The Longest View with Dez Fleming

This week my guest is Jake Miller, Co-Founder of Opto, a platform democratizing access to private markets for wealth advisors and their clients. Jake's journey from analyzing markets at Bridgewater to building prediction markets at Prattle to ultimately founding Opto offers a masterclass in identifying broken infrastructure and building solutions that scale. We dive deep into why private markets r...

This week my guest is Don Muir, Co-Founder and CEO of F2, an AI-powered financial intelligence platform. Don's journey from aspiring private equity investor to successful entrepreneur showcases the evolution of fintech in the AI era. After securing his dream job at Apollo Global Management, Don made the bold decision to leave and build his first company in revenue-based financing. Now with F2, he'...

This week my guest is Mitchell Jones, Co-Founder and CEO of Lava, a company building developer infrastructure to reimagine how enterprise software is created and deployed. Mitchell shares his journey from growing up in Dayton, Ohio to studying at Yale, working at Facebook and Dropbox, and ultimately founding his own companies. We explore his philosophy on building enterprise software with a focus...

This week my guest is Ben Markowitz, Co-Founder and CEO of Clerq, a payments platform serving auto dealerships. Ben shares his journey from JP Morgan to Citadel and eventually founding Clerq, offering raw insights into the realities of building in fintech venture investors territory. We explore why technology alone can't solve financial services problems, the hidden complexities of payments infras...

This week my guest is Rohan Parikh, founder and CEO of Keye, an AI-powered platform revolutionizing due diligence for private equity professionals. Rohan brings a fascinating perspective shaped by growing up in a family of entrepreneurs in Mumbai and spending five years climbing from analyst to director at a French investment bank in New York. We dive deep into why deterministic software is non-ne...

This week my guest is Ryan Eisenman, Co-Founder and CEO of Arch, the platform automating private market investment management. Ryan shares the fascinating origin story of how a dinner conversation in New York City led to building what he calls "one-click alt" - the Schwab for private markets. We explore how Arch has grown from a scrappy three-person team surviving on $500K to serving 180+ family o...

Former KKR CIO Ed Brandman joins Dez Fleming to discuss his transition from retirement to founding ToltIQ, an AI-powered platform revolutionizing due diligence for early-stage venture capital and private markets firms. Brandman shares insights from his decade at KKR, where he scaled technology operations from 5 to 145 people as AUM grew from $30-40 billion to $250 billion. He explains how ToltIQ l...

Cyrus Shirazi, founder of Haven, joins Dez Fleming to discuss his journey from watching his father leave private equity to becoming an entrepreneur himself. After experiencing both the highs and pitfalls at companies like Mainstreet and Meow, Cyrus launched Haven - a unified financial operating system for startups and small businesses. He shares tactical insights on guerrilla marketing, community...

Chuck Bradford, founder and CEO of Dexari, shares his journey from engineering student at UPenn to crypto entrepreneur. After experiencing the inner workings of centralized exchanges at Binance US, Bradford identified a massive opportunity to combine the user experience of traditional fintech with the benefits of decentralization. Dexari is building a mobile-first, self-custodial crypto platform t...

This week on The Longest View, Desmond Fleming sits down with Abdul Al-Assad, founder and CEO of Basic Capital, shares his remarkable journey from growing up in Damascus during the Syrian civil war to building a revolutionary fintech company in New York. As a Palestinian entrepreneur who arrived in America with $140 and no connections, Abdul built Basic Capital to solve what he calls the "cold sta...

Eric Shapiro and David Fine, co-founders of Understory, join Dez Fleming to discuss their journey from Columbia philosophy classmates to building a company that transforms how financial analysts work with private company data. Eric shares his transition from Elliott Management to entrepreneurship, while David brings his experience from Dynamic Yield and McDonald's. They explore the challenges of s...

Jeremy Tsui, Founder and CEO of Finley Technologies, joins Dez Fleming on The Longest View podcast to discuss his transition from Goldman Sachs private credit investor to fintech venture investors-backed entrepreneur. Tsui shares insights on building enterprise software VC solutions for the evolving capital markets landscape, where traditional banks and private credit funds increasingly collaborat...

Desmond Fleming welcomes Jonathan Birnbaum, founder of OpenYield. On the first episode of The Longest View, Jonathan shares his journey from Morgan Stanley trading floors to building a modern bond marketplace. Drawing from his experience in fixed income trading and fintech venture investors backing, he discusses how OpenYield is democratizing access to bond markets through technology. The conversa...