Moneyneversleeps

In this Money Talks segment, we take a deeper look at the startup ecosystem on this island that we call home, then head south to Europe for a constructive look at the European Payments Initiative, and then head further south to Africa for the story of Chipper Cash and the fintech opportunity in Africa. MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by PAT Fintech, the training partner that demystifies fintech and digital finance for financial services professionals. MAIN STORIES WE COVERED: Scale Ireland kicked off their membership drive last week, which is an “independent not-for-profit organisation and our mission is to support, represent and advocate on behalf of Irish tech startup and scale-up companies, to create the most advantageous conditions for them to succeed.” 18 Irish Startups to Watch, according to top VCs (Sifted [paywall], 27-May-21) Europe’s largest banks plan a joint attack on US payment giants. (Insider Voice via Finch Capital newsletter, 3-May-21) SVB-led $100M investment makes Chipper Cash Africa’s ‘most

Steve Ritter, CTO of Mitek, joins the show this week to share his story on fueling his passion for problem-solving with technology, how he thinks about creating safe digital environments to build trust, achieving the careful balance of friction and convenience in consumer fintech, the reality of defending against deep fakes, digital infrastructure priming the pump of inclusiveness…and rebuilding a 1972 Ford Bronco! MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by PAT Fintech, the training partner that demystifies fintech and digital finance for financial services professionals. Mitek brings the future to business with patented solutions and intuitive technologies that bridge the physical and digital worlds. Mitek products power and protect millions of identity evaluations as well as mobile deposits every day, around the world. Here's one soundbite from Steve Ritter on the differences between those financial services providers succeeding and those struggling with the massive shift to digital in the last 18 months: “I think it

This week, Joseph Chang and Gray Webb join the show to share their story on Liquibit Capital, a quantitative-driven investment management and technology company focused on producing consistent yield-like returns. In this conversation, we get into the converging paths that brought Joseph and Gray together with Liquibit, each of their respective ‘awakenings’ on crypto, how arbitrage works across the 24/7 crypto markets, how they’ve merged the benefits of their careers in institutional finance and technology into an institutional investment platform in a new asset class….and merging interests in aqua-scaping and wine! MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by PAT Fintech, the training partner that demystifies fintech and digital finance for financial services professionals. LINKS: Episode title inspired by OG Original Gangster by Ice-T Leave a review and subscribe on Podchaser| Apple Podcasts | Spotify| Google| Overcast Check out our MoneyNeverSleeps website Subscribe to our newsletter on Substack Follow us on Twitter Po

This is our latest Money Talks segment, where we get into the onslaught of crypto’s mainstream moments in the past two weeks featuring Elon Musk’s antics and Charlie Munger’s view on bitcoin, we dig into BNPL (Buy Now Pay Later) for the first time with a look at Klarna, we pick though Tiger Global’s supersize appetite for deals previously just the purview of VC, and we hear from Rory Galvin from Navirum on the Finsight Series. MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by PAT Fintech, the training partner that demystifies fintech and digital finance for financial services professionals. MAIN STORIES WE COVERED: Crypto’s mainstream moments from the last two weeks: Dogecoin is Getting People Worried (Noelle Acheson, Crypto Long & Short, 10-May-21) Charlie Munger Moans about Bitcoin - juxtaposed vs Noelle Acheson’s more realistic view below. Bitcoin’s Potential as a Collateral Class (Noelle Acheson, Crypto Long & Short, 4-May-21) No Mercy No Malice: The Martian (Scott Galloway, 7-May-21) Mike Novogratz's Galaxy Digit

This week we welcome back Andrew Mullaney, CTO of Premind AI, sharing his story on the last 2+ years of building Premind, streaming 57,000 stock prices into a million news stories a day, the impact of high-speed information flow on age-old market theory, the differences between his last startup NewsWhip and Premind AI, surviving in the startup desert…and still trying to be relatively innocuous! MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by PAT Fintech, the training partner that demystifies fintech and digital finance for financial services professionals. Premind AI is an Ireland-based deeptech venture providing institutional investors the 'edge' through anticipating market reactions to news events. HIGHLIGHTS: On the scale of data that the Premind AI ‘machine’ is processing: “We stream through one million articles a day, and we can burst 20-30 articles per second with each article averaging 500 words. So, we have 10,000 words per second coming through. We monitor 57,000 stocks, and each one has 20 descriptive words, so th

