MoneyNeverSleeps (Pete Townsend | Early-stage Startup Investor)

Sam Williams is co-founder and CEO of Arweave, a blockchain protocol allowing us to remember and preserve valuable information, apps, and history indefinitely. Pete Townsend interviewed Sam last month on the Techstars GiveFirst podcast, so thanks to David Cohen and Techstars for letting us share the interview for this episode of MoneyNeverSleeps.

In this episode, Sam shares the inspirational story of how Arweave got started, their life-changing experience with Techstars Berlin in 2018, and how their long-term vision, hope, and resilience have been the foundation of their successes to date.

LINKS:

Learn more about Sam Williams and follow Sam on Twitter

Learn more about Arweave and follow Arweave on Twitter

Episode title inspired by ‘Memory Lane (Sittin’ in da Park)’ by Nas

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Sorcha Finucane, Founder of TrainedIn, talks with Pete and Eoin about her inspiration for the business, the network effects of the platform, the ‘platformification’ of trust and referrals, the fairness of SME access to training vs. that of big business, how experience with both sides of the problem increases network value….and her life in an alternate universe in the military!

EPISODE OVERVIEW:

TrainedIn is an online platform assisting training and consultancy providers in showcasing their business and services while connecting them with individuals and organisations in need of their services.

When we learned about Sorcha and TrainedIn recently, our initial intrigue was driven by the network effects of professional training, where buyers bring more sellers and sellers bring more buyers. Also, as the whole world of professional training became virtual very quickly a few months ago, we wanted to know more about how those delivering training and those in need of training programs were keeping things moving. Pete comes from a family of educators, and Eoin and his family are experienced in educational endeavors as well, so this one hits close to home.

HIGHLIGHTS:

Sorcha shared how she’s launched the TrainedIn network by artfully bringing both those in need of training and those providing training onto the platform in such a way that brings immediate value, but doesn’t fleece anyone, and the trust-building benefits of this approach.

On creating opportunities: “We can bring smaller providers of training together to jointly tender for a big project, rather than the larger training providers getting all of the big jobs.”

Top skills sought after on TrainedIn in a pandemic – health and safety, leadership, emotional intelligence, project management, wellness and that old chestnut - Excel training.

Sorcha’s insight that everyone should spend some time in the hospitality industry, especially with understanding customer service, and “if you can communicate with people, you can travel the world with a hospitality passport.”

On making the right jump: “If you’re thinking about taking a big leap as an entrepreneur, call someone who won’t give you a load of BS and will help you make up your own mind. It’s your own mind that you need to make up, it’s not someone telling you that you should do it, because you have to believe in what you’re doing or else it won’t work.”

Finally, a shout out to Sorcha’s two dogs, Coco and Reilly, as the first ever non-humans on the show!

To learn more about TrainedIn, get in touch at contact@trainedin.global.

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Meredith Moss from Finomial joins us on the show to talk all things RegTech, to share her journey as an entrepreneur...and her love of composting!

Kindly sponsored by Ireland’s fintech and financial services recruitment specialists: Top Tier Recruitment

Meredith Moss is founder & CEO of Finomial

Finomial is the leading global Client Lifecycle Compliance platform.

Finomial automates investor servicing from end to end, Finomial is transforming the buy side investment process by automating the manual hedge fund subscription process between investor, fund manager and administrator. 

Finomial solves the challenges of data, documents, and forms that impede effective client onboarding, while ensuring rigorous compliance with regulations and delivering transparency.

Finomial’s Client Lifecycle Compliance Platform provides automation and end-to-end workflows that streamlines processes to enable collaboration with managers and investors, helping to deliver a compliant and optimized investor experience that accelerates revenue, all within an integrated, scalable software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform.

Joining the show this week is Tim Bos, founder and CEO of ShareRing, a blockchain-based company that's focused on changing the landscape of the fragmented sharing economy. In this chat, Tim and Pete Townsend talk through Tim’s crystal ball-like experiences in deep tech in the ’90s, how being a third-time founder has shaped his view of the blockchain space, adapting all of this incredible technology at our fingertips into real-world scenarios, and what makes a great Web3 project.

This episode was originally recorded as part of the Techstars Web3 Convo Series of fireside chats powered by the Launchpool Web3 Techstars Accelerator program in Ireland.

This episode of MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by Philip Lee, one of Ireland’s fastest-growing corporate law firms and expert advisors at the heart of the Dublin and London start-up, fintech and crypto communities.

LINKS:

Follow Tim Bos on Twitter and learn more about ShareRing

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The MoneyNeverSleeps crew picked out six founders from past episodes talking about the hard decisions they've made along the way, including taking the leap, operating without a playbook, building teams, penetrating new markets, and finding your way home from the middle of Cambodia!

Kindly sponsored by Ireland's fintech and financial services recruitment specialists: Top Tier Recruitment

In this special Startup Insights segment, we've compiled the thoughts shared in previous episodes by six startup founders on the hard decisions they've made along the way. Some of our founders are early days, and some are a bit further down the road, and you can tell that their differing perspectives and states of mind are somewhat related to how far along they are in their journey. In order of appearance, here are the featured founders:

-Stefan Uygur, co-founder & CEO of 4Securitas (ep 33)

-Andrew Patrick White, founder & CEO of FundApps (ep 35)

-Jennifer Hourihane, founder & CEO of Oathello (ep 36)

-Graham Rodford, co-founder & CEO of Archax (ep37)

-Andrea Reynolds, founder & CEO of Swoop (ep 41)

-Sean Faughnan, co-founder & CEO of 'Project Salmon' (ep 42)

We hope you all enjoy the compact format, shortened down to less than 20 minutes!

Mark Boylan, CFO at Trustap, joins the show this week to share his story about his leap out of Big 4 and into startup life, finding the right distribution channels to get Trustap into the end users’ hands, the benefit of strong relationships with your early investors, what’s next for Trustap…and being sports mad!

MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by PAT Fintech, the training partner that demystifies fintech and digital finance for financial services professionals.

Trustap is a secure transaction platform that completely protects you from being scammed when you want to buy or sell with someone you don't know, either online or face to face.

Mark Boylan on what makes Trustap work: “It's the people in the background that make it all tick, especially Sean Kelleher, our CTO, who is absolutely phenomenal. He solves every problem that comes his way. The answer is never, 'no, we can’t do that,' it's 'okay, how do we fix that?'”

“The team are all doing great work, everyone's pulling their weight and driving it on as best they can - that's what makes Trustap brilliant.”

LINKS:

Get in touch with Mark Boylan and the Trustap team to learn about becoming a Trustap partner

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Episode title inspired by Teamwork by Del the Funky Homosapien

Eoin Fitzgerald and Pete Townsend look at the outsized gender gap in web3, then riff on the realities of venture capital ‘dry powder’ and crypto VCs, before stepping through what’s wrong with Revolut’s neo-profitability, an unfortunate slip switch for railsr and WhatsApp B2B payments in Brazil as a WeChat-like foundation.

STORIES COVERED:

The Web3 gender gap, by the numbers (Sifted, 6-Mar-23)

Crypto startups, beware the 'dry powder fallacy' (The Block, 6-Mar-23)

Revolut auditor flags concern about $576 mln of revenue in long-delayed 2021 accounts (Reuters, 1-Mar-23)

Railsr investors on brink of deal to salvage parts of payments group (Sky News, 7-Mar-23)

WhatsApp gets Brazilian green light for business payments (Finextra, 6-Mar-23)

WhatsApp Picks Brazil To Launch In-App Business Directory And Shopping (Forbes, 17-Nov-22)

UK BaaS platform Griffin becomes a bank (Finextra, 7-Mar-23)

LINKS:

Leave a review and subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Check out our MoneyNeverSleeps website and email us at info@moneyneversleeps.ie

Follow us on Twitter:  MoneyNeverSleeps  |  Eoin Fitzgerald  |  Pete Townsend

Bo Brustkern is co-founder and CEO of LendIt Fintech, the world’s largest event series that provides context to the rapidly-changing universe of technology’s impact on financial services.  You can follow Bo on Twitter @brustkern.

For over 20 years, Bo has set himself apart as a leader in understanding, funding, and leading cutting-edge developments in fintech and financial services.  Here's his bio and a recent interview with him on Underdog, and the full Lendit Fintech story on the Lendit website.  

Towards the end of this podcast, Bo talks about a part of his lineage going back to a part of Cork, Ireland in 1833 and his ancestor Timothy Canty - if you've got any information that could be helpful, get in touch on info@moneyneversleeps.ie.

Also, Bo gave a shout out to Marius Jurgilas from the Bank of Lithuania as an interesting and innovative individual to have on the show, so get in touch if you're connected with Marius!

Kevin Feeney from DataChemist (now TerminusDB) joins us on the show to talk about his mission to make data meaningful...and traveling the length of Africa on public transport!

Data is the new oil and DataChemist is the refinery. DataChemist makes the complicated simple: we transform the messy, inconsistent data sets of the real world into clean, structured and integrated data. Our customers improve decision-making and reduce costs as a result.

DataChemist was founded with a simple goal: to make data meaningful. As a team we’re entirely focused on helping our clients make sense of their data and build structured, consistent data stores that support decision-making and business intelligence.

We're united by one belief: that the way the modern enterprise handles data is no longer fit for purpose. We're building a new database and a new way to think about data. If you're interested in coming along for the ride - or in us helping your business, we'd love to talk.

Paul Nunan from Link Asset Services joins us on the show to talk about entrepreneurial tendencies...and his love of juggling!

Kindly sponsored by Ireland's fintech and financial services recruitment specialists: Top Tier Recruitment

Link Asset Services is part of Link Group's Asset Services division and works in partnership internationally with almost 7,000 clients including asset managers and investors, business managers, asset owners, trustees, issuers and borrowers. We provide the infrastructure through which assets are secured or deployed in both regulated and unregulated markets.

The 3,000+ members of our team deliver over 70 closely aligned services, helping capital flow through the financial markets by processing £45bn of payments annually; and protecting and safeguarding more than £600bn held in funds, entities and other instruments. We build longstanding relationships and our clients rely on us to provide robust and agile technology, combined with relevant, accurate and timely industry knowledge and expertise.

We have partnered with some clients for generations; and the average tenure of our relationship management team often exceeds ten years. We are excited by the challenge and opportunity of helping our clients flourish as market dynamics play out; shifting regulatory frameworks, the search for investment alpha, the digitisation of the customer interface, the infrastructure funding shortfall, the pensions 'time-bomb' ¦and of course the socio-economic implications of Brexit and the broader geopolitical landscape.

Our unique proposition enables us to connect the different aspects of the capital and financial markets and how they interact, helping enable businesses, individuals and institutions to fulfil their roles and objectives. Furthermore, our consultative client centric approach means we deliver tailored solutions. We help our clients to:

• Create sustainable returns by increasing end-to-end efficiency leading to less value leakage, faster speed to market and ultimately enhanced IRR
• Effectively manage financial resources by reducing administrative burdens, giving them more time to focus on value adding activity
• Mitigate market, regulatory, competitive and operational risks by applying compliance, legal, governance, audit and processing best practices, and safeguarding assets
• Improve decision-making and navigate the markets by providing access to our expertise and resources, helping them to achieve their business goals and investment strategies.

We’ve been on a bit of a hiatus this summer, as we took a break to recharge after a few mad months, as sometimes, you need to go away for a while and dream it all up again.  In this episode we recorded on the Fourth of July, we pull the curtain off our upcoming plans, with a big announcement from longtime co-host Eoin Fitzgerald that brings him and Pete Townsend to a fork in the road with MoneyNeverSleeps. But before we get into all that, Eoin and Pete take a look back at Pete’s experience with the Techstars Web3 class of 2023 founders and their ‘distributed demo day’ at the end of June with 3 investor events across 3 cities in 2 countries in 5 days, and an epic journey in the spirit of  Planes, Trains and Automobiles.

LINKS:

Episode title inspired by ‘Encore’ by Jay-Z

Eoin’s reference to ‘The Sheep Shipper’ scene is from the movie ‘Just Go With It’

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Follow us on Twitter:  MoneyNeverSleeps  |  Eoin Fitzgerald  |  Pete Townsend

I’m joined by three of the founders from the Techstars Web3 class of 2024 to help me identify the mainstream adoption path for blockchain technology, including Andrea Miele, Co-Founder and CEO of The Colony, Fabien Arneodo, Co-Founder and CEO of SportSyncTech, and Nick Mason, Co-Founder and CEO of ProofSpace.

As William Gibson, author of the 1984 book Neuromancer, famously said: “The future is already here, it’s just not that evenly distributed”.  I think of this quote every time I get pushback from naysayers on the long-term usability of blockchain technology.

In the intro to a recent episode with the first group of 4 founders from Techstars Web3 we talked to about common misconceptions about web3, I referred to the estimated less than 20 million daily active users of crypto. Crypto in all of its shapes and forms is accountable for the overwhelming majority of the use of blockchain technology around the world today.

Recently, Lex Sokolin from the Fintech Blueprint (shout out to Lex!) summarized things nicely by pointing out that the daily active users of major blockchain protocols such as Ethereum, Binance Chain, Polygon, and Solana increased from 5 million to nearly 8 million this year.  Whether we’re talking about 8 million daily active users or 20 million users, with blockchain, we’re only in the ballpark of the number of Robinhood daily active users or the population of the Netherlands.

Given how much of my time I spend in crypto and blockchain it feels like we’re already mainstream, and that the future is already here. But, back to the reality of today and our 20 million daily active users, we have some work to do.

We’re on a trajectory with crypto adoption similar to that of the internet in the 1990’s, and if the growth projections hold water, blockchain by association will become ‘mainstream’ during the 2030s. That’s a 10-year range, so what’s the timeline to where more of humanity with internet access are using blockchain daily than not?

In terms of adoption, what are the things we need to do more of (or less of) in web3 to trigger blockchain adoption by web2-only users? Do they even need to know they’re using blockchain?

To answer these questions and more this week, I asked Andrea Miele from The Colony, Fabien Arneodo from SportSyncTech, and Nick Mason from ProofSpace what they think about the mainstream adoption of blockchain technology.

LINKS:

Connect with this week’s guests on LinkedIn:

-Andrea Miele:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/agriffin717/

-Fabien Arneodo: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fabien-arneodo/

-Nick Mason: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-mason-762316b/

Follow this week’s guests on X/Twitter:

-Andrea Miele: https://twitter.com/NFTeafor2

-Fabien Arneodo: https://twitter.com/FabienArneodo

-Nick Mason: https://twitter.com/nick__mason

Learn more about each founder’s business:

-The Colony: https://thecolony.xyz/   |   https://twitter.com/thecolonyxyz

-SportsyncTech: https://www.sportsynctech.com/  |   https://twitter.com/SportSyncTech

-ProofSpace: https://www.proofspace.id/  |   https://twitter.com/proof_space

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-Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4F8uOLxiscYVWVGEfNxTnd

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-Pete Townsend: https://twitter.com/petetownsendnv

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-Pete Townsend: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pete-townsend-1b18301a/

-MoneyNeverSleeps: https://www.linkedin.com/company/28661903/admin/feed/posts/

This week, Pete and Eoin dive into the curious deal brewing between Microsoft and TikTok, a crystal ball view into what's going on with the challenger bank Monzo, all topped off with the recent news on Square and piped-in crowd noise for Pete's beloved Boston Red Sox..

This episode is kindly sponsored by Ireland’s fintech and financial services recruitment specialists, Top Tier Recruitment.  If you would like an intro to the team at Top Tier Recruitment, please click here.

For insights delivered to your inbox beyond the spoken word, subscribe to our MoneyNeverSleeps newsletter right here on Substack.

Stories covered and and things we touched on this week include:

• The biggest problem with Microsoft’s fractured TikTok deal (The Verge, 4-Aug-20)
• Monzo sees losses double despite revenue bump (Sifted, Isabel Woodford, 30-Jul-20)
• Square’s Big Bitcoin Haul Is Good for Square but Better for Bitcoin (Barron's, 5-Aug-20)
• John Collison – Growing the Internet Economy  - do general accounting practices need to change to capture the true value of a company like Stripe?  (Invest Like the Best, EP.178)
• Artificial-noise plan is designed to get the crowd into the game at Fenway Park (Boston Globe, 23-Jul-20)

Please visit https://www.moneyneversleeps.ie/ for all of our other episodes.  Also, follow us on Twitter @MNSShow, @PeteTownsendNV and @EoinFitzgerald9 for updates and more information.

Jean Evans from the Venture Business Network in Ireland joins the show this week to share her insights on how to get started with professional networks, building your own board of advisors by developing your network, and being a master networker and a shy introvert at the same time.

For more episodes and our entire back catalog of show notes go to MoneyNeverSleeps.ie.

For insights delivered to your inbox beyond the spoken word, subscribe to our MoneyNeverSleeps newsletter right here on Substack.

EPISODE OVERVIEW:

The Venture Business Network is a dynamic community of business owners and leaders who share their knowledge and connections to support one another in the development of more successful businesses.

We’ve been talking a lot about how the shift to mostly virtual or virtual-only interaction with customers and investors has impacted entrepreneurs in the last few months, and how everyone is adapting. So, we were thrilled to connect with Jean to dive into how important it is to keep your wider network engaged. In this episode, Jean shares her experiences and insights on:

• Her “just get on with it” mindset to picking up the phone and speaking in Italian in the formative years of her career.
• How she became a connector of people across different geographies and industries through leadership roles in the organisation of professional conferences.
• Her passion for networking and how she helps those new to professional networking accelerate their engagement.
• How networking delivers far more benefits to you in the future than in the short-term, and how the “give first” mentality will ultimately come back to you positively.

To learn more about the Venture Business Network, you can reach out to Jean Evans at jean@venturenetwork.ie.

For more episodes and our entire back catalog of show notes go to MoneyNeverSleeps.ie.

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Follow co-host Pete Townsend on Twitter @PeteTownsendNV

Follow co-host Eoin Fitzgerald on Twitter @EoinFitzgerald9

Javier Tamashiro is the co-founder and CEO of Ospree, a comprehensive anti-money laundering compliance solution for Virtual Asset Service Providers that seamlessly integrates customer onboarding, blockchain monitoring, and the Travel Rule.

Javier and his Ospree co-founders Anne Winston and Jukka Pellinen are one of the 12 founding teams forming the Techstars Web3 accelerator class of 2023. 

By connecting to premium on-chain and off-chain data suppliers, Ospree offers a centralized repository of high-quality alerts for risk and compliance teams. With Ospree, institutions and SMEs serving the crypto and wider digital asset markets today can significantly reduce false positives, benefit from a single point of reference for Travel Rule data transactions, and automate and scale essential compliance operations.

Before co-founding Ospree in 2019, Javier’s tour of duty in TradFi included stops at S&P Global Market Intelligence, Standard Chartered Bank and Credit Suisse.  At each stop along the way, Javier operated in business intelligence and regtech roles, and he has been actively involved in blockchain projects since 2014. 

In this episode, Javier and Pete Townsend explore the blend of Japanese and Argentinian cultures that made Javier who he is today, and the life experiences that led him to the Ospree vision. We then dive into crypto market growth as a proxy for the wider growth of digital assets, and the role that compliance solutions can play in opening up the crypto floodgates for institutional capital.

LINKS:

Learn more about Ospree

Connect with Javier Tamashiro on LinkedIn and Twitter

Follow Ospree on LinkedIn and Twitter

Episode title inspired by ‘Trust’ by NF

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Follow us on Twitter:  MoneyNeverSleeps  |  Eoin Fitzgerald  |  Pete Townsend

René Pinnell is the founder of Artizen, a match-funding platform for human creativity, helping creators match fund new projects at the frontier of art, science, technology and culture. With over two decades of experience, René has helped creators raise more than $50 million for groundbreaking projects, including securing the first seven-figure VR film deal at the Sundance Film Festival.

