In this episode, Miguel Armaza sits down with Jo Ann Barefoot, CEO & Founder of the Alliance for Innovative Regulation and host of the Barefoot Innovation Podcast.

Jo Ann is a famous advocate of “regulation innovation,” and is one of the most active and visible fintech leaders working to improve and modernize financial regulation around the world.

She is also a Senior Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Center for Business & Government and in the past was Deputy Comptroller of the Currency of the United States and a staff member at the U.S. Senate Banking Committee.

Listen to the full interview → Spotify | Soundcloud | Apple…

In this episode, Miguel Armaza sits down with Matt Oppenheimer, Co-Founder and CEO of Remitly, a Seattle-based mobile payments platform enabling consumers to send and receive payments around the world that aims to provide the full suite of financial services to immigrants and migrants.

The inspiration behind Remitly came when Matt was working in Kenya in 2010 and saw how difficult it was to send and receive money overseas. He began working on the problem immediately and has since grown the business to a rumored 1.5 Billion dollar-valuation in 2020.

The company has raised almost $500 million in debt and equity from top industry VCs, including Generation Investment Management, Nasper’s PayU, Stripes Group, Threshold, QED, the World Bank’s IFC, Jeff Bezos, and many more! …

In this episode, Miguel Armaza sits down with Claire McDonnell, Co-founder and COO of True Link Financial, a company that aims to make life better for people with disabilities, vulnerable elders, individuals in recovery, and their families and professional support networks. At True Link, she focuses on growth, product, operations, and customer experience.

There’s no doubt True Link is a transformative firm that is making the world a better place by serving and meaningfully helping some of the most vulnerable members of society.

The company has raised over $50 million from a list of impressive Investors, including Centana Growth Partners, Khosla Ventures, Initialized Capital, QED, Radicle Impact, Y-Combinator, Alexis Ohanian, and many more! …

In this episode, I sit down with Kamran Zaki, COO of Adyen (AMS:ADYEN), a Dutch payments company that allows businesses to accept and receive payments across multiple channels and platforms. Publicly listed in the Amsterdam Internet Exchange, Adyen’s stock price has risen over 120% year-to-date and has a current market cap of $50+ billion.

Prior to Adyen, Kamran worked in several tech and payments companies, including PayPal, Netflix, and Citigroup, where he headed global payments teams across Europe, North America, and Emerging Markets.

Listen to the full interview → Spotify | Soundcloud | Apple Podcasts

Kamran is a true fintech veteran and has been working in the payments space for over two decades. First at Citigroup, then in key leadership roles at PayPal, and ultimately leading the Netflix payments team as the company expanded around the world. Reflecting back on the evolution of the industry, he is most surprised by the sheer speed of growth enabled by technology, in his words “I don’t think way back then I could have anticipated how fast technology would evolve and change, and how global things would become.” …

Miguel Armaza interviews Christine Kenna, Partner at IGNIA, a Venture Capital firm that invests in innovative solutions for the emerging middle class in Latin America.

Christine joined IGNIA in 2011 and has been investing and working with entrepreneurs in strategic planning, critical problem solving, and operational issues.

We discussed her background, investing approach, the evolution of the fintech ecosystem in the region, and the important efforts she leads to continue improving diversity and inclusion within the private capital industry in Latin America.

Listen to the full interview → Spotify | Soundcloud | Apple Podcasts

Growing up in Palo Alto, California, the heart of Silicon Valley, Christine would have never imagined she would one day find herself living and working in Mexico City. But that is exactly what she has been doing for the last 15 years and, in fact, now proudly describes herself as a “Chilanga-Gringa”. …

In this episode, Miguel Armaza interviews Steve Sarracino, Founder of Activant Capital, a growth equity fund with over $500 million in assets under management that partners with high-growth companies transforming the industrial complex.

Steve has a great track record of investing in disruptive tech and places particular emphasis on data-heavy businesses that can act as the source of truth for large industries. He is also an MBA graduate from our very own Wharton School and was a great guest!

Steve Sarracino — Founder and Partner of Activant

Steve founded Activant Capital in 2012, and is a partner on the investment team. He has a long track record of investing in disruptive technology companies, and has extensive experience as a board director in high-growth B2B platform businesses. Steve places a particular emphasis on data-heavy businesses that can act as the source of truth for large industries. As Activant’s founder, he sees the importance of investing in outstanding people, both founders and the Activant team. …

In this episode, Miguel Armaza sits down with Olugbenga “GB” Agboola, Co-Founder and CEO of Flutterwave, a revolutionary company building the digital payments infrastructure for Africa that’s enabling businesses to receive or make payments across the continent and the entire globe.

Launched in 2016, Flutterwave has grown at an astonishing rate and in 2019 processed 107 million transactions worth $5.4 billion. The company has also raised over $55 million in equity from a long list of top VCs, including Y-Combinator, Visa Ventures, Fintech Collective, Endeavor, Mastercard, Golden Palm Investments, and many more!

Prior to Flutterwave, GB spent many years in different roles building products and managing teams within the financial sector. From established financial institutions like Sterling Bank and the Royal Bank of Scotland, to tech and fintech powerhouses like Google and PayPal. Seeing different innovative and successful payment solutions around the world, led him to think about the many ways he could bring his learnings back home to Africa and solve a highly fragmented payments ecosystem in the continent. …

Embracing Math for Daily Decision Making — Sebastian Ceria, CEO of Qontigo

I sat down with Sebastian Ceria, CEO of Qontigo, a NY-based global company with over 550 employees that combines the most sophisticated risk analytics and portfolio-construction tools in the market, while also offering indexing services.

Prior to launching his own venture, Sebastian was an Associate Professor of Decision, Risk, and Operations at Columbia Business School. But after seeing the incredible entrepreneurial success of some of his former students, he decided to leave academia and become an entrepreneur in 1998.

Back when Sebastian was a professor at Columbia University, he remembers being bitten by the entrepreneurship bug at the height of the internet bubble of the 90s. Not only was he inspired by several of his students who went on to launch successful ventures, but he also realized becoming a tenured academic was not for him and he did not see himself pursuing an academic career any longer. Instead, he wanted to take what he had studied and learned and apply it to solving real-world problems. …