Fintech Leaders

Send us Fan Mail Miguel Armaza interviews Benjamin Fernandes , CEO & Founder of NALA , a global, cross-border payments company that helps customers send money in and out of Africa. Founded in 2018, NALA today is profitable and has raised over $50 million from Accel, Acrew, Amplo, Bessemer, DST, and NYCA. We discuss: Why NALA built their own infrastructure and stopped relying on local African i...

Send us Fan Mail Miguel Armaza interviews Richie Serna , CEO & Co-Founder of Finix , a US full-stack payment processor and infrastructure provider that processes billions of dollars a year for software platforms, marketplaces, retail, and e-commerce businesses. Founded in 2015, Finix has raised over $135 million to date and is backed by ActOne Ventures, Homebrew, Bain Capital Ventures, Insight...

Send us Fan Mail Miguel Armaza interviews Pedro Arnt , CEO of dLocal (NASDAQ:DLO) , a multi-billion dollar payments company that specializes in cross-border and local payments in emerging markets. Founded in Montevideo, Uruguay, dLocal today operates in 40 markets across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Pedro has an impressive background and you’ll learn a lot from him. Prior to his appointment as...

Send us Fan Mail Miguel Armaza travels to San Francisco for an interview with David Fortunato , CEO of Wealthfront , an asset management giant with $70+ billion in assets under management and over a million clients. Founded by Andy Rachleff almost 15 years ago, Wealthfront is now one of the most defining financial brands for millennials and Gen Zers. David joined the company in 2009 as a junior so...

Send us Fan Mail Miguel Armaza interviews Abdon Nacif , Co-Founder of Nexu , the leading auto financing and dealership software platform in Mexico and one of the fastest-growing fintech companies in the Americas. Nexu is growing fast, approaching $50 million in net annual revenue, and has been profitable for nearly two years. They have raised just over $30 million in equity and over $150 million i...

Send us Fan Mail Miguel Armaza travels to SF for an interview with Rujul Zaparde , CEO & Co-Founder of Zip , a leading SaaS & Fintech platform recently valued at $1.5 Billion that’s focused on bringing smarter procurement and spending software for small and large enterprises. Founded in 2020, Zip today serves hundreds of clients, including giants like Snowflake, Coinbase, Reddit, Canva, Da...

Send us Fan Mail Miguel Armaza interviews Michael Tannenbaum , CEO of Figure , one of the largest US fintech platforms building infrastructure and embedded products. Founded in 2018 by Mike Cagney, also the founder of SoFi and past guest of the show , Figure is now the largest non-bank originator of Home Equity Lines of Credit in the US having done $11 billion in AAA securitizations. Every time I...

Send us Fan Mail Miguel Armaza interviews Diya Jolly , Chief Product and Technology Officer at Xero (XRO.AX), a $22Bn tech giant that offers accounting and CFO management services for small businesses worldwide. Xero is one of the largest fintechs in the world. Their latest total annual revenue was $1.6Bn and they’ve doubled in size over the last three years. Prior to Xero, Diya was the Chief Prod...

Send us Fan Mail Miguel Armaza interviews Raimundo Morales , CEO of Yape , the dominant fintech app in Peru and certainly one of the biggest consumer fintechs in the world. Yape has 16 million users in Peru, which represents 80% of the country’s total population. On average, they process 550+ million payments a month and are doubling in volume on a yearly basis.  They are big and extremely importa...

Send us Fan Mail Miguel Armaza interviews Darian Shirazi , General Partner at Gradient Ventures , an early-stage venture fund focused on AI and data-rich companies, with Google as its major LP. Prior to Gradient, Darian founded and sold Radius, a B2B Customer Data Platform. He is also an early investor in companies including Lyft, Udemy, Carbon Health, Palantir, and Niva. Fun fact, he was Facebook...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, I sit down with Andrew Endicott , who’s my co-founder at Gilgamesh Ventures and who also previously built Petal, a New York fintech company. Andrew and I discussed a research report we recently published in collaboration with the Wharton School of Business. We examined the incredible impact that 15 leading fintech companies are having on the broader fintech ecosys...

Send us Fan Mail Miguel Armaza brings you a deep dive into one of the most pressing issues facing the financial industry today: consumer fraud prevention and identity verification. Over the last couple of years, Miguel has interviewed some of the top leaders in identity management and fraud-fighting, and in this episode you’ll hear a summary of the most interesting takeaways from five of the most...