As an executive producer, René has worked on acclaimed projects like BATTLESCAR, starring Rosario Dawson, and SPHERES, featuring Jessica Chastain, Millie Bobby Brown, and Patti Smith. Additionally, René has directed the feature documentary The King of Texas, sold a TV pilot to MTV, and founded two companies, reflecting his deep commitment to supporting and elevating creative talent. 

In this episode, I sat down with René to explore his transformative journey from filmmaker to startup founder. Delving into the evolution of creative funding, René discusses Artizen's innovative model, which blends traditional match funding with crypto and community-driven support. 

We cover pivotal moments from his VR project days with Kaleidoscope to forming high-profile partnerships, such as with Viola Davis during the BLM movement. Discover how Artizen's dual strategy of enterprise sales and grassroots initiatives is set to reshape the creative industry.

Plus, learn about the role of AI and no-code tools in revolutionizing product development, the benefits of community match funds, and the potential of crypto within the creator economy. Don't miss this insightful conversation on the past, present, and future of creative project financing.

René is also an alum of the Techstars Web3 accelerator class of 2024, investing in entrepreneurs building in web3 and enabling the next wave of growth in the decentralized internet and in tokenized economies.  Applications are now open for the Spring 2025 class, so check out techstars.com/accelerators/web3 to apply. 

TIMESTAMPS:

00:36 Meet René Pinnell: A Creative Force

01:17 René's Creative Journey and Family Heritage

03:54 The Birth of Artizen

05:52 Challenges in Funding Creative Projects

08:11 From Kaleidoscope to Artizen

10:22 Scaling Artizen with Community Curation

19:05 Artizen's Triple-Sided Marketplace

26:35 Support for Black Artists in Immersive Media

27:25 Fundraising and Future Plans for Artizen

28:22 High-Profile Partnerships and Match Funds

29:34 Challenges and Insights from Creators

32:32 René's Journey: From Filmmaker to Founder

37:31 Rebuilding Artizen with No-Code Tools

41:10 The Future of Product Development and Network Effects

44:10 The Importance of Fundraising Skills

45:41 Optimism and Personal Reflections

51:53 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

LINKS:

Follow René Pinnell

-X/(Twitter): https://x.com/RJPinnell

-LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rjpinnell/

Learn more about:

-Artizen: https://artizen.fund/

-René'ss ‘Wayback Machine’:  http://renepinnell.com/homepage.html

-Techstars Web3 Accelerator:  https://www.techstars.com/accelerators/web3

Leave a review and subscribe on 

-Apple Podcasts:  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id1455819294

-Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4F8uOLxiscYVWVGEfNxTnd

-Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvaaHrJjizUEd0-93mjCKsQ

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-Pete Townsend: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pete-townsend-1b18301a/

-MoneyNeverSleeps: https://www.linkedin.com/company/28661903/admin/feed/posts/

Brian McDonald is a partner at Bay Advisory, a corporate finance firm helping founders navigate funding, scaling, and exiting their businesses. Brian first joined the show in 2021, and now, four years later, he returns to share updated insights on startup exits, valuations, and the evolving market landscape.

From the importance of staying true to your business identity to understanding deal structuring and negotiation tactics, Brian breaks down what founders need to know before, during, and after an exit. He also shares his thoughts on current trends, including valuation shifts, the rise of AI-driven businesses, and the significance of knowing when to walk away from a deal.

If you’re a founder planning your next fundraising round or thinking about an exit, this episode is packed with actionable advice and real-world examples that you won’t want to miss.

Key Takeaways

1. Stay True to Your Business Identity:

Many founders feel pressured to present their business as a SaaS or AI-driven venture to attract investors, but Brian emphasizes the importance of positioning your business based on what it truly is rather than shaping it to fit investor expectations.

2. Avoid Venture Capital If You Plan to Keep Your Business Long-Term:

If you’re building a business to own and operate for life, taking on investors expecting a return may not be the right move. Transparency about your vision is crucial in aligning with the right partners.

3. Consider Alternatives to Full Exits:

Founders don’t have to sell their entire company to achieve financial security. Partial exits or taking some cash off the table while continuing to scale can be viable options.

4. Valuation Challenges in Today’s Market:

Valuations fluctuate, and generic revenue multiples can be misleading. Founders should focus on comparable deals and be realistic about their company’s value in the current market conditions.

5. Earnouts and Deal Structuring:

Few exits involve a full cash payout at closing. Earnouts based on future performance are common, and founders should aim for turnover-based earnouts rather than EBITDA-based, as buyers can manipulate EBITDA figures..

6. Know Your ‘No’ and Be Ready to Walk Away: Understanding your bottom line in negotiations is critical. If a deal isn’t right, having the confidence to walk away can save founders from making costly mistakes.

Market Trends and Strategic Insights:

Longer Deal Timelines: Exit processes that once took six months are now stretching to 9-12 months due to market shifts.

AI Bubble: Many businesses are branding themselves as AI-driven when they’re not, which mirrors past trends seen with blockchain startups.

Corporate vs. PE Buyers: Corporates focus on strategic fit, while PE firms prioritize financials and growth potential.

Importance of Data Rooms: Keeping updated documentation can streamline fundraising or an acquisition process when the time comes.

Guest Details:

Email: brian@bayadvisory.ie

Website: BayAdvisory.ie

LinkedIn: Brian McDonald

Listen to Brian’s first appearance on MoneyNeverSleeps in 2021 (episodes 118 and 119, Words of Advice, Parts 1 &2)

Learn more about Bay Advisory and their advisory services for founders

Brian referred to the book A Slight Edge by Jeff Olson in focusing on your niche at the earliest stages

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Pete Townsend: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pete-townsend-1b18301a/

MoneyNeverSleeps: https://www.linkedin.com/company/28661903/

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This week, Eoin Fitzgerald and Pete Townsend return from a 2-week hiatus and look at what’s driving Ramp forward so quickly with their $8bn valuation, the JP Morgan deal for western Ireland-based fintech Global Shares, and the latest with ApeCoin, Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs and Yuga Labs.

This episode of MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by Philip Lee, one of Ireland’s fastest-growing corporate law firms and expert advisors at the heart of the Dublin and London start-up, fintech and crypto communities.

STORIES WE COVERED:

Ramp confirms new $8.1B valuation after ‘a nearly 10x’ YoY increase in revenue(Techcrunch, 21-Mar-22)

JP Morgan confirms €665m takeover of Cork's Global Shares (Irish Times, 15-Mar-22)

What Is ApeCoin and Who Is Behind It? (Coindesk, 21-Mar-22)

Apple snaps up UK open banking start-up Credit Kudos (Silicon Republic, 23-Mar-22)

LINKS:

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In an excerpt from Flagship Marketing's webinar "How to Survive and Thrive with Your Investor", Jo van de Velde from Euroclear and our own Pete Townsend talk about how important it is to communicate with your investor to maximize the value they can add.

Kindly sponsored by Ireland's fintech and financial services recruitment specialists: Top Tier Recruitment

In this episode, our friends Ian Dalton and Jamie Dalton at Flagship Marketing kindly shared the audio track from a recent webinar entitled "How to survive and thrive with your investor". Flagship Marketing supports fresh-thinking fintech companies with inbound marketing services which generate qualified leads and delighted customers for socially motivated, innovative, financial scale ups. Flagship have tons of incredibly useful marketing guides and workbooks on their website, so log in and learn.

As the webinar was over an hour long, we split it into two parts, and this is Part One. Featured in Part One is Jo van de Velde, Global Head of Strategy, Product and Innovation at Euroclear, who has partnered with several startups and has great experience on how institutions and nimble startups can best work together.

Also featured in Part One is Pete Townsend, and he talks about talking - literally, as in how important it is for startup founders to talk to their investors to get at the true value-add of their relationship. As startups and their investors can be moving a hundred miles a minute in different directions on most days, it's critical to slow things down in the context of the board, make sure you've got your governance right, and communicate effectively with the people whose job it is to help unlock value for your business.

Pete points to two great reads that helped him form some thoughts around this in addition to his experience as an independent director and advisor on startup boards.

Angel by Jason Calacanis
The Secrets of Sand Hill Road by Scott Kupor

Dan Calvert, Head of Partnerships at N26, joins us on stage at Dublin Tech Summit to talk about building a bank that everyone loves!

Kindly sponsored by Ireland’s fintech and financial services recruitment specialists: Top Tier Recruitment

Dan Calvert is Head of Partnerships at N26

The N26 history

2013 - N26 was founded in 2013 by Valentin Stalf and Maximilian Tayenthal—reimagining the retail banking experience for today’s mobile lifestyle.

2015 - Since the initial product launch in 2015, over 2.5 Million customers across 24 European markets have signed up for N26—with plans to enter the US in 2019.
2018 - The firm has raised a total of USD 215 million from some of the world’s most well-known investors, including Allianz X, Tencent Holdings Limited, Li Ka-Shing’s Horizons Ventures, Valar Ventures, members of the Zalando Management Team, and Earlybird Venture Capital. N26 employs more than 1000 people and has offices in Berlin, New York and Barcelona.
2019 - N26 announces its $300 million Series D funding led by Insight Venture Partners. The round also includes participation from GIC, Singapore's sovereign wealth fund, and existing investors.

Ollie Walsh, CEO and co-founder of PiPiT, joins us to talk about enabling migrants to support their families back home cheaper and safer, prioritizing your pipeline, social impact....and his love of Tai Chi!

Ollie Walsh has 20 years' experience of developing strategies for startups and SMEs to target new markets and to grow. He specilaizes in building teams and implementing plans and making them work, and he puts this experience to work every day as CEO of PiPiT.

PiPiT is a B2B platform powering international cash transactions so that their network partners and their customers can accept cross-border bill payments in cash, load cash to e-wallets, accept cash for eCommerce orders and lodge cash to bank accounts across borders.

Ollie founded PiPiT with Julian Callaghan and Rory Ryan in late 2013 in Galway, Ireland, and he has first-hand knowledge of the problem they're solving after moving country shortly thereafter to take part in an accelerator program in Sheffield, England. The process of moving country, even with a small move from Ireland to England, made them realize how difficult migrating is. Between 2014 and 2017, Ollie & Co. built the business in their spare time, and finally gave up the day jobs in 2017. Having closed a post-seed round of €1.25mn from West Loop Ventures (Chicago) and Enterprise Ireland in 2018, PiPiT are now in scale-up mode with offices in Ireland and the UK with partner companies in Nigeria, Dubai and Mumbai.

You can get in touch with Ollie at ollie.walsh@pipit.global, learn all about PiPiT at https://www.pipit.global/ and follow PiPiT on Twitter @pipitglobal.

In this week's Money Talks segment, Pete Townsend and Eoin Fitzgerald look ahead to the impact of Wirecard on Banking-as-a-Service, how the Irish tech startup Circit could have prevented the Wirecard audit mess, and Diffuse's take on startups looking overseas for venture capital investors.

This episode of MoneyNeverSleeps is kindly sponsored by Ireland’s fintech and financial services recruitment specialists, Top Tier Recruitment.  If you would like an intro to the team at Top Tier Recruitment, please click here.

For insights delivered to your inbox beyond the spoken word, subscribe to our MoneyNeverSleeps newsletter right here on Substack.

In this episode, Eoin and Pete dig into pieces of content from this week that are relevant to the cosmic cloud of startups, tech, venture deals and enterprise in which they live.

The main stories stories covered in this week's episode include:

· BaaS Works, it's the Regulations That Don't (Chris Skinner's blog, 30th June)

· A special segment from David Heath, founder and CEO of Irish tech startup Circit, on how Circit could have prevented the Wirecard audit mess where Wirecard's purported cash balances were not being properly confirmed by auditors.

· The Problem with Raising Money Overseas(Diffuse blog, 1st July)

· Japan's SBI to Launch Crypto Fund with 50% in XRP(iHodl, 26th June)

· Unilever and Verizon are the latest companies to pull their advertising from Facebook (TechCrunch, 26th June)

· Deutsche Bank Taps Symphony & WhatsApp for Messaging Platforms (MarketsMedia, 25th June)

· ‘Flying Blind Into a Credit Storm’: Widespread Deferrals Mean Banks Can’t Tell Who’s Creditworthy (WSJ (paywall) 29th June)

Books we're reading this week:

• On Pete's Kindle this week is My Trip to the Startup World: the Voice of Fintech by      Rudi Falat who was on episode      74
• Eoin is reading only news and blogs this week as he's      been drafting the MoneyNeverSleeps newsletter!

Please visit https://www.moneyneversleeps.ie/for all of our other episodes.

This week we welcome back Andrew Mullaney, CTO of Premind AI, sharing his story on the last 2+ years of building Premind, streaming 57,000 stock prices into a million news stories a day, the impact of high-speed information flow on age-old market theory, the differences between his last startup NewsWhip and Premind AI, surviving in the startup desert…and still trying to be relatively innocuous!

MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by PAT Fintech, the training partner that demystifies fintech and digital finance for financial services professionals.

Premind AI is an Ireland-based deeptech venture providing institutional investors the 'edge' through anticipating market reactions to news events.

HIGHLIGHTS:

On the scale of data that the Premind AI ‘machine’ is processing: “We stream through one million articles a day, and we can burst 20-30 articles per second with each article averaging 500 words. So, we have 10,000 words per second coming through. We monitor 57,000 stocks, and each one has 20 descriptive words, so that’s one million words. Together, that’s 10,000 words per second coming through on the news side that we stream through a million words on the stock side. That’s just to get a match.”

On not trying to make sense out of market movements: “We're looking for patterns that are repeated over and over again, thousands and thousands of times a day. The very minute you put something in cognitive terms, like whether the movement was sensical or not, you're out of the picture. We don't really care. We look for cause and effect.”

On how fintech has only scratched the surface: “What I call ‘fintech v1’ is just digitizing banking, things like making payments go through instantaneously. It's crazy to think that the most powerful banking institutions could be impacted by something so simple. But the next level is the actual application of the more complicated systems that technology companies are bringing into all aspects of finance.”

On surviving the ‘startup desert’: “The pandemic is a scenario where you're already going through the desert as a startup and you've got to ride it out. It's one of these massive external scenarios that nobody could ever predict. There's nothing you can do about it. You just have to be able to get through it.”

Episode title inspired by The Prediction by Nas.

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This week, Eoin Fitzgerald and Pete Townsend riff on Eoin’s new role at Enterprise Ireland, the final nail in the coffin for Meta’s former crypto project Diem, the next steps for Ant Group now that Jack Ma is formally out, the back and forth on the environmental impact of crypto and bitcoin’s role, some new ideas on agri-finance thanks to past guest Nik Milanovich, and some details on an event Pete’s co-hosting for Techstars Web3 with Genesis Block and Union Square Ventures in New York City on 17-Jan-23.

This episode of MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by SecuriCentrix. SecuriCentrix is a trusted cyber security company with offices in Dublin, Cape Town and London. SecuriCentrix provides expert advisory services, primarily in the finance and fintech industries, with tailored security solutions to fit your specific needs and regulatory challenges.

STORIES COVERED

Silvergate buries Diem; lays off 200 staff (Finextra & CoinDesk, 6-Jan-23)

Jack Ma out of Ant group (Fintech Blueprint, 9-Jan-23)

Cryptocurrency mining and trading devastating the planet? (Finextra, 6-Jan-23)

GBTC Leverage Death Rattle? With Steven McClurg (What Bitcoin Did, 9-Jan-23)

The Next Fintech Revolution: Agriculture Finance (Nik Milanovic in Forbes, 6-Jan-23)

The Italian Bank Where You Can Use Parmigiano-Reggiano Cheese As Loan Collateral (Tasting Table, 7-Jan-23)

LINKS

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Deb Pratiher is the co-founder and CEO of Quest Labs, building infrastructure enabling organizations to leverage data in a privacy-preserving manner to unlock powerful user experiences.

Quest Labs is also one of the 12 founding teams forming the Techstars Web3 accelerator class of 2023.

Deb Pratiher is a product leader and engineer with experience building and scaling data infrastructure and systems at big tech companies. She is passionate about AI and web3 and the intersection of both. Prior to starting Quest she worked and researched at Nvidia, Visa, Tesla, and Carnegie Mellon University, as she was chosen for the highly selective Kleiner Perkins Fellowship Program.

In this episode, Deb and Pete Townsend speed-run through her life experiences that brought her to the point of co-founding Quest Labs, before we dig into why the world needs what Quest are bringing to market right now   We also talk through the interplay of owning your own data on this big wonderful creation called the internet, and how that drives the network effect that will deliver the future that Quest is running toward

LINKS:

Learn more about Quest Labs

Connect with Deb Pratiher on LinkedIn and Twitter

Follow Quest Labs on LinkedIn and Twitter

Episode title inspired by ‘Footprints’ by A Tribe Called Quest

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Clarisse Hagege, founder and CEO of Dfns, joins the show this week recorded recently as part of the Techstars Web3 Community Series events organized by the Techstars Web3 Accelerator. Dfns is a cybersecurity company providing wallet infrastructure for web3. From banks to gaming studios, developer teams rely on their decentralized custody network to build seamless applications and deliver smooth experiences for crypto.

This episode of MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by SecuriCentrix. SecuriCentrix is a trusted cyber security company with offices in Dublin, Cape Town and London. SecuriCentrix provides expert advisory services, primarily in the finance and fintech industries, with tailored security solutions to fit your specific needs and regulatory challenges.

In addition to Dfns, Clarisse is also a mentor for the Techstars Web3 Accelerator, and a graduate of the ABN Amro + Techstars Future of Finance Accelerator class of 2021.

In this episode, Clarisse Hagege and Pete Townsend riff on the drivers behind why ‘builders are still building' in web3 in the midst of the bear market, getting the right balance between security and freedom when protecting your crypto assets, how the history of custody is informing how we decentralize trust so that we can 'trust the tech' rather than third parties, and the challenges of building in web3.

LINKS:

Follow Clarisse Hagege on LinkedIn and learn more about Dfns

Follow Dfns on Twitter

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Eoin and Pete dive into the shortcomings of Metaverse graphics through the lens of Metaverse deep-thinker Matthew Ball and his new book on the Metaverse, what’s up with the Ethereum Merge, the big fundraisings of Irish unicorn Wayflyer and Techstars grad Alloy, the death of ING’s Yolt, Block’s Cash App’s small-dollar lending milestone, and old friend Bradley Tusk takes his super-charged regulatory advisory into crypto and DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations).

This episode of MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by Philip Lee, one of Ireland’s fastest-growing corporate law firms and expert advisors at the heart of the Dublin and London start-up, fintech and crypto communities.

STORIES WE COVERED:

When Metaverse (Life in Color, 1-Aug-22)

After $177 Billion in Investment, Why Do Metaverse Graphics Still Suck? (Decrypt, 27-Aug-22)

Ethereum’s Big Moment Is Coming With ‘The Merge.’ What It Means for Crypto (5-Sep-22)

Wayflyer secures €254m in debt financing from Credit Suisse (Irish Times, 1-Sep-22)

Fintech startup Alloy leans on fraud prevention to land new $1.55B valuation (TechCrunch, 1-Sep-22)

KlimaDAO Engages Tusk Strategies to Push Congress to Write DAOs Into Law (Decrypt, 4-Sep-22)

ING pulls the plug on Yolt, shutting down its open banking operation (AltFi, 30-Aug-22)

Cash App Now Originates 1m Small-Dollar Loans A Month (Fintech Business Weekly, 21-Aug-22)

LINKS:

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Michael Quartey and Lukas Bruell, founder and co-founder of Eczodex, join the show this week to riff on how Eczodex are enabling investors to unlock more returns with traditional investments through DeFi (decentralized finance).

This episode of MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by Philip Lee, one of Ireland’s fastest-growing corporate law firms and expert advisors at the heart of the Dublin and London start-up, fintech and crypto communities.

Eczodex are the ninth of the founding teams forming the Launchpool Web3 Techstars Accelerator Class of 2022 that we’ve got on the show in the lead-in to Demo Day in Dublin on June 30th.

