Fintech Leaders

EXPLORE

Society & Culture

Health & Fitness

© 2024 PodJoint

https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Podcasts221/v4/0d/36/15/0d36150f-9d7c-d28c-0896-90bd7ad380f8/mza_12556206758967802513.jpg/600x600bb.jpg

Fintech Leaders

Miguel Armaza

189 episodes

6 days ago

Send us a text Miguel Armaza sits down with Andrew Wang (CEO) and Linda Du (COO) of Valon, the AI-native infrastructure platform transforming mortgage servicing in America. They have quietly built a top-10 national mortgage servicer with over $100 million in revenue and more than one million loans under management, all while achieving profitability. Valon is now selling their battle-tested platform to the largest servicers in the country. They are backed by a16z, Westcap, Jefferies, and Alley...

Show more...

Entrepreneurship

All content for Fintech Leaders is the property of Miguel Armaza and is served directly from their servers with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.

Send us a text Miguel Armaza sits down with Andrew Wang (CEO) and Linda Du (COO) of Valon, the AI-native infrastructure platform transforming mortgage servicing in America. They have quietly built a top-10 national mortgage servicer with over $100 million in revenue and more than one million loans under management, all while achieving profitability. Valon is now selling their battle-tested platform to the largest servicers in the country. They are backed by a16z, Westcap, Jefferies, and Alley...

Show more...

Entrepreneurship

Episodes (20/189)

Fintech Leaders

Valon's CEO Sold $100M Without a Sales Team. Now They're Building a Multi-Billion Mortgage Platform

Send us a text Miguel Armaza sits down with Andrew Wang (CEO) and Linda Du (COO) of Valon, the AI-native infrastructure platform transforming mortgage servicing in America. They have quietly built a top-10 national mortgage servicer with over $100 million in revenue and more than one million loans under management, all while achieving profitability. Valon is now selling their battle-tested platform to the largest servicers in the country. They are backed by a16z, Westcap, Jefferies, and Alley...

6 days ago

50 minutes

Fintech Leaders

How Addi Reached $200M ARR with Better Margins Than Nubank, Affirm, and Klarna

Send us a text Miguel Armaza sits down with Santiago Suárez, Co-Founder & CEO of Addi, one of Colombia’s fastest-growing fintech and commerce platforms. With a background that spans global finance and a track record of driving innovation in Latin America, Santiago shares a candid, in-depth look at lessons from scaling Addi to over $1.3 billion in annualized GMV, serving 2.5 million customers, and achieving industry-leading gross margins above 55%. In this episode, Santiago and Miguel div...

2 weeks ago

43 minutes

Fintech Leaders

Clair CEO - From Swiss Fencing Champion to Fintech Founder

Send us a text Miguel Armaza sits down with Nico Simko, CEO and co-founder of Clair, for an inside look at the journey, pivots, and insights behind one of the most innovative companies in earned wage access and embedded fintech. From his early days as a competitive fencer on the Swiss national team—where he learned the mental agility and resilience needed for entrepreneurship—to his high-impact stints at J.P. Morgan, Nico shares how his personal story shaped his approach to building and scali...

1 month ago

33 minutes

Fintech Leaders

50 Years Of VC: Lessons From Howard Morgan and Alan Patricof

Send us a text Miguel Armaza interviews Alan Patricof and Howard Morgan, two of the most influential figures in the venture capital industry. From the early days of just 50 annual deals to today’s 10,000 opportunities, they’ve helped shape the industry’s explosive growth over the last five decades. In this episode, Alan and Howard share lessons from navigating multiple crises, their vision for the AI revolution and a future with humanoid robots, and why mentorship and legacy matter more than ...

1 month ago

30 minutes

Fintech Leaders

The Brex Growth Strategy: From Startup to Multibillion Fintech

Send us a text Miguel Armaza interviews Art Levy, Chief Business Officer of Brex. Brex has scaled to over $100 billion in processed transactions while becoming one of the most influential multibillion-dollar fintechs in the world. In this episode, Art shares the strategies behind Brex’s hypergrowth comeback, its extreme focus on three core products, and the culture that continues to produce founders of billion-dollar companies. Want more podcast episodes? Join me and follow Fintech Leaders to...