Oli Cavanagh and Charles Dowd, the co-founders of Strike, tell the story of the confluence of experiences and ideas that brought them together to launch Strike, getting a product live and raising an angel round in less than 3 months, the benefit of having done it before when you need to build a team swiftly, and the big road ahead for Strike. MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by PAT Fintech, the training partner that demystifies fintech and digital finance for financial services professionals. Strike is portable personal payment tech designed to make tipping, giving and paying convenient, safe and easy for all. Strike and its patent-pending technology has been successfully deployed in multiple verticals in Ireland and is expanding to a number of international markets. HIGHLIGHTS: Oli Cavanagh on moving fast: “I've been involved with a number of startups, but this one is really different to any of them. None of them have ever moved this quickly, and it's because we had the idea and within 24 hours Charles was buil

We’re back with another Money Talks segment this week, and we get into the story of Coinbase going public and the cryptofication of fintech, Starling Bank’s big investment from Goldman Sachs, the credit-building appeal and 'rundle' potential of the latest Apple Card feature, and buckets more! MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by PAT Fintech, the training partner that demystifies fintech and digital finance for financial services professionals. MAIN STORIES WE COVERED: Coinbase Goes Public (Form S1 filed with the SEC, 25-Feb-21) Eoin Fitzgerald zooms out on the bellwether moment for crypto: “One of the most important things about it is this is a company that's only nine years old. It’s only taken 10 or 12 years for cryptocurrency to go mainstream. It's incredible when you think of how far we've come with even fintech, and then you have something of this magnitude happening in a short period of time.” Pete Townsend talking about upside of fintech “Chamath (King of SPACs) looked at some of the numbers and said if yo

This is a special bonus episode welcoming back Ollie Walsh, co-founder and CEO of Pipit Global, a for-profit social impact fintech based in Galway here in Ireland. Ollie was on the show back in July 2019 in episode 52, and as Pipit's crowdfunding campaign on the Spark Crowdfunding platform here in Ireland is about to go live to the public, we brought him back to bring us all up to speed on Pipit and share his story on the campaign. MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by PAT Fintech, the training partner that demystifies fintech and digital finance for financial services professionals. Pipit is a platform that now touches every continent and has the potential to impact the lives of millions with a safer and more cost-effective way for migrants to support their families. Ollie and the Pipit team are enabling the public to invest in their vision to reduce the global cost of remittance, and are launching their crowdfunding campaign the week of April 26th on the Spark Crowdfunding platform. To learn more about the Spark

Mike Cavanaugh, Managing Partner at Regiment Alpha, shares his story on lessons learned in the open outcry commodity trading pits, his multiple entrepreneurial ventures amidst a life in fintech, having things thrown at him for saying ‘blockchain’, advising and helping to raise investment for fintech startups…and the joys of barefoot water skiing behind the Cheddar Curtain! MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by PAT Fintech, the training partner that demystifies fintech and digital finance for financial services professionals. Regiment Alpha is an early-stage venture fund investing in seed-to-Series A startups in four specific areas of fintech: Payments, WealthTech, RegTech, and Capital Markets Tech. The team is based in the Mid-West US but are open to investing as a lead anywhere in the US and as a “follow” globally. HIGHLIGHTS: On starting his career in the open outcry trading pits at the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT): “I started trading in the late nineties and got introduced to the trading world at an interestin

Fiona Edwards Murphy, co-founder and CEO of ApisProtect, shares her story on channeling her technology expertise into a passion for helping beekeepers, her transition from academia into the life of a startup founder, raising ApisProtect’s first round, building a customer base looking after 20mn bees…and playing the bagpipes! MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by PAT Fintech, the training partner that demystifies fintech and digital finance for financial services professionals. ApisProtect is an Irish tech startup using unique, innovative bee monitoring technology to help beekeepers prevent losses and increase productivity in their hives. Just this week, Fiona was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe list for 2021. HIGHLIGHTS: On Fiona’s attraction to IoT: “I really just fell in love with using sensors in the real world to achieve meaningful things. You're taking all of these concepts that you've learned about to get those sensors out to the real world, give people information that they don't have already and get