In this episode, Michael Quartey and Lukas Bruell talk with Pete Townsend and Eoin Fitzgerald about:

- How their backgrounds uniquely prepared them to bring Eczodex to life

- How Eczodex will bridge real-world assets into DeFi

- Enabling yield enhancement strategies for real-world investor

- Connecting the Eczodex vision with the realities of the crypto markets

- Breaking down the problem for individual investors

LINKS:

Connect with Michael Quarteyand Lukas Bruell and learn more about Eczodex on LinkedIn

Follow Eczodex and Lukas Bruell on Twitter

Episode title inspired by ‘Money Maker’ by Ludacris and Pharrell Williams

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Bradley Tusk joins us on the show to talk about saving start-ups from death by politics...and Operation Sandwich!

Bradley is a venture capitalist, political strategist and writer and author of 'The Fixer'.

Bradley is the Founder and CEO of Tusk Holdings, which includes Tusk Ventures, Tusk Strategies, Kronos Archives, Ivory Gaming and Tusk Montgomery Philanthropies.

Tusk Ventures is the world's first venture capital fund to work with and invest solely in high growth startups facing political and regulatory challenges. Previously, Bradley served as campaign manager for Mike Bloomberg, as Deputy Governor of Illinois and as Communications Director for Senator Charles Schumer.

Tusk Montgomery Philanthropies, Bradley's family foundation, funds and runs campaigns in states across the U.S. to increase funding for anti-hunger programs like school breakfast and food stamp enrollment. They are also working to create mobile voting so people can vote in elections on their phones.

Bradley writes a regular column for The Observer, hosts a podcast called Firewall, and has a book coming out this September about his adventures in protecting disruptors from the bad guys. Bradley is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania where he received his BA and has a JD from the University of Chicago Law School.

He lives in Manhattan with his wife and two children.

Laura Walsh returns this week to help me unpack the whirlwind of events shaking up crypto, finance, and politics—from Trump’s memecoin antics to regulatory shifts and the ever-increasing adoption of crypto by institutional finance.

Laura Walsh is a Techstars All Star Mentor, advisor, founder, web3 OG and friend, and in this episode, we dive into:

• Trump’s Memecoin Playbook – How the former U.S. president’s memecoins raked in millions in fees and what it says about crypto speculation today.

• Gary Gensler’s Exit from the SEC – What his departure means for the regulatory landscape and whether this signals a new era for crypto.

• Institutional Finance Embracing Blockchain – The latest on Circle’s acquisition of Hashnote’s tokenized money market fund and why crypto natives, not TradFi, are fueling the real-world asset movement.

• Regulatory Clarity & Crypto Adoption – How the SEC’s new crypto task force led by Hester Peirce is changing the conversation around compliance and innovation.

• Lessons from the Irish Whiskey Trade Battle – A fascinating parallel between crypto lobbying and how the Irish whiskey industry successfully pushed for tariff exclusions in the U.S.

• Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade Threats – The geopolitical implications of America’s shifting trade policies and how Canadians are rallying against expansionist rhetoric.

There’s no shortage of action in this episode—memecoins, market shifts, regulatory updates, and some fascinating history lessons all packed into one conversation!

Resources & Mentions:

Gary Gensler Leaves SEC, and Cryptocurrency-Friendly Mark Uyeda Is Appointed (Binance, 20-Jan-25)

SEC Forms New Crypto Task Force Spearheaded by Hester Peirce (CoinDesk, 21-Jan-25)

Trump’s meme coin is a reminder of crypto’s dumbest use case (CNN, 21-Jan-25)

Alternative viewpoint on memecoins from Kevin DeGods (X/Twitter, 20-Jan-25)

Canada has threatened ‘dollar for dollar’ retaliatory tariffs and ‘nothing is off the table’ (National Post, 21-Jan-25)

The Irish whiskey playbook: an insider’s guide to how firms must navigate Trump’s DC (Business Post, 20-Jan-25)

Dfns Raises $16 Million to Expand Crypto Wallet Infrastructure (Pymnts.com, 17-Jan-25)

Circle buys tokenized money market fund Hashnote-USYC (Finextra, 21-Jan-25)

Tornado Cash off OFAC List (Cointelegraph, 22-Jan-25)

Ross Ulbricht pardoned (X, 21-Jan-25)

Connect with Laura Walsh on social media:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauralwalsh/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheOGLauraWalsh

Keywords: Trump, memecoins, crypto, regulations, SEC, tokenized assets

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Cian Prendergast, founder and CEO of Ortus joins the show to share his story on the origins of Ortus in Ireland, sharing his story on how there’s a lot more to providing cloud and managed IT services to SMEs than what you’d expect, entrepreneurial leadership during a pandemic, surrounding yourself with brilliant people….and a past life of having every job under the clouds!

MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by PAT Fintech, the training partner that demystifies fintech and digital finance for financial services professionals.

Cian spent 8 years in the IT sector before launching Ortus in 2007, inspired by his ambition to build a client-centric business based on his own values and vision. Ortus provide cloud and managed IT services for over 300 small-to-medium-sized businesses in Ireland, and more recently in Continental Europe, in the financial, healthcare and legal sectors.

HIGHLIGHTS:

On Cian’s inspiration to launch Ortus: “It was this notion that there were some people sitting upstairs, making decisions that weren't actually connected with the clients, but I felt like I was the one that was connected to the clients. I found it more stressful to work for other people who I felt were doing it wrong than to work for myself, as petrifying as it was looking down the barrel of a recession in 2007.”

On getting traction at the inception of the Global Financial Crisis in 2008: “I realized we were coming into a recession, but people liked our message when we visited them as we were totally going down the road of cloud computing.  We would say ’During a recession, do you want to spend twenty-grand on a server or do you want to give me 500 euros? And for that 500 euros a month, I will put your stuff in the cloud.’”

On adapting to the work-from-home realities of the pandemic for Ortus’ clients: “If you have 300 clients in a managed environment with a managed network and managed internet connections and there are 20 or 30 people in each of those businesses, when they all go home, you've got 20 or 30 times the amount of internet connection problems. So, it was a disaster, but we were ready for it.”

On surrounding yourself with great people: “I think it was a Steve Jobs quote, ‘You don't hire great people and then tell them what to do, you hire great people so they can tell you what to do’. I think all I've really done is hire people that are better than me at different things. So, if I see someone and I think ‘She's better than me at that’, then I'm probably going to hire them. If you keep on doing that, you end up with a great balance of people that are all brilliant at something.”

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This week we talk to David Vatchev, Venture Development Lead at R3, on what it takes to survive uncertainty, stay relevant to investors while the venture capital cycle slows down, and also understand, measure and speed up the enterprise sales cycle...a big ask for anyone!

This episode is kindly sponsored by Ireland’s fintech and financial services recruitment specialists, Top Tier Recruitment.  If you would like an intro to the team at Top Tier Recruitment, please click here.  Also, watch for the first edition of the MoneyNeverSleeps newsletter that we're sending out before the end of this month!

This week we talk to David Vatchev from R3 about his role as Venture Development Lead and we did a deep dive into how startups can come to grip with the enterprise sales cycle, which is so relevant right now with how much harder enterprise sales have become with the pandemic, especially for startups embracing newer technologies.  R3 is “an enterprise blockchain software firm working with a broad ecosystem of more than 300 participants across multiple industries from both the private and public sectors to develop blockchain applications on Corda, an open-source blockchain platform, and Corda Enterprise, a commercial version of Corda for enterprise usage.”  At R3, David helps “CorDapps” or startups leveraging Corda at the core of their business, to build, grow and scale.  Before joining R3, David spent 15 years in the capital markets, so he has first-hand experience with that industry's inefficiencies, which is one of the big problems R3 set out to solve.

Given David's role with R3 and Pete Townsend's approach with helping distributed ledger technology (DLT) enabled startups find their first customers, get funded, and get their products to market, this conversation was just waiting to happen.

Helpful resources shared by David produced by R3:

• A Startup’s Guide to Speeding Up the Enterprise Sales Cycle
• Enterprise Startups: Actionable Fundraising Tips From R3’s Investor Community
• R3's Venture Development Program - A Gateway Into Our Ecosystem

To listen to more, please visit https://www.moneyneversleeps.ie/ for all of our other episodes.  Also, follow us on Twitter @MNSShow, @PeteTownsendNV and @EoinFitzgerald9 for updates and more information.

What a week! Techstars kicked off the Launchpool Web3 Techstars Accelerator this week in Dublin and they’re already moving at a breakneck pace. With that, we’re taking the opportunity to introduce our MoneyNeverSleeps community to the ten amazing founding teams that make up Techstars’ first chain-agnostic blockchain accelerator as well as Techstars’ very first accelerator program in Ireland.

This episode of MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by Philip Lee, one of Ireland’s fastest-growing corporate law firms and expert advisors at the heart of the Dublin and London start-up, fintech and crypto communities.

Here are the ten early-stage startups that form the inaugural class of the Launchpool Web3 Techstars Accelerator, all of whom introduce themselves and their vision in this episode recorded on March 16th, 2022, about two weeks before the program kicked off.

Meet the companies:

Barterchain -A peer-to-peer barterplace where members can swap or tokenize their skills and services

BigFan - Reinventing sports collectibles with officially licensed NFTs that provide access to Metaverse-driven fan experiences

CrowdClass - A web3 protocol for online teachers to better monetize their courses and reward student engagement

DAOventures - A secured, compliant and easy to use DeFi platform for crypto investors

Eczodex - Tokenized data assets for value investors

LiveDuel - DeFi-powered live fan engagement

MegaFans - Mobile esports platform bridging web2 to web3 for gamers and enabling game developers to increase their player lifetime value

Staxe - Enabling music and creative productions’ economies in web3

Vyper Protocol - Risk management for DeFi applications on Solana

Your Diamonds – Enabling the diamond industry to solve old world problems through digital technologies and web3

LINKS:

Episode title inspired by Scenario by Tribe Called Quest

Learn more about the Launchpool Web3 Techstars Accelerator

Read Pete Townsend’s Web3 Thesis 1.0

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Get in touch at info@moneyneversleeps.ie

We once again get inside the minds of entrepreneurs by diving deep into a recent piece of content that struck a chord, and Chris Skinner's recent blog post on Starling's Anne Boden and her recent talk on the myths of fintech.

This episode is kindly sponsored by Ireland's fintech and financial services recruitment specialists, Top Tier Recruitment. If you would like an intro to the team at Top Tier Recruitment, please click here.

In this episode, Pete Townsend and Paul Smyth (filling in for Eoin Fitzgerald) unpack the November 6th post from Chris Skinner's daily blog where he steps through a talk from Anne Boden, the CEO and Founder of Starling Bank on November 5th, 2019 at the New Statesman's Fintech Summit in London.

During her talk, in addition to talking about the path to profitability for Starling Bank, Anne Boden presented her view on the 'seven myths of fintech'. Anne's seven myths are a blend of social, demographic, competitive and technology themes, and Chris Skinner took a different view on most of them in his blog post the following day. 

In a world where society's collective grasp on myths and truisms tighten and loosen daily, the different perspectives always make for a better conversation, and we addressed the following questions during this episode:

-Why is fintech heavily populated by young white men?

-Are most banks truly run by old white guys?

-Are people changing their bank accounts for better tech, services and experiences?

-What kind of banking services are the challenger banks / neobanks providing?

-What kind of banking experience do small businesses need?

-Can big banks catch up with the tech prowess of challenger banks?

-Are challenger banks going to achieve profitability?

To listen to more, please visit https://www.moneyneversleeps.ie/ for all of our other episodes. Also, follow us on Twitter @MNSShow for updates and more information.

Allan Boyle, founder of Saltwater Consulting, joins the show to talk about helping growth-stage companies scale, putting people at the center of digital transformation, how to get to the root of a problem…and his love-hate relationship with handwriting!

This episode of MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by PAT Fintech, the training partner that demystifies fintech and digital finance for financial services professionals.

EPISODE OVERVIEW:

Saltwater Consulting is an Ireland-based strategic consulting firm specialising in providing businesses with experienced executive capacity and resources where needed during periods of transition and rapid growth.

When Allan connected with Pete Townsend and Eoin Fitzgerald, what stood out is Allan’s diverse track record across geographies, industries and business stages, and the number of repetitions in problem-solving he’s had. Also, given his focus on growth-stage companies, the problems Allan is helping to solve are the problems that earlier stage startups will eventually face, so there’s a crystal-ball context to this episode for early-stage startups as well.

HIGHLIGHTS:

On why he started his business: “Being part of AWS for a couple of years and watching how even the largest companies can scale rapidly was absolutely fascinating. That led to me starting Saltwater Consulting earlier this year, as what I really want to do is help companies scale.”

On his modus operandi: “As companies scale, [for example], getting that alignment between sales and engineering can be challenging at times. That's where I come in - I work with tech leaders to help them understand where they're going, identify people and process gaps, and help implement operational mechanisms.”

On the Rule of 3 and 10 from Hiroshi Mikitani: “Every single time the business triples in size, everything breaks - systems, people, the organization, everything. Technology is easy; you can replace that, you can scale it, you can adapt it, whatever. But it's the [organisational] systems, the processes and the people side I'm interested in, and that's why I'm doing what I'm doing.”

On his focus on the people side of digital transformation: “There's a need for people in anything you do. If you build a digital platform where you’re going to have millions of customers, you need to have some level of humans behind that.”

On an example of measuring what matters: “If you want to have a certain conversion ratio of sales, your metrics are what you’re putting into the funnel. What's happening with marketing? What are the activities people are doing at various points of the pipeline? You're not going to get that conversion If you don't track every step of the sales process.”

On looking ahead: “The future, for me, is about understanding how customer service evolves in this new digital world.”

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Aine Mulloy from GirlCrew joins us this week to talk about empowering women, building communities, her journey as a co-founder...and unfortunate injuries!

What is GirlCrew?

GirlCrew is a platform for women to make new friends. Not keen on going to a concert solo?

Find a crew with us. Want to book a vacation but your friends are all coupled up? Find a group of girls to travel with. Whatever you can dream up, you can do with the crew. Members can participate in online group chat and offline events, and many friendships have formed.

How did GirlCrew start?

GirlCrew began one Friday night, when Elva Carri really wanted to go out dancing, but had no one to go with. All her friends were either busy or tired. Believing there had to be other women in the same position, she put a call out for some platonic dancing buddies on Tinder. She had no idea she would quickly garner more than 100 enthusiastic matches. She added everyone to a secret Facebook group in Dublin, where she was based, and GirlCrew was born. Having gained lots of new friends, and a jam-packed social calendar, Elva was going to need help. She teamed up with Aine Mulloy and Pamela Newenham, and the three co-founders began growing

GirlCrew groups in cities all over the world, launching an app in the summer of 2017.

How does GirlCrew work?

GirlCrew operates through an app available on iOS and Android, and on desktop. Women simply join the group for their area such as Dublin, Melbourne, Austin or London, and there they can see what events are happening, read posts and comments from other members, write posts themselves and create events. They can also join international GirlCrew groups such as Trips & Travel, Careers, Entrepreneurs, Fashion & Beauty, Fitness & Wellness, Bloggers, Dating Advice and Staying In. In the groups, members share tips, advice and knowledge on everything from getting a new job to finding a good restaurant for a first date.

How big is GirlCrew and what's next?

GirlCrew has more than 100,000 members in over 50 cities worldwide, including Dublin, London, New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, Edinburgh and Melbourne. In the summer of 2017, the company launched an app. The app is
available on iOS and Android, and will be rolled out worldwide on a city by city basis

The summer of 2018 will see the app expand across 14 cities in the US including San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Philadelphia, San Antonio and Oklahoma.

[Unfortunately, GirlCrew closed down in October 2020]

www.girlcrew.com | Facebook.com/GirlCrewHQ | Twitter & Instagram: @GirlCrewHQ | Pinterest: GirlCrewHQ

Rudi Falat from the Voice of Fintech podcast joins Pete Townsend to riff on crossing over from the corporate world into the startup ecosystem, learning by doing, startup and corporate collaboration....and flipping the table with the final question on every MoneyNeverSleeps episode!

This episode is kindly sponsored by Ireland's fintech and financial services recruitment specialists, Top Tier Recruitment. If you would like an intro to the team at Top Tier Recruitment, please click here.

The Voice of Fintech is a podcast mapping out the Swiss and European fintech ecosystem, with the aim of inspiring entrepreneurs to launch their new ventures and connecting them with incubators, accelerators, investors and incumbents. Rudi runs the podcast from Zurich, Switzerland and has expanded beyond the spoken word with focused events connecting people across the fintech ecosystem in his neck of the woods.

On this episode, Rudi and Pete cover the below topics:

-Rudi's inspiration and his affinity for people who understand and believe in the imperative of growth, fueling innovation and relentless new product development.

-Teaching entrepreneurship versus learning by doing or from those who have done it before.

-Raising capital outside of your home market when you're from a small country but have global ambition.

-The rational or irrational approach of dealflow sourcing by VCs.

-Corporates engaging in "open innovation" and what startups should look out for to reduce "innovation theater" to a minimum.

To listen to more, please visit https://www.moneyneversleeps.ie/ for all of our other episodes. Also, follow us on Twitter @MNSShow for updates and more information.

On this week's episode, Pete and Eoin dive into payments on WhatsApp, the paradox between investing in underrepresented founders and the current demographics of venture capital, and getting digitally closer to your spending through Revolut and Olivia.

This episode is kindly sponsored by Ireland’s fintech and financial services recruitment specialists, Top Tier Recruitment.  If you would like an intro to the team at Top Tier Recruitment, please click here.

In this episode, Eoin and Pete dig into pieces of content from this week that are relevant to the cosmic cloud of startups, tech, venture deals and enterprise in which they live and work. At the end of this episode, Eoin announced the big news on the first edition of the MoneyNeverSleeps newsletter on SubStack, more news to come!

The stories covered in this week's episode include:

Visa, Facebook Link Up For P2P Payments, eCommerce On WhatsApp (PYMNTS.com, 15th June 2020)
-Beginning this week, Brazilian users will be able to pay for things through WhatsApp and can establish an account by adding their card card details to WhatsApp.

-Businesses can receive funds by opening a WhatsApp business account with a 3.99 percent fee applied on top of payments they receive.   Finally, WhatsApp making money!

Arlan Hamilton from Backstage Capital on Backstage Crowd (no news available, older story on Arlan)
-“Invest alongside Arlan Hamilton and Backstage to get access to the best diverse deal flow in VC.”  Backstage Capital focuses on underrepresented founders and now the deal flow is open to all accredited investors through Backstage Crowd.

-Cross-over connection with Beezer Clarkson from Sapphire Ventures on The Full Ratchet with Nick Moran - in this episode, Beezer and Nick had a short exchange on the the impact of the pandemic on how people get to know each other in the VC/founder context.

Revolut launches open banking feature in Ireland - (Silicon Republic, 17th June 2020)
-Revolut launches an open banking feature that enables your transactions and balances data from Bank of Ireland, AIB, UlsterBank and PTSB to be viewable in the Revolut app.

Olivia’s AI assistant encourages mindful spending and saving - (Silicon Republic, 15th June 2020)
-Olivia AI launches in Ireland and Bank of Ireland, AIB, UlsterBank, PTSB and Revolut are enabled to share your transactions and balances data with -Olivia.

To listen to more, please visit https://www.moneyneversleeps.ie/ for all of our other episodes.  Also, follow us on Twitter @MNSShow, @PeteTownsendNV and @EoinFitzgerald9 for updates and more information.

Pranav Kanade, Portfolio Manager of VanEck's Digital Assets Alpha Strategy joins the show this week. VanEck is an American investment management firm headquartered in New York City with over $100bn in assets under management. Although they’re well known for their passive exchange-traded funds or ETFs, they also manage active portfolios such as Pranav’s Digital Assets Alpha Strategy.  

