Around The Coin

In this episode, Mike Townsend interviews Des Martin, Chief Marketing Officer at Outlier Ventures where he sets marketing goals and objectives for the business, driving change and growth across the organization. Des joined Outlier Ventures from Brave, where he served as VP of Growth and Marketing for almost three years. Responsible for growing their daily active users from 800k to 11M, Des was key in positioning Brave as a breakthrough Web3 project. Prior to this, Des led marketing teams at two high-growth tech companies, Perkbox and Qualtrics, through periods of rapid growth. Perkbox gained recognition from both Linkedin’s Top UK Start-Ups and the National Business Awards under his direction. Des continues to actively invest and mentor Web3 companies.

In this episode, Mike Townsend chats with Michael Safai, Managing Partner of Dexterity Capital, a quantitative trading firm focused on solving the hardest problems in finance. By combining brilliant people, world-class technology, and rich proprietary datasets, Dexterity has built an algorithmic execution engine that trades billions of dollars every day.Dexterity Capital specializes in market-neutral strategies. That means they thrive regardless of whether the bulls or bears are winning. With offices in Seattle, San Francisco, and London they run their strategies 24/7 around the globe.

In this episode, Mike Townsend chats with Thomas Mattimore & James Glasscock, Head of Platform (Protocol) and Head of Ecosystem at Reserve.Thomas Mattimore is Head of Platform (Protocol) at Reserve, a protocol and application that helps people fight inflation with stable currencies. The platform enables anyone to create asset-backed currencies that fight inflation, share revenue, are censorship-resistant, yield-bearing, and have proof of reserves on-chain, 24/7. Thomas has a decade of experience in product and engineering, including roles at Web2 companies focused on expanding access to better financial products.James Glasscock is the Head of the Ecosystem at Reserve. James is a 20-year veteran of tech investing, starting at KPMG and Zone Ventures. He also led digital strategy and operations for media companies Turner Broadcasting, Machinima, and Warner Bros. 

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Stephany Kirkpatrick the founder and CEO of Orum, the simplest API integration for instant payouts. A digital executive and seasoned entrepreneur with over 15 years of experience in companies across a variety of industries, from startups to Fortune 100 corporations, Stephany founded Orum in 2019 on the belief that consumers should have immediate access to their money. A CFP by training, Stephany has spent the last decade of her career building technology to optimize financial outcomes for Americans – first at LearnVest and Northwestern Mutual where she helped design its financial planning software and now at Orum where she is leading a team that is building the new financial infrastructure that allows money to move immediately and automatically across accounts, products, and financial institutions. To date, Orum has raised $82M from investors, such as Accel, Bain Capital Ventures, Homebrew, SVB Capital, and American Express Ventures. Orum's customers include a range of leading fintechs across, lending, investing, crypto and insurance, including Public.com, Coinflow (FKA Phantasia), Kalshi, Nth Round, Dots, and Ponto. 

In this episode, Mike Townsend chats with Alex Harris, Founding Partner of Fiat Growth and General Partner at Fiat Ventures. Prior to Fiat, Alex led paid growth and partnerships at Chime, flexing his innovation skills and data-driven approach. His deep knowledge of the Fintech market provides superior marketing, business development, and growth strategies for Fiat’s clients.

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with MacLane Wilkison, Contributor to Threshold Network, the home of tBTC, the only decentralized and permissionless Bitcoin bridge to Ethereum. He is a co-founder of NuCypher, which combined with Keep Network in the first-ever decentralized network merger to form Threshold.

In this episode, Mike Townsend chats with Scott Dykstra, CTO and Co-Founder of Space and Time, and Purandar Das, CEO and Co-Founder of Sotero.Microsoft-backed Space and Time is the first decentralized data warehouse. Scott also serves as a Strategic Advisor to Sotero and was formerly the VP of Cloud Solutions at Teradata.Sotero is a Web2 data security platform that ensures your sensitive data is never left unprotected. Purandar previously served as CTO at Infogroup and CTO at Epsilon.

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Miles Parry & Cat Le-Huy, Co-founders of MPCH Labs, the team behind Fraction.Miles Parry has extensive experience building highly secure solutions to protect sensitive data and assets. Miles has worked as a trusted consultant for a variety of government organizations, such as the Ministry of Defense, the Financial Conduct Authority, and the Foreign Commonwealth Officer. Before MPCH, Miles founded and built Vo1t (now Genesis), a high-security service that safeguards valuable digital assets trusted by some of the world’s largest companies. At MPCH, Miles is focused on delivering military-grade security infrastructure and cryptographically approved business process management across economic sectors.As a software engineer by trade, Cat Le-Huy has experience working with some of the largest organizations in the world across numerous sectors, like defense, investment banking, MarTech, and FMCG, to help them achieve digital efficiency through various digital systems and strategies. As a veteran with over 20 years of experience and a uniquely creative approach to development, Cat brings together technology, product design, and business strategy. At MPCH, Cat is focused on designing military-grade security infrastructure and cryptographically approved business process management across economic sectors.

In this episode, Mike Townsend interviews Eric Shoykhet, Founder of Link Financial Technologies and Atom Finance, venture-backed software companies that collectively have raised $100mm. Previously, he was an investor at Governors Lane, an event-driven hedge fund. At Governors Lane, Eric worked on investments across a variety of sectors including industrials, financials, technology, and consumer staples. Prior to this, he worked in the Restructuring and Reorganization group at Blackstone. Eric graduated from the Huntsman Program in International Studies and Business at the University of Pennsylvania with degrees from both the Wharton School and the College of Arts and Sciences.

