Fintech Leaders

Send us Fan Mail In this special episode, Miguel Armaza brings you a curated selection of the best lessons, stories, and candid reflections about raising venture capital. You’ll hear directly from some of the strongest fintech entrepreneurs around the world spanning four continents. From the skyscrapers of New York, through the vibrant landscapes of Cape Town, up to the lively streets of Mexico Ci...

Send us Fan Mail Miguel Armaza sits down with Soups Ranjan , CEO/Co-Founder of Sardine , a fraud-prevention company that’s on a mission to make payments instant and risk-free. Sardine enables companies to improve risk management through a single API for fraud detection and compliance within financial services.  Founded in 2020, Sardine has raised around $75 million from a16z, NYCA, Activant, FJ La...

Send us Fan Mail Miguel Armaza sits down with Tommy Nicholas , CEO/Co-Founder at Alloy , a company that gives fintechs and banks a command center to control their fraud-fighting, credit, compliance, risk, and identity-decisioning needs. Founded in 2015, Alloy has raised around $200M from Bessemer, Avenir, Clocktower, Flourish, Lightspeed, Primary, Techstars, and a long list of great fintech invest...

Send us Fan Mail Miguel Armaza sits down with Trisha Kothari , CEO/Co-Founder of Unit21 , a company at the forefront of the fight against financial crimes. Founded in 2018, Unit21 has raised close to $100M from Google, ICONIQ Capital, Tiger Global, Core Innovation, and a number of great angel investors. We discuss: Finding Unit21’s initial design partners and how they eventually landed Coinbase an...

Send us Fan Mail Miguel Armaza sits down with Tidjane Deme , General Partner of Partech Africa, one of the largest Africa-focused venture capital funds with close to $500 million in assets under management. Some of their investments include TradeDepot, Wave, Yoco, Reliance, and Nomba. We discuss: A deep dive into the African Fintech landscape and what he’s learned from the most innovative companie...

Send us Fan Mail Miguel Armaza sits down with Luvleen Sidhu , CEO & Founder of BM Technologies (NYSE American: BMTX) a US Banking-as-a-Service platform that provides access to multiple financial services. The company currently serves over two million account-holders and provides disbursement services at approximately 725 colleges and universities. We discuss: How they successfully pivoted BM T...

Send us Fan Mail Miguel Armaza heads to Mexico City for a conversation with Jorge Combe , CEO & Co-Founder of DD360 and DD3 Capital Partners, one of the leading PropTech and real estate financing groups in Latin America. Prior to launching the firm, Jorge and his Co-Founder, Martin Werner , were co-heads of Goldman Sachs Mexico and Latin America. They left Goldman six years ago and bootstrappe...

Send us Fan Mail Miguel Armaza sits down with Daniel Cohen , Co-Founder of Cohen Circle , an investment firm; Cohen & Company , an asset manager with $2.2+ billion AUM; and The Bancorp , a bank specialized in fintech as a service and payments. Notably, Daniel has had a successful career in banking, along with his co-founder and Mother, Betsy Cohen . We discuss: Turmoil of US regional banks in...

Send us Fan Mail Miguel Armaza sits down with David Haber , General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) , one of the largest Venture Capital funds in the world, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. Based in NYC, David focuses exclusively on investing in global fintech. Before a16z, he founded Bond Street, a NY fintech that aimed to transform small business lending in the US. Bond...

Send us Fan Mail Miguel Armaza sits down with Itai Damti , CEO & Co-Founder of Unit , one of the leading banking-as-a-service and embedded finance providers in the US. Launched in 2019, Unit is backed by Accel, Better Tomorrow Ventures, Insight, Flourish Ventures, and many more. Itai is also a serial entrepreneur, having previously co-founded two companies in the financial industry back in Tel...

Send us Fan Mail Miguel Armaza sits down with Jane Alexander , Chief Marketing Officer at Carta , a platform that helps people and companies manage equity, build businesses, and invest in private companies. Launched in 2012 by Henry Ward , Carta is used by nearly 30,000 companies and over half a million employees to manage cap tables, compensation, and valuations. Carta also works with over 4,500...

Send us Fan Mail Miguel Armaza sits down with Nilan Peiris , Chief Product Officer at Wise (WISE.L) , a global fintech that helps clients move money around the world. Founded in 2011 by Kristo Käärmann and Taavet Hinrikus, Wise went public on the London Stock Exchange in 2021 and has a current market cap of £6 billion, has served 16 million people and businesses, and processes £9 billion in monthl...

Send us Fan Mail Miguel Armaza stops by Public.com’s TriBeCa headquarters for a conversation with Leif Abraham , Co-Founder & Co-CEO of Public.com , an investing platform for equities, fixed income, and alternative assets. Founded in 2019, Public now serves 3+ million customers and has raised hundreds of millions of dollars from Greycroft, Accel, Lake, Star, Tiger Global, and many more. They d...