Pranav Kanade joined VanEck in 2022 from Millennium Management where he was a Credit Portfolio Manager working closely with a team of six investment professionals. Prior to Millennium, he was the founding member of the Head of Research for the Liquid Credit investing business at Angelo, Gordon & Co. and also spent time with Hutchin Hill Capital focused on technology and energy.

In this episode, Pranav and I dig into his transition from traditional finance (TradFi) to the crypto world, his investment philosophy, and the catalysts for growth in digital assets. Pranav details his journey, the differences between traditional and liquid token investments, and how stablecoins, decentralized physical infrastructure, gaming, and social finance can drive mass adoption. We also delve into regulatory landscapes, tokenomics, and the challenges and opportunities in token project investments.

TIMESTAMPS: 

00:18 Meet Pranav Kanade: From TradFi to Crypto

01:55 The Evolution of Digital Assets

04:10 Understanding Tokenomics and Market Dynamics

16:20 The Future of Stablecoins and Tokenized Securities

21:13 Managing a Liquid Venture Portfolio

26:03 The Role of Regulation in Crypto Adoption

38:05 Closing Thoughts and Personal Insights

LINKS:

Follow Pranav Kanade on socials:

-Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pkanade1/

-Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/vaneckpk

-Substack: https://killerapps.substack.com/

Learn more about and follow VanEck:

-X-Twitter: @vaneck_us  |  https://twitter.com/vaneck_us

-LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/company/vaneck/

Leave a review and subscribe on 

-Apple Podcasts:  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id1455819294

-Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4F8uOLxiscYVWVGEfNxTnd

-Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvaaHrJjizUEd0-93mjCKsQ

MoneyNeverSleeps newsletter on Substack: https://moneyneversleeps.substack.com/

MoneyNeverSleeps website:  https://www.moneyneversleeps.ie/

Email us at info@norioventures.com

Follow on X(Twitter): 

-Pete Townsend: https://twitter.com/petetownsendnv

-MoneyNeverSleeps: https://twitter.com/MNSshow  

Follow on LinkedIn:

-Pete Townsend: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pete-townsend-1b18301a/
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We’re back with another Money Talks segment this week, and we get into the story of Coinbase going public and the cryptofication of fintech, Starling Bank’s big investment from Goldman Sachs, the credit-building appeal and 'rundle' potential of the latest Apple Card feature, and buckets more!

MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by PAT Fintech, the training partner that demystifies fintech and digital finance for financial services professionals.

MAIN STORIES WE COVERED:

Coinbase Goes Public (Form S1 filed with the SEC, 25-Feb-21)

Eoin Fitzgerald zooms out on the bellwether moment for crypto: “One of the most important things about it is this is a company that's only nine years old. It’s only taken 10 or 12 years for cryptocurrency to go mainstream. It's incredible when you think of how far we've come with even fintech, and then you have something of this magnitude happening in a short period of time.”

Pete Townsend talking about upside of fintech “Chamath (King of SPACs) looked at some of the numbers and said if you take Stripe out of the fintech unicorns, you're in the tens of billions of dollars in market cap for fintech. I looked at the top fintech unicorns and it was a lot more than tens of billions – it was closer to $300 billion. That's about 125 fintech companies that are north of a billion-dollar valuation. If you look at the S&P 500 US Financials index, that’s $4 trillion. That’s the upside in this space.”

Starling Bank secures £50m investment from Goldman Sachs (CityAM, 19-Apr-21)

Pete thinking about the next steps for Starling Bank: “How might they continue to move up the curve beyond banking SMEs into mid-sized corporates? Would they start providing lending and revolving credit? They've done really well in getting the SME experience right, because it is a hundred percent digital. They have no branches, you can't go fill out a form anywhere. When you move that into corporate banking, there's a lot more to do there."

Cleared of gender bias, Apple announces Apple Card Family for spouses and teens (TechCrunch, 20-Apr-21)

LINKS:

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Matthew LeMerle from Blockchain Coinvestors joins Pete Townsend for a two-part series on his predictions for how blockchain will impact the world in 2020, with Part I focusing on central bank-issued digital currencies, embracing bitcoin in developing nations, and institutional adoption of digital assets.

This episode is kindly sponsored by Ireland's fintech and financial services recruitment specialists, Top Tier Recruitment. If you would like an intro to the team at Top Tier Recruitment, please click here.

Matthew LeMerle is the Managing Partner of Fifth Era and Keiretsu Capital, who combined are the most active early-stage venture investors backing almost 200 companies a year. Matthew is also the co-founder and managing partner of Blockchain Coinvestors, who are investing in the leading blockchain venture partnerships.

In December 2019, Matthew featured on a Blockchain Coinvestors webinar where he walked through his ten predictions on blockchain for 2020. The ongoing conflation of 'enterprise blockchain' and 'blockchain-inspired' developments for corporates and institutions, with the merits of the original bitcoin blockchain and the 'crypto-first' mentality, means that a lot of discussions on blockchain can get as excitable as a dog in a butcher shop. On this episode, we talk about both crypto-first topics as well as enterprise blockchain, as both are playing a role in the continued digitalization of financial markets and money.

Given the length of the discussion between Matthew and Pete, we split this feature into two parts, with Part I covering Matthew's first six predictions, along with Pete's reflections on each one.

1 - G7 / EU nations will announce digital monies

2 - Developing nations will embrace bitcoin

3 - Banks will offer crypto access and custody

4 - Hybrid wallets will become available everywhere

5 - Asset players first deploy blockchain in back offices

6 - No ETFs but indices and funds will gather assets fast

We cover the last four predictions in Part II on episode 72 released on January 24, 2020, so check that out for the rest of the list.

To listen to more, please visit https://www.moneyneversleeps.ie/ for all of our other episodes. Also, follow us on Twitter @MNSShow for updates and more information.

Husband and wife team, Paul & Laura Smyth, join us this week to talk about their journey as partners in life and business, and why entrepreneurship was the natural fit for both!

Top Tier Recruitment is a specialist Recruitment Consultancy servicing a blue-chip domestic and international client base across Finance and FinTech.​

-Funds, Operations, Middle & Back Office
-Developers, DBAs, Architects, Engineers, Testers
-Corporate & Leveraged Finance, Private Equity
-Front Office, Trading, Research & Investments
-Project Managers, & Business Analysts (IT & Ops)
-Compliance & Risk
-Banking & Treasury
-Quants, BI, Research & Analytics

Founded in 2016, Top Tier Recruitment has quickly established itself as a key recruitment partner to several clients across Finance & Fintech. Their success hinges on their ability to quickly understand requirements and use their deep and active candidate networks to match the right candidate with the right role. The team's commitment to developing long term relationships with both candidates and clients drives them to deliver in a consistent and timely manner and operate with honesty and integrity without exception.

Pascal Bouvier, Managing Partner of MiddleGame Ventures sat down with Eoin Fitzgerald this week in front of a full house at a Nadifin Accelerator event. We set up our mobile sound desk at the event in the brand new offices of the Banking & Payments Federation in Ireland on Molesworth Street in Dublin, which is also the home of the Fintech & Payments Association of Ireland, and recorded Pascal and Eoin's chat for our landmark 50th episode of MoneyNeverSleeps.

Prior to co-founding MiddleGame Ventures with Patrick Pinschmidt and Michael Meyer in Washington DC to invest in fintech startups (post seed, Series A, Series B in Europe and the US), Pascal also co-founded the RegTech Lab, was a Venture Partner with Santander InnoVentures and a co-founder of Route 66 Ventures.

Pascal's full bio can be found on his personal blog, FiniCulture, and you can follow him on Twitter @pascalbouvier.

See below for an excerpt from the MiddleGame Ventures website on their modus operandi:

Our Story
Middlegame Ventures is a venture capital firm focused exclusively on early-stage fintech startups. Over the past decade, our partners have invested approximately $300M in financial services firms. The next decade will be even better. Because the second wave of fintech innovation will be a tsunami compared to the first wave.

Financial services innovation is our obsession and 100% of our focus. We bring to bear an essential - and differentiated - mix of investment, operations, and regulatory expertise to our investment process and on behalf of our portfolio companies. ​We create win-wins across our network - spanning entrepreneurs, incumbents, and regulators.

Our Investment Focus
We invest in late seed to Series B fintech companies based in North America or Europe that are developing and using advanced technologies to digitally transform and re-imagine the financial services landscape. Our investments range across five key sectors: banking, asset management, insurance, payments, and capital markets.

Our Investment Themes
We believe that four key key secular trends are reshaping financial services:
These trends, coupled with enabling technologies - AI/ML, AR/VR, big data, blockchain, and quantum computing - drive our five investment themes:

-Data is King (powered by the explosion of data sources and advanced analytical tools)

-End of Systemic Asymmetric Knowledge (between buyers and sellers across markets)

-Intelligent Automation (powered by advanced analytics, artificial intelligence, robotics)Â

-Hyper-connected Worlds (powered by networks, nodes and platforms everywhere)

-Starting Over: digital upgrade cycle (core banking, insurance risk management, intelligent payments, user engagement)Â

-Embryonic Asset Classes: finding the new data giants (identity, data, crypto, trust)Â

-Innovating Oversight: regtech (regulatory and compliance) with digital tools

-Platforms are the New Silos: financial categories will morph into platforms (open, transparent, interoperable)

-Better is Best: doing well while doing good (financial wellness, literacy, inclusion, optimization, risk management, SME finance)

Our belief is that technology will completely reinvent financial services as we know it. Our hope is that you can join us on the way.

Eoin Fitzgerald and Pete Townsend are back with their last Money Talks segment of the year with their review of their top stories for 2021.  From GameStop and Wallstreetbets, to Roblox and Coinbase going public, to Chamath and SPACs, to Charlie Munger on Bitcoin, to BNPL with Klarna, Square and Afterpay, to our spinning of the fintech flywheel, to CryptoPunks, stablecoins, the metaverse, Techstars in Ireland and Web3 and finally, Eoin’s new hope for Monzo, we’ve got it covered one last time for 2021.

This episode of MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by Philip Lee, one of Ireland’s fastest-growing corporate law firms and expert advisors at the heart of the Dublin and London start-up, fintech and crypto communities.

LINKS:

Episode title inspired by ‘What a Year’ by Big Sean featuring Pharrell and Detail

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Eugene O’Brien and Kurt Pittman from Ireland-based BigFan join Eoin Fitzgerald and Pete Townsend on the show this week. BigFan is reinventing sports collectibles through officially licensed NFTs that provide access to Metaverse-driven fan experiences

Eugene and Kurt from BigFan are the second of ten founding teams forming the Launchpool Web3 Techstars Accelerator Class of 2022 that we’ve got on the show over the next few months.

In this episode, we talk to Eugene and Kurt about how their paths converged into BigFan last year, why it makes so much sense for them to be working on BigFan together, the ‘art of the possible’ with building for the metaverse, and the challenges in front of them to tackle right now.

This episode of MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by Philip Lee, one of Ireland’s fastest-growing corporate law firms and expert advisors at the heart of the Dublin and London start-up, fintech and crypto communities.

LINKS:

Connect with Eugene O’Brien and Kurt Pittmanand learn more about BigFan

Episode title inspired by ‘Drop it Like it’s Hot’ by Snoop Dogg ft. Pharrell

Reference to Jasmine Maietta from Round21 on Web3 Breakdownspodcast

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This week I’m joined by guest co-host Mai Santamaria, who is the Head of the Financial Advisory Unit for the Department of Finance in Ireland. Mai and I met in February 2018 at a meeting of the Irish Blockchain Expert Group which later became the industry group now referred to as Blockchain Ireland.  

She’s one of the most helpful people I know and always has a uniquely incisive insight or two on what’s going on at the crossover of finance and emerging tech when she and I catch up.  Mai originally featured on episode 5 of MoneyNeverSleeps back in 2018, she made a cameo on our 200th episode last year, she’s a Techstars mentor, and has received a ton of shout-outs from Eoin Fitzgerald and me on this podcast over the years.

In this episode, Mai and I riff on where crypto exchange Binance goes from here after pleading guilty to violations of the Bank Secrecy Act in the US and being fined $4.3bn, with co-founder and CEO Changpeng Zao stepping down.  We also look at the new crypto-friendly Argentinian president, Javier Milei, and what he might do with dollarization and crypto adoption, and then finish up with a mind-opening counterpoint on Ethereum co-founder Vitalk Buterin’s new manifesto. 

STORIES COVERED: 

Binance CEO Resigns, Part of $4.3 Billion Settlement With US (Sporting Crypto, 27-Nov-23)

Everyone Needs a Manifesto (CoinDesk, 28-Nov-23)

My techno-optimism (Vitalik Buterin, 27-Nov-23)

Elon Musk Sees A Bright Future For Argentina Under Its New Pro-Bitcoin President (Binance Square, 21-Nov-23) 

Argentina Has a New Pro-Bitcoin President—Who Is Javier Milei? (Decrypt, 20-Nov-23)

LINKS:

Follow our guest co-host Mai Santamaria on  LinkedIn

Leave a review and subscribe on Apple Podcasts  |  Spotify 

Subscribe to our MoneyNeverSleeps newsletter on Substack

Check out our MoneyNeverSleeps website and email us at info@norioventures.com

Follow us on X(Twitter): Pete Townsend  |  MoneyNeverSleeps  

Follow us on LinkedIn:: Pete Townsend  |  MoneyNeverSleeps 

Eoin Fitzgerald and Pete Townsend are back with the first Money Talks segment of 2022 with a big bump in consumers spending crypto on Visa cards, the UBS deal for Wealthfront, Walmart doubling down on their superapp strategy, the story of Ireland’s latest unicorn, Wayflyer, and the pummeling of PayPal’s stock price as a bellwether for the post-pandemic era.

This episode of MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by Philip Lee, one of Ireland’s fastest-growing corporate law firms and expert advisors at the heart of the Dublin and London start-up, fintech and crypto communities.

STORIES WE COVERED:

Visa Customers Made $2.5B in Crypto-Linked Payments in Fiscal Q1 (Coindesk, 28-Jan-22)

How UBS plans to leverage Wealthfront’s robo-adviser (Investment News, 28-Jan-22)

Walmart’s Fintech Arm Acquires Two Firms In Financial Services Super App Quest (Ron Shevlin, Forbes, 26-Jan-22)

Wayflyer becomes latest Irish tech unicorn after $150m fundraise (Charlie Taylor, Irish Times, 1-Feb-22)

PayPal stock gets pummeled, wiping out nearly all of its pandemic-era gains (Fast Company, 2-Feb-22)

LINKS:

Leave a review and subscribe on Podchaser| Apple Podcasts | Spotify| Google| Overcast

Check out our MoneyNeverSleeps website

Subscribe to our newsletter on Substack

Follow MoneyNeverSleeps on Twitter

Follow Eoin Fitzgerald on Twitter

Follow Pete Townsend on Twitter

Get in touch at info@moneyneversleeps.ie

Dee Coakley is the co-founder and CEO of Boundless, the operating system for your international team, which she co-founded with Emily Castles in Ireland in 2019. Boundless is ‘global employment made simple, with benefits, share options and payroll in one neat platform’.

In this episode, Dee riffs with Eoin Fitzgerald and Pete Townsend on the snowball effect of the diverse international experiences and relationships that made Boundless such a no-brainer for her to co-found, the shifting mindsets, societal changes and competitive landscape that have made remote working and distributed international teams a scalable reality, the benefit of tight alignment with your seed investors, and how Dee is thinking about the next steps to grow the Boundless business.

LINKS

Learn more about Boundless and follow Boundless on Twitter

Connect with Dee Coakley on LinkedIn and follow her on Twitter

Episode title inspired by ‘Sure Shot’ by the Beastie Boys

Leave a review and subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Check out our MoneyNeverSleeps website and email us at info@moneyneversleeps.ie

Follow us on Twitter:  MoneyNeverSleeps  |  Eoin Fitzgerald  |  Pete Townsend

For the 100th episode of MoneyNeverSleeps, Eoin and Pete dive into their favorite topic – the challenges of challenger banks – and look back to the first 99 episodes to build out a list of their Top 10 episodes.

This episode is kindly sponsored by Ireland’s fintech and financial services recruitment specialists, Top Tier Recruitment.  If you would like an intro to the team at Top Tier Recruitment, please click here.

For insights delivered to your inbox beyond the spoken word, subscribe to our MoneyNeverSleeps newsletter right here on Substack.

Before we started the episode, we were thrilled to announce our inclusion in FeedSpot’s Top 20 Entrepreneur Podcasts You Must Follow in 2020. Thank you FeedSpot!

We start this week with the crossover of a few pieces of content from the past two weeks on challenger banks, in particular the Big 3 of Monzo, Starling and Revolut. Recent reports highlighted their financial results and compared and contrasted them, and one thought from Lex Sokolin of the Fintech Blueprint particularly struck a chord, and this is at the heart of what we dug into on the first half of this episode through the following stories:

Starling, Revolut and Monzo’s annual results compared (Sifted, 17-Aug-20)

Art Wittmann, Industry Research in “Chasing Profitability in a Changing Media Landscape” (Oracle NetSuite’s Brainyard)- how media companies make money

PRA challenges business models of new banks in consultation paper (Finextra, 24-Aug-20)

In the second half of the episode, Pete and Eoin each went through their Top 5 MoneyNeverSleeps episodes of all time to come up with the Top 10. Listen in to find out why, and also hear our ‘honorable mentions’, but here’s the big list!

Ep 99 - Peter Geoghegan and Democracy for Sale

Ep 93 - Be Direct - Zac Liew

Ep 57 - The Prediction - Andrew Mullaney

Ep 42 - Big Bank - Sean Faughnan

Ep 38 - Friends & Respect - Laura Smyth, Paul Smyth, Lisa White, Vessy Tasheva

Ep 37 - Fight for your Right - Graham Rodford

Ep 26 - Birds of a Feather - Ann O’Dea

Ep 23 - Money Made Me Do It - Elaine Deehan

Ep 15 - Angels - Chris Adelsbach

Ep 1 - The Re-up - Brian Norton

Thanks to all of our guests since May 2018 for their willingness to join us, their openness, their insights and above all else, helping us to figure out what makes them do what they do.  Please visit MoneyNeverSleeps for all of our other episodes.

A bumper episode this week with Pete Townsend joined by Paul Smyth, Laura Smyth, Lisa White and Vessy Tasheva to discuss all things diversity in the workplace and life.

Kindly sponsored by Ireland’s fintech and financial services recruitment specialists: Top Tier Recruitment

This weeks episode is a bumper one, clocking in at almost an hour long. The extra time is much needed to tackle Diversity and Inclusion in the workplace. We are joined on the show by:

Vessy Tasheva (@vessytash), Founder of Vessy.com, Diversity & Inclusion Consultant, Author of "2019 Diversity in the Workplace Report" - an international and independent report covering 10 companies from 10 countries.

Paul & Laura Smyth, co-founders of Top Tier Recruitment, who recently commissioned a report on Diversity & Inclusion for employers in the Irish financial services and FinTech industry (link to the online version (here))

Lisa White (@lisammwhite)- the founder of Spireworks. At once a Technologist, Transformation Manager, Consultant, Innovator, Program Manager, Evangelist, Entrepreneur, Team Leader and Follower, Security Specialist, Privacy Guru, Corporate Stooge, Cultural Sponge, Talker. Lisa's background in computer science and information security allow her to make technology work in complex, competitive and rapidly-changing organisational environments. But she has spent her career tackling the people and culture-centric issues that challenge most digital change.

Enjoy the show!

In another crossover episode, this time with Your Pursuit of Happiness, Paul Smyth and Pete Townsend talk through how to keep things running in your work life and your home life, two things that have become one since the world caught fire.  They dig into VC funding, hiring, startup decisions, transformational projects and more....with a guest appearance in the intro from Pete's kids!

This episode is kindly sponsored by Ireland's fintech and financial services recruitment specialists, Top Tier Recruitment. If you would like an intro to the team at Top Tier Recruitment, please click here.

