Ross Butler speaks with Matteo Stefanel and Udayan (“Uday”) Goyal, Co-Founders and Managing Partners of Apis Partners, one of the world’s leading growth-equity investors in financial technology.

Founded in 2014, Apis Partners has built a global fintech franchise by applying M&A discipline to private equity: identify the likely acquirers first, then build the company to fit their strategic blueprint. In this conversation, Matteo and Uday explain how they turned two decades of deal-making experience, from DLJ and Deutsche Bank to advising on Visa, Mastercard, and Worldpay into one of the most distinctive investment models in growth capital.

They discuss:

• How Apis built credibility as a first-time fund manager, raising $290m at launch and scaling to a multi-fund global platform.
  

• The importance of the network as an asset, relationships forged over 20 years now drive sourcing, diligence, talent, and exits.
  

• “Exit-first” investing, designing portfolio companies around known strategic buyers and building to a defined market demand.
  

• Why 2025 marks the most disruptive moment in financial services history, as stablecoins, micropayments, and decentralised rails reshape how money moves.
  

• The rise of agentic AI, where your personal financial assistant will soon negotiate directly with your bank’s AI.
  

• Embedded finance and the subscription economy, from iPhones to autos, where distribution and customer ownership, not balance sheet, define value.
  

• The democratisation of wealth, as technology opens private-market access to a broader investor base while raising new questions about fairness, data, and risk.
  

“Finance will be invisible, stitched into every product, every experience.”

This is a forward-looking discussion about what comes after banking, where technology, capital, and human behaviour converge to redefine how financial systems work and who benefits from them.

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🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹Thank you to our episode partnerBrookfield’s Private Equity Group: A Global leader in acquiring and driving operational transformation in industrials and essential business services.For more information, visit: www.brookfield.com/it-takes-industry🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹💼 Learn more at: 🌐 www.apis.pe🎙️Matteo Stefanel Managing Partner & Co-Founder, Apis PartnersLinkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matteostefanel/🎙️Udayan GoyalManaging Partner & Co-Founder, Apis PartnersLinkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ugoyal/Ross ButlerFounder and Host Fund Shack 🌐 www.fund-shack.comCONNECT on LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/rossbutler1/🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹 📩 Subscribe to our Substack: https://privateequitypodcastfundshack.substack.com/ 📘 Pre-order Ross Butler’s book

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00:00 Fintech revolution begins, Apis Partners ranked global #201:45 Meet Apis Partners, fintech growth investors Matteo Stefanel & Udayan Goyal
03:06 From Wall Street to growth capital, building a fintech platform
05:01 Relationships as alpha networks turned into exits07:56 Exit-first model designing for strategic buyers11:24 Value creation buy-and-build and customer access16:21 Partnering with founders, trust and alignment18:20 Stablecoins & 24-hour liquidity, treasury reinvented23:54 Micropayments & continuous finance, real-time money flow
27:27 Agentic AI, automation reshaping financial services
31:15 Embedded finance & subscriptions, banking disappears36:52 Who owns the customer, brands vs banks42:46 Finance as social engine,from UBI to capital ownership47:00 Democratising wealth, opening private-market access50:20 Bitcoin vs stablecoins, new financial infrastructure
54:28 the future of finance