Around The Coin

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Maya Pochiraju, VP of Product at Payability Apr 13, 2021

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In this episode, Min Kim interviews Maya Pochiraju. Maya is the Vice President in Blackstone’s Innovations Group driving firm-wide strategic technology programs across investor experience, fundraising, new-business regulation, and cloud computing. Maya’s work is based on her belief that technology should be leveraged to propel growth by providing unique business insights along with faster innovation, scale, and efficiency. Maya is deeply committed to mentoring and unlocking potential in others. She has been volunteering with StreetWise Partners since 2017 as a mentor and lead volunteer. Maya joined the Program Committee in 2018 before joining the Board in 2020.Maya received BAs in both Economics and Information Science from Cornell University.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Danny Shader, CEO & Founder, PayNearMe Apr 12, 2021

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In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Danny Shader. Danny founded PayNearMe in 2009 and is driven to do right by customers, employees, and investors. Prior to PayNearMe, Danny led Good Technology, Inc., a wireless software company that was acquired by Motorola in 2007. Danny previously co-founded Accept.com, one of the first person-to-person payments providers, which Amazon acquired in 1999. Danny earned a BS from UC Berkeley’s College of Engineering and an MBA from Stanford University. Outside of work, you’ll find him trying to improve his terrible backstroke with a group of middle-aged swimming dads called The Mermaids.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Alexander S. Blum, Managing Director of Two Prime Apr 06, 2021

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In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Alexander S. Blum, managing director of Two Prime. Alexander bought his first bitcoin for $9 in 2012 and has been professionally involved with the industry ever since. Two Prime offers an actively managed BTC and ETH long fund, focusing on wealth preservation and a secondary focus on growth. He previously founded digital investment group Atomic Capital, worked as a technology advisor for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Economic Forum, and as an economic development specialist for the Peace Corps. Alexander is a Fellow at University College London Centre for Blockchain Technologies and Chair of the Nexus Global Lab on Blockchain and Systems Change. He graduated from Tufts University, Arizona State, and MIT.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Brian Dammeir, President, North America at Adyen Apr 05, 2021

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In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Brian Dammeir, President, North America at Adyen. As the President of North America for Adyen, Brian Dammeir is focused on bringing the company’s global payments solution to major retail, tech, platform, and hospitality companies - including McDonald’s, Uber, Spotify, Subway, Postmates, and Gap. He oversees all North American operations including sales, account management, marketing, product development and operations. Committed to helping merchants meet changing consumer expectations, Brian keeps a pulse on Adyen’s merchants around the globe to understand their unique needs and pain points, logging over 125 flights last year. Brian previously led product strategy as Adyen’s Head of Product and has extensive experience working across APAC, Europe, and the Americas. He honed his product mindset with earlier stints at Airbnb and Google before joining Adyen in 2015.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Aaron K., Head of Listings, CoinMarketCap Apr 04, 2021

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In this episode, Min Kim interviews Aaron K, Head of the listings team at CoinMarketCap, the world's leading cryptocurrency data aggregator. Aaron was employee #16 (out of 30) at CoinMarketCap and had a front-row seat to the events leading up to the acquisition. An ex-central banker, Aaron was a founding employee at the FinTech & Innovation Group at the Monetary Authority of Singapore and spearheaded initiatives that have cemented Singapore's position as a globally renowned FinTech hub. Aaron started his career as a trade diplomat and had stints in AdTech and Venture Capital. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Matthew Zipkin, Lead Developer for Handshake Apr 01, 2021

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In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Matthew Zipkin, Lead Developer for Handshake. Zipkin joined Impervious in 2021 to contribute full-time to Handshake, which is an alternative DNS root zone secured by proof-of-work. Impervious is a team of developers contributing open source core software for Handshake and Bitcoin. The Handshake full node software is a fork of bcoin (an alternative implementation of the Bitcoin protocol written for nodejs) which Zipkin contributed to as an employee of Purse.io from 2018-2020. He provides non-stop technical support to the Handshake developer community and is a maintainer of the Handshake organization on GitHub, where the full node and light client codebases are under constant development.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hossein Azari, CEO of Cmorq Mar 31, 2021

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In this episode, Mike Townsend interviews Hossein Azari, CEO of cmorq. As the Founder and CEO of cmorq, Hossein Azari has set out to level the world’s financial playing field.After his first fintech startup, Clarity Money was acquired by Goldman Sachs, Hossein began his journey to build a data management platform that allows everyday consumers to access blockchain information through an easy to use interface. With experience at Harvard, Google and Goldman Sachs, Azari is at the forefront of data science and computational economics.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jay Shah, President of Personal Capital, an Empower Company Mar 30, 2021

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In this episode, Mike Townsend interviews Jay Shah, President of Personal Capital, an Empower Company. Jay, as founding executive member and current President of Personal Capital, shaped the pioneering digital wealth management company into what it is today. With more than 20 years of experience scaling businesses with technology and data, he has grown Personal Capital from a Silicon Valley startup to a tech-enabled advisory business managing more than $17 billion in assets. The company now has visibility into over $1 trillion in linked account values on their free, financial tools dashboard where people consolidate and see all of their financial accounts securely in one place.Jay's focus remains on building & running consumer-direct FinTech entities that have redefined the banking, credit and wealth management landscape. Prior to joining Personal Capital, Jay served as CIO of E-LOAN, Inc., a multi-billion dollar consumer lending platform, where he facilitated the company’s acquisition by Banco Popular and led the build-out of the consumer-direct banking platform. Earlier in his career, he served as CTO and CIO at Myers Internet, a B2B SaaS enterprise platform for mortgage and real estate companies, and as Director of Technology, National Risk Management Services at PwC, where he created a strategic software practice for the firm’s emerging consulting businesses.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Billy Libby, CEO of Upper90 Mar 25, 2021

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In this episode, Michael Townsend sits down with Billy Libby, CEO and Managing Partner of Upper90. Prior to starting the fund, he was the Head of Quant Execution and Market Making Sales, Goldman Sachs and Managing Director, Knight Capital.Upper90 provides non-dilutive growth capital to innovative companies that can demonstrate predictable future revenue or other forms of collateral. Upper90 typically starts with a $2-$10M credit facility with the ability to scale to $25-$50M+ for Seed to Series B businesses. Launched in June 2018, Upper90 began making founder-friendly credit investments often as a flexible alternative to equity (to protect founding teams and early investors from excessive equity dilution). One-third of their new $195M fund is focused on fintech and they have already invested in Clearbanc, Octane Lending and Fig as well as the first investor in Thrasio.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Aaron Kaplan, Co-CEO of Prometheum Mar 17, 2021

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In this episode, Mike Townsend interviews Aaron Kaplan, the founder and co-CEO of Prometheum, Inc., a NYC based fintech company building a Federal Securities Law compliant, blockchain native, public market infrastructure servicing the entire digital asset lifecycle. Aaron is also of counsel at Gusrae Kaplan Nusbaum, where since 2013 he has focused his practice on the applications of distributed ledger technology in the securities industry.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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