MoneyNeverSleeps

Greg Hannam is the co-founder and CEO of Peerkat a data analytics tool for marketers to help them understand their users, increase engagement and drive growth in their web3 strategies. In this episode, Greg chats with Pete Townsend about how his life experience drove him to the Peerkat vision, driving value for brands moving from web2 to web3, the evolution of non-fungible tokens (or NFTs) beyond...

Howie Young is the founder and CEO of Protico , a universal chatting interface that enables web3 chat on apps in seconds for enterprises that want to migrate business and engage customers at the web3 level.  Protico is also one of the 12 founding teams forming the Techstars Web3 accelerator class of 2023. With over eight years of experience in the chat and messaging industry, Howie Young is a high...

Deb Pratiher is the co-founder and CEO of Quest Labs , building infrastructure enabling organizations to leverage data in a privacy-preserving manner to unlock powerful user experiences. Quest Labs is also one of the 12 founding teams forming the Techstars Web3 accelerator class of 2023. Deb Pratiher is a product leader and engineer with experience building and scaling data infrastructure and syst...

Igor Khmel is the co-founder and CEO of SaveChain , the borderless banking app. SaveChain features a self-custody 'stablecoin-only' wallet with a banking interface for the global underbanked, with the option to open an FDIC-insured bank account for non-US residents. In short, SaveChain is Metamask meets Revolut. SaveChain is also one of the 12 founding teams forming the Techstars Web3 acce...

Lee Gray is the co-founder and CEO of SonX , a community platform that allows superfans to subscribe to their favorite musicians via a monthly membership fee unlocking fan-only ticketing, exclusive audio content, and digital and physical collectibles. SonX is also one of the 12 founding teams forming the Techstars Web3 accelerator class of 2023. In this episode, Lee and Pete Townsend dig into why...

Katerina Bohle Carbonell is the co-lead of TogetherCrew , one of the 12 founding teams forming the Techstars Web3 accelerator . Some web3 communities fall apart under pressure, others come together stronger. TogetherCrew exists to help build and grow communities by ensuring members and stakeholders create together.   Katerina’s life’s work goes broad and deep on how members of teams and communitie...

Jesse Phillips is the co-founder and CEO of TrustWare , one of the 12 founding teams forming the Techstars Web3 accelerator .  Jesse and Pete Townsend dig into how Jesse got into crypto, the TrustWare vision he formed with co-founder Jonathan Frazier, adjusting to some of the crypto curveballs the world is throwing at TrustWare, and how life experiences are informing the building and scaling of Tr...

This episode features a rundown of the 12 web3 founding teams that form the Techstars Web3 class of 2023 , along with an intro to each of their CEOs.  Builders gotta build, and build better. That was the Techstars Web3 rallying cry when Pete Townsend and Hugh McGirr opened up applications for the Techstars Web3 2023 cohort in November 2022, as finding those building for the long-term - rather than...

Patrick Pinschmidt is a General Partner and Co-Founder at MiddleGame Ventures , a financial technology venture capital fund focused on early-stage investments in Europe. In this episode, Patrick riffs with Pete Townsend on the life experiences that delivered him to venture capital and what Patrick looks for in fintech founders in the context of MiddleGame Ventures’ Irish seed fund. Patrick and Pet...

Eoin Fitzgerald and Pete Townsend take a look at the aftermath of the American Bankpocalypse with contrasting views on bitcoin as a safe haven, and how a potential outcome of Grayscale’s lawsuit of the SEC may be opening the floodgates of crypto into institutional finance.  Eoin and Pete also dig into the $600mn raise by open-banking-meets-AI startup Abound, and how a new EU regulatory framework a...

Eoin Fitzgerald and Pete Townsend take a quick look at the triumvirate of bank failures in the US with Silvergate, Silicon Valley Bank, and Signature Bank before Eoin asks Pete about his lessons learned from seeing over 1,000 deals in the last 18 months, so they riff on easy-to-remember mental models, investing in lines not dots, building relationships with founders, how those relationships evolve...

Eoin Fitzgerald and Pete Townsend look at the outsized gender gap in web3, then riff on the realities of venture capital ‘dry powder’ and crypto VCs, before stepping through what’s wrong with Revolut’s neo-profitability, an unfortunate slip switch for railsr and WhatsApp B2B payments in Brazil as a WeChat-like foundation. STORIES COVERED: The Web3 gender gap, by the numbers (Sifted, 6-Mar-23) Cryp...

Liang Wu is the Co-founding Managing Partner at Eleven26 Capital, an early-stage VC fund investing in diverse founders on the evolving Internet across Web2 and Web3. Liang is also a Web3 Research Fellow at Harvard Business School where he helps shape the Web3 curriculum by writing case studies on leading Web3 companies, as well as supporting community building and business development for Harvard’...

