Rebank: Fintech Analysis Will Beeson

Luca Prosperi is the co-founder and CEO of M^ZERO LABS_, a team building a new backend for the banking system.
Luca is a deep thinking analyst, economist and builder, with a background in institutional finance, alternative and credit investments and more recently DeFi lending and governance. Luca publishes analysis on Dirt Roads, a must read for anyone thinking about the construct and evolution of money and associated topics.
M^ZERO sprang into life recently with the announcement of a $22.5m seed round from investors including Pantera. AirTree, ParaFi, Mouro and Earlybird. The team is building decentralized infrastructure with the vision of ultimately replacing the commercial banking backend, starting with a better stablecoin.
In this conversation, Luca and I discuss the inspiration and vision for M^ZERO, Luca’s learnings from his time at MakerDAO, governance considerations for decentralized institutional infrastructure, the shortcomings of existing stablecoins and his team’s proposed approach, M^ZERO with respect to the current banking industry turmoil and more.
Thank you very much for joining us today. Please welcome, Luca Prosperi.

Sheel Mohnot is Co-Founder and General Partner at Better Tomorrow Ventures, an early-stage fintech VC currently investing out of its $225m second fund.
 
Sheel is a former founder, having built a tech-first card processor way back in 2010 which was quickly acquired by Groupon.
 
Since 2014, Sheel has been angel investing and, as of 2016, investing full-time.
 
Sheel is an incredible Twitter follow and constant source of information, insight and entertainment.
 
In this conversation, we discuss how fintech VC has changed over the last few years, the state of the early-stage market today, what separates elite seed funds from others, building social capital as an investor, the investment areas Sheel is currently focused on and more.
 
Thank you very much for joining us today. Please welcome, Sheel Mohnot.

Matt Harris is an entrepreneur and investor and the founder of Bloom Credit, an API platform for credit data access and analysis.
Currently, Matt is focused on investing and advising, working with VC-backed founders and advising companies in the credit space.
 
Among other things, Matt is an advisor to Commerce Ventures, writing scout checks and helping the fund make fintech investments.
 
Matt is also an active angel, having invested in 10+ fintech companies including TrueAccord, Karat and HM Bradley and a number of others.
 
In this conversation, we discuss the level of understanding among VCs and founders of the credit business, the inputs to effective underwriting, how to build a great credit business, emerging opportunities like embedded credit and more.
 
Thank you very much for joining us today. Please welcome, Matt Harris.

Stephane Lintner is Co-Founder & CEO of Jiko, a new take on the money storage and transaction layer in banking, a.k.a. checking accounts and cash management.
 
Jiko was founded in 2016 with the mission of providing consumers and businesses with direct access to spendable T-Bills, combining all the benefits of checking accounts with the safety and, depending on the economic cycle, yield of treasuries.
 
Jiko has raised $89m according to Crunchbase, including $40m in October. Jiko offers accounts directly to consumers via an app and to corporates and platforms via API. Jiko owns and operates an OCC-chartered national bank, which it acquired in 2020, and a registered broker-dealer.
 
In this conversation, Stephane and I discuss Jiko’s concept and ultimate vision, the implications for the existing banking model, Jiko’s successful bank acquisition, the relationship with adjacencies like stablecoins and CBDCs, and more.
 
Thank you very much for joining us today. Please welcome, Stephane Lintner

Matt Brown is a venture capitalist and Partner at Matrix Partners.
 
Matt is a founder and operator turned investor, having started two software companies, both backed by Matrix, and then led product for AfterPay in the US in the lead-up to its acquisition by Square, now Block.
 
Matt’s second company, Bonsai, is a vertical SaaS company for micro businesses which evolved from a pure software company into a fintech through the incorporation of financial products, before embedded finance was a household term.
 
Matt is strategic and thoughtful, writing regularly on fintech market dynamics, with a specific focus on payments, credit and vertical SaaS.
 
In this conversation, we discuss Matt’s approach to seed and A-stage investing, BNPL and the implications for digital commerce more broadly, Matt's analysis of payments market dynamics, opportunities for early-stage fintechs in an increasingly saturated market and more.
 
Thank you very much for joining us today. Please welcome, Matt Brown.

Chris Dean is the co-founder & CEO of Treasury Prime, a leading US banking-as-a-service platform fresh off a $40m Series C raise.
 
Treasury Prime is a software company that connects sponsor banks to customer facing fintechs and by doing so powers bank accounts, cards and money movement. Unlike others in the banking-as-a-service space, Treasury Prime describes itself as building a network of interoperable sponsor banks and customer-facing fintechs in a ground-up approach to Open Banking in the US. 
 
In this conversation, Chris and Will Beeson discuss the state of the banking-as-a-service industry, Treasury Prime’s approach compared to other software-based BaaS companies and tech-enabled sponsor banks themselves, the economics of banking-as-a-service, the evolving regulatory environment and more. 
 
Thank you very much for joining us today. Please welcome, Chris Dean.