile: https://bit.ly/3HAYhNv

 

Topics: fintech, artificial intelligence, neural networks, deep learning, generative AI

 

Companies: Lambda, Perceptio, Prisma, Apple, ChatGPT, Dall-E, Google, DeepDream, Dreamscope

 

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

 

1’48”: Stephen’s academic training and how it formed a foundation for his career trajectory

 

7’17”: The history of facial recognition AI, what a perceptron is, how it fails, and the architecture thereof

 

11’59”: Deep neural networks advancing facial recognition progress and the social credit score dystopia in China

 

17’45”: Define DeepDream and deep style - Neural network reverse engineering perceptions, visualisations and hallucinations

 

22’34”: From DeepDream to Dream Scope (web app) to accelerate image accuracy, and addressing the competition: Prisma’s Lensa

 

27’38”: The advances in the AI math that are responsible for the step-change in progress resulting in OpenAI’s ChatGPT, for example

 

31’53”: Lambda - how the company started, how the perceptions around consumable AI have changed, and the progress thusfar

 

36’42”: Lambda’s ability to evolve given the current heightened demand, and the future of the market

 

39’32”: What the future looks like with AI embedded into our everyday lives

 

41’38”: Channels to use to connect with Stephen & learn more about Lambda

Powering the AI revolution from DeepDream to Dall-E, with Lambda Labs CEO Stephen Balaban

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/3iRB8Nk

CEO'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

Combining payments infrastructure for merchants, digital lending, and DeFi, with Stronghold CEO Sean Bennett

 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/3H0LgwE

CEO'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

The $100B fintech custodian powering digital investing, with CEO of Apex Bill Capuzzi

In this conversation, our Editor-in-chief Lex Sokolin [https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexeysokolin/] 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 CONVERSATION

The 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, roboadvisor

Companies: Google, Greensky, Facebook, Robinhood, Youtube, DriveWealth, Betterment, Coinbase, MetaMask, Cross River Bank, MoonPay


ABOUT THE FINTECH BLUEPRINT

🔥Subscribe to the Fintech Blueprint newsletter to stay at the forefront of Fintech and DeFi: https://bit.ly/3hyhlC2 [http://bit.ly/3hyhlC2]

🤝 Partner with Fintech Blueprint through sponsorships: https://bit.ly/3UZllsV [http://bit.ly/3UZllsV]

👉 Twitter: https://twitter.com/LexSokolin

 

TIMESTAMPS

0’31”: Introduction - What the last 3 years brought to the Fintech space

2’45”: How to approach 2023 from a mental model perspective

7’03”: The approach to designing a Fintech or DeFi business model in 2023

16’27”: The Lean Start-up Methodology & how it optimises product market fit

22’48”: Methods to seeking economically sufficient demand: traditional banking vs neobanking models

27’45”: 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 consumers

36’11”: Economic models attached to opportunities

44’32”: Platform businesses providing an intermediating layer with repeatable demand

46’29”: The nature of economic flows: Money in motion vs money at rest

50’49”: Conclusion - closing remarks

The Fintech Blueprint guide to designing your 2023 business model

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/3WlCM8B

CEO'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

Building digital assets into roboadvisor strategy, with Betterment VP of Crypto Investing Jesse Proudman

https://lex.substack.com/p/podcast-scaling-a-core-ledger-for#details

In this conversation, we chat with Jarred Ward, CEO and co-founder of Twisp. Twisp 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 scale

 

THANK 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 CONVERSATION

Twisp website: http://bit.ly/3BEWBzb
CEO's Linkedin profile: http://bit.ly/3HAHgng
 

Topics: fintech, blockchain, ledgers, finance, financial infrastructure, cloud, accounting, banking-as-a-service, baas, api

Companies: 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 [http://bit.ly/3hyhlC2]

🤝 Partner with Fintech Blueprint through sponsorships: https://bit.ly/3UZllsV [http://bit.ly/3UZllsV]