Justin Rice is the Vice President of Ecosystem at the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF), a non-profit organization that supports the development and growth of Stellar, an open-source network that connects the world's financial infrastructure. In this role, he represents developers building on the Stellar network and coordinates members of the Stellar ecosystem, with an ultimate focus on the growth, development, and ongoing health of that system. Prior to his current role, Justin worked in Stellar product development, where he helped build the StellarX exchange, which utilizes Stellar open-source technology. He holds a Bachelors of Arts degree in Comparative Literature from Harvard University.

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Ramani 'Ram' Ramachandran, CEO of Router Protocol, an infrastructure layer enabling communication between blockchains. After graduating from MIT with an MBA from the Sloan School of Management, Ramani worked at Deloitte, Moody’s, and Schlumberger before moving into crypto in 2014. He built and ran Asia’s earliest crypto fund, returning 4x. Built Fordex - the world’s first stablecoin DEX and Qume, an institutional-grade crypto exchange. He also launched Asia’s first crypto-index token before founding Router Protocol which is solving the problem of blockchain interoperability.

In this episode, Mike Townsend, speaks with Adam Hofmann, Founder & CEO of Nimble Decentralized Insurance.Adam is forever a creative, but shifted his professional trajectory away from music and built a 22-year career in the insurance industry playing all the roles - service, sales, marketing, risk advisor, operations, and owner.Adam took his innate creativity, learned practicality and the thrill of building with a big vision, and became the founder of Nimble.Nimble is a decentralized and democratized insurance protocol built on Algorand; the rails for all people to have the opportunity at lower premiums, investment income, and proper protection.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend chats with Hugo Philion, Co-founder & CEO of Flare Network. They aim to be the interoperability chain connecting all smart contract chains, non-smart contract chains, & web2 APIs together.As a former commodity derivatives portfolio manager & a Master's in Machine Learning, Hugo is uniquely qualified to speak about the past, present, & future of DeFi - both on a financial fundamentals basis, as well as the tech driving it.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend interviews Darius Tabatabai, co-founder of Vertex Protocol, a cross-margined, order book DEX built on Arbitrum. Darius comes from an extensive background in TradFi, including as the former Global Head of Metals Trading at BAML and CS and former Head of Trading at Crosstower and JST Capital. Darius and Vertex co-founder, Alwin Peng, decided to build Vertex as a vertically integrated DEX that could compete with centralized exchanges in both features and performance.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend chats with Alan the co-founder and CEO of Enya Labs, a core contributor to Boba Network. With more than 20 years of experience in building and investing in enterprise and fintech startups, he leads the efforts at achieving Boba Network’s goal of bringing Ethereum to the next billion users worldwide.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Jack Vinijtrongjit the Co-Founder and CEO at AAG. Jack is a serial entrepreneur, avid investor, and advisor to global Web2 & Web3 tech start-ups. Tech enthusiast with an extensive background in enterprise software architecture and development. He created platforms for scalable applications in omnichannel retail (XY Retail), content management (TOOVIA), and real estate (CozyBid). Jack is a TIBCO alumnus.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend chats with Miles Paschini, CEO of FV Bank, a global digital bank providing fintech and blockchain companies with integrated banking, payments, and digital asset custody services. An investor and serial entrepreneur, Miles has built numerous innovative financial services businesses. He was awarded seven patents related to payment processing services during the development of EWI Holdings, acquired by Blackhawk in 2006. In addition to developing the industry’s first cryptocurrency-linked debit cards implemented worldwide. Miles and FV Bank co-founder Nitin Agarwal are the first in history to be awarded a U.S. patent for the development of stablecoin instruments to be backed by sovereign debt and on-chain KYC.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend, speaks with Zach Resnick, Founder and CEO of Unbounded Capital. He co-founded Unbounded Capital with Dan Rosen in 2018. He is also a founder of poker education and content company Just Hands Poker and of discounted biz/first class flight concierge service FlyFlat. During his early 20s, Zach made a living from playing cash games and investing in other poker players, providing a unique understanding of risk management that is largely shaped through leveraging volatility to outperform others in the high-risk high-reward situations of poker. In 2016 Zach made his first personal investment in Bitcoin and began a disciplined due diligence process for investing in crypto assets. He then began managing founding partner Dan Rosen’s capital and the continued success investing gave them the confidence and capital to start the firm in the SF bay area, officially launching in August of 2018.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend sits down with Sergej Kunz the Co-Founder of 1inch Network, a distributed network of decentralized protocols that enable the fastest, most lucrative, and protected operations in major blockchain ecosystems. Numbers-wise, they have 2.7M+ wallets, $194B+ in trading volume, and $55B+ in available liquidity.They also recently raised $175M in Series B funding at a $2.25B valuation.Sergej has been in the crypto space for 10+ years. He and his Co-Founder Anton Bukov created the 1inch Network MVP in 18 hours at the ETHNewYork hackathon in 2019.Before founding his company, Sergej worked as a software engineer. His resume includes Mimacom consultancy and Porsche. He also co-hosted the YouTube show CryptoManiacs.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend chats with Trevor Bacon the CEO and co-founder of Parcl, a blockchain-based platform that allows users to invest in a digital square foot of physical real estate in neighborhoods around the world. Trevor has seasoned experience as a portfolio manager at several hedge funds focused on the technology sector — specifically software, payments (where he was introduced to blockchain 5 years ago), and internet. Previous to Parcl, Trevor was a Portfolio Manager at Force Hill Capital Management, where he managed a portfolio of over $500M focused on growth technology. He was also a Portfolio Manager & Senior Analyst at Millennium, one of the largest hedge funds in the world. Trevor has an MS in Finance from Villanova and a bachelor's degree from Fordham University.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices