Fintech Leaders
00:08:43 · Kamran Zaki
[00:08:43] S0: I think it's a great point. So you should ideally, if there is global applicability for the problem we're trying to solve or use case, I think your vision should obviously be global. But to your point, you can't get ahead of yourself, right? From an execution standpoint, if you try and do 20 things really well, then you sort of may become a jack of all trades, but not great at one. And I think that's as much art as science, right? How do you as a founder or a core management team take these set of opportunities every quarter or year, and how do you decide which handful you're gonna prioritize and you're gonna make sure you're excellent at, right? And I think that's the key that if you're not excellent, how are you standing out compared to the competitive landscape for your customers? And so you really have to excel at least a few things and then build from there. But I think that can be different things for different companies. You could excel like Adyen did in the early days. It was all about digital. And it was about, hey, how do we help you solve this problem from a global standpoint? And I think then over time they added the unified commerce capability and then they added Adyen for platforms, embedded financial products. So that was sort of the path that they went down. I think other companies have done a great job of starting in The US as an example and starting to build multi product offering and then starting to go international. So I think there again many paths that could get you to success. It's just about having that big vision, but then executing really, really well against it.
00:10:12 · Miguel Armaza
[00:10:12] S1: Let's talk a little bit about some of the, I guess, verticals of Fintech where people are paying attention, where you are paying attention. One that we haven't talked about, at least you and I too much in the past, is stable coins. And I mean, this is this is at the core of payments disruption. You are the payments guy. I'm sure you are thinking about stablecoins. What sort of role do you envision for them in the coming years?
00:10:50 · Kamran Zaki
[00:10:50] S0: Would love your perspective on this as well. So, hopefully, is a dialogue. You know, the way I've always tried to approach things, and I think we do as Iconiq, is what's the problem we're trying to solve? And then, hey, is stablecoin the best technology or solution to solve it and or could something else do it? And I think that's where sometimes people get really excited about a thematic area, right, be it crypto or stablecoin or AI nowadays. But the key is, you know, what are those use cases or problems that are really large and can add a ton of value. And then if we work backwards, how are these the right technologies or enablers for doing so? And so to your point, I think in general, but especially the last couple of weeks, there's a lot of attention on stablecoins. And I think that's how I'm trying to think through it and actually talking to a lot of companies, but also a lot of potential end users that what are these use cases. Right? And ones that often come up are cross border money movement. Right? And then if we break it down, the question is, so in what corridors, right, are those large corridors? Are they B2B, B2C? You know, which country corridors might be the problem? Is the problem technology or is the challenge really regulatory? Right? Because in a certain country, if you're wanting to hold US denominated stablecoin, one of the first questions come to my mind is, can you hold a multicurrency denominated bank account, right, in USD? If not, is that sort of one of the big hurdles you're trying to solve? And so just think through it step by step and and sort of identify where these sort of, unmet needs are and then sort of work backwards and say, this technology, in this example, Stablecoin, the one best suited to solve it? Things start overlapping a lot, right? Because I think people have been working on solving the cross border money movement challenge for a long time, right? There's some great companies like Transferwise that are attacking this problem. There's also Revolut to some extent. You also have a whole generation of new remittance companies, right, that have targeted specific corridors or use cases. Then now I think you have a large number of companies that are building on top of stablecoin and blockchain in general to solve it.
00:13:05 · Kamran Zaki, Miguel Armaza
So then I think it's back to, do we think that is a large opportunity or market to multiple people are trying to attack it? What might be the best way? Or is it a combination of those? And then what's the best team we think that is going to solve it? [00:13:20] S1: Yeah. I think the interesting part for me to come out of stablecoins so far is that it kind of goes against what crypto fanatics really wanted because the most successful stable coins are backed and pegged to the dollar. Right? So it's only strengthening the US dollar dominance in the world. Right? And I think that there are some platforms I've seen specifically in Latin America where they're building neo banks on top of US denominated stable coin rails. And they're popular, especially in places where inflation has been crazy. But to your point, it's not everywhere. Right? It's specific use cases. I'm watching it also closely. I know quite a few people building an infrastructure for stable coins. Certainly, I don't think they're going away. It's probably just a new category of payments, right? Yeah. And that's why I
00:13:20 · Miguel Armaza, Kamran Zaki
[00:13:20] S1: Yeah. I think the interesting part for me to come out of stablecoins so far is that it kind of goes against what crypto fanatics really wanted because the most successful stable coins are backed and pegged to the dollar. Right? So it's only strengthening the US dollar dominance in the world. Right? And I think that there are some platforms I've seen specifically in Latin America where they're building neo banks on top of US denominated stable coin rails. And they're popular, especially in places where inflation has been crazy. But to your point, it's not everywhere. Right? It's specific use cases. I'm watching it also closely. I know quite a few people building an infrastructure for stable coins. Certainly, I don't think they're going away. It's probably just a new category of payments, right? Yeah. And that's why I [00:14:26] S0: think to your point, I try and look at the end use cases and then work backwards and say, again, what are these underlying enablers that are gonna help us solve it in a better way? Faster, lower cost, and better customer experience. And to your point, I think stablecoin or blockchain could well be part of that long term infrastructure, but sometimes it's challenging. You're just building infrastructure and not quite sure how to align those things. I think definitely a lot of interesting things going on in the space and definitely trying to get smarter on it because there's a lot to learn.
00:14:26 · Kamran Zaki, Miguel Armaza
[00:14:26] S0: think to your point, I try and look at the end use cases and then work backwards and say, again, what are these underlying enablers that are gonna help us solve it in a better way? Faster, lower cost, and better customer experience. And to your point, I think stablecoin or blockchain could well be part of that long term infrastructure, but sometimes it's challenging. You're just building infrastructure and not quite sure how to align those things. I think definitely a lot of interesting things going on in the space and definitely trying to get smarter on it because there's a lot to learn. [00:15:01] S1: Related to this, Kamran, the problem, the challenge of identity in financial services is cat and mouse game. Right? Where... Frosters against the rest of the industry trying to do things well. I mean, I I think every day, I either hear of a new company tackling the problem... Challenges of identity or, you know, someone struggling with it. How much time do you spend thinking about the future of identity in financial services?