Operate Podcast

Community-building as a Path to a VC Career - Rex Salisbury, Founder & GP at Cambrian

Rex Salisbury has a great story as his path into venture capital and transition from Andreessen Horowitz to founding Cambrian. It was fun recording our conversation so he could tell that story and inspire others who can now consider other paths to get there. His development of a community of fintech founders was definitely rooted in great timing and his personal passion, and also led him to realize that investing in this community was what he was also meant to do. 

His instincts led him to San Francisco where he thought his community would be, then to A16Z and ultimately to starting his own fund. 

Enjoy this conversation and the many things Rex has learned by serving the community around him.

Thanks to show sponsor, BankTech Ventures.

Charles Potts - Chief Innovation Officer at ICBA

 

Charles Potts is my favorite bank technology historian. And he happens to also be my partner in BankTech Ventures. This was a conversation I wanted to have and record for a long time, and I'm excited to share it.

Charles is currently the Chief Innovation Officer of the ICBA (Independent Community Bankers of America) and it is a perfect role for him, as he is part banker, part technologist, part entrepreneur and part futurist. He gives a great history lesson in here on how bank technology has evolved.

We also talked about bankers' priorities in 2023, how the ICBA ThinkTECH accelerator came to be, what's ahead for it, and the questions and advice he finds that he is consistently giving to bankers across the country.

Enjoy this one!

Eric Sprink - President & CEO of Coastal Community Bank

This episode was an absolute treat. Eric Sprink is what I call a human energizer bunny. He demonstrates abundance to his peers in community banking as he’s taught dozens of others how to do banking as a service right, which we talk about in the conversation.

Eric is the CEO of Coastal Community Bank in the greater Seattle area, and yet his community bank now supports millions of customer accounts through some very large partners whose names you’re likely to recognize.  He’s been a banker for most of his career, yet exhibits a growth mindset that is not so common amongst his peers. It's served him well as they've been one of the top performing banks in the country in the last few years.

I’m also fortunate to count Eric as a partner in BankTech Ventures. It’s been an absolute pleasure to know him for the past 5 years. 

 

Wayne Miller - SVP Innovation Programs at ICBA

It was great to have Wayne Miller on the podcast and record our conversation, which wasn't far from a typical one we have all the time. Wayne recently joined ICBA to continue and expand the great work he's been doing with bank technology innovation and startups, and he's a key enabler of the future of community banking. Wayne and I talked a lot about what is on banks' agendas for the new year and how we're all working together to help them.

I consider Wayne sort of a "founder whisperer" as he's worked with well over 100 of them in the last 6 years through a couple accelerator programs he oversaw. And with a focus on business development for the startups going through the program, it has been true business acceleration for them, and a big reason why it was named the fintech accelerator of the year a couple of years ago.

Enjoy Wayne - some great sound bites, stories and sayings. One of my favorites is "if people aren't buying what you're selling, you don't have a business."

Thanks to show sponsor, BankTech Ventures.

Brent Jackson - Founder & CEO of Torpago

 

Brent Jackson saw the opportunity for Torpago inside the finance and accounting organization of a prior company. I always enjoy when a founder just sees the opportunity and goes for it.

He has a good focus on customers and ensuring he has happy ones with stories of high impact. And while he's in a hypercompetitive market of corporate spend management, he's carved out a great niche and continues to grow quickly.

Brent has also been scrappy to get the company started, built and growing, and he's added great members to his team in recent years. It's been a pleasure to get to know Brent in the last couple of years.

Enjoy this conversation with a coachable entrepreneur who is growing himself and his company simultaneously.

And thanks to show sponsor, BankTech Ventures.

 

Ron Shevlin - Chief Research Officer at Cornerstone; Senior Contributor at Forbes

It was a really fun first episode to start the year. Ron Shevlin from Cornerstone Advisors had a lot of great thoughts and insights to share and we covered a lot of ground.

Ron talked about the strategic imperative for community banks and had a number of very clear action items banks can take to have more success in the coming years. 

A few areas we discussed:
1. Financial products vs. services

2. The re-thinking of and opportunity in what defines a bank's community

3. How banks can learn a lot from the health care industry

4. What he would do as a new bank CEO

5. What it means to really build a capability of partnership

6. How to attract more digital and younger talent into banking

If you are in financial services or fintech, this is an episode you will absolutely enjoy to kick of 2023. Happy New Year, Operate listeners!

And thanks to sponsor, BankTech Ventures!

Howard Makler - Founder & CEO of Innovation Refunds

 

Serial entrepreneur, Howard Makler, has been growing Innovation Refunds at 200% per quarter this year. Few companies ever do that quarter over quarter, as the numbers get big very quickly. It's been amazing to watch, and I was thrilled to have him join me to talk about the experience, his personal and leadership philosophies and what's unique about this opportunity vs. others he's built.

He also highlights how important passion and purpose are in fueling us day to day. Enjoy this conversation with Howard!

Thanks to episode sponsor, BankTech Ventures

David Wexler - Co-founder & CEO of PortX

David Wexler joined me to discuss a critical innovation and transformation topic in banking - integrations. This has been an expensive and painful area for banks and their technology partners for a long time, and few in community banking have embraced integration platforms, and that's slowed down their ability to digitally transform.

I’ve had the pleasure of working closely with David over the last year, and we share some very strong views about the  future state technology architecture of the financial services industry, and we discussed it on this episode.

He is the co-founder and CEO of PortX, a leading integration-as-as-service platform for financial services. He works with dozens of community financial institutions and fintech companies, enabling them to work together more efficiently and consistently.

He has a long history in application integration and services, including time at Mulesoft and Microsoft. He’s a big champion of community banks and enabling them to more effectively compete with digital products.

We also talked about what the industry has historically gotten wrong in implementing new software, how PortX is changing it, and how he's evolving and learning as a CEO of a key company in this market.

Also check out our sponsor, BankTech Ventures!

 

Zack DeFord - Co-founder & CEO of Smerf

Zack DeFord joined me to discuss his experiences as a lifelong gamer, and how his younger brother was bullied while playing online games. Zack's desire to make gaming safer and more fun for his brother led him to start Smerf, and that authenticity has served him well as he's built the company. Zack and his co-founder, Ben, have developed Smerf to be a critical identity and social layer across gaming platforms, and they're being noticed by some of the largest gaming companies in the world. We talked about his experience engaging with the CEO of one of them early in Smerf's life.

I've also seen Zack mature so rapidly as a founder becoming the CEO of a company with incredible potential to impact millions of gamers in a positive way. It's such a pleasure to get to work with him through Operate. Enjoy this conversation!

Cat Berman - Co-founder & CEO of CNote

Cat Berman and I met several years ago, so it was fun to finally have a recorded conversation. She is inspiring in her leadership of CNote and bringing more impact to the financial services world through the products that they offer.

Community financial institutions have impact in their communities. It's central to who they are as businesses. They engage and support the people where they are based. CNote works with them to get credit for the lending and banking they do in their communities, which is often ignored by larger financial institutions and even the broader market.

This was so evident during PPP, where community banks all over the country rallied to support their local businesses, delivering twice as much support volume than their market share for financial services. 

Enjoy a passionate entrepreneur and her mission to drive more impact. It was a fun conversation and we're excited (at BankTech Ventures) to be on the journey with her and her team. 

And thanks to BankTech Ventures for sponsoring.