2 months ago

49 minutes

Fintech Leaders

Shift4 CEO on Building an $8B Empire

Send us a text Miguel Armaza interviews the CEO of Shift4. Shift4 has been at the forefront of the global payments industry for 26 years—and they’re only getting started. In this episode, CEO Taylor Lauber reveals the strategies that have kept the company ahead in a competitive, fast-moving market. Want more podcast episodes? Join me and follow Fintech Leaders today on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app for weekly conversations with today’s global leaders that will dominate the 21st...

2 months ago

45 minutes

Fintech Leaders

From Zero to $120M: How Cashea Rebuilt Credit And Trust in Venezuela

Send us a text In a country where credit vanished, Cashea built a new system from scratch. CEO Pedro Vallenilla shares how they scaled BNPL to 3% of Venezuela’s GDP, through trust-based lending, merchant financing, and a bold vision for national impact.

2 months ago

38 minutes

Fintech Leaders

Steve Stagner on Building Crete's $500 Million AI Roll-up to Modernize Accounting

Send us a text Miguel Armaza interviews Steve Stagner, CEO of Crete, an AI-powered roll-up deploying $500+ million to modernize the accounting industry. Backed by Thrive Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, and others, Crete is acquiring US accounting firms and transforming them with OpenAI-powered tools. Steve brings battle-tested insights from building Mattress Firm from a single $1,300 franchise to a $3.8 billion Fortune 500 giant. In this episode, we discuss (1) Why "People, Process, Tec...

4 months ago

37 minutes

Fintech Leaders

Jack Zhang, Airwallex CEO - A $6 Billion Powerhouse Solving Global Payments for Companies

Send us a text [Original air date, April 9, 2024] Miguel Armaza interviews Jack Zhang, CEO & Co-Founder of Airwallex, a global payments and treasury giant that moves $7 billion in monthly transaction volume and serves 100,000+ clients, including Brex, Rippling, and SHEIN. Founded in Melbourne in 2015, Airwallex was last valued at $6.2 billion and has raised over a billion dollars from Sequoia, DST, Square Peg, Greenoaks, Mastercard, Tencent, Salesforce, and many more. In this epis...

4 months ago

36 minutes

Fintech Leaders

Eynat Guez, Papaya Global CEO - From 1,000 Rejections to $34 Billion in Annual Payments

Send us a text Miguel Armaza interviews Eynat Guez, CEO and Founder of Papaya Global. She has built an HR and payroll platform that has transformed how companies manage and operate global teams across 180 countries. After having faced over 1,000 rejections from VCs, Papaya has now grown to process $34 billion in payments annually and they've raised significant funding from Insight Partners, Bessemer, Greenoaks Capital, and more. We discuss why brutal honesty and direct leadership creates stro...

5 months ago

41 minutes

Fintech Leaders

Chen Amit, Tipalti CEO - A $100 Billion Opportunity, Why 'Once-in-a-Decade' Crises Now Happen Every 6 Months, Achieving 99% Revenue Retention

Send us a text Miguel Armaza interviews Chen Amit, CEO and Co-Founder of Tipalti, a global fintech platform processing billions in payments and serving over 4,000 mid-market companies worldwide. By focusing on the underserved mid-sized companies, Tipalti has achieved 99% gross revenue retention over 15 years and secured licenses across 50+ jurisdictions. We discuss: Navigating "once-in-a-decade" disruptions that now seem to happen every six monthsWhy customer intuition can override conflictin...

5 months ago

45 minutes

Fintech Leaders

Anré Williams, American Express – From Intern to Bank CEO, a 35-Year Journey at a Global Powerhouse

Send us a text Miguel Armaza sits down in NYC with Anré Williams, Senior Executive Advisor at American Express. Anré has spent over 35 years at Amex, rising from summer intern to, most recently, CEO of American Express National Bank (which represents ~60% of the company's revenues). Under his leadership, Amex transformed its banking business into a top 25 US bank by assets. Amex is one of the oldest financial services companies in the world. The company is 150 years old and in 2024, they repo...

5 months ago

42 minutes

Fintech Leaders

Eduardo Chedid, CEO of PicPay: 60M Users, $1B Revenue, From Brazil’s Digital Wallet to a Banking Giant

Send us a text Miguel Armaza travels to Sao Paulo for an interview with Eduardo Chedid, CEO of PicPay, a Brazilian fintech giant that has quietly become one of the most important financial companies in Latin America. With 60 million customers and handling 11% of all Pix payments transactions in Brazil, PicPay has achieved profitability while maintaining hyper-growth—posting 61% revenue growth and 7× higher profits in 2024. In this episode, we discuss: How PicPay transformed from a digital wal...