Barry Darmody, founder and CEO of Search4Less and ENKI, shares his story on the life experiences that were the catalysts for him becoming a startup founder, getting the Search4Less product to market in the early days, keeping the faith through the lean years, making yourself expendable through building a great team, and connecting the dots of life through his passion for problem-solving. MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by PAT Fintech, the training partner that demystifies fintech and digital finance for financial services professionals. Search4Less is a limitless company information platform that allows you to access any publicly available information about directors, shareholders and companies in seconds. ENKI is also part of the family, which is a focused product built around the Search4Less core that makes law searching easy and efficient for property transactions. HIGHLIGHTS: On the impact of playing a key role in acquiring businesses early in his career: “I learned a lot in the due diligence phases and in

SOUND QUALITY WARNING:  You know how Marc Andreessen said 'software is eating the world'? Well, software ate this episode, please excuse the underwater sound and we'll be back to normal next week! In this Money Talks segment, Pete and Eoin trade ideas on the impact of Ireland’s investment in Stripe, Revolut’s American dream, the season of the SPAC with eToro, Bakkt and Kraken and thoughts on DeFi vs. mainstream crypto. MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by PAT Fintech, the training partner that demystifies fintech and digital finance for financial services professionals. STORIES WE COVERED: The double-bottom-line impact of Ireland’s investment in Stripe (Irish Times, 22-Mar-21) Pete channeling Chamath Palihapitiya: “Take all of the old school, traditional financial services players that are valued in aggregate in the hundreds of billions right now. Then have a look at FinTech, and when you throw out Stripe, you’ve got maybe tens of billions of market cap. There's so much more room to grow in fintech.” Revolut

Robert Alice, artist and creator of the ‘Portraits of a Mind’ project, shares his story on how bitcoin - and to quote Robert – “and its essential ties to the past instead of the perpetuated perception of its radical severance with it,“ was a catalyst for a melting pot of inspiration for his mesmerizing artwork Portraits of a Mind, the crossover from physical art into digital art with non-fungible tokens (NFTs), the intersection of artistry and entrepreneurship…and the joys of life as a triplet! MoneyNeverSleepsis sponsored by PAT Fintech, the training partner that demystifies fintech and digital finance for financial services professionals. Robert Alice founded his project in 2018 to promote blockchain culture within the visual arts. The completion of Portraits of a Mind spanned 3.5 years and resulted in a 40-painting work of art. Each of the 40 paintings is the size of a small but circular garage door and each represents one of the first 40 blocks of the bitcoin blockchain.  ‘Block 21’ was recently auct

In this Money Talks segment, Pete and Eoin trip through the wires of Starling Bank’s latest fundraise, investing in Roblox’s direct listing, Walmart’s SuperApp vs. ‘The Bank of Walmart’, the Square-Tidal / Jack Dorsey-Jay Z tie-up, and Ireland's new national startup accelerator, international startup accelerators and pre-accelerators. MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by PAT Fintech, the training partner that demystifies fintech and digital finance for financial services professionals. MAIN STORIES WE COVERED: Starling raises £272mn at £1.3bn valuation (Sifted, 8-Mar-21) Pete’s overall thoughts on Starling Bank at this point in time: “Monzo, Revolut and N26, have all raised at higher valuations than £1.2bn. Starling now outpaces all of them in terms of value per user at £650 per user. Out of this entire story, after reading Anne Boden’s book ‘Banking on IT’, I think that’s the thing that she would point to and be the proudest of.” Roblox direct listing gets $45 reference price from NYSE (Marketwatch, 9-Mar-21) Eo

Cian Prendergast, founder and CEO of Ortus joins the show to share his story on the origins of Ortus in Ireland, sharing his story on how there’s a lot more to providing cloud and managed IT services to SMEs than what you’d expect, entrepreneurial leadership during a pandemic, surrounding yourself with brilliant people….and a past life of having every job under the clouds! MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by PAT Fintech, the training partner that demystifies fintech and digital finance for financial services professionals. Cian spent 8 years in the IT sector before launching Ortus in 2007, inspired by his ambition to build a client-centric business based on his own values and vision. Ortus provide cloud and managed IT services for over 300 small-to-medium-sized businesses in Ireland, and more recently in Continental Europe, in the financial, healthcare and legal sectors. HIGHLIGHTS: On Cian’s inspiration to launch Ortus: “It was this notion that there were some people sitting upstairs, making decisions that were

