Miguel Armaza interviews Charles Moldow, General Partner at Foundation Capital, a 30-year old venture capital firm with $3+ billion in AUM. Charles joined Foundation in 2005 and over the last two decades has led early-stage investments for many companies, 14 out of which either went public or were successfully acquired. Some of his investments include Lending Club, DOMA, Rappi, Rover, and OnDeck Financial.I learn a lot every time I talk to Charles and I hope you’ll enjoy this conversation as ...

Miguel Armaza interviews Oliver Hughes, Head of International Business at TBC Bank, a Central Asian leading bank that’s publicly traded on the LSE with a $2B market cap. Oliver is also a true fintech leader - in the past, he was the CEO of Russia’s Tinkoff bank, where he built the operations from scratch to become the most profitable digital bank in the world, eventually reaching a market cap of more than $20B. He’s been leading in fintech well before anyone was talking about it.We discuss:Le...

Miguel Armaza interviews Rodger Desai, CEO & Founder of Prove, one of the leading global companies in identity verification and fraud reduction. Founded in 2008, Prove serves over one thousand corporations, including 9 of the top 10 US banks, and has raised around $200 million from Wellington, Oak HC/FT, Apax Digital, Mass Mutual, AmEx, Capital One, Verizon, and a long list of funds and impressive angels.We discuss:Why KYC processes will become nearly free in the near futureUsing cel...

Miguel Armaza interviews Doug Ricket, CEO & Co-Founder of PayJoy, a global fintech with $300+ million in annualized revenue that provides credit to over 10 million customers across Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia.Founded in 2015, PayJoy reached profitability in 2023 and has raised almost $200 million in equity financing from USV, Core Innovation, Greylock, Invus, and DNX.We discuss:How his years at the Peace Corps in Africa shaped him and fueled the ambition to work with emergin...

Miguel Armaza interviews Rebecca Lynn, Co-Founder & General Partner at Canvas Ventures, an early-stage VC with almost $900 million AUM, focused on Series A & B in fintech, digital health, marketplaces, and logistics.Rebecca has been operating or investing in fintech for over 25 years and has also been ranked on the Forbes Midas List 5 years in a row.In this episode, we discuss:Marketing and go-to-market strategies from her experience at Next CardHow companies should think about prepar...

Miguel Armaza interviews Asaf Horesh, Managing Partner of Vintage Investment Partners, a $4B global fund investing in VC funds, growth companies and secondary investments. Founded in 2003, Vintage has invested in several of the world's leading venture funds and has exposure to over 2000 technology companies.We discuss:Going from Apache helicopter pilot to tech investorWhy self-awareness and critical reflection are especially important to succeed in VCHow Vintage leverages data to make better ...

Miguel Armaza interviews Mike Seckler, CEO of Justworks, one of the largest platforms for SMBs providing HR, Tax, and payroll services in the US and Internationally. Founded in 2012 in NYC, Justworks recently crossed $300 million in annual revenue and is backed by some of the best NY-based VCs, including Bain Capital Ventures, FirstMark, Thrive Capital, Union Square Ventures, Index, and Redpoint. We recorded this conversation live in the heart of NYC at Barclays Rise, as part of New York...

Miguel Armaza interviews Jack Zhang, CEO & Co-Founder of Airwallex, a global payments and treasury giant that moves $7 billion in monthly transaction volume and serves 100,000+ clients, including Brex, Rippling, and SHEIN. Founded in Melbourne in 2015, Airwallex was last valued at $5.5 billion and has raised 900 million dollars from Sequoia, DST, Square Peg, Greenoaks, Mastercard, Tencent, Salesforce, and many more. In this episode, we discuss: How investing in a coffee shop led him to...

Miguel Armaza interviews Alberto Dalmasso, CEO & Co-Founder of Satispay, the largest fintech in Italy and one largest fintechs in Europe. Founded in 2013, Satispay has 4 million consumers and 330,000 merchants active on the platform. Started as a payments network, they’ve now evolved to a wider financial services ecosystem and super-app. Satispay has raised $500 million from Block, Greyhound, Addition, Coatue, Banca Sella, Endeavor, and many more. We discuss: Strategies and key metrics...

Miguel Armaza interviews Nick Peddy, CTO of Clear (YOU:NYSE), a publicly traded company with over 20 million members that’s built one of the largest identity platforms in the world. If you’ve ever travelled through an airport in the US, you’ve definitely seen them. Most recently, Clear expanded into financial services by launching its first reusable KYC solution. In this episode, we discuss: The future of digital identity and why re-usability is crucialLessons and secrets to great...

Miguel Armaza interviews Lauren Kolodny, Co-Founder & Managing Partner at Acrew Capital, a multi-stage venture capital fund with over a billion dollars in assets under management. Some of their fintech investments include Chime, Gusto, Coinbase, Bilt, Vanta, and Klar. We discussed: Lessons from over a decade of investing in technology and fintechA bullish case for consumer fintechLauren’s philosophy on developing talent from withinHow Acrew covers multiple industries and keeps their ear...

Miguel Armaza sits down with I sit down with Eric Poirier, CEO of Addepar, a global tech and data company with over $5 trillion in client assets managed on the platform and clients in more than 45 countries. Founded in 2009 by Joe Lonsdale and Jason Mirra, Addepar has raised half a billion dollars from a long list of great investors. Eric has been CEO of Addepar since 2013 and prior to that, he was amongst the first 20 employees at Palantir. We discuss: Lessons for entrepreneurs on the...

