Rebank: Fintech Analysis – Details, episodes & analysis

Raghu Yarlagadda is the Co-founder and CEO of FalconX, the leading institutional digital asset prime brokerage.

In the last year, FalconX has done $1 trillion in trading volume across spot and derivatives.

FalconX is an incredible success story, starting early and growing alongside broader institutional adoption of crypto and digital assets. With current regulatory tailwinds, the company is extremely well positioned to accelerate growth even further. FalconX has raised nearly $500m, most recently at an $8 billion valuation, from investors including Accel, GIC, B Capital, Altimeter, Thoma Bravo, Tiger Global, Lightspeed, Wellington and many more.

Please enjoy today’s conversation with Raghu Yarlagadda.

Today we’re joined by Bhaji Illuminati and Jürgen Blumberg.

Bhaji is CEO of Centrifuge, one of the original players in the RWA space. Jürgen is a former Goldman ETF exec and, as of recently, COO of Centrifuge and CIO of Anemoy, it’s asset management arm.

In this conversation, Bhaji, Jürgen and Will Beeson dive into the evolution of investment management toward an on-chain markets future. We discuss the early growth of the tokenized financial asset market, similarities with the early days of ETFs, current on-chain investment capital pools and investor demands, the interplay between stablecoin growth and tokenized assets, use cases and distribution strategies for assets across the risk curve, the relationship between DeFi and TradFi, future market expectations, and much more.

Laszlo Szabo is the CEO and Co-Founder of Kiln, a staking infrastructure provider backed by 1kx, Crypto.com, Wintermute, GSR, Kraken Ventures, Consensys and others. Diana Biggs is a partner at 1kx, a crypto VC that has led rounds in companies including Arweave, Pudgy Penguins, Rarible, Wallet Connect and many more.

In this conversation, Laszlo, Diana and Will Beeson break down the staking opportunity and Kiln’s view of the space and also use it as a jumping off point to explore 1kx’s investment strategy.

Specifically, we discuss staking as a crypto primitive, its potential to supercharge consumer and institutional crypto use cases, the investment thesis behind staking infrastructure, technical considerations and more.

Seth Rosenberg focuses on fintech at Greylock, one of Silicon Valley’s most storied venture firms, with noteworthy investments including LinkedIn, Facebook, Airbnb and many more.

In this conversation, we talk through Greylock’s fintech thesis, Seth’s view of where the industry is going and the way the firm looks at investments in general. We reference a deck Greylock published, accessible here.

In addition to the insights we deliver through our podcast and newsletter, Rebank offers advisory services to fintechs, banks and corporates.

Drawing on our experience starting, running and advising fintech businesses and our vast network of the most impactful fintech entrepreneurs, investors and innovators around the world, we help companies make sense of fintech, work through specific questions and optimize proposition and strategy.

For more information about our services, please visit www.bankingthefuture.com.

Thank you very much for joining us today. Please welcome, Seth Rosenberg.

Mike Massaro is the CEO of Flywire, a Boston-based payments company.

Flywire specializes in large-value payments for education, healthcare and travel. Flywire has raised over $140 million from leading investors including Spark Capital, Fidelity’s F-Prime, Bain Capital, Temasek, Accel Partners and QED Investors.

In this conversation, Mike and I discuss the drivers and implications of recent consolidation in the payments industry, existential threats to payments incumbents and the trend of payments integration into vertical software platforms.

In addition to the insights we deliver through our podcast and newsletter, Rebank offers advisory services to fintechs, banks and corporates.

Drawing on our experience starting, running and advising fintech businesses and our vast network of the most impactful fintech entrepreneurs, investors and innovators around the world, we help companies make sense of fintech, work through specific questions and optimize proposition and strategy.

For more information about our services, please visit www.bankingthefuture.com.

Thank you very much for joining us today. Please welcome, Mike Massaro.

Ryan Gilbert is a General Partner at Propel, a San Francisco-based venture firm with investments in companies including Coinbase, Personal Capital, Trussle, Prosper and many more.

Prior to joining Propel, Ryan founded and ran SmartBiz loans, a leading SBA loan originator.

In this conversation, we explore a few interesting fintech verticals, including mixed commerce, insurtech and payroll benefits, by way of recent investments Ryan has made.