On the show this week we’ve got Gerry Fahy and Andrew Quinn with the story of the PAT Group and PAT Fintech, the Irish opportunity with the growth of fintech and regtech, achieving product-market fit in learning and education, and teaching the way you would have loved to have been taught. Gerry Fahy is the founder of the PAT Group, who are at the forefront of online education and digitally enhanced learning in Ireland. Through Gerry’s origin story, his launching of PAT in 2017, and Andrew Quinn joining to head up PAT Fintech in 2020, we explore continuous learning and education as critical components of Ireland’s ambition to become a global center of excellence for fintech and regtech. HIGHLIGHTS: On one of Gerry’s earliest thoughts: “It struck me that we should be embracing technology as a medium of delivery. Should learners have to fight the traffic and come into a classroom tired after a hard day? Shouldn’t they actually consume their education,training and skills digitally?” On Gerry’s inspiration to laun

In this Money Talks segment, Pete and Eoin riff on Pete’s first experience with Clubhouse, Jay Z and Jack Dorsey’s Bitcoin Trust for Africa and India, fintech valuations and SPACs, Citi’s fat finger, efficient crypto markets and grief for Revolut over raising fees. MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by PAT Fintech, the training partner that demystifies fintech and digital finance for financial services professionals. MAIN STORIES WE COVERED: Why can’t Europe build a Clubhouse? (Sifted, 17-Feb-21) Thoughts from the author, Nicholas Colin, pointed to a fragmented European market (we agreed), a lack of experience with scaling social media platforms (we agreed here too), and perhaps a less favorable European mindset towards social media (we’re too snobby in Europe? Really? Not the Irish, at least!). Jay Z and Jack Dorsey's Bitcoin fund for Africa and India (TechCrunch, 12-Feb-21) Jay Z and Jack Dorsey are getting together to start up a Bitcoin Trust and putting 500 Bitcoin into it between the two of them, which is cur

Deborah Brock, founder and CEO of Nua Fertility, joins the show to share her story on the origins of Nua Fertility in Ireland, why it made so much sense to add in educational elements and a community ethos to the value proposition, finding global partners….and rugby as an analogy for startup life! MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by PAT Fintech, the training partner that demystifies fintech and digital finance for financial services professionals. Deborah spent 15 years in the non-profit and education sectors, and then after her own experience with solving infertility, was inspired to start Nua Fertility in 2017. Nua Fertility launched its first product in 2020, NuaBiome for Women, which is the first-of-its-kind, natural pre-natal fertility supplement specially developed to help support female fertility. HIGHLIGHTS: On launching her own business: “When you've been through fertility treatments, you suddenly have a PhD in fertility because you go from one extreme to the other. It just naturally led me into thinkin

Yoann Turpin, co-founder and Head of Business Development at Wintermute, joins the show to talk about the parallels between competitive swimming, derivatives trading and crypto, creating liquid markets for digital asset trading platforms, cross-pollination of business opportunities across the digital assets universe…and visiting less countries than languages he can speak! MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by PAT Fintech, the training partner that demystifies fintech and digital finance for financial services professionals. Pete Townsend and Yoann Turpin connected in late 2020 after an intro from the intro-king himself, Graham Rodford with some expected involvement in the intro from Ivailo Jordanov from 7Percent Ventures as well. As Yoda would say, “Small universe the digital asset space is.” HIGHLIGHTS: On parallels between life experiences: “With both competitive swimming and trading, there is a binary outcome with marginal wins. When you hit the wall, even if you’re fast, you might just be a few milliseconds be

In this Money Talks segment, Pete and Eoin try to make sense of GameStop and WallStreetBets, the aftermath of the failed Plaid-Visa deal, who might buy Monzo, a Cambrian explosion at the intersection of money and society and RIP Hammerin’ Hank Aaron. This episode of MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by PAT Fintech, the training partner that demystifies fintech and digital finance for financial services professionals. MAIN STORIES WE COVERED: What the Hell Is Going On With GameStop’s Stock? (Slate, 26-Jan-21) What does it mean for the future of publicly traded equities where you have groups like WallStreetBets, who on a whim, can turn against you and drive the stock up or down? When a market is 24/7, whether that’s in crypto or with after-hours trading on public equities, you’ve got to get your head around all of these new channels where market sentiment is effectively created and observable in real time. The hedge funds need to get smarter, because the crowd now has the ability to move the price, almost on its ow