Fintech Leaders
Learn from today’s global leaders building the organizations that will dominate the 21st century in fintech, business, and beyond.
Eduardo Chedid, CEO of PicPay: 60M Users, $1B Revenue, From Brazil’s Digital Wallet to a Banking Giant
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Miguel Armaza travels to Sao Paulo for an interview with Eduardo Chedid, CEO of PicPay, a Brazilian fintech giant that has quietly become one of the most important financial companies in Latin America.
With 60 million customers and handling 11% of all Pix payments transactions in Brazil, PicPay has achieved profitability while maintaining hyper-growth—posting 61% revenue growth and 7× higher profits in 2024.
In this episode, we discuss:
How PicPay transformed from a digital wallet into a multi-product financial platformThe power of bus...Yoshi Yokokawa, CEO of Alpaca – 5 Million Accounts in 40 Countries, A Vision for Borderless Investing, Decision Frameworks & The API Sandwich Strategy
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Miguel Armaza stops by the New York Stock Exchange to interview Yoshi Yokokawa, CEO & Co-founder of Alpaca, an API-first brokerage infrastructure company that has raised over $100 million to serve more than 200 financial institutions across 40 countries, with 5 million brokerage accounts on their platform.
In this episode, we discuss:
Balancing data-driven decisions with entrepreneurial instinctWhy Alpaca's self-clearing model slashes dependencies, cuts costs, and accelerates innovationWhy API-first companies need a sandwich approach: bottom-up developer community and top-down enterprise sales<...Daniel Vogel, CEO of Bitso – Serving 12 Million Customers and Building a Crypto Giant Through Innovation, Transparency, and a Curious Mind
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Miguel Armaza interviews Daniel Vogel, CEO & Co-Founder of Bitso, one of Latin America's leading cryptocurrency platforms serving over 12 million customers across Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, and Brazil. Bitso processes over 10% of the remittances flowing from the US to Mexico ($6 - $7 Billion), and is pioneering the use of stablecoins for cross-border transactions throughout Latin America.
In this episode, we discuss:
Why rate of learning is one of his core principles for company culture and personal growthUsing transparency to drive company performance and...Bam Azizi, CEO of Mesh Connect - From Credit Card Debt to $130M, Building the Rails for a $37T Market, Executing a Wild Pivot
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Miguel Armaza interviews Bam Azizi, Co-Founder and CEO of Mesh Connect, a fintech infrastructure company that has transformed from a consumer-focus to a fast-growing B2B platform serving hundreds of corporate clients including Revolut, and Coinbase. After raising nearly $130 million, including a Series B closed in just one month, Mesh is now focusing on serving the stablecoin ecosystem.
We discuss:
The rollercoaster journey from B2C to B2B and the painful but necessary pivot decisionsWhy stablecoins represent a $37 trillion...Johnny Ayers, CEO of Socure - Building a Giant that Protects Billions of Identities, and How to Turn a Crisis into an Advantage
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Miguel Armaza interviews Johnny Ayers, CEO and Co-Founder of Socure, a leader in digital identity verification that has transformed the industry using machine learning and graph databases. From surviving a major risk event in 2014 to becoming a trusted partner for the largest financial institutions, consumer businesses, and government agencies, Socure now processes over 15 billion rows of data weekly and has verified more than 3 billion identities globally.
In this episode, we discuss:
How Socure rebuilt in 2014 and turned a near disaster into an advantage<...Shensi Ding, Merge Co-Founder - Lessons for First-Time Founders, $75M to build API Infrastructure in an AI World, The Truth About Fundraising
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Miguel Armaza interviews Shensi Ding, Co-Founder of Merge, an integrations infrastructure platform that has quickly grown from serving early-stage startups to powering integration layers for some of the largest financial services companies in the world including Revolut, Airwallex, Ramp, Brex and many more. They have raised a total of $75 million from great investors including NEA, Addition, and Accel.
In this episode, we discuss:
Building credibility with engineers and product teamsUnique advantages of being a first-time founder. Plus some hard lessons...David Magerman, Differential Ventures - How to Fix the Internet, Risks of GenAI, Pioneering Quant Trading
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[Original air date, February 6, 2024] Miguel Armaza sits down with David Magerman, Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Differential Ventures, an early-stage fund that invests in data-focused entrepreneurs building enterprise technology.
In a past life, he spent 22 years in leadership roles at Renaissance Technologies (RenTech), a legendary hedge fund with over $100 billion in AUM and probably the most successful fund in history.
David is also a contrarian thinker and a non-conformist, which made our conversation even more interesting.
Ryan Graciano, Credit Karma Co-Founder - Scaling to 140 Million Users, Turning Crisis into Opportunity, Leading Product Innovation From CTO to CPO
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Miguel Armaza interviews Ryan Graciano, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Credit Karma, one of the most successful fintech companies serving over 130 million customers. Credit Karma was bought by Intuit for $7.1bn in 2020, marking one of fintech’s largest acquisitions ever. Ryan began his journey as CTO after a brief stint at IBM and helped build Credit Karma from the ground up since 2007.
In this episode, we discuss:
Key technical decisions that shaped Credit Karma's successRyan's vision fo...Jackie Reses, Lead Bank CEO - Lessons from Tech Titans, Why Regulators Might Finally Be Ready for AI, Building Modern Financial Rails
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Miguel Armaza welcomes back Jackie Reses, CEO and Co-Founder of Lead Bank, a pioneering bank reimagining modern financial infrastructure and fintech partnerships. Jackie previously held leadership roles at Square and Yahoo, and served on the board of Alibaba, working alongside visionaries like Jack Dorsey and Jack Ma.
In this episode, we discuss:
How Lead Bank achieved instant product-market fit before even acquiring their bank charterWhy banking regulation needs a "first principles" rethinking approach and why the CFPB may need significant r...John Waldmann, CEO of Homebase - Serving 3.8M SMB Workers, Why AI Will Create More Small Business Owners, Importance of High-Velocity Decision Making
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Miguel Armaza interviews John Waldmann, Founder & CEO of Homebase, a company on a mission to help modernize local business teams in the US. Since launching in 2014, Homebase has grown to support over 150,000 businesses and 3.8 million workers, processing hundreds of millions of shifts annually.
In this episode, we discuss:
Why founders should have more courage and conviction in their early cultural choicesCreating a culture of ownership and high-velocity decision-makingThe dangers of consensus decision-making and the power of individual...