In addition to the insights we deliver through our podcast and newsletter, Rebank offers advisory services to fintechs, banks and corporates.

Drawing on our experience starting, running and advising fintech businesses and our vast network of the most impactful fintech entrepreneurs, investors and innovators around the world, we help companies make sense of fintech, work through specific questions and optimize proposition and strategy.

For more information about our services, please visit www.bankingthefuture.com.

Thank you very much for joining us today. Please welcome, Ryan Gilbert.

Sankaet Pathak is the Founder and CEO of Synapse, a platform banking provider. 

Fresh off a Series B led by Andreessen Horowitz, Synapse is operating at the leading edge of the potentially massive platform banking trend.

In this conversation, we discuss the issues with existing sponsor banking infrastructure, examples of new propositions that can be created using a platform like Synapse and the implications of big tech and non-banks increasingly surfacing banking and financial services products within their offerings.

In addition to the insights we deliver through our podcast and newsletter, Rebank offers advisory services to fintechs, banks and corporates.

Drawing on our experience starting, running and advising fintech businesses and our vast network of the most impactful fintech entrepreneurs, investors and innovators around the world, we help companies make sense of fintech, work through specific questions and optimize proposition and strategy.

For more information about our services, please visit www.bankingthefuture.com.

Thank you very much for joining us today. Please welcome, Sankaet Pathak.

Donna Parisi is a Derivatives Partner and Global Head of Financial Services and Fintech for Shearman & Sterling, a leading global law firm.

In addition to her work on a range of derivatives, structured products, securitization, capital markets and commodities matters, Donna has built specific expertise in crypto, tokens and digital assets, which are the subject of our conversation today.

Donna and I discuss regulatory frameworks and institutional infrastructure for digital assets, where the space is going and why. You’ll note that we intentionally don’t dig into Facebook’s Libra project, which I may pick up in a standalone episode in the future.

In addition to the insights we deliver through our podcast and newsletter, Rebank offers advisory services to fintechs, banks and corporates.

Drawing on our experience starting, running and advising fintech businesses and our vast network of the most impactful fintech entrepreneurs, investors and innovators around the world, we help companies make sense of fintech, work through specific questions and optimize proposition and strategy.

For more information about our services, please visit www.bankingthefuture.com.

Thank you very much for joining us today. Please welcome, Donna Parisi.

Jon Stein is the Founder and CEO of Betterment, one of the world’s leading digital investments companies.

We first connected with Jon in January 2018 in a great episode that’s still very relevant today. Since then, Betterment has added $4 billion in assets under management to its platform, and today, they’re launching checking and savings accounts as they extend their offering into banking.

This move is a compelling one at a time when consumer fintechs are increasingly extending early product sets in pursuit of comprehensive financial services offerings.

In addition to the insights we deliver through our podcast and newsletter, Rebank offers advisory services to fintechs, banks and corporates.

Drawing on our experience starting, running and advising fintech businesses and our vast network of the most impactful fintech entrepreneurs, investors and innovators around the world, we help companies make sense of fintech, work through specific questions and optimize proposition and strategy.

For more information about our services, please visit www.bankingthefuture.com.

Thank you very much for joining us today. Please welcome, Jon Stein.

The subject of today’s conversation is design in financial services.

We talk all the time about the new customer experiences shaping the evolution of finance, generally focusing on the implications of those forces and others on the trajectory of the industry. Today, we take a closer look at those experiences themselves, through the eyes of the people designing them.

The first voice you’ll hear after Will's is that of Yenny Otero, Head of Design at TSB. The following speaker is Nick Haley, Product Design Principal at Idean, a design agency. The fourth and last voice that enters the conversation is that of Noel Lyons, Experience Design Director at Barclays.

Design is an increasingly important function in financial services, with organizations around the world embedding it in product development and leveraging it for better traction, engagement and ultimately, monetization.

In addition to the insights we deliver through our podcast and newsletter, Rebank offers advisory services to fintechs, banks and corporates.

Drawing on our experience starting, running and advising fintech businesses and our vast network of the most impactful fintech entrepreneurs, investors and innovators around the world, we help companies make sense of fintech, work through specific questions and optimize proposition and strategy.

For more information about our services, please visit www.bankingthefuture.com.

Thank you very much for joining us today. Please welcome, Yenny Otero, Noel Lyons and Nick Haley.