6 months ago

57 minutes

Fintech Leaders

Yoshi Yokokawa, CEO of Alpaca – 5 Million Accounts in 40 Countries, A Vision for Borderless Investing, Decision Frameworks & The API Sandwich Strategy

Send us a text Miguel Armaza stops by the New York Stock Exchange to interview Yoshi Yokokawa, CEO & Co-founder of Alpaca, an API-first brokerage infrastructure company that has raised over $100 million to serve more than 200 financial institutions across 40 countries, with 5 million brokerage accounts on their platform. In this episode, we discuss: Balancing data-driven decisions with entrepreneurial instinctWhy Alpaca's self-clearing model slashes dependencies, cuts costs, and accelerat...

6 months ago

36 minutes

Fintech Leaders

Daniel Vogel, CEO of Bitso – Serving 12 Million Customers and Building a Crypto Giant Through Innovation, Transparency, and a Curious Mind

Send us a text Miguel Armaza interviews Daniel Vogel, CEO & Co-Founder of Bitso, one of Latin America's leading cryptocurrency platforms serving over 12 million customers across Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, and Brazil. Bitso processes over 10% of the remittances flowing from the US to Mexico (the world's largest remittance corridor $65 Billion), and is pioneering the use of stablecoins for cross-border transactions throughout Latin America. In this episode, we discuss: Why rate of learnin...

6 months ago

50 minutes

Fintech Leaders

Bam Azizi, CEO of Mesh Connect - From Credit Card Debt to $130M, Building the Rails for a $37T Market, Executing a Wild Pivot

Send us a text Miguel Armaza interviews Bam Azizi, Co-Founder and CEO of Mesh Connect, a fintech infrastructure company that has transformed from a consumer-focus to a fast-growing B2B platform serving hundreds of corporate clients including Revolut, and Coinbase. After raising nearly $130 million, including a Series B closed in just one month, Mesh is now focusing on serving the stablecoin ecosystem. We discuss: The rollercoaster journey from B2C to B2B and the painful but necessary pivot de...

6 months ago

34 minutes

Fintech Leaders

Johnny Ayers, CEO of Socure - Building a Giant that Protects Billions of Identities, and How to Turn a Crisis into an Advantage

Send us a text Miguel Armaza interviews Johnny Ayers, CEO and Co-Founder of Socure, a leader in digital identity verification that has transformed the industry using machine learning and graph databases. From surviving a major risk event in 2014 to becoming a trusted partner for the largest financial institutions, consumer businesses, and government agencies, Socure now processes over 15 billion rows of data weekly and has verified more than 3 billion identities globally. In this episode, we ...

6 months ago

42 minutes

Fintech Leaders

Shensi Ding, Merge Co-Founder - Lessons for First-Time Founders, $75M to build API Infrastructure in an AI World, The Truth About Fundraising

Send us a text Miguel Armaza interviews Shensi Ding, Co-Founder of Merge, an integrations infrastructure platform that has quickly grown from serving early-stage startups to powering integration layers for some of the largest financial services companies in the world including Revolut, Airwallex, Ramp, Brex and many more. They have raised a total of $75 million from great investors including NEA, Addition, and Accel. In this episode, we discuss: Building credibility with engineers and product...

7 months ago

30 minutes

Fintech Leaders

David Magerman, Differential Ventures - How to Fix the Internet, Risks of GenAI, Pioneering Quant Trading

Send us a text [Original air date, February 6, 2024] Miguel Armaza sits down with David Magerman, Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Differential Ventures, an early-stage fund that invests in data-focused entrepreneurs building enterprise technology. In a past life, he spent 22 years in leadership roles at Renaissance Technologies (RenTech), a legendary hedge fund with over $100 billion in AUM and probably the most successful fund in history. David is also a contrarian thinker and a n...

7 months ago

45 minutes

Fintech Leaders

Ryan Graciano, Credit Karma Co-Founder - Scaling to 140 Million Users, Turning Crisis into Opportunity, Leading Product Innovation From CTO to CPO

Send us a text Miguel Armaza interviews Ryan Graciano, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Credit Karma, one of the most successful fintech companies serving over 130 million customers. Credit Karma was bought by Intuit for $7.1bn in 2020, marking one of fintech’s largest acquisitions ever. Ryan began his journey as CTO after a brief stint at IBM and helped build Credit Karma from the ground up since 2007. In this episode, we discuss: Key technical decisions that shaped Credit Karma's s...

8 months ago

43 minutes