The Fintech Blueprint

Latest Episodes:

Combining payments infrastructure for merchants, digital lending, and DeFi, with Stronghold CEO Sean Bennett Jan 20, 2023

Show notes

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

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.

The $100B fintech custodian powering digital investing, with CEO of Apex Bill Capuzzi Jan 13, 2023

Show notes

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

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.

The Fintech Blueprint guide to designing your 2023 business model Jan 06, 2023

Show notes

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 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

🤝 Partner with Fintech Blueprint through sponsorships: https://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

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.

Building digital assets into roboadvisor strategy, with Betterment VP of Crypto Investing Jesse Proudman Dec 23, 2022

Show notes

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

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.

Scaling a core ledger for neobanks, processors, brokerages, and payment providers, with Twisp CEO Jarred Ward Dec 16, 2022

Show notes

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 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

🤝 Partner with Fintech Blueprint through sponsorships: https://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

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.

The emerging problems in banking-as-a-service, with Lex Sokolin and Will Beeson Dec 09, 2022

Show notes

In this conversation, we chat with Will Beeson, who currently works at Standard Chartered Ventures. Previously, Will was the Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer at digital bank BELLA, as well as, a Principal at Rebank, a fintech advisory firm. Will’s banking entrepreneurship streak doesn’t end there, he co-founded Allica, a digital bank for businesses in the UK. We discuss the evolution of the banking-as-a-service sector, and in particular the challenges of infrastructure providers when their fintech clients fail due to market pressure. What’s next for embedded finance?

MENTIONED IN THE CONVERSATION

Rebank: https://rebank.cc/

Will Beeson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/willbeeson/ and https://twitter.com/will_beeson

Topics: Embedded finance, fintech, neobank, banking, payments, finance, banking-as-a-service, API, RegTech, Regulation

Companies: Plaid, Onfido, Stripe, Socure, Green Dot Bank, Cross River Bank, FIS, Fiserv, BlockFi, BBVA

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

1’01”: 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 dialectic 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

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.

How to blow up a $32B crypto exchange, with Binance Labs MD of Token Engineering, David Shuttleworth Dec 02, 2022

Show notes

In this conversation, we chat with David Shuttleworth, the managing director of token engineering at Binance. Prior to this, David was a Senior DeFi Economist at ConsenSys, where he focused on mechanism design, tokenomics, and protocol design. David’s experience is extensive and includes leading the development of the Medical Advanced Analytics team at GlaxoSmithKline and was a data scientist at various stage startups in FinTech and predictive analytics.

David also conducted research in behavioral economics and health outcomes at the University of Pennsylvania and has published his work in peer-reviewed scientific journals such as JAMA, the Annals of Internal Medicine, and the Lancet.

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:

2’21”: 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

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.

Adam Nash, Daffy CEO & former Wealthfront CEO, on using technology to improve people's financial lives Nov 25, 2022

Show notes

In this conversation, we chat with Adam Nash, the co-founder & CEO of Daffy – a new fintech platform focused on charitable giving. Adam has served as an executive, angel investor, and advisor to some of the most successful technology companies to come out of Silicon Valley. He is currently on the Board of Directors for Acorns, the country’s fastest-growing financial wellness system, and Shift Technologies (Ticker: SFT).

Adam has previously served as President & CEO of Wealthfront. He has held executive and technical roles at Dropbox, LinkedIn, eBay, and Apple. Adam also serves as an Adjunct Lecturer at Stanford University, where he teaches “Personal Finance for Engineers.” As an angel investor, Nash is well known for being an early investor in Firebase (sold to Google), Opendoor (Ticker: OPEN), Figma, Gusto, and over 90 other startups. Adam holds BS and MS degrees in Computer Science from Stanford University, as well as an MBA from Harvard.

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

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

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.

Embedded custody services and crypto IRAs using fintech APIs, with Prime Trust CEO Tom Pageler Nov 18, 2022

Show notes

Timestamp

1’24”: From the US Secret Service to fraud control at Visa - what kickstarted this journey?

3’58”: Transitioning from the public to the private sector and building an electronic crimes task force

6’15”: The goals of payment network VISA relative to the e-commerce in which it participated

9’15”: Dispelling the myths around risk in e-commerce and how these narratives evolved into crypto

14’15”: The definition of a security engineer and how hackathons are used to counter vulnerabilities

16’16”: DocuSign and how it compares to the fundamental structure of a blockchain, as well as, how it works

20’07”: Joining crypto-custodian BitGo and how that lead to joining Prime Trust

21’47”: Prime Trust – what it is and how it has grown over the years

24’01”: The differences between a trust company or a trust custodian versus a depository institution like a bank versus a brokerage custodian like BNY Mellon

29’18”: The archetypes of the customers and clients of Prime Trust

31’27”: Prime Trust’s go-to-market strategy and how APIs as a product feature and distribution mechanism are used

34’53”: The vision and mechanisms for growth for Prime Trust over the next year, given the current market state

38’17”: The view on where American regulation will land with regards to the crypto industry

40’29”: Channels to use to connect with Tom and/or to learn more about Prime Trust

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.

Metaverse-native virtual artists and their financial ecosystem, with Hume CEO David Beiner Nov 11, 2022

Show notes

In this conversation, we chat with David Beiner, Co-Founder and CEO of Hume – a web3 entertainment company pioneering music in the metaverse. David’s background is in media strategy working with companies like Comcast/NBC and MGM. In 2017 he went down the Ethereum rabbit hole and never looked back. Hume’s community-building approach blends music, digital identity, and storytelling to develop virtual artists, or metastars. Hume goes beyond just the music and production of their virtual artist like ‘angelbaby’ — originally from the popular NFT collection FLUF WORLD— they thoroughly craft a rich backstory that embodies and humanizes their Metastars. 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.

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