This week, Eoin Fitzgerald and Pete Townsend riff on the latest US regulatory crackdown in crypto markets, how NBA Top Shot on the Apple app store is a leading indicator of our wider society’s digital asset adoption whether we realize it or not, trouble in Banking-as-a-Service land with Solaris, Nova Credit’s entry to the UK market, and Revolut’s Irish Trojan Horse. STORIES COVERED: Crypto markets...

In this special segment, we’re featuring web3 investors, founders and mentors such as Joey Krug from Pantera Capital, Matthew Graham from Sino Global Capital, Teana Baker-Taylor from Circle, Sam Williams from Arweave, John Wu from Ava Labs, Clarisse Hagege from Dfns, Sean Lee from Odsy, Tim Bos from ShareRing and Michelle Tsing from GRI. Included in this episode are some of the most helpful insigh...

Dee Coakley is the co-founder and CEO of Boundless , the operating system for your international team, which she co-founded with Emily Castles in Ireland in 2019. Boundless is ‘global employment made simple, with benefits, share options and payroll in one neat platform’. In this episode, Dee riffs with Eoin Fitzgerald and Pete Townsend on the snowball effect of the diverse international experience...

Sam Williams is co-founder and CEO of Arweave , a blockchain protocol allowing us to remember and preserve valuable information, apps, and history indefinitely. Pete Townsend interviewed Sam last month on the Techstars GiveFirst podcast , so thanks to David Cohen and Techstars for letting us share the interview for this episode of MoneyNeverSleeps . In this episode, Sam shares the inspirational st...

This week, Eoin Fitzgerald and Pete Townsend riff on Eoin’s new role at Enterprise Ireland, the final nail in the coffin for Meta’s former crypto project Diem, the next steps for Ant Group now that Jack Ma is formally out, the back and forth on the environmental impact of crypto and bitcoin’s role, some new ideas on agri-finance thanks to past guest Nik Milanovich, and some details on an event Pet...

This week, Eoin Fitzgerald and Pete Townsend riff on the latest on Sam Bankman-Fried before diving into a few of the fintech and web3 predictions for 2023 published recently, then we do an experimental walk-through of the AI bot ChatGPT. We finish up with a look at some of the January leadership changes in fintech and crypto and an update on the Techstars Web3 accelerator. This episode of MoneyNev...

Clarisse Hagege, founder and CEO of Dfns, joins the show this week recorded recently as part of the Techstars Web3 Community Series events organized by the Techstars Web3 Accelerator . Dfns is a cybersecurity company providing wallet infrastructure for web3. From banks to gaming studios, developer teams rely on their decentralized custody network to build seamless applications and deliver smooth e...

Sean Lee, co-founder of Odsy Network , joins the show this week recorded recently as part of the Techstars Web3 Community Series events organized by the Techstars Web3 Accelerator . Sean is the former CEO of the Algorand Foundation, he is an accomplished executive in web3 innovation and fintech, and is a senior advisor for the Crypto Council for Innovation. This episode of MoneyNeverSleeps is spon...

Holy Mackenzie, we just hit 200 episodes!  When Eoin Fitzgerald said to Pete Townsend in early 2018, “Hey Pete, I heard you on a couple of podcasts, wanna help me start one?” never in our wildest dreams did we think this would become such an integral part of our week for the past, well, 200 weeks. So, here’s our recap of our Top 10 from the past one hundred episodes, some honourable mentions,...

This week, Eoin and Pete take the inevitable plunge into what to make of the FTX mess, and then resurface with some of the scenarios unfolding on what Elon Musk has in mind for the 250 million daily active users of Twitter.  The guys also look at the hubbub around the control of Tech Nation in the UK, a Digital Dollar pilot in the US, and how the Big Tech layoffs in Ireland may be short-term...

This week, Pete gives some insight into the new Techstars Web3 accelerator and goes on a quick rant on FTX before he and Eoin riff on Block’s flywheel and their ambitions with Cash App, then they go through a hall-of-fame list of fintech and crypto apps from Rex Salisbury, and finally dive into NFTs and VR through an Apple lens with a dash of Reddit. This episode of MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored b...

Ollie Walsh is the co-founder and CEO of Pipit , who are bringing to market the new Konect network that is powering international cash transactions with DeFi and enabling migrants to support their families back home cheaper, safer, and now faster. This episode of MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by SecuriCentrix . SecuriCentrix is a trusted cyber security company with offices in Dublin, Cape Town and...