eXponential Finance

Thomas McMahon is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of AirCarbon, a Singapore-domiciled digital exchange focused on eliminating market friction in a carbon-constraint economy by securitizing carbon credits into fungible and tradable securities with transparent pricing and real-time settlement. The soft launch is currently planned for August 19, with the full go-live in September 2020.&nbs...

Markus Hillebrand is the Chief Executive Officer - Asia Pacific for ControlExpert, a German InsurTech company employing ~900 people in 17 locations, including offices in Japan, China (Mainland & Hong Kong), and Thailand.  Policyholders typically do not interact with their insurance company. When they actually use the product, it is almost by definition a negative experience, because...

Paul is the Director of Research at Alphacution who recently made some waves by digging deep into how Robinhood, the commission-free trading app valued at upwards of USD 8 billion, actually makes money. Paul is a veteran of the proprietary trading community, and an expert in market structure.   Alphacution is the first digitally-oriented research and strategic advisory platform uniquely focus...

We were super-excited to welcome Lex Sokolin, the Co-Head of FinTech at ConsenSys, *the* venture studio in the Ethereum ecosystem, as our honorable guest for our 50th anniversary podcast.  Lex is a New York & London entrepreneur with senior operating and board-level FinTech experience (i.e., thick scar tissue) in digital advice, personal finance, and wealth management. He has held a varie...

Live at Singapore Blockchain Week, we hosted a panel discussion sponsored by Chintai with leading minds in the world of compliance enabled decentralized finance - tokenized securities & stablecoins. We discussed compliance enabled blockchain technology, issuance/custody/secondary trading for tokenized securities, stablecoins, how tokenized securities can change global financial systems, what i...

For this episode, we are listening in to a webinar hosted by our friends at Merkle Science, a panel discussion that assessed whether Hong Kong is a competitive jurisdiction for virtual asset businesses from the perspectives of regulation, operations and market opportunities. Featured panelists: - Ian Lee, Lead Investigator, Merkle Science - Moderator - Urszula McCormack, Partner, King & Wood M...

Sakuta-san is leading venture finance advisory business in Japan at Deloitte Tohmatasu, supporting startup fund raising and M&A as well as the corporate venturing journey of large global corporates. In this conversation, we are taking a health check on the Japanese venture capital and corporate venture capital ecosystem, and Sakuta-san explains how he sees VCs and CVCs responding differently t...

William W. Baber has combined education with business throughout his career. His professional experience has included economic development in the State of Maryland, language services in the Washington, DC, area, supporting business starters in Japan, and teaching business students in Japan, Europe, and Canada. He taught English in the Economics and Business Administration Departments of...

The Global Insurtech Alliance was formed to represent leading insurtech ecosystems across the globe. We all share a common purpose, to create a global ecosystem for insurtech to thrive within. In this first Global InsurTech Alliance (GITA) event, we focused the discussion around insurtech across the Asia Pacific region and includes representatives from:   George Kesselman , President and Foun...

Marta is the Founder of Seoul Startups, an international community partner of Tokyo FinTech, leading a startup community in Korea with an online and an offline presence, and currently more than 1,300 members. Having experienced Korea as a child when her father became a diplomat in post-communism Poland, Marta wanted to spread her wings upon graduating, returned to the country on a Korean governmen...

Hena Mehta is the Founder & CEO of Basis, a first-of-its-kind company focused on the financial independence of (initially) Indian women. Basis is building a digital platform powered by tailored financial content, engaged communities and curated services and products for women. Hena talks about her own experience as the motivation behind Basis, the target market of professional, well-educated,...

Viking alert! Gustaf Hård af Segerstad and Johan Lindskog are the podcast host for Fintechpodden, one of the leading shows in the Nordics. What better people to talk to about the Swedish and Nordics FinTech ecosystem overall?  Gustaf and Johan talk about the cashless society, how the government has made small interventions to introduce a little bit of friction back into the purchasing process...