👉 Twitter: https://twitter.com/LexSokolin

 

TIMESTAMPS

1’29”: The foundational experiences in Jarred’s education and career

3’39”: Identifying the ways in which computers and automation were helping people in finance solve their problems

7’35”: Jarred’s experience working at B2C consumer neobank Simple and its approach to success in a highly competitive space

12’58”: The approach of the financial stack in a US-based traditional bank vs. neobank like Simple

16’47”: The acquisition of Simple by BBVA and their approach to remaining competitive and relevant

22’29”: 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 date

33’08”: The fundamentals of a core ledger and how abstraction supports assets of differing types

38’39”: The ways that modern stacks are able to get around the natural limitations of technologies like MySQL and Postgres

43’52”: Financial workflows: Their evolution, customer adoption preferences, and the ability to package them into on-demand financial infrastructure

46’50”: Channels to use to connect with Jarred & learn more about Twisp

Scaling a core ledger for neobanks, processors, brokerages, and payment providers, with Twisp CEO Jarred Ward

Timestamp

1’01”: Setting the scene in Fintech 2022 & what are the symptoms of things going wrong in the Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) space

10’01”: The recipe for success in the BaaS space and the opportunities over the next coming years

13’19”: The dialetic between infrastructure and application and their phases of innovation

19’32”: Optimising the operating model for maximum efficiency & where/how regulatory influence plays a part

24’27”: The tangible impact of regulation & how this may help alleviate the current state of affairs

28’04”: The cost impact of fintech solutions on the value chain & what these costs may look like

31’31”: The optimal outcome for fintech infrastructure: embedded & bundled, or independent development, or acquisition of leading providers of services

34’00”: The optimal outcome for fintech applications: build a full service neobank or build a revenue generating component and grow from there

37’13”: Channels to use to connect with Will & Lex

The emerging problems in banking-as-a-service, with Lex Sokolin and Will Beeson

Timestamp

2’21”: A high level overview of what happened to FTX and the bizarre coverage of Sam Bankman-Fried

6’56”: How BitMEX fits into the equation

11’34”: Addressing the relevance of the conspiracy theories surrounding FTX

16’19”: Tokenomics of FTT (FTX’s token) overview - explaining trading on the margin, how this differs from buying at spot rates, and liquidation machanics

20’24”: Crypto holding attacks and why this is profitable for the attacker

22’59”: FTX and Alameda Research’s Balance sheet - collateralization, strategy, and leverage

27’16”: The collapse of Terra LUNA and Three Arrows Capital, how this impacted FTX, and who is likely to fall next

35’02”: Remediation strategies: The Binance Billion Dollar Recovery Fund and Proof of Reserves

39’12”: Channels to use to connect with David

How to blow up a $32B crypto exchange, with Binance Labs MD of Token Engineering, David Shuttleworth

Timestamp

1’30”: The formative experience behind Adam’s career & starting at Apple in its heyday

9’59”: The building experience during the internet boom that lead to roles at eBay and other leading Web2.0 companies

13’22”: The evolution of consumer sentiment towards E-commerce at eBay

18’43”: Embedding software in Web1.0 to initiate the possibility for engagement & what this meant for product at LinkedIn

25’21”: The Web2.0 approach to building software & the initial hypotheses around extending the Silicon Valley method to financial services

32’36”: Daffy – the idea, what drove its inception, and what the future looks like

37’40”: The art of giving via a Fintech app – the methodology of how to make generosity a major driver of Daffy’s user journey

41’37”: Channels to use to connect with Adam and/or to learn more about Daffy

Adam Nash, Daffy CEO & former Wealthfront CEO, on using technology to improve people's financial lives

Finance is being pulled apart by the forces of frontier technology. From AI, to
blockchain and DeFi, mixed reality, chatbots, neobanks, and roboadvisors — the
industry will never be the same. Here is the blueprint for navigating the shift.

Lex Sokolin

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