This week we've produced another Money Talks segment with friend of the show and sponsor Paul Smyth from Top Tier Recruitment and Possible.ie. We're looking at the right here, right now this week with the world on fire with coronavirus and how that's impacting business across startups, VCs, funding, hiring, coaching, corporates and new ideas.

This episode is also featured on Top Tier Recruitment's podcast, Your Pursuit of Happiness, so check that out on your favourite podcast platform as well, loads of great insights from that crew.

In this episode, we get into:

As a startup, focusing your efforts on what people are willing to pay for - what's your niche - what can you do in the short term to generate revenue that businesses and consumers need right now?

The impact of downtime, and being in a position to help - if you look back in ten years and knew you were in a position to help but decided not to for some reason, how would you feel?

How Possible.ie are offering that help with free 90-minute coaching sessions: Â https://www.possible.ie/covid

Corporate & Social Responsibility as a draw for prospective employees - what's been your community response during all of this and how the actions you take now can define how you're perceived as a business for the long run?

Managing remote teams when you've never done that before and the impact on your own management style. What can you do now with the tools you have available to react and stay afloat?

How do you cope as a leader with that pressure coming down on you now? Take it and channel it and run with it and do what you can with it, or do you pass it on in a negative way to your teams?

Focusing on a 100% virtual sales process - witnessing a startup shifting from enterprise sales to a true SaaS online-only sales model in 2 weeks

The importance of human contact and making connections and turning the Zoom camera on (tastefully!)

How what we're all going through right now will encourage more of the mindset of "bringing your whole self to work", being yourself and being authentic.

Approaches by VCs to reassess their funding position, and how the money behind the money impacts how VCs are considering or re-considering their investments in startups.

The different ways that corporates are handling hiring right now, and the thought of your first day of work with a new company being from home.

What to read (from Pete): What You Do is Who You Are by Ben Horowitz

What to read (from Paul): The Choice by Edith Eger

To listen to more, please visit https://www.moneyneversleeps.ie/ for all of our other episodes. Also, follow us on Twitter @MNSShow for updates and more information.

This is a special bonus episode welcoming back Ollie Walsh, co-founder and CEO of Pipit Global, a for-profit social impact fintech based in Galway here in Ireland. Ollie was on the show back in July 2019 in episode 52, and as Pipit's crowdfunding campaign on the Spark Crowdfunding platform here in Ireland is about to go live to the public, we brought him back to bring us all up to speed on Pipit and share his story on the campaign.

MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by PAT Fintech, the training partner that demystifies fintech and digital finance for financial services professionals.

Pipit is a platform that now touches every continent and has the potential to impact the lives of millions with a safer and more cost-effective way for migrants to support their families. Ollie and the Pipit team are enabling the public to invest in their vision to reduce the global cost of remittance, and are launching their crowdfunding campaign the week of April 26th on the Spark Crowdfunding platform.

To learn more about the Spark Crowdfunding platform, check out the interview we did with Chris Burge, co-founder and CEO of Spark, in episode 111.

[For the sake of transparency, Pete Townsend (host of this episode) is a non-executive director on the board of Pipit Global, and is invested in the company.]

LINKS:

Leave a review and subscribe on Podchaser | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google | Overcast

Check out our MoneyNeverSleeps website

Subscribe to our newsletter on Substack

Follow us on Twitter Podcast| Twitter Pete | Twitter Eoin

Get in touch at info@moneyneversleeps.ie

This episode features an introduction to the 12 founding teams that form the Techstars Web3 accelerator class of 2024, with each of their founder/CEOs giving you a quick look inside what they're building.

Meet the companies! 

Artizen - Match-funding platform for breakthroughs in human creativity. 

Founder locations:  USA / UK | Featured Founder/CEO:  Rene Pinnell

The Colony -  Shaping the future of collectibles through blockchain technology.

Founder locations: USA / Canada | Featured Founder/CEO: Andrea Miele

Ember AI - AI DeFi companion that understands what you want and helps you do it securely, without new apps or hardware.

Founder locations: USA / Colombia  | Featured Founder/CEO: Tom Daniel

FairAI - Fueling democratized open-source AI through a decentralized marketplace with digital property rights. 

Founder locations:  Portugal / USA | Featured Founder/CEO: Tiago Ferreira

FileMarket - Multichain data tokenization protocol for storage and P2P digital goods trading.

Founder location: Hong Kong  | Featured Founder/CEO: Ilya Orlov

GenoBank - Ensuring the privacy and data ownership of your genetic information.

Founder location: USA | Featured Founder/CEO: Daniel Uribe

Lantern Finance - Custodial staking and lending services for the everyday investor.

Founder location: USA  | Featured Founder/CEO: Jung-Won Kim

Millicent -  The open smart contract platform for compliant real-world DeFi.

Founder locations:  UK / USA | Featured Founder/CEO: Kene Ezeji-Okoye

PawPass - Digital identification for animals.

Founder location: UK | Featured Founder/CEO: Julia Kemp

ProofSpace - No-code platform for reusable identity. 

Founder location:  UK | Featured Founder/CEO: Nick Mason

SportsyncTech - Empowering amateur sports organizations and athletes with innovative, data-driven solutions.

Founder locations:  France / USA  | Featured Founder/CEO: Fabien Arneodo 

Savvy - Interest-free lending protocol with overcollateralized deposits and self repaying loans.

Founder location:  USA  | Featured Founder/CEO: Roman Giler

LINKS:

Learn more about the Techstars Web3 Class of 2024:

https://www.techstars.com/accelerators/web3

Leave a review and subscribe on 

-Apple Podcasts:  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id1455819294

-Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4F8uOLxiscYVWVGEfNxTnd

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Achia Nila, Founder & CEO of Women in Digital, joins the show to share her story on Women in Digital, an all-star team of female technologists dedicated to bringing more Bangladeshi women into the digital economy. In this chat, we get into Nila’s earliest inspirations, proving herself and becoming a CTO before becoming an entrepreneur, the founding principles of Women in Digital, and how she has been able to train 10,000 women in 8 years.

MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by PAT Fintech, the training partner that demystifies fintech and digital finance for financial services professionals.

LINKS:

Episode title inspired by ‘Freedom’ by Beyonce featuring Kendrick Lamar

Get in touch with Achia Nila and Women in Digital to learn about their programs

Leave a review and subscribe on Podchaser| Apple Podcasts | Spotify| Google| Overcast

Check out our MoneyNeverSleeps website for all of the shownotes and highlights in the written word.

Subscribe to our newsletter on Substack

Follow us on Twitter Podcast| Twitter Pete| Twitter Eoin

Get in touch at info@moneyneversleeps.ie

Luis Martinez and Martin Liebrich are the co-founders of Staxe. Staxe is enabling music and creative production economies on web3 so that anyone can become an owner of music and creative productions, support their favorite artists, and become a part of their success.”

This episode of MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by Philip Lee, one of Ireland’s fastest-growing corporate law firms and expert advisors at the heart of the Dublin and London start-up, fintech and crypto communities.

Staxe are the seventh of the founding teams forming the Launchpool Web3 Techstars Accelerator Class of 2022 that we’ve got on the show over the next month.

In this episode, Pete Townsend talks with Luis and Martin from Staxe about:

- Luis leaving DJ school to become a trader before going down the crypto rabbit hole

- Martin’s earliest days of programming on the Commodore 64

- The lightbulb moment on the problem to solve with financing creative productions

- How creative productions are like micro-startups

- Blockchain as a social coordination tool

- The big opportunity for Staxe with massive creative productions

LINKS:

Connect with Luis Martinez and Martin Liebrich and learn more about Staxe

Episode title inspired by ‘In da Club’ by 50 Cent

Leave a review and subscribe on Podchaser| Apple Podcasts | Spotify| Google| Overcast

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Get in touch at info@moneyneversleeps.ie

In a new format we're trying with MoneyNeverSleeps, we try to get inside the minds of three entrepreneurs by riffing on recent tech news and venture stories. This episode includes a look at central bank ambitions of the sovereigns pushing back on Mark Zuckerberg's crypto project, Adam Neumann's WeWork legacy, and Uber's London problem.

Kindly sponsored by Ireland's fintech and financial services recruitment specialists: Top Tier Recruitment

In this episode, Pete Townsend and Paul Smyth (artfully filling in for Eoin Fitzgerald) riff on three developments this week in the world of tech and venture capital to try to get inside of the minds of the entrepreneurs behind the stories. Here they are:

How Facebook's Libra fueled push for central bank-run digital currencies - Financial Times - Monday, 23rd September, 2019 (paywall)

-France, UK, Sweden, Japan, China all weigh in with their views

-KEY POINT: To consumers it would feel very much like the electronic payment and transfer solutions that are already available today through their banking apps or a service such as PayPal.

-Why is this important, where could it all go and what's going through Mark Zuckerberg's mind?

-Pete Townsend's recent blog post, "My Thoughts on Libra"

WeWork's Adam Neumann to step down as chief executive - Financial Times - Wednesday, 25th September, 2019 (paywall)

-Neumann will no longer hold majority voting rights and becomes non-executive chairman

-Finance chief Artie Minson and WeWork vice-chair Sebastian Gunningham will take over as co-chief executives

-Comparison to Travis Kalanick, whose former advisor Bradley Tusk was on episode 27 of Money Never Sleeps.

-Threat of lob losses (up to 6K of 15K workforce) reported.

-What's still good about WeWork though amidst all of the negativity? Where could this go? What's next for Adam Neumann?

Uber gains London licence for just 2 months - BBC News - Tuesday, 24th September, 2019

-Reported: Concerns over safety, identification and insurance.

-From the FT - spokesperson for the Mayor's office: "[London Mayor] Sadiq [Khan] has been crystal clear that in London it doesn't matter how powerful and how big you are, you must play by the rules."

-What's one market where Uber just didn't work at all (Ireland)? Why is this important? What's going through Dara Khosrowshahi's mind?

Luke Sully, founder and CEO of Custody Digital Group joins the show to talk about his path into digital assets from an IT security background, building a business through aligning the interests of talented people, why he's basing his operations in Ireland.....and his love of the merengue!

This episode is kindly sponsored by Ireland's fintech and financial services recruitment specialists, Top Tier Recruitment. If you would like an intro to the team at Top Tier Recruitment, please click here.

Custody Digital Group (CDG) provide financial institutions with a single point of governance for securing and managing digital assets. Luke and Pete Townsend connected in early 2019, and they've stayed in touch since then with their mutual interests in all things digital assets and Luke's plans for setting up an Irish operation for CDG. Some of the highlights include:

• Channeling Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz from a16z - if you try to solve a big problem in a really big market, then you have a great opportunity to build a really scalable business, and that's what we saw with CDG. 
• As a founder, you have a vision for how you think you can do things and how you think you can solve problems and help create a better way of doing things, or for serving a market that you can see that other people can't.  It's just an itch you have to scratch.
• Everyone has the capacity to start to build, but you never really know what the next week or month is going to look like, so you have to be able to accept a certain amount of chaos in your life and how you build a business isn't always as linear as you would like. So there's a huge amount of resilience that you have to draw on on a fairly regular basis.
• Being a founder is about getting really good people around you, making sure they're all aligned as to why they're involved, and aligning what they want to do with the vision and the objective of the company. If you can align everyone's objectives and interests around that core theme, it will make your life easier. 
• What people don't realize is that really good startups get spun out of other startups. There are folks that will be working in high-growth technology companies that understand the playbook, have a finer sense of risk and take calculated risks, that then put teams together and go and build companies. That provides a really long tail that I think Ireland will start to enjoy.
• With regulation, it's not only making sure you're compliant, but using it as a competitive advantage. If you can get it right and read the tea leaves properly, it allows you to work across jurisdictions that give you a broader palette and a broader client base.
• How CDG's go-to-market strategy is aligned in terms of the different kinds of digital assets (cryptocurrencies vs. security tokens)
• Being a founder is a constant surprise - each day is different and brings with it a set of challenges that you may not have expected before.
• Build a startup is kind of like climbing a mountain, the moment you start looking down just to give yourself a pat on the back about how far you've come, it can look a bit scary, so it's best to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
• Absorbing pressure and becoming more resilient with each passing month.

To listen to more, to listen to more, please visit https://www.moneyneversleeps.ie/ for all of our other episodes. Also, follow us on Twitter @MNSShow for updates and more information.

This week, I’m joined by the brilliant Mai Santamaria for a far-ranging discussion inspired by Ian Goldin’s concept of The Butterfly Defect — a thought-provoking take on the risks and interconnectedness of our global systems. We dive into how this idea resonates with the evolution of crypto, web3, and the financial markets, and explore how the convergence of traditional and decentralized systems could reshape the future.

Mai, an award-winning fintech and financial policy expert, has been a trailblazer in shaping regulatory and strategic frameworks in Ireland. With deep expertise in digital finance and a passion for innovation, Mai brings her unique perspective to our conversation, exploring the challenges—and opportunities—of hyper-connectivity in our global economy.

It's a deep and engaging conversation that offers insights into how globalization, technology, and finance intertwine

IN THIS EPISODE:

- The Butterfly Defect: How hyperconnectivity increases systemic risks and the lessons for crypto and globalization.

- Parallel Arcs of Financial Systems: The inevitable convergence of traditional financial markets and crypto.

- Regulatory Perspectives: Why interconnectedness demands careful collaboration at a global level.

- The Role of Technology: How blockchain innovation like self-executing smart contracts can reshape financial markets.

- Echo Chambers: Navigating the challenges of being too immersed in niche ecosystems and staying grounded.

- Ireland’s Potential: How Ireland’s geographical and technological advantages position it as a hub for sustainable digital financial services.

- Emerging Market Innovation: The surprising use cases for stablecoins and tokenized assets in emerging markets.

KEYWORDS:

butterfly defect, globalization, digital economy, crypto, blockchain, web3, regulation, stablecoins, butterfly effect

RESOURCES:

Follow our guest co-host Mai Santamaria on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mai07/

The Fintech 15: Meet the Women Shaping the Irish Revolution (paywall)

The Fintech Blueprint podcast interview with Tom Duff Gordon from Coinbase

Professor Ian Goldin’s 2014 Princeton lecture on The Butterfly Defect

Meet Keith Gill, the man who drove the GameStop Reddit mania and made millions

Aled Jones’s article The Actuary (2021) on the Butterfly Defect

The Stablecoin Revolution with Linda Jeng | Unpacking Castle Island Ventures’ Latest Stablecoin Report

David Senra’s Founders podcast

LINKS:

Leave a review and subscribe on

• Apple Podcasts

• Spotify

• MoneyNeverSleeps (website)

Email us: info@norioventures.com

Follow on X(Twitter):

• Pete Townsend: https://twitter.com/petetownsendnv

• MoneyNeverSleeps: https://twitter.com/MNSshow

Follow on LinkedIn:

• Pete Townsend: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pete-townsend-1b18301a/

• MoneyNeverSleeps: https://www.linkedin.com/company/28661903/

MoneyNeverSleeps newsletter: https://moneyneversleeps.substack.com/

Alejandro Gutierrez joins the show as guest co-host in this Money Talks segment. Alejandro is the CEO of Defactor Labs, providing all the required technological and financial tools for traditional companies to tap into alternative sources of financing using tokenized Real World Assets as collateral. Congratulations to Defactor Labs for taking home the gong at the inaugural National Fintech Awards in Ireland for ‘Best Crypto, Blockchain or Digital Asset Offering’. 

In this episode, Alejandro and Pete Townsend riff on the SEC cracking down on NFTs as a fundraising tool by looking at the Mila Kunis-backed Stoner Cats project and that of LA-based media company Impact Theory. They also step through the story of Visa integrating the Solana blockchain for USDC settlements, Mark Cuban getting hacked, Citi’s new token service, and have some fun with emerging tech hype cycles and Patagonia vests.

STORIES COVERED: 

NFT Takedowns

What Happens to Mila Kunis' Stoner Cats NFTs After SEC Settlement? (Decrypt, 13-Sep-23)

SEC settles first NFT enforcement case, fines LA media company $6M (TechCrunch, 29-Aug-23)

Visa+Solana+USDC

‘A Huge Deal’—Visa Reveals Crypto Payments Bombshell (Forbes, 7-Sep-23)

Long Take: Visa, Worldpay, and Nuvei settling transactions using stablecoin USDC on Solana (Fintech Blueprint by Lex Sokolin, 6-Sep-23)

Mark Cuban Hacked

Mark Cuban Loses Nearly $1M to Crypto Scam (CoinDesk, 18-Sep-23)

Billionaire Mark Cuban Loses $870,000 In Crypto Scam (Decrypt, 16-Sep-23)

Citi’s New Token Service

Citigroup Debuts Token Service in Latest Foray Into Digital Assets (Bloomberg, 18-Sep-23)

Citi Token Services will provide payments, liquidity to institutional customers (Cointelegraph, 18-Sep-23)

LINKS:

Follow our guest co-host Alejandro Gutierrez on X(Twitter) and LinkedIn

Learn more about Defactor Labs and follow them on X(Twitter) 

Leave a review and subscribe on Apple Podcasts  |  Spotify 

Check out our MoneyNeverSleeps website and email us at info@norioventures.com

Follow us on X(Twitter): Pete Townsend  |  MoneyNeverSleeps  

Follow us on LinkedIn: Pete Townsend  |  MoneyNeverSleeps

Des O'Donohoe from FundRecs joins us this week to talk about learning to be an entrepreneur...and his love of gaming!

Fund Recs was founded in 2013 when the company founders were approached by a large bank to develop a new reconciliation platform for it's Fund Administration unit. With over 25 years of operational and technology experience between them, the team are building a platform to transform how data is managed, processed and leveraged by the Funds Industry.

Fund Recs recently launched VELOCITY platform for Fund Administrators empowers Administrators to process valuations faster and with increased oversight.

Taking the latest technology and approaches from the best-loved consumer software applications, the Fund Recs team are combining consumer user experience and interfaces with enterprise accuracy, security and availability.

The team at Fund Recs believes that the software we use in day-to-day business activities should be as well designed and easy to use as the consumer applications we enjoy every day in our personal life.

By combining ease of use with powerful processing, flexible data import and key Industry knowledge we have set out on our mission towards developing the most efficient, powerful and cost-effective reconciliation software available.

Michelle Tsing joins Pete Townsend in a special segment from the Techstars Web3 Convo Series of fireside chats driven by the Launchpool Web3 Techstars Accelerator program kicking off in Dublin in March 2022. Michelle is based in the San Francisco Bay Area, and in addition to wearing many hats as a lawyer, artist, entrepreneur, startup advisor, and self-described futurist, she mentors founders through the Berkeley Blockchain Xcelerator and Singularity University Ventures.  

Michelle talks about her entry point into blockchain, the links back to her career with PayPal that shape how she mentors founders today, some of her own eye-opening experiences as an entrepreneur, her experience with DAOs or decentralized autonomous organizations, what she looks for in founders and how she works with startup teams, and what it takes to be successful in the Web3 space.  

LINKS:

Learn more about the Launchpool Web3 Techstars Accelerator and the Techstars Web3 Convo Series

Connect with Michelle Tsing here and check out her Laptop Radio podcast

Check out Michelle’s Tsing’s suggested must-read book here: Games People Play by Eric Berne

Leave a review and subscribe on Podchaser| Apple Podcasts | Spotify| Google| Overcast

Check out our MoneyNeverSleeps website

Subscribe to our newsletter on Substack

Follow us on Twitter Podcast| Twitter Pete| Twitter Eoin

Get in touch at info@moneyneversleeps.ie

Howie Young is the founder and CEO of Protico, a universal chatting interface that enables web3 chat on apps in seconds for enterprises that want to migrate business and engage customers at the web3 level. 

Protico is also one of the 12 founding teams forming the Techstars Web3 accelerator class of 2023.