Ranked multiple times among the Top 100 Women in FinTech globally, and one of the absolute top voices for FinTech in Malaysia, Jenna is the Co-Founder of FortNynja, a cyber security startup. Previously, she was responsible, as part of the digital government initiative, for drafting the FinTech strategy for Malaysia. Jenna is passionate about making Fintech education available more broadly, and is...

David is the Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Symphony, the secure collaboration platform focused on global markets. David’s ideas have influenced the major trends in consumer and enterprise communications and most recently secure collaboration technologies over the past two decades. He founded and ran Microsoft’s unified communications products (Skype for Business) and as Global Head of C...

Assaf Marco is a General Manager and leading the Product Strategy team at Sompo Cyber Security, a fully owned subsidiary of one of the three Japanese Mega Insurers. As such, Assaf is responsible for pre-sales, marketing and technical services development. Prior to his current position, Assaf had served in the Israeli Embassy in Japan as a Senior Commercial Officer promoting and developing the Japa...

Kristof is a passionate serial entrepreneur with six exits under his belt. He believes that respect & transparency is the basis for solid business, and that doing good for the world & providing return for investors can co-exist.  One of the most exciting, and best hidden secrets so far, the ThreeFold Foundation builds the infrastructure for the new internet, and internet that empowers...

Martin is the Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Upvest, a FinTech startup providing the first pan-European securities account API. Upvest is a BAFIN-licensed (the German financial services regulator) custodian and enables any neo broker to offer securities accounts to their end users instantly in their apps. We talk to Martin about: - His journey from venture capitalist early in his career...

Mikaal is the SVP, International at SoFi, a finance company based in San Francisco that offers a range of lending and wealth management services to Millennials, after 8 Securities, which he founded and was the Chief Executive Officer of, got acquired in April. This was SoFi's first international acquisition.  Launched in 2012 in Hong Kong with zero-commission securities trading as the proposi...

Chintai started off as a community contribution by EOS42, one of the early EOS block producers, to provide an effective marketplace for token leasing. On EOS, the tokens that you hold allow you to use bandwidth on the network. Rather than tying up your capital by purchasing token, Chintai supports the idea that you can just lease them (for a fee, of course).  Since presenting at the Tokyo Fin...

Parissa Haghirian is Professor of Japanese Management at Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan. She has lived and worked in Japan since 2004 and is an internationally renowned expert in international management practices with a focus on Japan. Professor Haghirian earned an MA in Japanese Studies from the University of Vienna in 1999 followed by an MA and PhD in Business Administration from the Vienna...

Matt is the Founder & Chief Decentralization Officer at DecentraNet, where he is working on the Monetary Reformation. As an analogy, he views the Reformation as the open sourcing & forking of Christianity. The Catholic Church still exists today, but you do not have to use them. The Monetary Reformation will do the same to central bank money.  We also talk about a data-centric future,...

Railsbank was co-founded by Nigel Verdon, who also founded Currencycloud - the most famous FinTech startup that nobody has ever heard of, as its engine powers Revolut, Monzo and Starling Bank, among others. Railsbank is taking a similar trajectory in enabling any company to become a FinTech.  We talk with Shaul David, Head of Growth, and previously in a role as a FinTech Sector Specialist wit...

Masuda-san is the Chairman of the Japan Security Token Association (JSTA) and the Chief Operating Officer at Blockchain Hub. Previously, he also worked at SMBC, one of Japan's three megabanks, where he was setting up an Innovation Lab in Silicon Valley. We talk about the recent changes in crypto assets and digital securities regulation in Japan, how we expect the market to react to those rules tha...

Fabrizio is the Co-Founder & Head of Growth at Fintastico, curating a comprehensive database of of FinTech services and FinTech news to address the financial needs of consumers, retailers, enterprises and financial institutions, with a primary focus on European and North American FinTech startups. Following their recent funding round, they are working hard to become a FinTech aggregator, lever...

Luc is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Tokeny Solutions, a Luxembourg-based software vendor building an full lifecycle platform to issue, manage and transfer tokenized securities, such as tokenized loans, structured notes, equity and funds, in a compliant way, allowing companies operating in private markets to benefit from using blockchain technology.  Technically built on the Ethe...