Send us Fan Mail [Original air date, March 28, 2023] Miguel Armaza interviews 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:...

Send us Fan Mail Miguel Armaza interviews Alex Konrad , Senior Editor at Forbes , where he covers venture capital and startups. Alex also edits and curates the famous Midas List and The Forbes 30 Under 30 VC category. He is a central figure in the world of Venture Capital, Tech, and Fintech and I suspect you’ll enjoy hearing what he has to say. We discuss: A behind-the-scenes look of the Forbes Mi...

Send us Fan Mail Miguel Armaza interviews Melissa Guzy , Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Arbor Ventures , a global fintech-focused fund with offices across Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and the US. Founded in 2012, some of their portfolio companies include Tabby, TrueAccord, Grab, and Fundbox. We discuss: Melissa’s early days as a VC investor at VantagePoint Capital where they navigated the do...

Send us Fan Mail [Original air date, May 9, 2023] 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...

Send us Fan Mail Miguel Armaza interviews Rakefet Russak-Aminoach , Managing Partner at Team8 , a global Venture-Creation and VC Fund with over a 1 billion dollars in AUM, that creates and invests in companies focusing on Fintech, Cybersecurity, Data & AI, and Digital Health. Since launching in 2014, Team8 has built 20 companies and achieved over two billion dollars in exits. Prior to Team8, R...

Send us Fan Mail [Original air date, July 4, 2023] 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. The founders featured in this episode have built revolutionary companies. Many of them multi-billion-dolla...

Send us Fan Mail Miguel Armaza interviews Anthony Denier , Group President of Webull Corporation , a global digital investment platform serving 20 million users in over a dozen countries worldwide. We discuss: What it takes to be a great trader on and off the trading floor How technology, client demands, and regulation transformed the trading industry in the last two decades Why Webull decided to...

Send us Fan Mail Miguel Armaza interviews Mikhail Lomtadze , CEO of Kaspi.kz (NASDAQ:KSPI), one of the largest publicly traded fintechs in the world and the leading tech platform in Kazakhstan. Kaspi is traded on the Nasdaq and has a current market cap of $24 billion dollars. They also have incredible numbers. They serve 15 million customers, in a country with a population of 20 million; 2/3 of th...

Send us Fan Mail Miguel Armaza interviews Blake Hall is the CEO & Co-Founder of ID.me , one of the leading US companies in identity verification with over 130 million users. Founded in 2011, ID.me has raised around $300 million in equity from BoxGroup, Blu Venture, Moonshots Capital, Capital G, Morgan Stanley, Viking Global, and a long list of impressive funds and angels. Blake is also a decor...

Send us Fan Mail Miguel Armaza interviews Vishal Garg , CEO & Founder of Better.com (NASDAQ: BETR), a publicly traded online mortgage lender that has funded more than $100 billion in mortgage volume in the last decade. Prior to going public in 2023, they raised capital from a long list of VCs, including Activant, Softbank, AmEx, Citi, and Goldman among others. We discuss: How Better’s business...

Send us Fan Mail Miguel Armaza interviews Charles Moldow , General Partner at Foundation Capital , a 30-year old venture capital firm with $3+ billion in AUM. Charles joined Foundation in 2005 and over the last two decades has led early-stage investments for many companies, 14 out of which either went public or were successfully acquired. Some of his investments include Lending Club, DOMA, Rappi,...

Send us Fan Mail Miguel Armaza interviews Oliver Hughes , Head of International Business at TBC Bank , a Central Asian leading bank that’s publicly traded on the LSE with a $2B market cap. Oliver is also a true fintech leader - in the past, he was the CEO of Russia’s Tinkoff bank, where he built the operations from scratch to become the most profitable digital bank in the world, eventually reachin...

Send us Fan Mail Miguel Armaza interviews Rodger Desai , CEO & Founder of Prove , one of the leading global companies in identity verification and fraud reduction.  Founded in 2008, Prove serves over one thousand corporations, including 9 of the top 10 US banks, and has raised around $200 million from Wellington, Oak HC/FT, Apax Digital, Mass Mutual, AmEx, Capital One, Verizon, and a long list...