Fintech in Asia with Slava Solodkiy of Life.SREDA

Dan Kimerling is Founder and Managing Partner at Deciens, an early-stage fintech VC and investor in Chipper Cash, Treasury Prime and many others.

Prior to starting Deciens, Dan co-founded Standard Treasury and served as its CEO until its acquisition by Silicon Valley Bank. Standard Treasury was one of the earliest players in what has evolved to become the Banking-as-a-Service space. The company was backed by YCombinator, Andreessen Horowitz, and Index Ventures. After the acquisition, Dan became responsible for API Banking, Open Platform, and Global Research at SVB.

In this conversation, Dan and I discuss the strategy of concentrated bets, why he doesn’t want to see every deal, what’s next in startup funding, value accrual in AI and more.

Amias Gerety is a partner at QED with a specific focus on infrastructure, insurtech and payments.

Prior to QED, Amias served as the President’s nominee and as Acting Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. In that role, he was the lead advisor to the Secretary on policies affecting financial institutions, fighting to restore order during the global financial crisis and impacting policy in the years that followed. Amias is a recipient of the Alexander Hamilton award, the Treasury’s highest honor.

In this conversation, Amias and I discuss a few counterintuitive views on venture capital, thematic vs. opportunistic early stage investing, opportunities in payments and more.

Thank you very much for joining us today. Please welcome, Amias Gerety.

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.