In this special episode, Miguel Armaza brings you a compilation of the best insights and actionable learnings on what it takes to be a great VC investor from 10 amazing interviews recorded over the last two years with early and late-stage investors. The Partners and leaders featured in this podcast, represent firms with a combined $160 billion AUM from funds including General Atlantic, Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed, Bain Capital, and more. If you want to dig deeper and listen to any of...

Miguel Armaza sits down with Michael Blaugrund, CEO of DriveWealth, a fintech platform and broker-dealer enabling investing products for businesses and consumers worldwide. Founded in 2012, DriveWealth works with over 100 corporations in almost all continents, including Revolut, BTG Pactual, GBM Mexico, MoneyLion and many more. They have raised over $550 million from Accel, Point72, Insight, Greyhound, and many more. Prior to DriveWealth, Michael held leadership roles at Nasdaq and NYSE,...

[Original air date, Nov 8, 2022] Miguel Armaza sits down with Matt Harris, Partner at Bain Capital Ventures and one of the Fintech OG legends who started his investing career back in 1995 and has been working with fintech entrepreneurs throughout several cycles. Some of his investments include GoCardless, Orum, Finix, Acorns, and many more. In this episode, Miguel stops by the Bain Capital Ventures office in New York City, where they discuss: Investing through economic cycles. Matt was a...

Miguel Armaza sits down with Sohail Prasad, CEO and Co-Founder of Destiny and Co-founder of Forge (NYSE: FRGE). Destiny is creating a family of exchange-traded products that will enable anyone with a brokerage account to invest in publicly traded portfolios of private technology companies. Their first and flagship product, the Destiny Tech100 (NYSE: DXYZ), will be listed on the NYSE in March 2024 – it will consist of a portfolio of some of the top venture-backed private tech companies,...

Miguel Armaza sits down with David Magerman, Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Differential Ventures, an early-stage fund that invests in data-focused entrepreneurs building enterprise technology. In a past life, he spent 22 years in leadership roles at Renaissance Technologies (RenTech), a hedge fund with over $100 billion in AUM and probably the most successful fund in history. David is also a contrarian thinker and a non-conformist, which made our conversation even more interesting. We...

Miguel Armaza sits down with Shamir Karkal, Co-Founder of Sila, a fintech company that’s raised over $20m to modernize payments. Shamir is also a true OG in fintech. He previously co-founded Simple, the first US neobank built for the smartphone era, and sold it to BBVA in 2014 for $117 million. We discuss: Selling Simple to BBVA and the post-acquisition challenges of integrating to a big bankCompany building lessons and the importance of good timingThe real reason why banks do not buy...

Miguel Armaza sits down with Bill Capuzzi, CEO of Apex, a company that’s built capital markets infrastructure to enable investing. Their customers include major global banks, Webull, eToro, SoFi, and a long list of financial institutions with $115B+ in AUM and 21 million brokerage accounts. In 2023 the company reportedly had over $400 million in operating revenue and they confidentially filed for a U.S. IPO in December 2023. They are widely expected to go public this year in 2024. We...

Miguel Armaza sits down with Wayne Slavin, CEO & Founder of Sure, a leading insurtech SaaS and infrastructure company powering embedded products for some of the world’s most recognized brands and carriers. They’ve raised over $120m from Menlo Ventures, IA Capital, David Rubenstein’s Declaration Partners, Plug and Play, and many more. We discuss: How Sure pivoted from a direct-to-consumer model to a B2B embedded insurance providerWhy embedded insurance has the potential to revolutionize...

Miguel Armaza sits down with Dan Rosen, Founder of Commerce Ventures, a fintech and retail-focused fund that’s been building an impressive portfolio since 2013. Some of their investments include Bill.com, Marqeta, Socure, Moov, MX, and many more. We discuss: Building a Venture fund and how their thematic strategy has evolved in the last decadeQualities of great tech and fintech investorsThe real advantage of second-time foundersWhy we are starting to see signs of a comeback in the growth...

In this special episode, we explore valuable company-building lessons and mistakes shared by 18 of our guests from over last 2 years. So if you’re building a business, I hope you find it helpful. This show is divided into four categories of insights: Organizational CultureProduct StrategyLeadership TacticsSales and MarketingEach chapter explores critical aspects of building a tech company, featuring the CEOs, Founders, and leaders of companies like Ramp, SoFi, Gusto, Lending Club, Figure,...

This episode was the most popular one of 2023 - it first aired Apr 18, 2023. Enjoy and have a happy new year! Miguel Armaza sits down with Nilan Peiris, Chief Product Officer at Wise (WISE.L), a global fintech that helps clients move money around the world. Founded in 2011 by Kristo Käärmann and Taavet Hinrikus, Wise went public on the London Stock Exchange in 2021 and has a current market cap of £6 billion, has served 16 million people and businesses, and processes £9 billion in monthly...

Miguel Armaza sits down with Maëlle Gavet, CEO of Techstars, a premier global accelerator and one of the world's most active pre-seed investors. Techstars was founded in 2006 and has backed almost 4000 companies with a combined portfolio market cap of $105B. Some of their invested companies include Remitly, Chainalysis, DataRobot, and Alloy. We discuss: Trends and lessons learned at Techstars after 16 years, countless programs, and backing 9000 foundersMaelle’s criticism of the venture...

Miguel Armaza sits down with Luis Silva, CEO & Founder of Cloudwalk, where they are building an interplanetary payment network. Headquartered in Brazil, Cloudwalk has now expanded internationally, is profitable, and recently crossed annual revenue of $400 million. They are backed by Valor Capital, Coatue, DST, FIS, Plug and Play, The Hive, and many more. We discuss: Benefits of extreme long-term planning – why you should think in thousands of years, not just in quarters or decades.An...