With over eight years of experience in the chat and messaging industry, Howie Young is a highly skilled and dedicated professional who has built a reputation for delivering innovative and user-focused solutions. Combining a strong foundation in business with extensive self-taught technical expertise, Howie has contributed to the development of numerous successful and creative products that are used in more than 100 countries around the world.

Also, Howie has been fueling his creative mind as the founder of a co-working space for the startup ecosystem back home in Taipei, Taiwan since 2014.

In this episode, Howie and Pete Townsend riff on his life experiences to date that led him to launch Protico before digging into Howie’s first steps into the market with Protico’s MVP and how he expects network effects will follow.  We also get into the crossover of web2 users into web3, some of the key challenges Howie sees ahead, and his big ‘earned secret’ from his life in startup ecosystems.

LINKS:

Learn more about Protico

Connect with Howie Young on LinkedIn and Twitter

Follow Protico on LinkedIn and Twitter

Episode title inspired by ‘The Message’ by Nas

Leave a review and subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify 

Check out our MoneyNeverSleeps website and email us at info@moneyneversleeps.ie

Follow us on Twitter:  MoneyNeverSleeps  |  Eoin Fitzgerald  |  Pete Townsend

This episode features a rundown of the 12 web3 founding teams that form the Techstars Web3 class of 2023, along with an intro to each of their CEOs. 

Builders gotta build, and build better.

That was the Techstars Web3 rallying cry when Pete Townsend and Hugh McGirr opened up applications for the Techstars Web3 2023 cohort in November 2022, as finding those building for the long-term - rather than chasing token markets - was the priority.  

Each one of these 12 founding teams embody web3 in their own way, whether they’re building web3 companies, communities, or economies. Techstars found these founding teams all over the world from Taiwan to the West Coast of the US, and they’re building web3 infrastructure, ‘DeFi Mullets’, DAO tooling, and creator ecosystems.

LINKS

Learn more about the Techstars Web3 Class of 2023 and connect with each team here

Follow Techstars Web3 on LinkedIn and Twitter

Episode title inspired by World Class by Snoop Dogg and Wiz Khalifa

Leave a review and subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify 

Check out our MoneyNeverSleeps website and email us at info@moneyneversleeps.ie

Follow us on Twitter:  MoneyNeverSleeps  |  Eoin Fitzgerald  |  Pete Townsend

Andrew Patrick White from FundApps joins us to talk about his travels as an entrepreneur over the past 9 years....and traveling to over 113 countries!

Kindly sponsored by Ireland’s Fintech and financial services recruitment specialists: Top Tier Recruitment

Andrew Patrick White, CEO of FundApps joins us on the show this week.

In our previous companies, we saw the pain that installed compliance software caused. We disliked telling prospects that they’d need to buy database licenses and hire IT staff to run & monitor our system. We felt guilty charging clients to upgrade their software to the latest version (especially if they got no added value from the upgrade) and it was embarrassing to have clients wait years for the features they had requested.

FundApps is unique as it provides both technology and content. We make white-hot technology written by some of the best developers around, but we also partner with the most respected content providers in the industry and our experts deliver the rules & updates which happen so frequently in financial regulation nowadays.

We continue this week with our second edition of Money Talks - Rachel Kenny from HubSpot covers the basics of startup marketing and Bernadette Wijnings from Blanco tells her story about digital asset management and raising capital from VCs.

Kindly sponsored by Ireland's fintech and financial services recruitment specialists, Top Tier Recruitment. If you would like an intro to the team at Top Tier Recruitment, please click here.

In this episode, we continue with Part II of 'How to Survive and Thrive with Your Investors', and you can check out Part 1 in Episode 58.

Featured in Part II are:

- Rachel Kenny from HubSpot - if you would like an intro to Rachel, please click here.

- Bernadette Wijnings from Blanco - if you would like an intro to Bernadette, please click here.

You'll also hear Ian Dalton from Flagship Marketing moderating the discussion, with Jo van de Velde from Euroclear, Koen Vanderhoydonk from Blanco and Pete Townsend from MoneyNeverSleeps and Norio Ventures all piping in.

The genesis of this episode is a Flagship Marketing webinar, and they kindly shared the audio track with us. Flagship Marketing supports fresh-thinking fintech companies with inbound marketing services which generate qualified leads and delighted customers for socially motivated, innovative, financial scale-ups. Flagship have tons of incredibly useful marketing guides and workbooks on their website, so log in and learn.

Brian Zwerner is the President and Founder of W3 Studio, and a VC and Founder of Beyond the Game Network.  As the President and Founder of W3 Studio, a 501c3 non-profit venture studio, Brian and his team help diverse founders in Atlanta build startups in web3. W3 Studio partners with corporations and provides grants to startups to fund the launch of their first products.

With his role as a VC and Founder at Beyond The Game Network, Brian teams up with a venture group of athletes that invest in Seed to Series B consumer startups in sports, media, web3, and fitness.

Brian Zwerner was previously the founder of Sportal, a startup in the sports industry. He managed the growth of Aquina Health through a Series A capital raise. He has invested in or held senior roles with several companies and funds and previously spent 20 years in investment banking roles in the US and overseas. 

In this episode, Brian and I riff on what led him to scratch his entrepreneurial itch in the first place, his experiences as a founder, and the symmetry of his leadership across Beyond the Game Network and W3 Studio.  We also take a look at the market for sports-themed digital collectibles since the 2020-2021 bull run, how to build a more sustainable business at the intersection of sports and web3 by focusing on fandom rather than speculators, and how his advice to founders has evolved with the comings and goings of bulls and bears.

LINKS:

Episode title inspired by ‘The World is Yours’ by Nas

Learn more about W3 Studio:  https://w3studio.us/

Learn more about Beyond the Game Network:  https://thebtgnetwork.com/

Connect with Brian Zwerner on social media:

-Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/w3studioatl

-Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-zwerner/

-Twitter: https://twitter.com/BrianZwerner

-Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@bzwerner/

-TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@brianzwerner

Leave a review and subscribe on 

-Apple Podcasts:  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id1455819294

-Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4F8uOLxiscYVWVGEfNxTnd

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MoneyNeverSleeps website:  https://www.moneyneversleeps.ie/

Email us at info@norioventures.com

Follow on X(Twitter): 

-Pete Townsend: https://twitter.com/petetownsendnv

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Follow on LinkedIn:

-Pete Townsend: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pete-townsend-1b18301a/

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In this Money Talks segment, Eoin Fitzgerald and Pete Townsend start with some insights on Visa’s deal for Tink and how the European context of Tink differs quite a bit from the US context of Visa’s dead deal with Plaid, then we look at Binance’s recent troubles before rounding out with Revolut’s recent reporting of their 2020 results and the potential to roll Revolut into a Rundle - the recurring revenue bundle.

MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by PAT Fintech, the training partner that demystifies fintech and digital finance for financial services professionals.

MAIN STORIES WE COVERED:

Visa to buy Swedish fintech Tink for €1.8bn (Sifted, 24-Jun-21)

Binance: Watchdog clamps down on cryptocurrency exchange (BBC, 28-Jun-21)

Revolut’s 2020 Results (Lex Sokolin, The Fintech Blueprint, 28-Jun-21)

LINKS:

Leave a review and subscribe on Podchaser| Apple Podcasts | Spotify| Google| Overcast

Check out our MoneyNeverSleeps website

Subscribe to our newsletter on Substack

Follow us on Twitter Podcast| Twitter Pete| Twitter Eoin

Get in touch at info@moneyneversleeps.ie

This week, Eoin Fitzgerald and Pete Townsend riff on the latest on Sam Bankman-Fried before diving into a few of the fintech and web3 predictions for 2023 published recently, then we do an experimental walk-through of the AI bot ChatGPT. We finish up with a look at some of the January leadership changes in fintech and crypto and an update on the Techstars Web3 accelerator.

This episode of MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by SecuriCentrix. SecuriCentrix is a trusted cyber security company with offices in Dublin, Cape Town and London. SecuriCentrix provides expert advisory services, primarily in the finance and fintech industries, with tailored security solutions to fit your specific needs and regulatory challenges.

STORIES COVERED

What’s in store for European fintech in 2023? (Sifted, 3-Jan-23)

Web3 in 2023 (Life in Color Blog, 2-Jan-23)

Is Binance in Trouble? (Forbes, 14-Dec-22)

Gemini’s Winklevoss accuses crypto mogul Silbert of ‘bad faith stalling tactics’ over frozen funds (CNBC, 4-Jan-23)

This is what the future holds for cryptocurrencies (World Economic Forum Davos blog, 2-Jan-23)

In a banking industry first, neobank Cogni adds noncustodial Web3 wallet (Yahoo Finance, 22-Dec-22)

ChatGPT is Coming for Crypto (Forbes (via CoinDesk), 28-Dec-22)

Goldman Sachs' consumer banking unit head steps down (Reuters, 3-Jan-23)

Zodia Custody Appoints Crypto Exchange Bitstamp’s Julian Sawyer as CEO (CoinDesk, 3-Jan-23)

Techstars Web3 accelerator investment thesis 2.0 (Techstars Newsroom, 26-Nov-22)

LINKS

Leave a review and subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Check out our MoneyNeverSleeps website and email us at info@moneyneversleeps.ie

Follow us on Twitter:  MoneyNeverSleeps  |  Eoin Fitzgerald  |  Pete Townsend

Katerina Bohle Carbonell is the co-lead of TogetherCrew, one of the 12 founding teams forming the Techstars Web3 accelerator. Some web3 communities fall apart under pressure, others come together stronger. TogetherCrew exists to help build and grow communities by ensuring members and stakeholders create together.  

Katerina’s life’s work goes broad and deep on how members of teams and communities attract, engage and retain new contributors, and how people collaborate and co-create within communities - collectively known as ‘network science’.  With the advent of DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) in the last few years and the massive opportunity to apply network science to web3 communities, Katerina joined up with Daniel Ospina and Ashish Gangrade to co-lead TogetherCrew in 2022.

Katerina and Pete Townsend dig into how her life’s work led her to TogetherCrew, what TogetherCrew is doing right now, the longer-term vision for TogetherCrew when virtual organizations become the norm, the challenges that Katerina expects they’ll face on the way there.

LINKS:

Learn more about TogetherCrew

Connect with Katerina Bohle Carbonell on Twitter

Follow TogetherCrew on Twitter

Episode title inspired by ‘One Tribe’ by Black Eyed Peas

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Gray Webb is co-founder and CTO at Liquibit Capital, and we kick things off with a look at what’s happened with BTC since the latest bitcoin halving.  Gray and I then riff on the evolution of bitcoin into a long-term holding with huge opportunities for financial innovation.  We also look at the mainstreaming of stablecoins as the killer app for crypto and how stablecoins have only scratched the surface by nudging past Visa in quarterly settlement volume.

Gray Webb is an entrepreneur and technology professional specializing in Digital Asset & Equity Capital Markets. With over 20 years of experience, he has expertise in high-frequency trading, risk management, and post-trade systems. He is currently the Co-Founder and CTO of Liquibit Capital, an algorithmic-driven trading and asset management company. Gray is also involved in mentoring, teaching, and startup mentoring in the blockchain and Web3 space, and is one of the fantastic mentors for founders in the Techstars Web3 accelerator program. He has a strong background in product management and technology delivery, having worked with companies like Digital Asset and JPMorgan. 

Liquibit Capital⁠ is a best-in-class investment management firm focused on producing consistent and uncorrelated returns in the emerging digital asset class.

You can also listen to more of Gray’s backstory and that of his Liquibit co-founder Joseph Chang in episode 138 from 2021. 

STORIES COVERED:

BTC as a long-term holding

Hong Kong's six spot bitcoin, ether ETFs see $11 million in volume on first trading day (The Block, 30-Apr-24)

Blockworks’ BTC ETF Tracker

Stablecoins mainstreaming

PV01 Issues First Digital Bond to Blue-Chip Stablecoin Investors (PRNewswire, 16-Apr-24)

Tether, USDC and DAI transaction volume surpasses Visa's 2023 monthly average: Nansen (The Block, 29-Apr-24)

Stripe Brings Back Crypto Payments Via USDC Stablecoin (Yahoo Finance, 25-Apr-24)

Making sense of stablecoins (Visa, 25-Apr-24)

LINKS:

Learn more about Liquibit Capital:  https://liquibit.io/

Connect with Gray Webb on socials:

-LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/graywebb/

-X(Twitter):  https://twitter.com/cryptopacific

Leave a review and subscribe on 

-Apple Podcasts:  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id1455819294

-Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4F8uOLxiscYVWVGEfNxTnd

-Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvaaHrJjizUEd0-93mjCKsQ

MoneyNeverSleeps newsletter on Substack: https://moneyneversleeps.substack.com/

MoneyNeverSleeps website:  https://www.moneyneversleeps.ie/

Email us at info@norioventures.com

Follow on X(Twitter): 

-Pete Townsend: https://twitter.com/petetownsendnv

-MoneyNeverSleeps: https://twitter.com/MNSshow  

Follow on LinkedIn:

-Pete Townsend: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pete-townsend-1b18301a/

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Eoin Fitzgerald and Pete Townsend walk through Amazon’s new partnership with BNPL (buy-now-pay-later) player Affirm and what this means for the Amazon flywheel, and then answer the question ‘what’s a stablecoin?’ in the context of USD Coin and the Centre Consortium, before diving into the world of NFTs through Visa’s $150,000 purchase of a CryptoPunk NFT and the big opportunity for monetizing the metaverse.

MAIN STORIES COVERED:

Amazon-Affirm BNPL (buy-now-pay-later)

Affirm shares soar nearly 47% after Amazon partnership that lets consumers buy expensive things in installments (CNBC, 30-Aug-21)

Is Affirm's Amazon Deal Better Than Walmart? (Fintech Business Weekly/Jason Mikuda, 29-Aug-21)

How does Affirm make money? (Finty, 21-Jun-21)

USDC and Stablecoins

Centre Consortium announces new team to create 'global network of stablecoins' (the Block (via Coindesk), 30-Aug-21)

AID:Tech utilises Circle and USD Coin to provide fraud resistant disaster relief(Finextra, 30-Aug-21)

Visa is now supporting settlement of card transactions with USDC (Techcrunch, 29-Mar-21)

Visa gets into NFT space

Visa buys a CryptoPunk as it takes first steps into 'NFT commerce' (The Block, 23-Aug-21)

Nifty Corporates (Not Boring by Packy McCormick, 30-Aug-21)

LINKS:

Leave a review and subscribe on Podchaser | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google| Overcast

Check out our MoneyNeverSleeps website

Subscribe to our newsletter on Substack

Follow us on Twitter Podcast| Twitter Pete | Twitter Eoin

Get in touch at info@moneyneversleeps.ie

Isaac Kato, who leads the Filecoin Techstars Accelerator program in Seattle joins Pete Townsend on this episode originally recorded as part of the Techstars Web3 Convo Series of fireside chats powered by the Launchpool Web3 Techstars Accelerator program in Ireland. In this chat, Isaac and Pete riff on the differences and similarities between Web2 and Web3 startups, the Lego blocks of Web3, defending your turf, incentivizing your users, keeping your community close, building your team, fundraising strategies ...and the Gaelic sport of hurling.

This episode of MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by Philip Lee, one of Ireland’s fastest-growing corporate law firms and expert advisors at the heart of the Dublin and London start-up, fintech and crypto communities.

LINKS:

Follow Isaac Kato on Twitter and learn more about the Filecoin Techstars Accelerator 

Follow Pete Townsend on Twitter and learn more about the Launchpool Web3 Techstars Accelerator

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Get in touch at info@moneyneversleeps.ie

Eddie Dillon from CreditLogic joins us on the show to talk digital transformation, making the move from corporate to entrepreneur...and his love of skiing!

This episode is kindly sponsored by Ireland's fintech and financial services recruitment specialists, Top Tier Recruitment. If you would like an intro to the team at Top Tier Recruitment, please click here.

Eddie Dillon is the founder and CEO of CreditLogic who are powering simplified and scalable mortgage origination. CreditLogic is a mortgage origination platform for both customer-facing advisors and lenders which reinvents application processing. The platform streamlines application data capture, validation, review and integration for compliant scalable origination.

If you would like an intro to Eddie, please click here.

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Recorded live in Dublin at the BFC EU 2019 conference on DLT and emerging tech, Zeeshan Feroz from Coinbase and Pete Townsend took the stage for a fireside chat on Coinbase's institutional presence, custody as a building block of the crypto economy and crypto regulation.

This episode is kindly sponsored by Ireland's fintech and financial services recruitment specialists, Top Tier Recruitment. If you would like an intro to the team at Top Tier Recruitment, please click here.

Our MoneyNeverSleeps co-host Pete Townsend from Norio Ventures and Zeeshan Feroz, CEO of Coinbase in Europe, sat down on October 9th, 2019 at BFC EU 2019 for a half-hour chat on:

How Coinbase are connecting institutions with the crypto economy.

Trends in institutional crypto and custody as a building block of the crypto economy.

Financial institutions' ongoing acknowledgement that the backbone of the financial system is changing.

The infrastructure to support the widespread institutional adoption of digital assets.

Engaging with regulators, welcoming crypto regulation and operating as a qualified custodian of digital assets.

We'd like to extend our thanks to Hannah Kitchen and Dean Murphy at Fintech Network for sharing the audio track of Zeeshan and Pete's chat so that we could create this episode!

Ivailo Jordanov from 7Percent Ventures joins Pete Townsend to share his story of powering the search engine pioneers of the dotcom era, his incurable optimism, becoming an early-stage tech investor....and being yet another person on the show admitting to not being able to swim!

This episode is kindly sponsored by Ireland's fintech and financial services recruitment specialists, Top Tier Recruitment. If you would like an intro to the team at Top Tier Recruitment, please click here.

Ivailo Jordanov is a venture partner at 7Percent Ventures, a London-based VC investing in early stage tech companies that represent billion dollar opportunities. After an invitation from Graham Rodford from Archax who was on episode 37 of MoneyNeverSleeps, Pete Townsend met Ivailo at an investor dinner in London in October 2019 following CordaCon, the two-day conference put on by the enterprise DLT software firm R3. Through telling his story, Ivailo gets into the following themes:

How it's much harder to distribute a product than it is to build a product.

Asking questions like "are the [startup's] product people good at understanding marketing," and "are the marketing people good at understanding product?"

How all of the problems that startups need help with, someone else has had them before, and how a network of mentors and advisors can be incredibly helpful in solving these problems.

How he sees a lot of startups that have a great product, but no one is using it - it's not because the product isn't useful, it's because they're not putting it in front of the right people in the right way.

How you can get sucked into customer research and doing it forever, and how that's’s a sign of procrastination.

Finding the right balance between how long you want to talk to customers and when you start building.

To listen to more, please visit https://www.moneyneversleeps.ie/ for all of our other episodes. Also, follow us on Twitter @MNSShow for updates and more information.

Tim Goodman is the founder and CEO of Your Diamonds, an ecosystem enabling the diamond industry to solve old-world problems through digital technologies and Web3.

This episode of MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by Philip Lee, one of Ireland’s fastest-growing corporate law firms and expert advisors at the heart of the Dublin and London start-up, fintech and crypto communities.

Your Diamonds are the eighth of the founding teams forming the Launchpool Web3 Techstars Accelerator Class of 2022 that we’ve got on the show over the next month.

In this episode, Tim Goodman talks with Pete Townsend about:

- Having diamonds flowing through his veins

- Scaling by surrounding yourself with smart people

- Cashflow finance as the problem to solve in the diamond industry

- Building fintech first before moving into DeFi (decentralized finance)

- Providing a venue for lenders and borrowers to negotiate

- Creating scalability by pairing NFTs as digital twins of real-world assets with smart contracts

- Letting nature work out the ups and downs of crypto markets

LINKS:

Connect with Tim Goodman and learn more about Your Diamonds

Episode title inspired by ‘Diamonds Dancing’ by Drake & Future

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Our guest this week is Gershie Vann, Founder and CEO of Magma Capital Funds, a Chicago-based quantitative hedge fund firm. We talk through the long iterative climb involved in launching a business, finding alternative skillsets outside of finance when building his team during the first pandemic lockdown in 2020, what’s at the core of his entrepreneurial mindset, quieting the always-on mind of the founder, an innovative approach to raising capital for new hedge funds, along with a shallow dive into crypto and sovereign currencies…and being the elder statesman in a family of 7 kids!