Send us Fan Mail Miguel Armaza sits down with Alex Prot , CEO & Co-Founder of Qonto , one of the largest fintechs in Europe that helps SMBs simplify their everyday banking and offers a wide range of digital financial services. Founded in 2017, Qonto serves 350,000 clients across France, Italy, Spain and Germany, and has over 1,000 employees. The company has also raised close to $700 million fr...

Send us Fan Mail Miguel Armaza sits down with Mercedes Bent , Partner at Lightspeed , a global venture capital firm founded in the year 2000. Over the last 23 years, they have secured over $18 billion in committed capital and backed over 500 companies, including Snap, Affirm, Faire, Grubhub, Carta, Blend, and a long list of great firms. In this episode, we discuss: Investing in marketplaces or cre...

Send us Fan Mail Miguel Armaza sits down with the great Adam Nash , Co-Founder and CEO of Daffy , a not-for-profit fintech community built around a new, modern platform to teach, help, and encourage charitable giving. In fact, visit Fintech Leaders and sign-up today to get an extra $25 for charity when you join Daffy. Thanks Adam. In this episode, I sit down with Adam Nash , Co-Founder and CEO of...

Send us Fan Mail Miguel Armaza sits down with Zach Noorani , Partner at Foundation Capital , a 28-year venture capital firm with $3 billion in assets under management, currently investing out of its 10th flagship fund. Foundation has previously backed great companies like Stripe, Solana, Lending Club, Envestnet, Alto, and many more. In this episode, we discuss: What Zach learned after spending alm...

Send us Fan Mail Miguel Armaza sits down with Suni Lobo , Chief HR/People Officer at Marqeta (NASDAQ: MQ), a publicly-traded fintech that helps companies issue cards with flexibility, control, and scale with an open API platform. Founded in 2010, Marqeta has now issued hundreds of millions of cards across 36 countries and works with customers like Square, Klarna, Uber, Coinbase, and JP Morgan. We...

Send us Fan Mail Miguel Armaza sits down with the legendary Bruno Balduccini , Partner at Pinheiro Neto , the leading law firm in Brazil where he spearheads the Financial Institutions group and advises domestic and international clients. If you’ve ever worked in the Brazilian financial and fintech ecosystem, you’ve probably crossed paths with Bruno, since he has worked on the majority of major tra...

Send us Fan Mail Miguel Armaza sits down with Denise Thomas , CEO & Co-Founder of ApplePie Capital , a company that offers franchise financing, enabling franchisees to efficiently obtain financing to start or expand their franchise business, while also enabling investors to earn fixed-income returns. Launched in 2015, ApplePie partners with 60 franchise brands and has facilitated the funding o...

Send us Fan Mail Miguel Armaza sits down with Prajit Nanu , CEO & Co-Founder of Nium , a billion-dollar fintech building global payments infrastructure supporting 100 currencies across 190+ countries. Founded almost seven years ago in Singapore, Nium has raised ~$300 million from top fintech investors including Riverwood, GFC, Temasek, and Visa amongst others. We discuss: Advantages of outside...

Send us Fan Mail Miguel Armaza sits down with Peter Hazlehurst , CEO & Co-Founder of Synctera , a Banking as a Service platform powering accounts, cards, payments, lending, and more. Launched back in 2020, Synctera has raised ~$50 million from FinVC, Lightspeed, Portage, Mastercard, Max Levchin, Alexa von Tobel, and a long list of great fintech minds. Peter has also built and sold several fint...

Send us Fan Mail Miguel Armaza sits down with Bar Geron , CEO & Co-Founder of Balance , a B2B eCommerce payments company offering an online checkout experience built for businesses. Launched just two years ago in February 2021, Balance now supports hundreds of B2B merchants and marketplaces, and has partnered with large platforms like Shopify, Salesforce, Magento, and BigCommerce. They raised...

Send us Fan Mail Miguel Armaza sits down with the very genuine Rob Petrozzo , Co-Founder and CPO of Rally , an alternative investing platform for blue-chip and digital collectibles, including classic cars, sports memorabilia, watches, and NFTs, totaling over 400 assets in 19+ different categories. Founded back in 2016, Rally has grown to half a million users, actively finds, manages, and fractiona...

Send us Fan Mail Miguel Armaza heads down to sunny Miami for the Fintech Nexus LatAm Conference, to sit down with Aron Schwarzkopf , CEO & Co-Founder of Kushki , one of the largest digital payments companies in Latin America that’s helping businesses across the region digitize their payments under a single integration. Founded in 2017, Kushki now operates across most of Spanish-speaking Latin...