LINKS:

Episode title inspired by ‘Bring the Noise’ by Public Enemy and Anthrax

Get in touch with Gershie Vann and check out Magma Capital Funds to learn more

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Andrea Reynolds from Swoop joins us on the show to talk about her journey as an entrepreneur, pitching in Downing Street...and her love of Formula 1!

Kindly sponsored by Ireland’s fintech and financial services recruitment specialists: Top Tier Recruitment

Andrea Reynolds is founder and CEO of Swoop

About Swoop
We've set up Swoop to help businesses successfully answer the question, "Where do I get access to funding?"

With Swoop, we want to help businesses demystify this problem by showing them the broad funding landscape that currently exists across the UK and Ireland. Through a combination of our funding experience, our matching technology and our 1,000+ providers, we can assess your needs quickly and match you to the right funding solution.

Apply for Financing in One Fell Swoop
We are acutely aware that it takes time to find and apply for all these funding options, so that's where we'll come in to save you the time and hassle.

Swoop's platform only requires you to fill in one super form in a few minutes and we'll be able to assess and match you to providers instantly. Not only that but as your information changes and the market changes, we'll be able to update you in real time with funding solutions that start to appear that best suit your business needs.

Being apart of your funding journey
At Swoop, don't look at us as just a platform. Our team of funding experts have been in your shoes and have been apart of thousands of funding journeys over the years. Pop over to our Team page and drop us a line if you need any help and assistance getting your applications together or advice on what the right path for your business should be.

David Soden, Co-founder and CEO of Aptimyz, talks with Pete Townsend about early entrepreneurial influences, finding purpose in a move from pharmaceuticals to B2B SaaS, the end-all-be-all of delivering customer value….and doubling down during lockdown!

For more episodes and our entire back catalog of show notes go to MoneyNeverSleeps.ie.

For insights delivered to your inbox beyond the spoken word, subscribe to our MoneyNeverSleeps newsletter right here on Substack.

EPISODE OVERVIEW:

This week Pete talks to David Soden, co-founder and CEO of Aptimyz, an Irish tech startup delivering a complete and affordable EPOS (electronic point of sale) and back-office management solution providing stability for retail in challenging times. If David and Pete had recorded this right after they met pre-lockdown in February, this conversation would’ve been much different!

Think about it this way - you build some hard-fought traction with your startup and climb right up to the edge of hitting the market in a big way. Then, the unthinkable happens to not only your target market, but the entire world around you, and the physical interactions between consumers and small businesses that were a critical lever to your business, basically drops through the floor. Well, that’s pretty much a masterclass in “Dealing with Adversity” that you can’t get in any business school on Earth.

HIGHLIGHTS:

Being the youngest of five boys in an entrepreneurial household with both parents and two brothers running their own businesses: “It never looked easy, but it was always exciting, and I think I had the bug from that point.”

On one of the biggest takeaways from his days in pharmaceuticals: “It was amazing as a young guy to be involved in a product launch going from zero to $1.5bn in 18 months, with that kind of scale, and see the pre-launch activity through to launch activity through to hyper growth.

On his purposeful move from pharmaceuticals to SaaS: “It was always important to have that north star and know what you’re working for and why you enjoy doing it.”

On his mantra as a startup founder: “It’s not worrying about the money, it’s worrying about whether you’re truly relieving a pain point for the customer.”

On his thoughts on startups: “For anyone interested in doing a startup, it’s isn’t easy, and if it is easy, there’s a good chance you’re fooling yourself that you’ve found something that’s really worth it.”

On digitalizing retail: “It isn’t about having a till or a PoS and then going online, it’s about having a digital business with a physical connection to the customer in store, and the virtual connection with the customer online, but managing it all in one place.”

On the pandemic: “When it hit in March, it was kind of a hold-your-breath moment, and then we realized we could give up, or double down. We doubled down and expanded the team.”

On delivering value: “There are a lot better things that retailers can be doing with their money right now than spending it on old PoS hardware.”

On lessons learned from pitching to investors: “Be sure of what you want going into it because you can’t cry about it afterwards if you end up with a bad deal.”

On looking ahead: “It’s a huge challenge, but we’ll be successful if we deliver customer value. It’s not about the shiny buttons, it’s about helping customers run their businesses more efficiently. “

To learn more about Aptimyz, get in touch at info@aptimyz.com.

Follow us on Twitter @MNSShow, @PeteTownsendNV and @EoinFitzgerald9

Ambre Soubiran, CEO of Kaiko, joins the show this week to talk about how the pioneers of crypto and blockchain laid the foundation for the transformation of capital markets, Kaiko’s role beyond crypto as a financial market data provider…and the best route for sailing across the Atlantic!

This episode is kindly sponsored by Ireland’s fintech and financial services recruitment specialists, Top Tier Recruitment.  If you would like an intro to the team at Top Tier Recruitment, please click here.

For more episodes and our entire back catalog of show notes go to MoneyNeverSleeps.ie.

For insights delivered to your inbox beyond the spoken word, subscribe to our MoneyNeverSleeps newsletter right here on Substack.

Check out our inclusion in FeedSpot’s Top 20 Entrepreneur Podcasts You Must Follow in 2020.

EPISODE OVERVIEW:

Kaiko was founded in 2014 and is now a market data provider in the blockchain-based digital assets space, providing institutional investors and market participants with enterprise-grade data infrastructure. In this episode, Ambre talks through the intersection and merging of Kaiko’s story with her personal story – see below for some of the best soundbites:

On her entry point to the crypto and blockchain space: “In 2012, for me it was a refreshing new venture, I was going to these really random bitcoin meetups in these underground venues on Brick Lane in London, it was really sketchy at the time, but in a good way. It was really smart people that were inspired and changing the world and doing so in a technological and mathematical way that were really close to my heart.”

On thinking about crypto differently: “Bitcoin is very often perceived as a “crypto-anarchist revolutionary-against-institutions” mindset, which is indeed the genesis of it, but not everyone is like that, and I think it was more about challenging the status quo and re-thinking the notions of money, and that’s what I really liked about those meetups.

On dispelling market rhetoric: Banks definitely don't ignore blockchain anymore, but I was trying to push it at a time when they weren't ready for it yet. But the “blockchain-good-crypto-bad” mindset frustrates me a little bit, because what makes a blockchain work are the consensus and incentivization mechanism. If you don’t have a unit of value, i.e., a cryptocurrency or token, that incentivizes people to maintain the network in a decentralised way tied to a blockchain, you're missing out on the main points of what makes a blockchain work.

On knowing your target investors: If you’re a founder in the blockchain or crypto space, and you have to spend the first 15 minutes of a 30-minute pitch to a VC explaining blockchain and crypto, you’re in the wrong meeting.

On the capital markets: The capital markets industry is definitely less creative than it used to be, and that’s one of the things that drove me to crypto is that there’s still so much room to build.

To learn more about Kaiko, get in touch at hello@kaiko.com, and you can get in touch with Ambre at Kaiko directly at ambre@kaiko.com.

For more episodes and our entire back catalog of show notes go to MoneyNeverSleeps.ie.

Sign up for our weekly MoneyNeverSleeps newsletter on MoneyNeverSleeps.substack.com.

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This week, Eoin and Pete riff on crypto exchange FTX’s partnership with Visa enabling users to spend crypto anywhere Visa is accepted, Google Cloud enabling customers to pay in crypto in partnership with Coinbase, the state of ‘community fintech’ through the lens of Chetwood Financial’s deal with Mumsnet and their 8 million-strong community, NovaCredit’s big $10mn investment from HSBC as a rallying cry for public fintech utilities, the latest on Meta’s metaverse world, and how it’s backs-against-the-wall time for Goldman Sachs’ Marcus and Bank North.

This episode of MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by SecuriCentrix. SecuriCentrix is a trusted cyber security company with offices in Dublin, Cape Town and London. SecuriCentrix provides expert advisory services, primarily in the finance and fintech industries, with tailored security solutions to fit your specific needs and regulatory challenges.

STORIES COVERED

Visa partners with FTX in a bet that shoppers still want to spend cryptocurrencies in a bear market (CNBC, 7-Oct-22)

Google Partners With Coinbase to Accept Crypto Payments for Cloud Services (Coindesk, 11-Oct-22)

Chetwood Financial partners with Mumsnet for family-focused financial service (Finextra, 30-Sep-22)

The Fintech 250: The most promising fintech companies of 2022 (CB Insights, 4-Oct-22)

HSBC Invests $10mn in Nova Credit (AltFi, 20-Sep-22)

Under Pressure, Goldman CEO Ditches Dream of Consumer Domination (Bloomberg, 10-Oct-22)

Meta announces legs (TechCrunch, 11-Oct-22 | Dave Cunningham on Twitter)

LHV UK to buy SME lending business of Bank North

LINKS

Leave a review and subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify 

Check out our MoneyNeverSleeps website and email us at info@moneyneversleeps.ie

Follow us on Twitter:  MoneyNeverSleeps  |  Eoin Fitzgerald  |  Pete Townsend

In another edition of our Money Talks segment, Pete Townsend and Eoin Fitzgerald air their thoughts on the startup support plan announced in the UK, Marc Andreessen's 'Build' essay, and NFX's recent post on how startups can survive a downturn.

This episode is kindly sponsored by Ireland's fintech and financial services recruitment specialists, Top Tier Recruitment. If you would like an intro to the team at Top Tier Recruitment, please click here.

In this episode, the comeback kid, Eoin Fitzgerald, finally rejoins Pete Townsend as they dig into a few of the things that happened in the past week in tech, venture deals, and the topics that they generally cover in their day jobs. The stories covered in this week's episode include:

UK Government launches £1.25bn plan to help struggling UK start-ups - How high (or low) does the investment committee making these decisions set the bar?

Andreessen Horowitz's (a16z) Marc Andreessen and his "It's Time to Build" essay - There is a widespread inability to build and the problem runs deeper than your favorite political opponent or your home nation - so take that off the table!

NFX's 28 Moves in a Downturn - Blog post in March by Pete Flint, a Managing Partner at NFX, a seed-stage venture firm based in San Francisco, focusing on managing losses, gaining ground and managing psychology.

The Last Dance - Eoin Fitzgerald's personal recommendation for what to watch on Netflix.

NFX's 16 Non-Obvious Fundraising Lessons - Although we didn't dig into this one, we referred to it - an oldie but a goodie!

To listen to more, please visit https://www.moneyneversleeps.ie/ for all of our other episodes. Also, follow us on Twitter @MNSShow for updates and more information.

Mihai Alisie, Founder of the AKASHA Foundation, joins Pete Townsend on stage at Dublin Tech Summit to talk about collected vs collective intelligence, blockchain and humanity. 

Kindly sponsored by Ireland’s fintech and financial services recruitment specialists: Top Tier Recruitment

Mihai Alisie is the founder of the AKASHA Foundation, a non-profit born at the intersection of blockchain and collective intelligence.

We believe that humans are not problems waiting to be solved, but potential waiting to unfold.

This is why we nurture projects helping individuals amplify their potential through open systems that expand our collective minds at local, regional and global scales. If this fires your synapses, we unpack it below and describe the behaviors we’ve adopted for the journey.

Zac Liew, co-founder and CEO of Curlec joins the show to talk about the societal influences of what works well in fintech, how Curlec is enabling the subscription economy in Southeast Asia and getting comfortable being uncomfortable.

This episode is kindly sponsored by Ireland’s fintech and financial services recruitment specialists, Top Tier Recruitment.  If you would like an intro to the team at Top Tier Recruitment, please click here.

For insights delivered to your inbox beyond the spoken word, subscribe to our MoneyNeverSleeps newsletter right here on Substack.

This week we talk to Zac Liew from Curlec, a fintech startup helping SMEs overlooked by traditional banks collect recurring payments with their automated platform, replacing manual methods like cash, checks and credit cards.  Zac and Pete connected through their respective networks recently from one of those conversations that Pete had that went like “based on what you just said, you need to meet Zac Liew.”  Being a trusting soul, Pete did just that, and this episode is the result of that decision.

In this conversation, Zac and Pete connected on a more universal level with their respective interests in societal influences, how people spend money, a cross-over reference to Islamic finance and the impact of family lineage on an individual's tendencies to build.  Zac and Pete also got into how first time entrepreneurs need to get comfortable being uncomfortable, and the network effect of Zac being named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 for Finance and Venture Capital.  See below for some of the key takeaways:

• On Zac's upbringing "I’ve always had a desire to      build something and pursue a career in entrepreneurship - that stems from      my family, and growing up with parents who were both entrepreneurs."
• On one of the triggers to launch Curlec: "Living      in the UK three to four years ago, I'd go back to KL (Kuala Lumpur) for      holidays, and every time I came back it felt like the country was moving      quicker in terms of fintech, and there was a big wave coming and the      timing was right."
• On the view on Southeast Asia from the West:       "A lot of people loop this region into one, but when you go into the      details, not only culturally is it different from country to country but      also in terms of infrastructure."
• On the big question for scaling:  "Do you      wait for the banking rails to homogenize across Southeast Asia, or do you      homogenize your product to sit on top of multiple rails?  To hedge      our bets, we're adding new products as well."
• On the learning curve as a first time founder:       "Just keep pushing yourself, throwing yourself into uncomfortable      situations and you’ll eventually become comfortable.  That was a big      learning curve for me.  As a first time entrepreneur, get comfortable      being uncomfortable."

Please visit https://www.moneyneversleeps.ie/ for all of our other episodes.

Fiona Edwards Murphy, co-founder and CEO of ApisProtect, shares her story on channeling her technology expertise into a passion for helping beekeepers, her transition from academia into the life of a startup founder, raising ApisProtect’s first round, building a customer base looking after 20mn bees…and playing the bagpipes!

MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by PAT Fintech, the training partner that demystifies fintech and digital finance for financial services professionals.

ApisProtect is an Irish tech startup using unique, innovative bee monitoring technology to help beekeepers prevent losses and increase productivity in their hives. Just this week, Fiona was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe list for 2021.

HIGHLIGHTS:

On Fiona’s attraction to IoT: “I really just fell in love with using sensors in the real world to achieve meaningful things. You're taking all of these concepts that you've learned about to get those sensors out to the real world, give people information that they don't have already and get meaningful results.”

On the early days of identifying the problem to solve: “Beekeeping works almost the same way as it did back in the middle ages. Before our technology, the last big advancement in beekeeping technology was the invention of the forklift.”

On the business impact for commercial farming: “If you want to really level up your operation, if you want to dramatically increase the revenue from your farm without having to increase the size or change the crops that you're growing, you're talking about getting your crops to be more effectively pollinated.”

On Fiona’s transition from academia to startup life: “You have to be really passionate to do a PhD, and you have to be really passionate to be an entrepreneur.”

On the importance of timing for a startup: “It was a combination of a very good product, a very good opportunity, and being the right team to go after it as we had been working in the area since the very early days of bee monitoring technology being a concept. We were in the right place at the right time with the right skill set and it all just came together really well.”

On the never-stop-learning realities of a startup CEO: “I often say I learn more in any single six-month period at ApisProtect than I did in eight years at university. That's the nature of the job. You have to understand everything that's going on because at the end of the day, you're responsible for everything.”

Episode title inspired by Wings by Little Simz

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This week, we dive into Aleph Zero, a privacy-enhancing layer one blockchain renowned for prioritizing scalability, security and speed, with co-founder Antoni Zolciak and Head of Investments Piotr Saczuk. 

Antoni discusses his transition from technology marketer to blockchain, emphasizing the humanist aspect of technology and the broad scope of blockchain's potential applications. Piotr shares his journey from TradFi to blockchain investments, highlighting the importance of values and adaptability in the fast-paced crypto industry. 

The discussion explores the challenges and strategies involved in building the Aleph Zero community, driven by transparency, support, and a user-focused approach. We also talk about the nuances of ecosystem investing, the importance of UX, and the integral role of a strong community in fostering innovation and adoption. Additionally, we look inside Aleph Zero’s relationship with the Techstars Web3 accelerator, and the related benefits to web3 founders.

00:24 Introducing Aleph Zero: A Privacy-Enhancing Blockchain

01:16 The Journey to Aleph Zero: Antoni’s and Piotr’s Stories

01:24 Building a Thriving Ecosystem and Community in Web3

05:30 The Art of Keeping Up with Blockchain's Pace

10:48 From Concept to Ecosystem: The Growth of Aleph Zero

21:27 Investing in the Future: The Ecosystem Funding Program

25:05 The Importance of UX and Security in Web3 Development

32:34 Finding the Right Founders to Build on Aleph Zero

38:33 Closing Thoughts and Personal Revelations

Antoni Zolciak is co-founder of the Aleph Zero Foundation and Cardinal Cryptography, the core developer of the Aleph Zero blockchain.  Antoni is a technology marketer with over 10 years of professional experience in public relations and content creation projects for global brands such as ING, Samsung, Sony, Olympus and Nikon.  But now, he’s here to tell the story of incredibly smart people working on decentralized innovations.

Piotr Saczuk is the Head of Investments at the Aleph Zero Foundation.  After university, Piotr had a short spell in TradFi before going down the crypto rabbit hole with Finoa, Unmind DAO, Soonami, and then finally to Cardinal Cryptography and Aleph Zero, first as ecosystem investments manager and then into his current role as Head of Investments.

LINKS:

Follow this week’s guests on X/Twitter:

-Antoni Zolciak:  https://twitter.com/antonizolciak

-Piotr Saczuk:  https://twitter.com/Piotr_Saczuk

Learn more about and follow Aleph Zero:

-X-Twitter:  @aleph__zero  |  https://x.com/aleph__zero

-Linktree:   https://linktr.ee/alephzero  

Connect with this week’s guests on LinkedIn:

-Antoni Zolciak:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/antonizolciak/

-Piotr Saczuk:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/piotr-saczuk-0347521bb/

Leave a review and subscribe on 

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This week, we’re tapping into the intersection of hip-hop, technology, education and startups with a true pioneer—Arabian Prince.

If you know your rap history, you know Arabian Prince as one of the founding members of N.W.A, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame rap group that redefined music and culture. But what you might not know is that he’s also a lifelong technologist, entrepreneur and futurist—a kid from Compton who got his hands on a computer early and never looked back.

From songwriting, rapping and DJ-ing to producing electro-funk beats and Grammy-nominated #1 hit song Supersonic to leading innovation in 3D animation, video games, and blockchain, he’s been pushing the boundaries of technology for decades.

In this episode, we talk about how a chance encounter with an N.W.A-inspired crypto-merch baseball cap led to this conversation, and from there, we cover everything—his early love for tech, how music and technology shaped his career, and his mission as founder of INov8 Next Open Labs and co-founder of INov8 Capital to bring the next generation of kids into the world of tech.

Form beats to bytes, Arabian’s story is all about curiosity, hustle, creativity, and breaking boundaries—whether it’s in music, business, or technology, so this is one you don’t want to miss.

EPISODE LINKS

• Follow OGArabianPrince on social: Instagram | LinkedIn | X/Twitter

• Learn more about iNov8 Next Open Labs

• Learn about Arabian Prince’s music and past work here

• Check out Arabian Prince’s GGGOAT Golf and GGGOAT PC brands 

• Check out Swarm, the crypto real-world asset platform that started this conversation: www.swarm.com

QUOTES FROM THE EPISODE

• “I was just a kid with a computer in Compton. That changed everything for me.”

• “If you want to make real change, you have to give kids access—not just knowledge, but tools, networks, and opportunities.”

• “Most of the people running tech companies today grew up on our music. That connection helps me open doors to push innovation forward.”

SHOW NOTES 

01:45 – The backstory: A crypto merch cap leads to this conversation

04:10 – Growing up in Compton, discovering computers, and early influences

08:50 – Blending music and technology: from electro-funk to hip-hop

11:15 – The birth of N.W.A and leveraging tech in the studio

14:40 – Why Arabian Prince left N.W.A and pivoted into animation and video games

16:20 – Working on Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Silver Surfer, and Casper

18:30 – Founding iNov8 Next Open Labs and building tech education initiatives

21:05 – The regional approach: Adapting tech education to different U.S. communities

24:15 – Leveraging relationships and hip-hop’s legacy to open doors in tech

27:40 – Thoughts on blockchain, AI, and the future of digital ownership

29:50 – The impact of teaching kids about technology and entrepreneurship

32:00 – Fun facts about Arabian Prince: his love for SpongeBob and video games

34:00 – Arabian’s connection to Ireland and plans for visiting soon

35:00 – Closing thoughts and where to find Arabian Prince online

Keywords: #arabianprince #nwa #rap #hiphop #tech #education #inov8next

Shout-outs and hat-tips: Amor Sexton, Philipp Pieper, Timo Lehes, Katie Evans, Kene Ezeji-Okoye

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Eoin Fitzgerald and Pete Townsend dive headfirst into insights from the first AMA session on the Launchpool Web3 Techstars Accelerator, then look at Stripe’s re-entry into crypto and what they’d miss if they stayed on the sidelines, Pete shares some stories from the Token 2049 conference last week in London, and Eoin tees up some unique insights on embedded finance through the lens of NerdWallet’s IPO filing and Productfy’s $16mn Series A.

MAIN STORIES COVERED:

Highlights from 1st AMA (ask-me-anything) on the Launchpool Web3 Techstars Accelerator in Dublin (YouTube, 13-Oct-21)

Stripe goes back to the crypto future (Charlie Taylor @ Irish Times, 13-Oct-21)

Stories from Token 2049 in London last week (Business Insider, 11-Oct-21)

NerdWallet’s IPO filing reveals high-margin content business, accelerating marketing spend (Techcrunch, 11-Oct-21)

OTHER STORIES/REFERENCES:

‘Shopify of embedded finance’ startup Productfy grabs $16 million in funding (ITMunch, 10-Oct-21)

Proposed Bank Jewel Wants to Become a Global Stablecoin Issuer, With Bermuda’s OK (Coindesk, 13-Oct-21)

Plaid Report: The Fintech Effect - Fintech’s Mass Adoption Moment (Plaid Blog, 12-Oct-21)

LINKS:

Leave a review and subscribe on Podchaser| Apple Podcasts | Spotify| Google| Overcast

Check out our MoneyNeverSleeps website

Subscribe to our newsletter on Substack

Follow us on Twitter Podcast| Twitter Pete| Twitter Eoin

Get in touch at info@moneyneversleeps.ie

Martin Cass from Barclays joins us on the show to talk about banking, working with startups...and his one foray into the boxing ring!

Martin is a Director in Barclays Private Bank and a Mentor for the Barclays Techstars Fintech Accelerator.

Barclays is a British multinational investment bank and financial services company headquartered in London. Apart from investment banking, Barclays is organised into four core businesses: personal banking, corporate banking, wealth management, and investment management.

Barclays has over 4,750 branches in about 55 countries and of which about 1,600 are in the United Kingdom.

Barclays traces its origins to a goldsmith banking business established in the City of London in 1690. James Barclay became a partner in the business in 1736. In 1896 several banks in London and the English provinces, including Backhouse's Bank and Gurney's Bank, united as a joint-stock bank under the name Barclays and Co. Over the following decades Barclays expanded to become a nationwide bank. In 1967, Barclays deployed the world's first cash dispenser. Barclays has made numerous corporate acquisitions, including of London, Provincial and South Western Bank in 1918, British Linen Bank in 1919, Mercantile Credit in 1975, the Woolwich in 2000 and the North American operations of Lehman Brothers in 2008.Â

Barclays has a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. It has a secondary listing on the New York Stock Exchange. Qatar Holdings, an investment vehicle of the State of Qatar, is the largest shareholder of the company.

This week, Eoin and Pete have the pleasure of talking to Peter Geoghegan about his book,  ‘Democracy for Sale: Dark Money and Dirty Politics’. 

It is a fascinating story of how undisclosed donations have infiltrated British politics, undermining public faith in democracy and fuelling the rise of populism across the West.

Pete and Peter also discuss their common love of baseball and cricket and Peter shares a fascinating story about emigration from Longford to Argentina!

This episode is kindly sponsored by Ireland’s fintech and financial services recruitment specialists, Top Tier Recruitment.  If you would like an intro to the team at Top Tier Recruitment, please click here.

For insights delivered to your inbox beyond the spoken word, subscribe to our MoneyNeverSleeps newsletter right here on Substack.

Peter Geoghegan is an Irish writer, broadcaster and investigations editor at the award-winning news website openDemocracy. He led openDemocracy‘s investigations into dark money in British politics that were nominated for a 2019 British Journalism award and the Paul Foot award. His journalism has appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, the London Review of Books and many other publications. He has made documentaries for BBC Radio Four, worked on investigative TV programmes for Channel 4 and regularly appears on British and international broadcast outlets.

His most recent book, Democracy for Sale: Dark Money and Dirty Politics, was published in August 2020 by Head of Zeus. His previous book, The People’s Referendum: Why Scotland Will Never Be the Same Again, was nominated for the Saltire First Book Award. He is co-founder and current chair of Scottish investigative website the Ferret and lives in Glasgow and London.

In this special year-end Money Talks segment, Eoin Fitzgerald and Pete Townsend wax lyrical on big valuations in the 'Fintech Year in Review', Stripe and the next stage of B2B financial services, the long-term economic impact of bitcoin, optimism for the next frontier of money...and of course, the Rundle!

This episode of MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by PAT Fintech, the training partner that demystifies fintech and digital finance for financial services professionals.

STORIES WE COVERED:

Big Valuations and the Fintech Year in Review

Tesla’s market cap tops the 9 largest automakers combined - CNBC - 14-Dec-20

2020: The year that shook fintech - Sifted - 30-Dec-20

Big Ideas Fintech Will Tackle in 2021 - a16z fintech team - Dec-20

Neobank numbers worldwide approach 300 - Finextra - 22-Dec-20

WhatsApp to rollout insurance and pension products on its platform in India soon – The Economic Times – 16-Dec-20

Stripe and the next stage of B2B financial services

Stripe Treasury and embedding banking services via API into businesses’ operational platforms - Silicon Republic, 4-Dec-20

Packy McCormick’s reference to the Stratechery podcast and Stripe as the Platform of Platforms – Ben Thompson - 3-Dec-20

Is an awakening to Bitcoin scarcity driving the price rise or is it the money-printing effect?

Bitcoin Soars Above $23,000 as More Wall Street Firms Pile In [and heads for $30K]– Bloomberg - 17-Dec-20

Bitcoin Braced For Near-Trillion Dollar Stimulus Bill And Fresh Fed Firepower - Forbes - 15-Dec-20

Bitcoin Is More Than a Hedge Against Inflation – It’s a Hedge Against ‘Crazy’ - Crypto Long & Short/Coindesk (Noelle Acheson) - 20-Dec-20

More on the infamous Rundle (recurring revenue bundle)

Getting Subscription Bundles Right for Minimum Churn - PYMNTS.com - 22-Dec-20

After Covid: How firms can make the most of their post-pandemic opportunities - Irish Times - 17-Dec-20

Thanks to all of our listeners and newsletter readers out there in the MoneyNeverSleeps community for listening in every week, spreading the word and driving us up the podcast rankings in 2020!

Check out our MoneyNeverSleeps website

Subscribe to our newsletter on Substack

Get in touch at info@moneyneversleeps.ie

This week, Pete and Eoin take another look at the TikTok deal as a bellwether for change in how entrepreneurs outside the US look at the American market, a peek inside the now-profitable fintech unicorn TransferWise, the Nikola scam, the Yandex-Tinkoff tie-up, YCombinator’s acid test….and Cobra Kai!

This episode is kindly sponsored by Ireland’s fintech and financial services recruitment specialists, Top Tier Recruitment.  If you would like an intro to the team at Top Tier Recruitment, please click here.

For more episodes and our entire back catalog of show notes go to MoneyNeverSleeps.ie. For insights delivered to your inbox beyond the spoken word, subscribe to our MoneyNeverSleeps newsletter right here on Substack.

THIS WEEK’S STORIES:

What the US and China’s tussle over TikTok means for Europe (Sifted, Nicolas Colin - 23-Sep-20) - Revisiting a story we covered on episode 97: Microsoft Goes Tik Tok and Monzo on the Clock.  But, Microsoft didn’t go TikTok, Oracle and Walmart did, and here’s a good overview of that deal from the Motley Fool.  Pete and Eoin walk through rethinking the default go-to scaling strategy of European startup founders looking at the US as the holy grail.

TransferWise reports second year of profit, revenue almost doubles (CNBC, 10-Sep-20) - Pete and Eoin talk through a different way to think about a challenger fintech rather than just a better bank.

Russia’s Yandex Agrees $5.5Bln Deal For Tinkoff Bank (Moscow Times, 22-Sep-20)

Nikola saga hits three speculative areas at once: SPACs, Robinhood traders and electric vehicles (CNBC, 21-Sep-20)

Start-up co-founded by ex-Goldman trader is first fintech to complete takeover of a national bank (CNBC, 4-Sep-20)

Michael Seibel – Lessons from Thousands of Startups (Invest Like the Best, EP.190)

Strike First… and Chill: Cobra Kai Moves to Netflix (Ted Theodore Logan, Medium, 9-Jul-20)

Also, a special thank you goes out to Paul and Laura Smyth at Top Tier Recruitment for sticking with us as such supportive sponsors and friends!

For more episodes and our entire back catalog of show notes go to MoneyNeverSleeps.ie.

Follow us on Twitter @MNSShow, @PeteTownsendNV and @EoinFitzgerald9.

Nik Milanović is the founder of This Week in Fintech, a global digest of fintech news, and General Partner at The Fintech Fund, an early-stage venture capital fund. In this episode, Pete Townsend and Eoin Fitzgerald talk to Nik about what influenced his modus operandi, the big opportunity with fintech to provide financial services to even more people around the world, how Nik ramped up from a newsletter to a syndicate to a venture fund, the blurred lines between fintech and crypto…and how Nik managed to make the most of his love of music!

This episode of MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by Philip Lee, one of Ireland’s fastest-growing corporate law firms and expert advisors at the heart of the Dublin and London start-up, fintech and crypto communities.

LINKS:

Episode title inspired by My Philosophy by Boogie Down Productions

Follow Nik Milanovic, subscribe to This Week in Fintech, and learn more about The Fintech Fund

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Garrett Cassidy, co-founder and CEO of Trezeo, joins the show to talk about making financial services accessible to independent workers, the snowball effect of impacting people's lives, mental health perspectives in the startup community....and the impact of scuba diving on his ability to communicate!

This episode is kindly sponsored by Ireland’s fintech and financial services recruitment specialists, Top Tier Recruitment.  If you would like an intro to the team at Top Tier Recruitment, please click here.

This week we talk to Garrett Cassidy from Trezeo, a fintech on a mission to help independent workers with their financial lives by providing them with a comprehensive safety net delivered 100% digitally. As Garrett said recently on a Future of Work interview series for Aperture, “Trezeo is not a social enterprise, it is a for-profit investor-backed enterprise. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t make money from doing the right thing, and that’s where technology changes things fundamentally.”  Pete Townsend met Garrett back in 2014 when he came into Pete's office talking excitedly about startups and pre-accelerators, and Pete looks back at that meeting as one of the reasons that he's doing what he does.  See below for some of the soundbite highlights, and the link here for the Techstars video series on mental health in the startup community and separately for Garrett's pitch at the Barclay's Accelerator powered by Techstars.

• “Just because you work a different way, why should you have such radically different access to financial services?  It’s a simple idea, but a really gnarly set of problems to solve.”
• “We actually started by looking at better banking and financial services for micro-businesses, but with our early customer research and some independent research at the time, we dug into the gig economy, the sharing economy and the self-employed, and we realized there was a much bigger and more important problem to solve.”
• “When we dug into the problem of broken bank accounts for the people we were trying to solve it for, we realized that bank accounts weren’t as broken for them because they didn’t really care - most self-employed and independent workers don’t have a separate bank account for their business.”
• “Keeping a broad mindset of trying to validate the problem actually brought us to “we’re actually looking at the wrong thing here.’"
• “Startups are tough, but if they weren’t, the problems wouldn't be there, someone would have solved them already”
• “One of our customers came to us and said “You know what, I just got my first mainstream credit and I’ve never been able to get it before.  Although that’s just one person, it creates the drive to do this again and again and again.”
• “The typical qualities of startup founders - curiosity and persistence are both a double-edged sword of becoming unfocused and pigheaded.”
• “What we’ve become better on is articulating our purpose and vision - what are we trying to do, what’s our guiding light and what will help towards that, and push hard towards it."

To listen to more, please visit https://www.moneyneversleeps.ie/ for all of our other episodes.  Also, follow us on Twitter @MNSShow, @PeteTownsendNV and @EoinFitzgerald9 for updates and more information.

Pete Townsend introduces an insightful line-up of entrepreneurs and investors who share their thoughts on web3. Opinions are gathered around what aspects they hope to see web3 founders solve, focusing on topics such as user experience, digital identity, decentralized finance, AI, regulatory issues, and real-world applications.

The diverse panel includes John Hallahan from Fireblocks, Arry Yu from the U.S. Blockchain Coalition, Hesus Inoma from i13 Ventures, Niamh O'Connell from CasperLabs, Prashanth Swaminathan from Woodstock Fund, Sean Lee from the Crypto Council for Innovation, Clarisse Hagege from Dfns, and Lou Kerner from the Crypto Oracle Collective. The episode aims to explore and understand the current challenges and potential opportunities in the Web3 space.

00:19 Techstars Web3 Accelerator Announcement

00:47 Web3 founders' challenges and solutions

01:46 John Hallahan's Web3 Wishlist

03:43 Arry Yu's thoughts on digital identity and being the adult in the room

06:17 Hesus Inoma's insights on Web3 founders

08:27 Niamh O'Connell on self-sovereign identity

11:28 Prashanth Swaminathan's top areas for Web3

15:52 Sean Lee's perspective on Web3 tokens

18:16 Clarisse Hagege's call for real-life use cases

19:10 Lou Kerner's thoughts on balance and mistakes

CONTRIBUTORS:

John Hallahan, Director, Business Solutions & Advisory at Fireblocks, whose mission is to enable every business to easily and securely support digital assets and cryptocurrencies. (video) 

Arry Yu, is the Co-Founder and Co-Chair at the U.S. Blockchain Coalition, a coalition of state blockchain associations, organizations and influencers across the country cooperating together to ensure the United States is a leader in blockchain, Web3, and distributed ledger technologies (DLT).  

Hesus Inoma, Head of Strategy & Innovation at i13 Ventures, whose purpose is to co-create and back products and services grounded on first design principles for the new era of the web.

Niamh O’Connell, Enterprise & Partnerships Lead (U.S) at CasperLabs, the first blockchain built specifically for business adoption.  

Prashanth Swaminathan, Partner at Woodstock Fund, a thesis and research-driven fund, investing in early and growth stage Web 3.0 companies and protocols.

Sean Lee, Senior Advisor at the Crypto Council for Innovation, a global alliance of crypto industry leaders that are advocating for responsible and healthy regulations in the digital asset industry.

Clarisse Hagege, Founder & CEO at Dfns, providing web3 wallets as APIs and wallet-as-a-service infrastructure that enables crypto developers to forget about private key management so they can focus on building what matters most — their applications.

Lou Kerner, the founder of the Crypto Oracle Collective, a decentralized web3 advisory firm and also the DAO for Crypto Mondays, which is the largest crypto meetup in the world with active chapters in 54 cities.

LINKS:

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Greg Chew, founder and CEO of QPQ, joins us on the show this week to talk about blockchain, smart contracts...and trading bananas!

QPQ is uniquely positioned to be the key enabler of digitalisation. As such, the development of our technology and platforms will have enormous financial, social, and commercial impacts.

Backing up our unique technological and business proposition, we have assembled a core team of highly experienced professionals who straddle the digital and traditional divide. This underpins our ability to translate fluently between the new digital frontier and traditional enterprise.

The architecture of our technology and business planning are fully developed, customers are ready to utilise our platform and services. We are now seeking the necessary investment and partnerships to rapidly develop and deploy our platforms and services.

.

Colin Platt joins the show to talk to Pete Townsend about leaving behind his early career in the capital markets, the crossover of solving entrepreneurial problems and solving global political problems, the professional merits of podcasting, hating and loving writing, his view on economics....and his grasp of the Swedish language!

This week we’re catching up with Colin Platt, whose LinkedIn profile describes him as a “crypto performance artist” in addition to being an independent consultant, but where you really want to follow him is on Twitter @colingplatt and on his blog on Medium.

Colin works with innovative companies on technology and business strategy with a focus on cryptocurrencies and distributed ledger technologies, and is also a founder of entrepreneurial ventures. Colin and Pete connected after Pete had his own awakening on blockchain and distributed ledger technologies back in 2014, and they were both at BNP Paribas for a while before they met in 2015.  

Pete remembers how Colin’s departing email from BNP Paribas way back then said “I’m going to give this entrepreneur thing a shot,” and Colin's leap was one of the inspirations for Pete's own leap.   Fast-forward five years and about 200 podcast episodes later between the two of them - Colin mostly on Blockchain Insider and Pete mostly right here on MoneyNeverSleeps - the two pals get into:

Colin's history in the corporate world, his awakening with cryptocurrency, and his inspiration to take the leap.

The "do I or don't I" question when it comes to following a problem that could create some great traction when you solve that problem, but it's a dramatically different problem than the one you set out to solve.

That fantastic feeling when you finish a project and the client turns around and says,"OK, I absolutely didn't think about this, and this changes everything I need to do now," and seeing them light up on the success of really understanding something differently.

Seeing a client 3-6 months down the road after you've worked with them, and they say "We pivoted and then really got traction with this, and we couldn't have done it without you."

The professional benefits of stage presence and presentation skills from doing tons of podcast episodes.

On blogging:  "Being able to write is a superpower - it doesn't have to be anywhere special - LinkedIn, Medium, wherever.  Write a blog about something and just continually write 600-800 words every couple of weeks and put it out there."

On the economic effects of this global pandemic we're going through:  "I think one of the things that I got really interested in early on with bitcoin or ether as an asset class is this notion that you can actually see where everything is and how it works.  That parlays quite quickly into having money that is more traceable on the one hand, but at the same time less controllable. It's got to be something that starts to rear its head."

On economic stimuli:  "Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, as more money is pumped into the system, you're going to have people that demand transparency [on where it goes]."

Colin's status as the richest man alive (tongue firmly implanted in cheek) and "creating a coin that was worth $3.6 quadrillion, which is thirty-three thousand six hundred thousand trillion, so a really big number."

Lizzy Hayashida from Change Donations joins us on the show to talk how small change can lead to big impact...and her new-found love of Tipp hurling!!

Kindly sponsored by Ireland's fintech and financial services recruitment specialists: Top Tier Recruitment

Lizzy Hayashida is CEO of Change Donations. You can follow Lizzy on Twitter @LizzyH and keep track of what she's up to with @ChangeDonations.

At Change Donations, we believe that making an impact is not about how much you can give, it's about giving what you can to those in need. At Change Donations we make giving easy. Our mission is to help people change the world through everyday spending. We are a community of everyday philanthropists donating one cent at a time to incredible causes that are inspiring positive change across the globe.

The foundational pillars here at Change Donations are Transparency, Passion, Integrity, and Community.